RTYD Member Graham Forbes kindly sent me a signed-copy of his second book, Rock and Roll Tourist (Northumbria University Press), which I took on holiday with me over Easter and thoroughly enjoyed.
Forbes has played with all sorts of bands, from the Incredible String Band to a blues band in Los Angeles including session men John Gilston and Nicky Hopkins. He has also played with Mike Heron's Reputation, Golden Eagle, with ex-Bowie drummer Woody Woodmansey, the Kim Beacon Band (ex-Peter Gabriel), Radio Clyde DJ Tiger Tim Stevens, and a big soul band with actor Rory McCann and Carol Smillie.
He's played gigs with the Kinks, 10cc, the Drifters, Boy George, Pasadenas, Marshall Tucker Band, Elvin Bishop, 3 Dog Night, Bruce Springsteen, the Stranglers, Travis, Gong, Chick Corea, McGuiness Flint, Hudson Ford, Don MacLean, and Nico.
He lives half the year in the USA and when at home in Scotland plays he plays in a BBC celebrity band with John Beattie, James McPherson, Jackie Bird, Andrea McNeil, Robert Calder, and other guests including Scott Wallace, Deke McGee and the Brassnecks,Michelle McManus, Horse,Tom Urie, Alan Nimmo, Jim Condie, Jade Lazar, Gordon Smith Patrica Panther, Middle of the Road, Gary Innes and Dougie Vipond.
His first book, Rock And Roll Mountains, was nominated for an international award at the Banff Mountain Book Festival in Canada and got some great reviews. It is available in good bookstores or Amazon.
Below are some reviews of Rock and Roll Tourist. You can get hold of a copy here.
"Some wonderful descriptive writing. I heartily recommend it."Tom Morton, BBC Scotland
'With a keen eye for the absurd, Graham has an uncanny knack of stirring a range of emotions within a single story, but mostly, it's just laugh-out-loud funny!' Onnie McIntyre – Average White Band
'If Bill Bryson could play guitar, this is how it would sound!' Tommy Cunnigham, Wet Wet Wet
'Excellent. Compelling. A great read. I love the way you portray the band. It's electric'. Scott Ian, Anthrax
'Graham reports this world from his own unique lens – writing from the perspective of everyman, with a personal insight only he possesses. I wish I could have described a touring band's experience so succinctly.'
John Wheeler – Hayseed Dixie
'Graham's writing is refreshing in that it is about the life and not the myths of rock and roll… he captures for the reader what they can only imagine the lifestyle is really like… not all fun and games… except when it's fun and games!' Paul Barrere – Little Feat
'Terrific… perfectly captured the atmosphere of the days we spent together.' Neil Harrison – Bootleg Beatles
The Skinny.co.uk: Reviewed by Kayleigh Bohan, (Fri 30 Oct 2009)
The entertainment pedigree of booking a train ticket online can hardly compete with a stadium gig by U2. It's lucky, then, that the great strength of this second book by Graham Forbes is to make such separate brands of spectacle and farce as those to be found on tour and those that lie in wait for the general public equally engrossing. Insider knowledge is present without being overwhelming; the author is a guitarist formerly of The Incredible String Band. Writing with unforced familiarity, Forbes remains a warm and encyclopedic guide, introducing BB King, Anthrax and the coffee shops in Palma airport with impressive dexterity. In a book that gives as much time to cities, trains, planes and buses as gigs, Tourist maintains its hold while turning the attention back to Forbes and his brief addiction to prescription painkillers. Losing momentum when he settles in to give his opinions on the modern music scene, the otherwise sharp commentary risks aimless nostalgia, before recovering its energy. However, given the authority with which he writes and his willingness to invite the uninitiated along, it's hard to feel such opinions are unearned. A funny, engaging book of surprising substance. [Kayleigh Bohan]
Daily Mail: Reviewed by Ray Connolly (12th June 2009)
ROCKING ALL OVER THE WORLD
There are diverse reasons for travelling for fun. The pursuit of art history drags legions of (mainly) women across Europe every year; craggy mountaineers have a list of the world's highest peaks to conquer; and I'm told that nudists keep catalogues of beaches on which they wish to doff their modesty.
Old rockers: Brian Johnson and Angus Young of the band ACDC
But Graham Forbes, the former owner of a furniture removal company in Glasgow, has a quite individual motive. He goes around Europe and the U.S. watching rock bands play, talking to the musicians and oddballs he meets along the way, while ruminating generally on the state of popular music, the world and coffee.
It isn't a way of spending retirement that we might all fancy, but Forbes has a more-than-special interest in rock music.
Because decades ago, before he got into the removal business, he played bass guitar with one of the quintessential light folk Sixties groups, the Incredible String Band. And it seems the lure of the road, a sentence that all musicians must endure, has never quite left him.
The stories he tells are mainly about the sheer physical slog in search of a dream and somewhere to play. The two dead hours, for instance, that many musicians go through when they do a sound check, the constant waiting at airports, and the greasy, damp awfulness of English rock festivals in the rain.
Some of his stories are blackly funny in the Spinal Tap sense, such as when AC/DC members and friends meet and honour the 25th anniversary of the death of their original singer, who choked on his own vomit.
To collect these stories, Graham Forbes travelled to Slovenia to talk to the Bootleg Beatles, all top musicians who remind him that The Beatles never played most of their later hits on stage; to Hamburg to see Eminem who, like Chuck Berry in Glasgow, doesn't turn up; and Florida, where the fattest lady he has ever seen offers him her body at a BB King concert.
As a travel book, the random nature of Forbes's little journeys makes it no more than a lightweight companion, although his frequent digressions are sometimes amusing. But music is his primary interest and his love of rock 'n' roll is warming.
http://www.rock-til-you-drop-musicians.com/profile/GrahamForbes
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