Alan King: Hardship Lane in Hastings

I’ve never had a guitar lesson in my life, said Alan King, as he spent two hours musically extrapolating on western and Indian music and the links between them. Friday night’s gig at the Electric Palace Cinema (EPC) in Hastings was supposed to be by ‘Hardship Lane’, a raga exploration by Alan and other musicians schooled, like him, in folk, blues, jazz and rock (In fact quite a lot like the last time Alan played at the EPC with his band, The Prisonaires, (as reviewed on this site).

Having felt ill, demotivated and, he confessed, wanting to pass the gig on to another act, on the night Alan pulled it together. That said, the evening didn’t go as it would had Alan had the preferred anonymity of being one of several musicians on stage. It looked like he was winging it when he began by digressing into talking about such early guitar influences as Roy Buchanan. Less predictably perhaps he also talked about Nils Lofgren, Neil Young’s drunken sparring partner on the infamous ‘Tonite’s The Night’ tour: a major influence on an impressionable young Alan.

His point was to not only emphasise guitarists who can perform under the influence, but those whose playing is raga-like. Another muse, Davy Graham, who Alan played with in the 1990s, was recalled for his technique and for a recklessness than both inspired and destroyed his musical career. One story, part-apocryphal maybe, was of Davy taking £20 in advance for a guitar lesson, then sticking on an Indian classical record and handing the student a guitar before exiting quickly to score some smack.

Before Alan got much further in telling a personal guitar history that spans some 50 years of western music, a member of the audience piped up and asked Alan if he knew Bert Weedon. Not satisfied by Alan’s response, the man, who’d plainly been enjoying some pre-gig refreshment, asked if Alan actually knew his stuff. Wilfully absurd, this provocative question produced a first rate version of ‘Guitar Boogie Shuffle’, making me wonder if this semi-heckler was hired in. (The man later declared that he’d been at The Prisonaires’ EPC gig three months earlier and, as a guitarist himself, had been seriously inspired by it). The number of people attending this gig was no more than at the last EPC Prisonaires one; in fact less if you count all those who were on the stage last time. However there were more middle-aged, bevied up, males this time around. This could be fun; the Bert Weedon enthusiast had a drole humour that usually made his interjections entertaining.

Alan observed that import restrictions amidst an economic crisis in Britain had made it impossible to get hold of American rock n’ roll records like those of Bert Weedon, so the Americans got around the problem by launching London Records to sell their product into the British market via a company that was also registered in the UK (In the ‘60s this same American label sold records by UK bands like the Rolling Stones into the US market).

Davy never liked Bert Jansch’s version of ‘Anji’, Alan said; it was too fast. Alan proceeded to play a version that was somewhere between the two but a copy of neither. He later wondered if he’d missed something musically by not being close to the dark side as substance users like Davy Graham. Bert Jansch was scary, said Alan; he could be off his head but then play some totally obscure 15^th century tune.

Alan is an intuitive player; you cannot teach guitar, he says. When I went to the local grammar school, he said, there were maybe two guitarists (including himself) out of 2,000 kids. Now there’ll be a thousand and they’re all having lessons. Alan said he started out playing a plastic four-string ‘Beatles guitar’ his dad had bought him, but at around 10 years of age his father gave him the same acoustic guitar he was using at this gig.

Alan goes to open mic nights in Hastings. Young guys get up and there's a wonderful tension and atmosphere about those first early appearances. One year later it's over, they've been schooled in a certain way and all the emotion has gone out of it, he says. 

Alan started to get more impatient voices from the back but he carried on in his studiedly relaxed but didactic mode. For my part I enjoyed listening to Dr King both talk and play, either way he's a piece of living musical history (a description he'll probably hate). He even dismissively commented on digital guitar tuners. You don’t always want to be in tune, all ending up sounding the same, he says. “It's got to be wrong to be right.” Goebbels would have said that the A string has to be tuned to 440 Hz, Alan observed.

