Quiet

I have been quiet recently. The holiday put me in a mellow mood, certainly not a rant mood. Also, I have been working on your behalf! In the next seven days I am going to post the first part of a long interview with Mike Hurst. It's not just about Mike, it's about the Sixties and the maelstrom of creativity. Mike just happened to be in the middle of it, but it is his story nevertheless. There are not only lots of contributions from Mike himself but also from his mates, Clem Cattini and Ray Fenwick. If you don't already know who they are google them and you will see they were and are major players in the last 40 odd years of music.

Here's a teaser, a sample from the piece. Hurst is describing the Mighty Garvey sessions that he did with Manfred Mann, and in particular, Mighty Quinn:

Tom McGuinness and Mike Hugg wanted to do the blues but the fact is they were a pop/rock band. Manfred was incredible. He was the most laid back character I have ever come across. You went into a session, from the day before or the week before and he’d taken the master tapes home and lost them. So life was quite strange. He’d sit there and read the paper most of the time as well. I didn’t want to do Mighty Quinn. They came to me and asked if I would produce it and I listened to the Bob Dylan demo and it was horrible. I didn’t think there was a hit in it. I could not hear anything in the song. Manfred persuaded me to do it, and I was doing an album with them anyway (Mighty Garvey), so I agreed to do Mighty Quinn and it was number one everywhere in 1968. They had a sound a bit like the Byrds, with Tom McGuinness’ National Steel guitar. I tried to make it sound more American. It was after all, a Dylan song. It could have been a mistake because of course they are English, apart from Manfred, who is South African, but as it turned out, it wasn’t a mistake. Klaus Voorman did the flute on it as well as playing bass. In retrospect the song had a great hook.

People pieces, I like. I have been lucky so far and have been able to get some movers and shakers. Some pieces are still being negotiated because you just don't get interviews with people who are being pursued by Panorama by sounding nice on the phone.

The point of this is that I am trying to establish some credibility. I am trying to raise the bar. When you come here I want you to feel that, despite our limited resources, you can expect similar standards to the ones you get in the MSM. It's not easy, but the traffic I am getting now justifies it.

So please bear with me. I have not given up, I just want to do more, better.

And if you are curious, this is what Mike Hurst did with the strange case of Manfred Mann and Mighty Garvey: