


Five Things I Saw & Heard This Week
Transcripts from the everyday world of music by Martin Colyer
…and on presentation: A lot of the looks were down to financial problems. Everyone in those days wore flares and had long hair. So if you went into secondhand stores, there’d be so many straight-legged trousers because everyone wanted flares. That instantly set you apart from everybody else. And also there was another place called Laurence Corner… Mick Jones: Selling army surplus…
I work along the road from where Laurence Corner was, and still fondly remember the green Army Jacket I bought there. Now there’s a chemist in its place, but they’ve put a nice plaque in the window…
That Difficult Second Album
Sexual Healing, Pamela Stephenson Connolly’s sex therapy column in The Guardian: “My boyfriend talks too much during sex. We’ve been together for a year and recently he’s started talking to me while we’re intimate. At first it was everyday stuff like what he wants for dinner but then essentially he began ranting. Do you know how hard it is to climax while listening to someone talk about how many bands have produced “disappointing second albums”? I don’t know if I can go on like this.”
Rolling Stone’s Bob Dylan Special
No professional manicures for Bob…
Stephen Collins’ strip, Guardian Weekend
Still, his wonderful anti-Mumfords bandwagon rolls on…
Not room this week for Sam Amidon at Bush Hall, intriguing, strange and moving in equal measure. More next week…
Currently, of course, everyone is home, but here’s the story of Charlie and Peter, in Peter’s words:
“I met Charlie out at the Vapors Club, in Memphis, back in 1970. He was fairly obscure. So I go out there and I met Charlie and his wife, Margaret Ann, and I just never met anybody who I liked more on first acquaintance. I just loved them both — one of those things where you feel like you’ve really connected. Between sets, Charlie would tell me about growing up outside of Forrest City and growing up in the church; the guilt he felt and the depression he suffered, his drinking. Charlie was not an “up” person. He once said, “I don’t know what it is, I just don’t dig happy songs.” And Margaret Ann, during the sets, would tell me the same stories but in a more rounded, expressive way. She was a brilliant woman as well.
Then I wrote it up for “Feel Like Going Home,” and nobody had done any interviews with Charlie at that point. And as I wrote it, I had the terrible feeling that these two people who I’d really liked so much, that I was never going to see them again. The chapter seems mild by today’s standards, but I had to tell the truth, and it was terrible. Shortly after it was published, the secretary of the publisher called me up and said Charlie Rich just called and ordered 35 copies, one for everyone in his family. Not long after, Charlie told me, “The thing about it was, it was the truth. It hurt, it really hurt, but it was the truth.”
A couple of years later he invited me to New York. I hadn’t seen him in a while and he was playing at Max’s Kansas City. “Behind Closed Doors” had just come out and he was on a publicity tour. And he says, “I got a surprise for you, man.” And I said, “Great, I love surprises.” Which is not at all the case, but what are you gonna say? And so he played the song “Feel Like Going Home” for the first time. And he told me, “I wrote this out of the feeling I got from reading the book.”
And a few years later, he sent me a 7-inch reel-to-reel of the piano demo. And as far as I know, that’s the only copy. Roland Janes later told me, “That’s such a great song, Peter, is the book anywhere near as good?” And I said, “Nope.” It’s no big deal, really, but I mean can you imagine a greater thrill?”