Bobby Womack: God, mental health and Walthamstow

Bobby Womack’s final album, ‘The Bravest Man in the Universe’, contains one of the most emotionally honest and powerful vocal performances I have ever heard. Right off the bat ‘Please Forgive my Heart’ overwhelmed me, and it still does every time I hear it. “Please forgive my heart,” sings Womack, “It's not that the problem lies anywhere in there.” When he follows that by confessing “I’m a liar, I’m in a dream, Goin’ on my way, Nothing to rely on”, you know you’re witnessing a very private moment. I guess that not all will relate “the problem” he refers to as about mental health, but I think it’s an admittance that there are things that prevent us from loving because we cannot trust, or rely on, ourselves, let alone others. As Bobby sings in the song's second verse: "Oh, it feels like the sky is falling, And the clouds, clouds are closing in, Where did I lose control? Where did it all begin?"

I hope to God that I am not cheapening his divinely honest confessional by attempting such commonplace analysis. I somehow though need to express how it feels, thank God, to still be overwhelmed, to be brought literally to my knees, by playing such songs. I used to think that there were only a handful of singers, all white contemporaries of Mr Womack, who could, on occasion, work this kind of earthly divinity, this sacred and profane magic. It’s there in Dylan’s testament, ‘Every Grain of Sand’; Van Morrison had it on ‘Listen to the Lion’; and you can feel it when John Martyn preached ‘One World’. 

But Bobby Womack lived the religious emotion of the everyday right from childhood. He was no latter-day convert. Nearly four decades before Bobby Womack died he sang that “Love is the emblem of eternity.” You’ve got to believe that if you’re hurting big time. And the fact that he included that line on a funky number entitled ‘Jealous Love’ (from ‘What is the World Coming To?’) showed that he was a person, and an artist, who didn’t believe in siloing his emotions or his motivations.

Bobby Womack is a man very aware of his mortality on ‘The Bravest Man in the Universe’ (released 2012), but he sounded as alive and as exciting as ever. Credit is also due to former Blur front-man Damon Albarn, who wrote most of its songs including ‘Please Forgive My Heart’. However it’s plain on listening to the album’s carefully crafted retrospective but ultra-modern feel (Albarn also co-produced the album with XL Records founder Richard Russell) that the words were written with Womack in mind. The songs catalogue the singer’s belief in forgiveness ('The bravest man in the universe is the one who has forgiven first'), love, and, yes when necessary, serving yourself. 

Bobby Womack died in June 2014, two weeks or so before he’d been scheduled, implausibly, to headline that year's Walthamstow Garden Party. I still went, marvelling at the incredibly empty experience of hearing last minute replacements, the Brand New Heavies, trying to enliven the audience. Bobby Womack had had more than five decades in the business, as both a songwriter whose songs were popularised by many black (and some white) stars, and as a soul singer who had been (musically) born again several times over. If he’d had the strength to perform ‘Please Forgive My Heart’ with the feeling he conveys on the original, and to a field of Walthamstow revellers, would they have understood? Or would they have run screaming for the exits, as was once said of Laurence Olivier if he’d really turned up the acting volume. We shall never know. However I am grateful for Bobby Womack’s wonderful songs and for his wondrous voice. But I am most grateful for ‘Please Forgive My Heart’ because today it made me cry as I was reminded of the God-given gift of those artists who can use our tenderest feelings to lift us up from the floor and take us to the heavens. If only for a while.

A kind of seasonal playlist

Songs that, for me, conjure up Christmas, past and present. That’s Christmas, not Kissmass, Christingle, or Xmas. Not John Lewis, not the worship of babies or the family, but the festival that’s been marked in Britain ever since the 4^th century when a pagan winter nosh-up and piss-up was superseded by a, well, pagan winter nosh-up and piss-up, coupled, in the last half century or so, with a commercial orgy.

Anyway, back to the music.

New World Order – Curtis Mayfield

One World (the 1992 re-recorded studio version) – John Martyn

Somewhere Over the Rainbow – Judy Garland (the 1961 ‘Live at Carnegie Hall’ LP version)

Every Grain of Sand - Bob Dylan (This is a good version but the original from 'Shot of Love' is by far the best)

In Christ There in No East or West – Mavis Staples

Driving Home for Christmas – Chris Rea

Both Sides Now – Joni Mitchell (the version featured in her 2000 album ‘Both Sides Now’ and in the film ‘Love Actually’)

Too Close/On My Way to Heaven – Mavis Staples with Donny Gerard

A Soapbox Opera – Supertramp 

In the Ether – The Who (No online versions available; original is on 'Endless Wire')

Christmas in my Soul – Laura Nyro

I don’t know why I feel the need to list or write about this stuff. The reasons for my affection for these are intensely personal and therefore often hard to explain. I mean, Chris Rea? There’s a very Christian line in it that I find moving. ‘In The Ether’ has an extraordinary vocal (not by the Who’s lead singer). It's not an obviously Christian song, but it has emotional vulnerability and a strong sense of abandonment that recalls a certain story involving human frailty. ‘Every Grain of Sand’ is one of the greatest hymns ever written.

