I can't with the difference, never mind the weather. When you come to Tommy's, the order is forever!
I can't with the difference, never mind the weather. When you come to Tommy's, the order is forever!
Welcome!
Johnnie Sauvage is standing right here. He's picking up the pieces from Laura's show. Thank you very much for the Occidental Living Room.
I hope everyone enjoyed it. Today is June 5th. I was going to have Joe Boyd, the record and film producer in the studios. Unfortunately, he had to change of travel plans.
He couldn't come up to Sonoma County for this show, but I'm hoping that he will call in. We're having phone problems, but hopefully we may be able to get him on the line for a few minutes at least.
If not, he will be back in late summer and will be coming into the studio. We'll be doing lots of Joe Boyd's music, basically all the people who he influenced, produced and promoted.
First things first, we did have a passing away this week, and it was Coco Taylor who passed away. I thought I'd run up with one of hers first of all.
We've got a man.
When I was a little girl, only 12 years old, I couldn't do nothing to save my dog on soul.
My mama told me the day I was grown, she said sing the blue child, sing it from now on.
I'm a woman. I'm a woman. I'm a ball of fire. I'm a woman. I can make love to a crocodile. I'm a woman. I can sing the blues.
I'm a woman. Change old and new. Spelled up your old. He'll make it. Oh yeah. That means I'm grown.
I'm a woman. I'm a rushing wind. I'm a woman.
Can you hear me there Joe? I can. I'll make myself an echo too though.
Can you hear us despite that? I'm still getting the echo.
I'll persevere. I don't mind.
I do. I live in London. I like the weather there.
I like London from the minute I got there. I got there at a great time in the 60s.
The UFO club and that whole psychedelic world that was beginning to happen there. How did you fall into that?
Unfortunately, the first week I was in London, I was there as a tour manager for actually Coco Taylor's stablemates, Muddy Waters, Otis Spann, Citroën Esar,
Adam McGee and Sonny Terry and I met a bunch of people at first week and one of the people I met was a photographer who came to take pictures for Melody Maker of Muddy Waters and everybody and he was the guy called John Hopkins.
Wonderful photographer and he later dropped his camera trade and started the International Times and he became the kind of center of the whole London Underground scene and by that time we were good friends.
So I was sort of right in the middle of it because of my friendship with Hoppy and the house band of the London Underground scene in the summer and autumn of 66 was of course Pink Floyd and we both needed money.
I've been fired by Electra Records after opening their London office and so we decided to start a club and we called it UFO and the Floyds were the resident group and the soft machine came after them and then the world of Arthur Brown and Prokoharam and
it was a great, for about six months it was a great place but I think those things have a sort of natural life cycle and it went through its cycle very quickly.
But it's interesting though, it went through its life cycle but really the influence is still felt today, I mean here in Sonoma County, I mean it's as if it's like the London of 67 or San Francisco of 67, the sensibilities have really grown.
I think, you know, I'm trying to remember, I believe that at a reading I did from my book, White Bicycles in the Bay Area, someone came up who is from Northern California, maybe even Sonoma County who has a UFO association and holds annual UFO events and something like that.
I think it's from somewhere around your neck of the woods.
Most probably.
Yeah.
In fact, one of our programmers on, he goes all night, Sunday night to Monday, Rick, Captain Chaos, he does a lot of that stuff on his show.
Right.
So maybe that is him, maybe he's the UFO guy.
Yeah, so now you're at UFO and this was happening, when you were watching the Floyd and watching the soft machine, did you think that they were this great, this powerful, they were going to last for 50 years?
I thought that about the Floyd.
I think Sid Barrett's songs were so good, they just, you know, I think, you know, a lot of bands could have done the kind of, you know, abstract improvisations that the Floyd pioneered, but they hadn't had that platform to launch from of these great songs, these funny, witty, melodic, gorgeous songs.
And I think he really, I always say that Hoppy and Sid Barrett were the two key figures in making London come to life in that period, you know, because in that way, the whole underground scene, sort of kind of like Jerry Garcia and Janice Joplin here, I suppose.
Just the two characters who, or maybe Ken Keesey and Jerry Garcia is the better comparison.
You know, they just were so full of life and so original and such vivid personalities and so talented that you just had a spring in your step, you know, because you knew you were surrounded by stuff of such high quality.
Yeah, and that was the thing, I suppose, then, I mean, it was so new, the music, it was very experimental.
Yeah, I mean, in a way, you could say, Sid, the fascinating thing that I heard not so long ago, a few years ago, David Bowie came down to the Albert Hall when Dave Gilmore was in his concert there and sang Arnold Lane.
Oh my God.
And he asked him afterwards, why did you sing Arnold Lane? And Bowie said Arnold Lane was the record that changed his life, that it was the first time he heard somebody singing like an Englishman just the way he talked, that he wasn't trying to sound black, he wasn't trying to sound American,
he wasn't trying to sound Mockney, he wasn't trying to sound Scouse, he was just speaking like an ordinary estuary accented home county boy, you know.
Interesting.
And that gave him the courage to start making music and singing songs in the same aesthetic.