So who's your favourite guitarist, shouted the Bert Weedon fan. Paco de Lucia …maybe, said Alan. Talking about guitar maestros encouraged Alan to go to the inevitable subject of Jimi Hendrix. He spoke of his particular affection for the album ‘Electric Ladyland’. If Hendrix had had the equipment we have..., Alan started to say. The point though, Alan corrected himself, was that Hendrix had all the equipment he needed. Hendrix was a blues man and always played in the five note Pentatonic Scale; the black notes on a keyboard as Alan put it, dismissing the importance of even this knowledge. Alan proceeded to play a version of Hendrix’ ‘Little Wing’ that was tasteful, mannered, and beautiful.

He then started talking about the musicians that really excite him. Fred Frith, who he said played in a “south London Marxist collective experimental jazz band” …. Henry Cow. What were they like, asked the Bert Weedon fan. F***ing unbelievably incredible, was Alan’s pithy reply.

Neil Young has this thing where he is not quite in tune, Alan said, and that way you can bend it in tune. You should show some imagination in your playing, Alan said.

He noted however that Neil Young admitted that ‘The Needle and the Damage Done’ was a rip-off of Bert Jansch’s idea on ‘Needle of Death’, while on ‘Ambulance Blues’ Neil Young appropriated Jansch’s tune too. This can cut both ways though, as Alan revealed by demonstrating how Pink Floyd’s ‘Breathe’ is a close copy of Neil Young’s ‘Down by the River’.

He then talked about songwriters he likes before playing a Carole King tune. Another favourite of his is Junior Kimbrough, a name lost on almost everybody in the room – and this was a fairly informed audience. Kimbrough was a one chord ‘country’ performer, said Alan, emphasising that it isn’t all about being a (taught) virtuoso. Charlie Feathers (a friend of Junior’s) was the rockabilly “real deal”, never mind Elvis, who screwed him over, said Alan. Feathers lived and worked right next door to Sam Phillips’ Sun Studio in Memphis, he said, but didn’t get a break there. Feathers was threatening; “he was evil.”

Alan also mentioned how much he admired the songwriter Alan Hull. “Who?” asked the guy at the back. He was in Lindisfarne, Alan explained, who later became a “cabaret band”. He talked about the beauty of a folk tune Alan Hull did when they played together, ‘She Moves Through the Fair’. Are you going to play it then, asked the bloke. Alan declined, to some sweary but good humoured frustration. Before taking a comfort break, Alan commented that when he was touring in Ireland a few years ago, he walked into a bar and was told that because it was ‘Holy Hour’ they couldn't serve him. However he was offered a drink while he waited.

It's well known that Alan helped Bert Jansch to resume his career when he had more or less abandoned performing altogether. In the Gents we talked about Alan and Bert’s musical collaboration (which included Alan producing and recording Bert's celebrated 'Live at the 12 Bar'). I asked whether they worked up ragas together, and, not immodestly, Alan said that he had got Bert into playing them in the first place. This was the early 1990s after a long and mostly fallow period in Bert’s career. Bert had had a drinking problem and a big cocaine addiction, said Alan. There were times in the ‘80s when Bert Jansch was not together enough to be in The Pentangle line-ups even if he’d wanted to. Without Bert, John Renbourne and Jacqui McShee, Pentangle didn’t make any sense, said Alan. Gerry Conlon (ex-Fotheringay), who Alan calls a 'click drummer', someone who just plays in time, was going out with Jacqui; so he got the drummer’s gig. How can you hope to replace a jazzer like Terry Cox with a click drummer, he asked. Back on stage Alan said that John Lennon said that Ringo wasn't a very good drummer, but all the great drummers Alan has met, including Billy Cobham, said that Ringo was the best. He played in a few big bands, noted the guy at the back.

Alan’s raga infatuation started when he went to collect an Indian takeaway and heard this incredible music playing in the background. He’s been obsessed with playing ragas for more than ten years. Alan normally likes to play ragas for three hours, but reassured this EPC audience that he wouldn’t being doing that tonight. The great thing about ragas, he said, is that if you come at them from a blues, jazz or flamenco tradition you can understand them; likewise raga can inform these western musical traditions.

In the ‘80s Alan said he practically lived at The Marquee Club. He also had a photography business and used to shoot artists for their album covers, including on one occasion Bruce Springsteen. Alan was living in Hackney at the time, which back then was like 1950s Warsaw, he observed.