Mavis gets in twice with two overtly religious numbers; one is Gospel, the other is gospel truth. ‘A Soapbox Opera’ is by Supertramp's Roger Hodgson, who, like me, wanted gospel truths not Christian convenience. (Only Hodgson's live solo versions are available online; they seem clinical, cynical, less than emotional, by comparison to the Supertramp original on 'Crisis? What Crisis?').

Judy Garland has long been part of my Christmas consciousness because ‘The Wizard of Oz’ was first shown on British TV on Christmas Day circa 1974 when I was only 10. This phenomenal live version of ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ from a famous 1961 concert isn’t about looking for Oz either, just peace. That is supposedly the heart of the Christmas message, and it’s a connection that Laura Nyro sings of her struggle to find. 

The version of ‘Both Sides Now’ Joni Mitchell recorded when she was much older makes much more emotional sense in its sad meditation on love than her youthful original (For better or worse it was used, poignantly, in a Christmas-related film too).

Curtis Mayfield so desperately wanted to communicate about those for whom a new world order is sorely needed that he recorded it one line at a time whilst lying in dire pain on the floor of the studio after a totally disabling accident a decade earlier. 

Any version of ‘One World’ by John Martyn is wonderful. However on this particular version his call for mutual help in a 'cold and lonely world' is performed with such power, beauty and, at times, pleading that it’s arguably the greatest love song of all time.

The Prisonaires Live at the Electric Palace, Hastings

“Is this a supergroup?” asked a friend of mine as we took our places last night in the third row of this tiny, historic, yet barely half-full Hastings cinema. If about 250 years of combined experience playing with some of the most important western musicians of the 20^th Century fits the bill, then The Prisonaires are definitely a supergroup. While not household names, any blues, jazz-rock, folk, or rock enthusiast will understand that these gentlemen were pivotal to some of the most ground-breaking music of the 1960s and '70s. Yet there were plenty of empty seats in a venue that only has 48 of them.

Acoustic guitarist and leader of the band, Alan King commented wryly that scheduling a gig during an international football tournament is always a disaster. But can it be that south-coast music buffs preferred staying at home to watch telly in the hope that Argentina would defeat the French, than attending a gig of this quality? When The Prisonaires finished their set a member of the audience stood up and shouted that it was the finest gig he’d seen in Hastings in years. It was one of the finest gigs I’ve seen anywhere in years.

Alan (left) with Bobby Valentino (fiddle), Les Morgan (drums) and Tony Reeves (right,bass)

Musical impresario, Alan King was a doyen of the famed 12 Bar Club, the ‘60s Soho music venue that gives the name to Dr King’s ‘12 Bar Music’, the platform for this and for some forthcoming Electric Palace gigs. King told me outside the Gents – the Electric Palace is so small that the toilets are never far away – that he is lucky enough to have played with his favourite guitarists, Davy Graham and Bert Jansch, and his favourite singer, Miller Anderson. For many years King also played with his favourite songwriter, Alan Hull (of Lindisfarne).

The aura of Graham and Jansch hung over proceedings as King opened the set riffing on the rite of passage folk guitar tune, ‘Anji’. What the advance publicity promised would be a hybrid of The Pentangle and Can, “with a touch of Miles Davis’” jazz-rock-funk fusion, was underway. ‘Anji’ went from sounding like The Pentangle were performing it, to something with a lot more attitude. Almost like Fairport Convention’s ‘A Sailor’s Life’, but lifted beyond even that wonderfully free-flowing, folk-jazz hybrid  However I couldn’t detect the influence of Can on this or on any of the other tunes The Prisonaires performed last night. It was undoubtedly an eclectic set though, and The Prisonaires have certainly embraced Can’s determination to kick against the musical pricks.

What happened on ‘Anji’, and throughout the gig, was a superannuated jam session without the tedium that that would normally imply. Each number, often only loosely based on professed connections to an original tune, has a distinct concept behind it that’s usually conceived of and initially worked up by Alan King. It might be a radical reworking of a known tune or the fusing of diverse tunes and elements together – the second number was inspired by ‘Sketches of Spain’ era Miles but went all over the place. King communicates with some band members via SoundCloud (“or just by text”, grinned guitarist Paul Baverstock). Rehearsals are live. Some band members, like the audience, may be hearing a number for the first time. To carry this off you need musicians of a very high calibre and, as importantly, imagination.

