I must confess to a certain degree of 'wallowing in nostalgia' at the moment. After all, the fact that a stroke is not normally fatal (although it can be), it does still make you think a little about mortality; focuses the mind on the fact that we are not immortal. One day we will die! (And what have you bloody well done with your life? Precious little!) And God forbid that we should be paralysed, or rendered dumb before the final curtain is drawn. Makes you predisposed to thinking about the past. Makes you think back to the days when you thought you were immortal; when death was so, so very far away. A lifetime away!
How short a lifetime seems now!
Because music seems to permeate my life, I never could stand solitude unless there was music (I'm better now :-), things that happened to me, or things which were perpetrated by me, always have a musical accompaniment. Singing in the rain........literally. How much more seductive women seem when accompanied by the lilting strains of Chopin. How much more interesting vacuuming is when drowned out by Gotterdaemmerung; appropriate seeing as I do the vacuuming about as often as Armageddon comes! Lovers leave, always to the sound of 'Empty Chairs'.
Which got me thinking. How much do I owe Keith Emerson?
I was reminded of this only because at the same time that 'Nils Lofgren - Live at Rockpalast' arrived (last blog), so did the 'The Nice - Live at Fillmore East 1969'; a long buried full '8 track' master of a performance not long before I saw them (supported by a 'first line' up Yes, pre-Howe, pre-Wakeman and, mercifully, pre-'Tales of Topographic Oceans' - and as a front row seat I witnessed for the first time the awesome ear-numbing effect of Squire's bass technique!).
I've just listened to the record - all one and half hours of it, the complete concert.
So how much do I owe a man who would routinely take a bull whip to the stage; a man who threw knives at speaker cabinets and was partial to wedging them between keys on his Hammond organ to hold down the note; a man who rode the organ like a bucking bronco; a man who conjured sounds from the box, undreamt of by its makers: a man who routinely left his Hammond organ at the end of a performance a smoking ruin of an instrument.
Well, he introduced me (via my local public library - record loan section) to a world outside 'Black Sabbath', 'Deep Purple', 'Vanilla Fudge', 'the MC5', 'Led Zeppelin', the 'Electric Prunes'. A world outside over-cranked guitar chords; a world outside over-long guitar solos and even longer drum solos. Don't even think about getting me started on Tim Bogart's bass solo!
Every time Emerson introduced a snippet of 'Brandenburger 6' or the 'Karelia Suite' or Brubeck or Tchaikovsky, it would lead to a frantic search for the original. To the scratched and mangled public library collection of worn out classics that no-one wanted to hear anymore. I took them out and I listened. Bach, Sibelius and later Mussorsky, Janacek, Copeland, Ginastrera. And then, because I was game for anything by that time, Vivaldi, Telemann, Bocherrini and then onwards to Beethoven, Mahler, Papa Haydn, Dvorjak. And then learning to recognise the influences of other 'popular' musicians, Torroba, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Albeniz, Granados. (Sorry, I never quite made it to Schonberg or Stockhausen, or at least all the way through!)
Would I have ever gravitated from 'Rock', 'Heavy Metal' to something a little more subtle, something perhaps a little deeper, without the guiding hand of Mr Emerson? Probably, but how long might that have took?
While I'm about it, ta to Mike Oldfield for the Phillip Glass introduction and a life long admiration of the ability to extract something so magical and beautiful from so little. Rock music has its uses however inane or pointless it all seems at the time!
Oh and a very big thank you to Wandsworth Borough Council and the Lavender Hill Public Library for allowing me access to such wondrous music, which I would never have been able to afford. Radio 3 was so hit and miss! And my mother would get annoyed if I changed the tuning on the radio. No pre-sets in my day! Buttons! All done by turning the knob! And it was a devil's own job to find Radio Luxembourg (yes, really) once you'd lost it. Used to be accompanied by the Albanian (I think) National Anthem breaking in all the time, similar transmission frequencies.
(Aside: talking, writing of the MC5, the Electric Prunes etc reminded me of the seminal (read: over-indulgent, spaced-out, noodling, incomprehensible crap of the first order) album by 'Iron Butterfly' (think incompetent 'Rush') that hung around the album chart for what seemed like an eternity. It was called 'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida'. It was long rumoured, maybe apocryphally, that this was one of the band member's spaced out interpretation, when speaking of the album's prospective title, of 'In the Garden of Eden'.)
So what have I have done with my life? Well, I've visited the very place that the Prince Regent wanted to sodomise. Metaphorically speaking, you understand. Bognor, and Butlin's to boot! I have become a chum to the only 'blogging penguin'. (Accept no substitute, the Kings' are ghost written!) I once spoke to Jeff Beck (and Scott Gorham although I perhaps shouldn't have asked how it felt to be touring with a band in which not one original member was playing, Thin Lizzy). I have asked for Christopher Lee's autograph (boy, is that guy tall) in a bookshop on behalf of a gaggle of girls, too shy to do it themselves, Robert Vaughn too. Not much to show for a life, ay? Amidst all the sadness.
But I have had so much fun!
PS Thank you Emo! You enriched our lives so much with YOUR music, but so much more were our lives enriched by what you led us on to. We may have never found it otherwise.
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