My first electric guitar cost £4. It was home made. I bought it in a junk shop. I took it home and painted black and white swirly patterns all over its body. For eight quid I bought a knackered Watkins Dominator combo. After less than five minutes on full whack the Dominator made a noise like a demented donkey that you could only kill with feedback. Best feedback resulted from sticking the head of the guitar against the speaker, the guitar’s arse into my groin and basically humping the amp to vary the pitch of the scream. Psychedelically enhanced, this felt fierce and mighty.
I wanted to be original, so I resolutely refused to learn
anything. That’s how smart I was. I twiddled and diddled. I bought a Marshall
Fuzz Face and a Vox Wah Wah pedal. I fuzzed and wahed my twiddly diddlings.
After a year or so I met another guy called Dirk. We jammed. He
would play A and E minor and I would twiddle and diddle.
Obviously the next step was a gig. I knew a chap called Ambrose
who was putting on a benefit at Guildford Youth Centre. I blagged a slot. This
was 1970. These were Acid Days. I may not have been able to play the guitar but
I was more than able to talk. I knew a drummer called The Black Shadow. He
looked like King Charles the Second. He knew a white South African who claimed
to play the bass. We called him The Immigrant. They were both up for it. None
of us had any gear. No matter. We would borrow. I called us ‘Scorched Earth’.
I invited Stephen Stills to come and jam with us at the gig. I’d
never met him, but I knew where he lived. He’d bought the house that Peter
Sellers had sold to Ringo Starr. It was three miles from Guildford .
I wrote him a very trippy illustrated invitation, which not only
explained several of his own song lyrics to him, but also suggested he bring
his friend Eric Clapton to our gig. I delivered it by hand. This was 1970.
Security hadn’t been invented yet. I walked into Stephen Stills’ kitchen and
handed the invite to a very beautiful young American woman. She assured me
she’d pass it on to Stephen. I told the promoter. We got a mention in ‘The
Raver’ column in Melody Maker.
At the last minute the other Dirk pulled out. His girlfriend went
into labour. This was a serious setback. His A and E minor had been intrinsic.
He did however lend me his claret coloured velvet doublet. It had puff sleeves
and old-gold frog fasteners. He’d bought it in Amsterdam
We arrived punctually, but Black Shadow and The Immigrant were not
getting on. They were snarling at each other like a pair of rottweilers with
too-tight nut-sacks. It was a struggle to keep them apart whilst attempting to
explain to Ambrose, the promoter, my vision for the gig.
My plan was to be actually playing before anyone even arrived. It
was going to be a hypersensitive organic psychedelic jam session. The vibe of
the arriving audience would totally govern the music. In fact I told Ambrose it
was an experiment in Anti-Music. With hindsight this may have been a mistake.
Ambrose did not share my enthusiasm. If anything there was a
definite flicker of panic in his eyes. He told us he’d prefer to start off with
a few records. I was a little bit disappointed. But he was adamant. So much for
my cunning plan. First no rhythm guitar, and now, not only the bass and drums
at each others throats, but my artistic improvisational brainchild aborted by
the promoter’s short-sighted lack of faith.
‘Well be back later,’ I murmured through clenched teeth. I turned
on my Cuban heels and strode off, Black Shadow to the left of me Immigrant to
the right of me.
We went round to visit Christopher Robin. He was a vegetarian
butcher: a troubled soul with a heart of gold. He lived just a few streets
away. He had a big bag of weed. It helped calm down The Black Shadow and The
Immigrant. It took the edge off. They stopped snarling at each other. After an
hour or so we staggered back to the Youth Centre to see what was happening. We were
well wasted.
The Youth Centre was now half full. Between fifty and a hundred
people sat around looking bored and mildly pissed off. Ambrose rushed up. He
now seemed even more panic-stricken than when we’d left.
‘Quick. You’re on. Now.’
Too stoned to argue, we stumbled onstage. I had a great deal of
trouble plugging in my fuzz box and wah-wah pedal. Some kindly hippie assisted
me but I was still too out of it to stand up. It was a big stage. We were
surrounded by equipment belonging to the several other bands on the bill.
Someone got me a stool. I sat down and we started.
I diddled and twiddled. The Black Shadow triple-flammed and
paradiddled. The Immigrant pumped out some deep mumbling bass lines. I fuzzed
and I wahed. It didn’t take long for me to get through my entire repertoire of
three or four riffs by which time I managed to hoist myself upright and line
myself up with a microphone. We seemed to have somehow slipped into a twelve
bar blues which was a surprise. I’d never played one before. Hell, I couldn’t
even play a scale. I sang some kind of ‘Just a Country Boy’ lyrics.
I noticed a pretty girl smiling. ‘Hey, this is fantastic,’ I
thought. Then I spotted a bloke yawning. ‘Oh no it must be shit,’ I thought. I
then turned my improvised lyrics into ‘hey lets all have a jam, everyone.’ A
couple of guys got up on stage at my invitation, but they were halted by
representatives of all the other bands. No Way was anyone going to play any of
their gear, Jose. That was final, non-negotiable and totally immune to all my
‘Aw c’mon, mans’.
None of these supposed hip musos seemed to understand the hippie
ethic. ‘I’ll bloody show them,’ I snarled to myself. I handed my guitar to the
nearest of the two onstage volunteers, exited stage left and left them to it.
It would be two years before my next gig. It would also be two
hundred miles from Guildford .
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