At Home in Hespeler

One likes to believe in the freedom of music.

Rush – Spirit of Radio.

London in the early 1960’s was like a guitarist factory. These young blokes would 1) hang around the Crawdaddy club 2) go to art school and 3) become virtuosos guitar players, seemingly in that order. If you did 1 & 2 on the above list, 3 seemed certain to follow. Take for example The Yardbirds.

Yea, yea, yea, The Yardbirds: Clapton, the pure bluesman, who left when they performed the “commercial,” For Your Love. Beck, hired on the recommendation of his childhood pal, Jimmy Page, wild and untamed he took the Yardbirds to it’s greatest commercial success. Then Page himself joined and for a while they were a dual lead band, Page and Beck powering audiences. Then the Page era, the Yardbirds more burned out than turned on, in full psychedelic force.

So yea, The Yardbirds. But here’s another list of guitar players to ponder:

Jimmy Page
Albert Lee
Ritchie Blackmore
Mick Abrahams

According to Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones, Jimmy Page was a known quality in London as early as 1962:

… Even in 1962 I can remember people saying ‘You’ve got to go and listen to Neil Christian and the Crusaders – they’ve got this unbelievable young guitarist.’ I’d heard of Pagey before I’d heard of Clapton or Beck…

By 1963 future Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page was road weary and sick with glandular fever – a form of mono. He quit Neil Christian and the Crusaders to go to art school and hang around the Crawdaddy club and then, ultimately, to studio work. Eventually he would leave studio work for the Yardbirds, and then Led Zeppelin.

Neil Christian and the Crusaders? They replaced Page with future lead guitarist for The Strawbs, Paul Brett and from Brett to “Mr. Telecaster” Albert Lee.

Lee, writer of the Ricky Scaggs hit, Country Boy, is a five time consecutive winner of Guitar Player Magazine’s “Best Country Guitarist,” honor (GP retires players after 5 wins in a category) and has been cited by no less than Eric Clapton as “the greatest guitarist in the world.”

Currently, on top of his own work, Lee plays with Bill Wymann’s Rhythm Kings, a band that contains Gary Brooker, Andy Fairweather-Low and Gary U.S. Bonds as well as being regularly joined by a host of the most famous musicians in rockdom.

Albert Lee was replaced in Neil Christian and the Crusaders by a guitarist who would go on to even greater fame and accolades, Ritchie Blackmore.

Around the same time that The Yardbirds were falling apart around Jimmy Page, Ritchie Blackmore joined Deep Purple. While with Deep Purple, Blackmore co-wrote/played on songs such as Kentucky Woman, Lazy, Woman from Tokyo, Highway Star and Smoke on the Water, and established himself as one of the top guitarists in rock music.

After he left Deep Purple he formed one of the greatest hard rock acts of the 70’s, Rainbow (also known as Blackmore’s Rainbow), a band featuring Ronnie James Dio on vocals.

He did return to the Deep Purple fold, but now plays finger style guitar in a group called Blackmore’s Night, and has released at collection of original classical guitar music. He was named 50th in Rolling Stones top guitarist list, and in 2004, placed 16th in Guitar World’s “100 greatest metal guitarists of all time,” list.

Blackmore was followed in Neil Christian and the Crusaders by Mick Abrahams. Abraham’s was a founding member of Jethro Tull, leaving due to “creative differences,” with Tull frontman Ian Anderson.

That’s the way it went in London in the swinging 60’s: some unknown band with no records produced 5 guitarists of varying style, three of whom became acknowledged greats and two who had long solid careers, products of the greatest guitarist factory ever known.

The Freedom of Music Albert Lee, Andy Fairweather-Low, Bill Wymann's Rhythm Kings, Eric Clapton, Gary Brooker, Gary U.S. Bonds, Ian Anderson, Jeff Beck, Jethro Tull, Jimmy Page, Mick Abrahams, Neil Christian and the Crusaders, Paul Brett, Ricky Scaggs, Ritchie Blackmore, The Strawbs

All the fluffy news about those nutty celebrities

Mr. Zeta Jones, Actor Michael Douglas, announced this week he was diagnosed with throat cancer. Mr. Jones will undergo chemotherapy and is “very optimistic,” of a full recovery.

Back in June his son Cameron, from a previous marriage, was sentenced to five years in prison for dealing methamphetamine and possessing heroin. Which just goes to show, even Kirk Douglas’s son, who’s married to Catherine Zeta Jones can have a shitty go of things.

You can, in fact, have it all and legitimately wonder, “why me?”

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Update: Later in the week reports indicate Michael Douglas could lose his voice during the treatment.

Remember Joaquin Phoenix and the beard? He quit acting to become a rapper, then grew a big hippy beard (because that’s what all the rappers are wearing this Woodstock).  Remember the David Letterman non-interview? Remember there was speculation that it was a fake, a sham? All part of a documentary he was making with Casey Affleck? That was denied. “Oh no, this is real,” he protested.

Yea, all fake. The Casey Afflek documentary on Phoenix’s year as a non-rapping rapper will be released in September.

What a wanker.

Aerosmith front man Stepehen Tyler, back on stage after missing the past year when he broke his shoulder falling off a stage, fell off the stage in Toronto this week. Reports are that guitarist Joe Perry bumped Tyler while playing Love in an Elevator. Tyler returned to the stage and joked, “not this time.”

The story as I heard it was Tyler angrily told Perry, “not this time.” A bit of a battle between the Aerosmith frontmen ensued.

Don’t know which story is true, but I like mine better. And if you’re falling off the stage is becoming regular, are you , to borrow Ian Anderson’s phrase, too old to rock and roll?

Soungarden bassist Ben Shepherd is one happy bottom ender that Soundgarden is doing the always profitable reunion gig. Shepherd is “broke and technically homeless.” And these are the good times:

My whole life seemed over (in the late 1990’s). Soundgarden broke up; my other band, Hater, broke up; my fiancee broke up with me, and then I broke three ribs.

I got addicted to pain pills, drank a ton, and wound up OD’ing on morphine. I was laid out in my house for five days, and no one knew it. It was a f**king horrible time.

I saw the Jennifer Aniston ugly duckling photo shoot last week: the one where she makes herself up to look just like Barbara Streisand. A fine example of how to turn beauty butt ugly in one make-up session.

Want to know what my reaction was: “glad I never laminated that list.”

But this Thursday she was on Regis and Kelly, when she said about the photo shoot:

I play dress up. I do it for a living – like a retard.

Cue the professionally aggrieved, specifically Pete Burns, CEO of Arc:

I was extraordinarily offensive and inappropriate. Frankly, someone in her position ought to know better.

Someone in her position? What, an actress? A fairly average actress who if it wasn’t for the fact she has a very cute, girl next door thing going on you would never have heard of? She should know better than who? The President?

You know who should know better than to say really stupid, intellectually challenged, things: people with CEO on the business card.

Fluffernutter Aerosmith, Ben Shepherd, Cameron Douglas, Casey Affleck, Catherine Zeta Jones, David Letterman, Ian Anderson, Jethro Tull, Joaquin Phoenix, Joe Perry, Michael Douglas, Soungarden, Stephen Tyler, Too Old to Rock and Roll