winds of change and the scotch of st james

In spring 1965 a new club opened in what looked like a fairly typical West End public house. "The Scotch Of St James" was to become the centre of London for the next year or so, where rock stars and anyone who was anyone gravitated to the place as a matter of course.
Some of the northern groups had made the pilgrimage south to the city during the Beat Boom of 64 and like the other London bands, hanging out in between gigs in the West End (or Soho) where "The Scotch" was located (13 Masons Yard to be precise) was part of the off duty schedule. Just yards away from the unassuming exterior of "The Scotch" was the art gallery John Lennon first met Yoko. In very short time Masons Yard had become the bohemian hotspot of the West End. A couple of hundred yards away Soho begins proper where properties at the time were easy to get and affordable to rent. Hendrix on first arriving in the UK is said to have had his first flat near the market in Berwick St.
Jimi had first arrived in London at the beginning of September 1966 and took little time in making straight for the in-crowd and first played at "The Scotch" on 24 September. As someone once said the Swinging 60's was really just about 400 trendy people with everyone else looking on. It's a dead certainty that those 400 had ended up in "The Scotch" at one time or another during 1966.
Chris Welch, journalist with Melody Maker at the time -

"Many groups shared apartments and flats for a while, including The Animals. But not for long. You can imagine the fights and rows after a hard days' night revelling and jamming. But to make sure he didn't miss any of the action, Eric Burdon got his own flat above the Scotch of St James, one of the West End's trendiest night clubs, where he could literally drop in and catch Jimi Hendrix jamming and share a brandy or three with The Rolling Stones and The Beatles".

By December 1966 the original Animals had split, with now Burdon entranced by Hendrix and the ever evolving London scene he mixed with at the club, had changed his musical ideas away from driving r&b beat and by 1967 formed the New Animals and his version of the new psychedelia in California, moving there that year. By June 1967, Hendrix, Burdon and many of the musicians and bands that had hung out at the "The Scotch" less than 12 months earlier were now lining up at The Monterey Pop Festival along with the American bands of Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, The Mammas and Pappas etc and marking the first real sign of the Summer Of Love and that Love Generation.
Monterey was to be Hendrix's debut in America with the Experience, who along with The Who, had been recommended to the organisers by McCartney when the Beatles declined an offer to play the festival. Which was hardly surprising given The Beatles were by now a studio concept only.
That year Hendrix released - Are You Experienced and Axis Bold AS Love, The Beatles - Sgt Pepper, The Rolling Stones - Her Satanic Majesties Request, Eric Burdon and the New Animals - Winds Of Change.
Burdon's barmy take on psychedelia and probably the lesser known of the bunch had him reciting poems and beat like pros against sitars, guitars and all manner of stuff on one side with a heavier psyche blues rock on the other. The idea of it was crazy. The idea of it also being born in it's embryonic form in some small West End bar 10 months earlier was completely crazy.

Eric Burdon & the Animals - Winds of Change has just been re-released on 180 Gram Vinyl (and CD) as a mono edition. We're also reliably informed by the Audiophile LP Round-Up in Record Collector that hearing it on a record deck with a specialist mono cartridge makes all the difference.
Oh yeah and where the dickens do you get one of those from? Anyway the album is available from Sundazed

The photograph at the top of The Scotch Of St James was purloined from Kathy Etchingham's website who was Jimi Hendrix's girlfriend at the time and also has some rather fun stories taken from her book.

mother earth blues

During 1969, Eric Burdon joined up with the Californian funk rock band War. It was just 12 months later the band were playing at Ronnie Scott's in Soho, London when Burdon's friend Jimi Hendrix was to join them on stage for the last two numbers of the night. Both songs were played more or less as loose blues jams for Hendrix and the group to work out.
This momentous night in Frith Street was also recorded by one of the audience, a 20 year old from Shepherds Bush, London who had quite unknowingly recorded a piece of music history. Bill Baker had just a Sony cassette recorder and a cassette to capture that night at Scott's and had to turn the tape over to record the last part of the gig when Hendrix was introduced as the guest and hence losing the first part of the War performance.
The two Hendrix tracks from this recording, "Mother Earth" and "Tobacco Road", were later included without permission from Bill Baker on a bootleg LP, although how the tape was passed to the bootlegger isn't clear. The recording quality of the end product was poor as were many bootlegs of the day.
The recording eventually entered general circulation in 2009 and then in December 2010 was remastered in California with the recording improved.
The end result is more like listening to an old blues recording from the 1920's rather than the bright new 70's age of stereo.
But that one night on September 16th 1970 is much more than the final audio result as it documents the last performance of Jimi Hendrix. Within little more than 24 hours he was gone.
Here is an extract from Memphis Slim's "Mother Earth Blues". The uploader has also improved the quality even over the last remastering and edited it to just Jimi's two solo's. The picture above is assumed to be taken on that night.

monterey festival 1967

On the 45th anniversary of the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival this weekend in 2012 saw another report on a stage collapsing at a large festival in Toronto.
This recent festival misery resulted in the death of one man and several others injured.
Alarmingly, this weekends disaster is not an isolated incident with another collapse of a stage at the Bluesfest in Ottawa July 2011. That time with one person dying and several people injured, followed by six people losing their lives in August 2011 at a Sugarland concert in Indianapolis and a further five fatalities in Belgium when a storm swept in and toppled the stage at the Pukkelpop Festival.
So what the architectural hell is going at the modern day pop festival ?!
With present festival tickets going for exorbitant prices wouldn't it be expected that the important matter of a safe stage would be top of the priorities for any organisers. Are there too many cowboy constructors? crap designers? or is it cost cutting entrepreneurs that are causing this apocalyptic nightmare for music fans and musicians.
Any other event e.g. sport bodies, would have had hand wringing inquiries with overall licensing being revoked from the culprits to ensure stuff like this never happened again.
Festivals have been successfully held for decades and no such disasters were evident in what might be considered an era of less technical staging. Woodstock. Isle Of Wight. Monterey etc. It's criminal that it should be happening now!

Here's a taste of the famous "summer of love" Monterey Festival in 1967 to mark what could be described as the birth of the rock festival. With Eric Burdon and The New Animals performing "Monterey" as a tribute to the event, along with some great pictures of some of the people and places put to the bands live recording, by Youtube uploader "olturrano".
May future festivals be as beautiful... and safe.

eric burdon

UK's finest blues singer, Eric Burdon was 71 this last week (11th May).
The man could tear a song apart right from the first time he had hit way back in 1964 and of course The Animals "House Of The Rising Sun" will always be his most iconic song with it's underlying Geordie threat to the vocals. It also rang the bells of change for pop songs being the longest at around 4 minutes.
He was Hendrix's mate since he'd been brought over to England by Chas Chandler (an ex-Animal) and was the last gig Hendrix played when Eric Burdon and War were playing a week at Ronnie Scott's, London. They were joined by Hendrix on stage on the last night for an impromtu jam. Several days later Jimi was dead in his flat. It was Burden that Jimi's girlfriend first rang when turning for help on the night of the fiasco. Burdon has talked at length in interviews about the events and still appears sad and angered by the whole sorry business.
In 1974 he released probably one of his most least known albums "Sun Secrets" with a lengthy track being a painful exorcism of a prisoners views from the county prison. For fans of Burdon it was one the best and hardest blues of the seventies amongst what was at the time a deluge of underwhelming adult orientated rock (AOR).
Eric Burdon always made tough music. Here is "Letter from the County Farm" in all it's grit and pain.