Theories, rants, etc.

MOJO welcomes letters for publication. Write to: MOJO Mail, Academic House, 24-28 Oval Road, London NW1 7DT. E-mail: mojoreaders@bauermedia.co.uk

You’ll be getting like them bloody beatniks before you know it

I’ve been a subscriber for the last 268 issues and, in years to come, I believe MOJO will stand proud and be considered a primary resource for historians. So I thought I might mention an uncharacteristic piece of mistaken information in the Woodstock stor y [MOJO 310], specifically Carlos Santana’s remembrances. He mentions a festival they played in Dallas prior to Woodstock. He did play the festival just outside Dallas and his band was wonderful, but the Texas International Pop Festival actually happened two weeks after Woodstock on August 30, 31, and September 1, 1969. The line-up was slightly different than Woodstock – no Hendrix or Who – but we had a few acts that fully sufficed as replacements, like Led Zeppelin, Spirit, B.B. King, Tony Joe White, Delaney & Bonnie, Chicago Transit Authority, Nazz, and the brand new Grand Funk Railroad, who played four or five shows during the weekend. Word of what had happened in Woodstock had already trickled out over the community and we saw it as a great preview of what we had coming. It was a magical weekend.

Wes Marshall, Portland, Oregon

I am one of the faces

Sorry to be pedantic about this, but in MOJO 310, the pic on page 68 in the Richard Thompson article has the credits wrong. Left to right, it’s bassist Pat Donaldson, Sandy, drummer Timi Donald and Richard. Nice piece, by the way – and keep up the good work.

Dave Mattacks, via e-mail

That’s why I joined the army, to be different

The excellent interview with Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull [MOJO 311] took me back to 1968, when I was on holiday in London from Ireland. I ventured to the Marquee Club in Wardour Street to see The Taste, but getting the night wrong I saw a group called Jethro Tull instead. They really knocked me out and I bought their first LP as soon as it was released in Dublin. In August 1969, in London on holiday again, outside Gloucester Road tube was a guitar-carrying chap wearing a battered leather hat. I stopped him and said, “You’re the new guitarist with Jethro Tull”: he was surprised I had recognised him. Fifty years later, in August 2019, this came back to me as I stood in front of the stage watching Martin Barre play at this year’s Cropredy Festival.

Gerard Murtagh, London

…During the summer of 1967 I was holidaying in Blackpool with my parents. On our way to see Freddy Frinton and Danny Ross in Wedding Fever, my parents were walking on the prom and I, in my cool Jimmy Tarbuck shirt, green shiny waistcoat, navy tight trousers and Cuban heeled boots, was walking away from them on the sands. I was desperately shy and, in front of me, were a group of rough-looking types dressed in army greatcoats and drinking cider. Their sole aim, it would appear, was to be an annoyance to holidaymakers. As I drew near, one of the group blew me an almighty kiss, provoking loud guffaws from his seated friends. It bothered me that I felt upset by this incident. Being 17 and working, how was I to make my way in the world if this sort of thing got to me? I didn’t know, at the time, that the face I saw later on would provoke much upset when Ian Anderson appeared on Top Of The Pops in all his pop-eyed, one-legged, lip-licking glory.

The tale does not end there. A few days later, we took refuge in a small seaside cafe one rainy afternoon. There, at the next table, was my nemesis with a thin, arty girl. It was obvious that he had done something to annoy her. He scurried around getting her sugar, milk and biscuits, only for her to stare blankly at her cup, unimpressed. The thought of blowing him a kiss as we left the cafe did occur to me, but he looked too scary. Later on, I became a big Tull fan. So thank you, Ian, for helping me grow another skin and grow up a little, as well as for all the great music. I do hope our paths cross again.

Mike Bolton, Southport

…Having been on the MOJO train since issue

1, it’s very rare that I spot errors. However in the Jethro Tull article you caption the guitarist in the Rock’n’Roll Circus line-up as Mick Abrahams, rather than the far more interesting pre-Sabbath Tony Iommi. Sporting a left-handed Strat, no less. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard Clapton say he’d bought the ‘first one he’d seen’ as a gift for Jimi some time in 1970 (Jimi passed before he could give it to him); he must have had his eyes closed – or otherwise ‘not present’ – during the Circus sessions… And, after waiting 25 years, I’ve finally read a review of a gig I was at in your hallowed pages (Wilco in Brussels). Then, London bus-style, I was also witness to the Dylan/Young Hyde Park gig.

Matt Fisher, via e-mail

I mean, you gotta be somebody

I listened to David Berman in quite an extensive interview recently and was amazed at how open and emotional he sounded. Then his Purple Mountains album arrived and you could hear in some of the lyrics he was still struggling with life and the world. All these hints didn’t prepare me for the shocking and sad news of his death. The man and his music will always be a part of my life, and let’s not forget the many memorable lyrics of great wit and humour. I’m perfectly happy to report I had a few drinks, listened to some of my favourite Berman songs and cried a little.

Philip Mander, Bedlington, Northumberland

I don’t give a monkey's arsehole

Hats off for printing the interview with Glyn Johns in your feature on the Abbey Road project [MOJO 311]. Glyn is quoted as saying he can’t see the point of remixing and remastering albums and calls it an “insult”. Nice to read a balancing point of view. I can understand why Glyn says he hasn’t listened to much of the music he worked on after it was released; it was never going to sound the same on his Dansette, or any generation of home hi-fi as it did in the control room. The Holy Grail for any music fan is to hear a track the way it sounded at mixdown when the band gave it the thumbs-up. We weren’t there. We wish we were.

I went to Abbey Road on a tour of Studio 2 in 1983 and they played us Leave My Kitten Alone, which we’d never heard before. The bass was ridiculous, and the band sounded like they were in the room. Of course I have ordered my copy of the new reissue. I trust the genes and the skill of Giles Martin. But I won’t be getting rid of my 1969 LP.

Philip Bird, East Stour, Dorset

Plenty of young men would give their eye-teeth to be in your shoes

The September 2019 issue is a particularly fine one, with articles on such dear to my heart subjects as Rhiannon Giddens and Woodstock, in-depth articles on people whose music I know only glancingly, like Dr. John and The Raincoats, and the introduction of Mattiel. But on page 106, things got personal when I saw the review of Sachiko Kanenobu’s record, Misora, and the accompanying photo. I knew her as Sachiko Williams, and the man with her in the photo is Paul Williams, her husband. Paul was many things, including the founder of Crawdaddy! magazine, a Dylanologist, a small press publisher, a new age guru, and literary executor of Philip K. Dick’s estate. (I’m sure he brought Sachiko’s music to Dick’s attention, as Andrew Male mentions in the review.)

I met Paul at some science fiction convention or other in the 1970s. He and Sachiko lived in Manhattan, and I apartment-sat for them for a few weeks while they visited Paul’s family in the Boston area. I also visited them a few years later, when they lived with their sons in Glen Ellen, a small town north of San Francisco. But I don’t believe I ever heard Sachiko’s music during the time I knew her.

Jerry Kaufman, Seattle