Alan mentioned that he worked with Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer, later of ‘Vic Reeves’ Big Night Out’ fame. Mortimer, an old school friend of Alan's, was practising as a lawyer; “at which he was sh*t,” said Alan. However Mortimer was also into comedy. For a year Alan pestered him to come and perform at an open mic night in Deptford, which eventually Mortimer did. Alan then wrote material for Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer when they were into what he describes as Dadaist, situationist, humour. I liked Vic because, like me, he had a northern accent, recalls Alan. I set up a gig for them with BBC bigwigs who just wanted formulaic stuff. The rest is history, he says. Vic used to eschew the celebrity circuit but he soon embraced it; he became insufferable, said Alan.

Partly out of frustration with the organisational and financial side of band gigs, Alan said off stage that tonight was going to be his last. What about more solo spots, I asked. I don't want to be up in lights on my own, he said, I have never enjoyed that. A highly accomplished guitarist with so much to teach players and fans alike about the evolution of western music, but who eschews personal attention. Alan says though that he’ll probably still attend a few gigs in Hastings pubs, and maybe he’ll join in occasionally at some open mic nights.

Before playing us out, Alan digressed about going into a bar in Sweden one night, desperate for a drink after having just finished playing a gig. Suddenly somebody rushed in urging him to come around the corner because “someone just like Stevie Ray Vaughan was playing; he's even got the hat.” “He’s even got the hat,” Alan repeated to emphasise his contempt for the superficial side of the business. He never liked Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “boogie-woogie stuff,” he said, but his subtler, jazz, playing was sublime. Two of these tunes, ‘Riviera Paradise’ and ‘Lenny’, were fused together by Alan in a wonderful, virtuoso performance; the effort and concentration etched across his face. He was working very hard; fingers flying across the frets.

Let’s hope we can catch him around Hastings in a pub somewhere if he ever feels like showing some other musicians a few tricks. 

American music legend plays Whatlington Village Hall

Award-winning American acoustic musician and song-writer Doug MacLeod stayed in the tiny East Sussex village of Crowhurst on Tuesday and Wednesday this week. This 70-something survivor of child sexual abuse discovered as a young man that music could save his mortal soul and went on to found a one-man musical ministry to heal us all. Doug was staying at Nina’s “Woodside” B&B in Old Forewood Lane before giving an intimate gig in Whatlington Village Hall, the new venue for Mrs Yarrington’s Music Club, the best platform for acoustic music in the south-east of England.

Doug played at Mrs Yarrington’s back in 2016 (click here for my review of that gig). In fact it made such an impression on him that on Tuesday night he went straight back to the same venue (at The Senlac Inn in Battle), sat in the bar, and wondered where his punters might be. He made it to the new venue in time however, bringing much needed relief after the opening act, Song Box Band. While this Brighton pop-folk duo impressed with their in-sync guitar playing, the singer's musings on Mediterranean holidays and other anodyne middle-class preoccupations grated.

When Doug began his song sermons, there was an almost palpable sense of excitement as an audience that was mostly familiar with the man readied themselves to get healed. He did not disappoint. Having heard some of his blues-based gospel before, I had an idea of what to expect, but songs familiar, and ones I had not had the privilege of hearing him sing live before, were equally compelling.

Among the stand-out songs were ‘Who’s Driving This Bus?’, a musical musing on the interests that may lay behind our elected leaders, with a nod to John Lee Hooker in Doug’s phenomenal guitar playing done in his professed “gumbo” style. Another musical acknowledgment was made by Doug when introducing a song that almost stole the show, and whose title went something like “(I Believe That) The Sun is Gonna’ Shine”. It was, said Doug, a song influenced by the celebrated black bluesman (and long-time muse), Tampa Red. You had to fight back the tears when hearing a tale of hoped for redemption that came straight out of Doug’s backstory. It was truly one of the most extraordinary vocal performances I’ve heard in nearly 40 years of attending gigs.

This man is an acknowledged master of his particular art; he just played in a village hall up the road from where I live. His landlady came to the gig and joked that she’ll be putting his sheets on e bay. She hadn’t heard of him before Tuesday but knew that, somehow, she had a star staying in her guest house. If you want to be similarly blessed, make sure you check him out the next time Mrs Yarrington’s puts this huge performer on a tiny stage.

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 effects 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 Voodoo 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.

(Listen to 'It's About That (Voodoo) Time' by clicking on this Soundcloud link)

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.