Alongside King in this endeavour last night were virtuoso fiddle player Bobby Valentino, who at 64 is one of the youngest in the band. Valentino was in The Fabulous Poodles, worked extensively with The Men They Couldn’t Hang, and has played with Dylan, Knopfler and Petty. He is part Stephane Grappelli, part Jean-Luc Ponty, but is mostly just himself. 

Bobby Valentino

On electric lead guitar was Paul Baverstock. Paul, who also spoke to me outside the Gents, said that he was in the celebrated London band that nearly made it big in the early ‘80s, A Bigger Splash. Their first single, ‘I Don’t Believe A Word’, was produced by Sting who also, with Eddie Reader, sung harmonies on it. It made it to the influential BBC Radio 1 review programme, ‘Roundtable’, but had the misfortune of being followed by Prince’s ‘Kiss’ which, Alan said, blew everything else out of the water that week (or pretty much that decade). Last night Paul’s impressive pedal affects assisted him in alternating between a blues-inflected rock guitar sound that often echoed Dave Gilmour, and being a Hammond organ virtuoso. Paul was loud for a small venue but was darned good. 

To his right in the all-star line-up was Tony Reeves. Tony has a strong jazz feel to his impressive electric bass playing; hardly surprising given that he was founder member of fusion band Colosseum and later joined Curved Air. Like Alan, Tony started out on the folk circuit. He’s on Davy Graham’s first two albums. A few years later he joined John Mayall’s celebrated Bluesbreakers, along with Mick Taylor who a few months later replaced Brian Jones in the Rolling Stones. Reeves has also played with, and produced, John Martyn and is the bassist on a Sandy Denny LP. By contrast, as a Pye Records’ plugger in the mid-60s, Tony promoted, and then played on, Tony Hatch’s ‘Sounds Orchestral’.

Les (drums), Tony (bass) and Paul (guitar)

In the centre of the stage, and often, my friend observed, making sure that the whole thing held together, was drummer Les Morgan (who’s performed with leading UK blues artists Alexis Korner and Jo-Anne Kelly, and with singer Chris Farlow). Les isn’t musically ostentatious like Paul, but, as good drummers often do, provides backbone (and flair) when some of the showmen occasionally threatened to take proceedings off on too conflicting a set of tangents. Alan King told me that the band also normally features Mike Paice (a Jools Holland sparring partner) on sax and harmonica, who, to King’s surprise given the unusual combination of instruments, gels successfully with violinist Valentino.

Among the most interesting musical adventures of the night was a number influenced by Miles Davis’ darker funk-fusion phase that also informed its title, ‘It’s About That Movie Time’; and a latin jazz excursion based on a number by jazz guitarist Kenny Burrell. In something of a preview of his own forthcoming set at The Electric Palace on 21 September, King took the band on a further musical diversion: ragas. He found suitable accompaniment from Valentino, before Reeves and Baverstock somehow worked out their place in the evolving mix. The Prisonaires' ‘raga rock’ is wholly its own thing, and has been a decade-long musical preoccupation for King. No easy nod here to George Harrison, The Byrds or even L. Shankar. The September gig by Dr King, possibly accompanied by some other members of The Prisonaires, will be well worth seeing.

Getting in tune? Les, Alan & Paul

The closing number was introduced by Alan as a fusion of two pivotal Jimmy Webb songs: - “the greatest anti-war song ever written”, ‘Galveston’, and the “greatest love song ever written”, ‘By The Time I Get to Phoenix’ – but without the words! This was an extraordinary musical idea successfully realised: you could hear the trace elements of both Webb classics in the heady mix.  

On a sweaty night out in Hastings some thirty odd people had experienced a real treat, and they rightly gave the band a rapturous response. Cries for an encore were understandably resisted though as the band, tired and thirsty, had done what they set out to do – whether Can were in the house or not.   

Les Johnson and Me Live at Leytonstone What's Cookin'

‘Les Johnson and Me’ are a six piece, part rockabilly, part country, Scottish cum American roots music band. They played last Wednesday night at What’s Cookin’, one of the most exciting music happenings in the UK. It can be found most Saturday and Wednesday nights at the Leytonstone Ex-Servicemen’s Club in north-east London, and Sundays at the Union Chapel, N1.