Yeah, because really, like the Beatles, people didn't really know they were from Liverpool because it was a very, you know, bland accent they did when they were singing, yeah.
Yeah.
But yeah, you're right, he really did just do his normal accent, I hadn't thought of that before.
Now it's all the rage.
Yeah.
Now I used to hang out at the Arts Lab, you know, on Drury Lane there, so I remember that well, it was a fantastically creative place.
Yeah.
And what happened to Nicky Hopkins?
John Hopkins.
John Hopkins.
Well John, you know, he's got a couple of photo exhibitions going on, one in London opens on the 19th of June, and it moves up to Glasgow in the autumn.
I mean, he's got a coffee table book, which is great, I mean, his photography is great.
And he's, you know, he's a bit older than me, so he's already pushing 70.
Okay.
But he's in good form, and I see him regularly, and he's a wonderful guy, wonderful spirit, great, great fellow.
Oh, that was just a fabulous place.
Yeah.
He just opened up so much creativity.
Yeah.
Arnold, I'm going to have to wind this up a little bit, because I'm on my way, this is a real testament to the times.
You see, I'm on my way to see the San Francisco Symphony by Schubert and Albin Berg.
Okay.
I just have one question.
Yeah.
In 1965, Newport, 1965, when Dylan went electric, in your book, White Bicycles, you know, you know, obviously you say that Pete Segar and Theodore Backell wanted to basically shut it, shut Dylan down.
Well, they wanted to turn the volume down.
Turn the volume down.
Now, a couple of weeks ago, in fact, Miss Laura on the show before, we had a Pete Segar tribute, because it was 90, and David Dunaway, Pete Segar's biographer, who I think knows you, he came in and did it.
Who was that?
David Dunaway.
Okay.
I don't think I know, but anyway, okay.
Yeah.
He's Pete Segar's official biographer, and I asked him that question, you know, what actually happened?
And now, his take was that they didn't, that Pete Segar didn't like the mix.
That was what he got from the biographer, that it was the mix, not the level of sound.
No.
I've talked to Pete Segar about it since.
I saw him in New Orleans about 15 years after that, and he said, you know, when something is that loud and sung in that way, nobody can ever sing it again.
Like something, he believes music should be something that other people can sing, and that when you present it with such volume, because, I mean, the mix, you know, was the mix.
It was a pretty accurate representation of the music, and the real demand, I mean, because I have a vivid memory of being confronted by Bickel and Alan Lomax and Segar backstage, and they all turned to me and said, you've got to turn it down.
Uh-huh.
And that was the real, you know, clarion call.
But definitely, he never tried to chop the wires to the speakers with an axe.
That's one myth we can put to bed.
Okay.
Unless it was a guitar axe, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, that's great.
I understand you have to go, and I really appreciate it.
I'm delighted to hear that, you know, some of the records I produced are going to be played over the beautiful northern California hills this evening.
And one of these days, I'll get up and pay you a visit.
Oh, that would be wonderful.
There's so many people who just, you know, love Floyd.
We haven't even talked about the incredible string band.
There's more fans of the incredible string band up here, per square foot, than anywhere in the world.
I can guarantee that.
Well, listen, you know, it's July, if anybody is making their way to England, we're having a witch season weekend, July 18th and 19th at the Barbican in London.
And the 18th is going to be a Fairport All-Star reunion with Richard Thompson and Swarbrick and Ian Matthews and everybody.
And then on the 19th, there's a incredible string band tribute concert with Robin Hitchcock.
And I think Kate McGarregal is going to be there and Robin Hitchcock and Teddy Thompson, I think.
And a wonderful new group called The Trembling Bells.
Okay.
So his first record is coming out this spring and you should get it.
It's just great.
They're really terrific, bunch of weird Scots guys.
And they're going to be there.
And anybody wants more information?
I'll mention, I'm not the most diligent website host, but I do have a website.
It's www.jovoid.co.uk.
And I'll have details and maybe links to YouTube and stuff about that concert once it's happened.
Oh, great.
That sounds good.
I'm coming in September, so I'll miss it, but we'll put the word out.
All right.
And also, to tell your incredible string band fans, eventually, it's very slow.
It's like molasses going uphill.
But we are prying loose those old masters from Warner Brothers and getting them remastered
so they sound decent again, because they've been really hurting my ears the way those
digital versions sound.
And we should have good versions of those records out sometime before the end of the year.
Oh, excellent.
There'll be a lot sold in this area.
Okay, good.
All right.
Thank you so much, Joe.
Okay, pleasure.
Great.
Have a great trip back.
Okay.
Bye-bye.
See you.
Bye-bye.
Well, folks, that was my interview with Joe Boyd, the record and film producer.
He couldn't come into the studio, but thank goodness he could call us on the phone and
give us a little bit of his wonderful, wonderful experiences from the early 60s in England,
in America, and all the wonderful people he has produced.
And we went back to 67 and the band that was the house band of the UFO Club in London on
the Toppencourt Road, right around the corner from Sunny Good Street.
The house band at the beginning for the first few months was a band called the Pink Floyd.
So let's start with their wonderful interstellar overdrive.
Thank you.