“Les” is a 54 year old sharp-dressed crooner, pencil thin with dark baritone voice. Highly personable, he told me after the gig that he has been doing this for 7 years; he started when he was 47. His day job, he says, is running a Glaswegian charity. He and his band are a treasure. Check out the wonderfully named “Hitting the Small Time Big” via the band’s website. Listening to it again I get the Jim Reeves comparison that his website invites you to make. Especially if you imagine a previously unreleased Jim Reeves' track on a soundtrack to a Quentin Tarentino film not yet made. “Break My Heart”, also available to listen to, made me cry on hearing it again.

On the night “Les” (he did tell me his real name, but I had one too many Guinesses that evening) performed all his own songs with one exception, a totally unexpected cover of “Senor”. This was possibly the least successful performance of his set, but it still thrilled. It’s taken from what Les rightly described as a much underrated Dylan album, “Street Legal”.

Les’ band are, as I understand it, essentially the Shiverin’ Sheiks (also on Holy Smokes Records), who are more or less the same things as The Strange Blue Dreams…I think. Of particular note was the southern-fried lead guitar player, and the double bassist. Les and the young female backing singer dropped out after the interval; the rhythm guitarist took over vocal duties, a mandolin player was added, and The Strange Blue Dreams were born.

The Dreams had a more mannered take on their shared musical roots, slicker in a sense, but somehow less effecting. The singer is a talented guy, but he could not quite command the same amount of attention. Perhaps it’s an age thing, i.e. mine and many members of the audience. You’d probably be more likely to dance to the Dreams and more likely to weep into your beer to Les. As I get older it’s the weepers that get me.

John Martyn’s “Spencer the Rover” (Live at the Brewery Arts Club version); Shirley Bassey’s cover of “And I Love Her So” (from Live at Carnegie Hall) and Judy Garland’s version of “Smile” (as performed on the Ed Sullivan show) are right up there. Not that there’s anything wrong with dancing. When the Dreams were on stage, Les and his backing singer pulled some fancy moves, as did a lady from the audience who, sadly, was the only actual punter to tread the boards on this occasion.

Stephen and Ali Ferguson continue to present roots musical gems. I sure as hell wish I’d bought Les’ latest CD, “15 Hands”, on the night, but even better would be for Stephen to get someone to record some of these performances for a What’s Cookin’ “Live in Leytonstone” CD. He could have a classic in the making.

Joan Armatrading live at Bexhill's De La Warr Pavilion, England

Rock’s Charlie Pride is a born-again black artist.

I lost touch with Joan Armatrading nearly three decades ago. In 1985 she seemed firmly planted in the white musical bombast of the time. Me Myself I, the last number by her that I paid any attention to, was a brilliant piece of overproduced pop-rock stomp. Last night at Bexhill's dlwp her devotees and enthusiasts were treated to a one woman seminar on Joan as major league black performer with a rightful, but not sufficiently acknowledged, place in the international music hall of fame.

She gave us the photos to prove it.

She did raw and accomplished blues, and subtler jazz, guitar. She sat at the piano and emoted like a latter day Nina Simone.

Joan's voice is as powerful as when she started but is now possessed of a richer, maturer tone. 

There were some occasional lyrical lapses. However Joan gave a flawless performance of numbers that ranged from the very good to the quite exquisite.

If there is one complaint, it is that Joan’s self-styled “last major world tour”, and first solo one, is evidently a low-budget affair. If she had been genuinely unplugged, the rawness that worked so well on her blues and balladeer numbers would only have enhanced her performance of the now classic Love and Affection.

It was still a barnstormer, but the pre-recorded synth strings and cheesy sax could have ruined it were it not for the sheer emotional heft and powerful hook lines that inevitably made it a winner. More or less devoid of “enhancements”, Down to Zero and The Weakness in Me, two comparably powerful torch ballads, were better performances on the night.  

Joan does great dead-pan too. She joked, self-effacingly, about pics of herself with better known performers, and introduced her encore so that she could get off the stage according to her schedule.

Joan closed the concert with an early favourite, Willow, and, oddly, gave the audience the last word as she played along to the few who felt confident enough to sing it back to her.

This gig though was an object lesson by Joan in “why I matter”.

She is of course preaching to the converted. 

Let’s hope she once again gets the attention she deserves from national and international media.    

Manfred Mann Live at the Jazz Cafe (September 10th 2013)

Manfred Mann’s Earth Band (MMEB) were the first band I ever saw live, when, 33 years ago, I went with my elder brother to see them at the Brighton Dome. Seeing a line up of the Earth Band with only two surviving members from the 1970s was never going to match a 16 year old’s rock rite of passage. Back then they were a band that, while far from hip, had had some success only a few months earlier with a consistently good album “Angel Station”. Then, only in their mid to late 30s, they had toured the album extensively. They also had a mixing desk at The Dome. And, they had Chris Thompson on vocals. His is the voice on the most highly rated MMEB albums, all of which, unsurprisingly, were released in the 1970s. He was never especially mellifluous or highly dextrous in the vocal department, but Thompson could do subtlety, and gritty, as required.

Tuesday night’s man in the vocal spotlight was one Robert Hart. He doesn’t play much guitar, leaving himself free to pose with the mic stand like he was Rod Stewart in the 1970s. Close-up, in an intimately small venue like the Jazz Café, this is not a pretty sight. Hart is a competent but uninspiring member of the rock belter school of vocals. It was little surprise to discover later that he was Bad Company’s singer long after Paul Rogers had moved on.

MMEB have a great bass player, Steve Kinch, almost a veteran himself as he joined way back in 1986; a solid and slightly more youthful drummer, Jimmy Copley; and of course an almost undimmed 72 year old Manfred Mann on trademark keyboards together with original member Mick Rogers (no relation) on lead guitar and occasional vocals.

This was a relatively short performance; the night’s entertainment was partly filled with 45 minutes of Lesley Mendelson, a painfully sincere and wholly inappropriate 20-something female singer-songwriter from New York. The Earth Band themselves managed just eleven, admittedly not short, numbers, most of which would have figured on any “Best of” compilation. Subtler, but, for fans, highly popular numbers were probably out of Hart’s technical and emotional range. In some cases they would probably be too musically challenging for the rest of the band too, at least without that mixing desk and more time spent in rehearsal. The atmospheric quality found on numbers like “Waiting for the Rain” (from “Angel Station”, 1979); “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue” (a brave Dylan cover from 1972); or “Drowning on Dry Land” and “Circles” (from their most commercially and critically successful LP, “Watch” (1978)) was nowhere to be heard. The performance of “Martha’s Madman”, taken from “Watch”, failed to get remotely close to the drama of the original.

“Blinded by the Light” (originally a Springsteen song) was both obligatory and, as it turned out, well performed on the night. Hart, for once, did not overdo the vocals, while he and Kinche provided a solid, but not overly dominating, chorus to accompany Manfred’s verse part (as per the band’s original version). MMEB are renowned for their covers; detractors would, a little unfairly, say not for much else. In most cases in the 1970s their interpretations actually complemented, even, in the above Springsteen example at least, arguably enhancing the original, in the process of often changing songs beyond recognition. “For You”, also performed, proved a far, far less satisfying cover of a Springsteen original. It wasn’t totally absurd though that a third should be added to the night’s repertoire. “Dancing in the Dark” though proved to be just about the worst cover I can remember having had the displeasure of hearing a name act do. (And I heard Westlife do “Matthew and Son” on a rainy morning in London in 1996). This was embarrassing, even, it seemed, to some of the members of the Earth Band. Total cabaret, and not particularly well done. Unlike “Blinded by The Light”, and the welter of Dylan covers for which they’re famous, it was made all the worse for being more or less a straight reproduction, at least until Manfred tried to rescue it with another blast of what, live, sometimes became an excess of keyboard noodling.

Things picked up when Robert disappeared and Mick Rogers took over vocal duties. He is weaker in volume but more in keeping with the style for which the band is renowned. He sang lead on “Father of Night”, a relatively obscure Dylan song first recorded by MMEB in 1973, and made it one of the highlights of the evening. When most of the rest of the band then exited for a well-earned comfort break, Rogers dusted off another gem, this time from an even earlier Manfred incarnation: “Doo Wah Diddy”. Singing with only his guitar and the drummer for accompaniment, Rogers alternated between the pace of the mid-60s original and a bold, rockabilly-style, reinterpretation.

A fairly decent fist was made of “Davy’s on the Road Again”, written by Robbie Robertson and John Simon, a live version of which MMEB are as equally renowned for as “Blinded by the Light”. For the encore yet another song from “Watch” was chosen, Dylan’s “Mighty Quinn”, which soon relapsed into a pub-style sing along.

It has to be said that there was a lot of emotion on the stage. The band, very friendly, upbeat and engaging with the many apparently recognisable faces in the audience, were plainly having a good time, including even the irascible old anti-star himself, Manfred Mann. At times he would delight his long time followers by emerging from behind his fixed and rather defensive bank of keyboards and strut his stuff with a strap-on “keytar”.

When the band linked arms for one of several bows, you wondered how much longer there would be as many as two original members still doing this routine. “For as long as people want to pay,” he recently commented, and there is a very hard core of devotees who will no doubt go on doing so for as long as he is still able to play.