Something Is Happening

Highway 61 Revisited photo session (New York 1965)

Just listened to a music podcast called ‘Is It Rolling, Bob? (talking Dylan)’ in which two actor blokes (Kerry Shale and Lucas Hare) talk to a journo bloke (David Hepworth) about a song & dance man, Bob Dylan.

It is a lot better than ‘Stalking Time for the Moon Boys’ in which two TV blokes (David Baddiel and Tim Hincks) talk to various other blokes and each other about a song & dance man, David Bowie. But it’s still not great. Entertaining enough if you’re keen on your Dylan.

One interesting fact I picked up was that Dylan named himself not after Welsh poet D. Thomas (which I’d believed) but after Marshall Dillon in some TV cowboy show (‘Gunsmoke’). Dylan as lifelong cowboy makes a lot of sense.

A question they asked David was how did you first come across Dylan. Got me thinking.

As a six year-old, just allowed to go by myself across one road to the newsagent (Eric & Mavis’s or perhaps it was the previous incarnation), I bought myself a fold-out poster magazine. I got it home expecting it to fold out to reveal a hippy rabbit (Dylan of ‘Magic Roundabout’ fame). Instead it was an unprepossessing bearded bloke with a guitar. A disappointing first encounter.

When I first fell under Dylan’s spell was having one of those Moments listening to ‘Ballad of a Thin Man’. I’d heard bits & pieces of Dylan during my childhood, listened to him a bit at uni through friends who were advocates (but I still had my Punk head on). But it was listening to this track on ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ when the light went on. It was the Surrealism of the lyrics that really grabbed me – I’m not really a lyrics man but the words made their impact, above all the non-rational, dream-like nature of them. I was in.

This moment lead directly to my ending up with a son called Dylan (who looks at times a little like the Big Man of this vintage).

You walk into the room with your pencil in your hand
You see somebody naked and you say, “Who is that man?”
You try so hard but you don’t understand
Just what you will say when you get home
Because something is happening here but you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?

You raise up your head and you ask, “Is this where it is?”
And somebody points to you and says, “It’s his”
And you say, “What’s mine?” and somebody else says, “Well, what is?”
And you say, “Oh my God, am I here all alone?”
But something is happening and you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?

Sometimes it’s really good not to know what it is – just let it sink in and brew up.

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For the record

A relative in Ireland recently sent me one of those chain postings in Facebook – I don’t go for passing those on but since I did the thinking – about what my favourite records are – I’ll plop them in here for posterity.

My funeral record (last track)

My other funeral record (first track)

 

Sound & Vision: 4 of the best from Bowie’s art collection

I had a bit of an art blow-out earlier this week with three thoroughly enjoyable exhibitions in a day:

View from a beanbag

You Say You Want A Revolution? at the V&A which looks at “records and rebels” from 1966 to 1970 – I went with my friend Kathelin Gray who was present at many of the events showcased and knew many of the people referred to, including Allen Ginsberg who is the person who first brought us together when I was on sabbatical writing in 2013-14. Walking through this excellent display with her certainly added a special, personal dimension. For a while we kicked back on beanbags to watch highlights from the Woodstock movie, including Jimi Hendrix’s era-defining rendition of the Stars & Stripes, perfect for US election day.

Endless Highway off the beaten track

The Path Beaten at The Halcyon which for the second time in as many years brings together in London a collection of Bob Dylan’s paintings and sculpture. The images which most appealed were ones like ‘Endless Highway’ which seem of a piece with his songs and how they capture the essence of America. Also perfect for an election day when that could easily get lost.

Sandwiched between was a visit to Bowie / Collector at Sotheby’s, a last viewing of Bowie’s personal collection (minus the stuff of sentimental value) before it went under the auctioneer’s hammer on Thursday 10th and Friday 11th November (yesterday and the day before). I went with my friend Doug to whom I picked out a single painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat as The One. As it turned out that canvas went for £7.1M, the top price at an auction which raised double the expected revenue, in this case more than doubling its top estimate of £3.5M. So I reckon I’ve got a good eye. And what that good eye spied on the day were these…

ONE Lot 22: Jean-Michel Basquiat – Air Power (1984)

Jean-Michel Basquiat – Air Power (1984)

For all the bullshitWar(se)hol(e)hype around Basquiat, the young man was a really dynamic artist with a beautiful sense of colour. Bowie played Warhol in Julian Schnabel’s biographical movie. The canvas displays Basquiat’s usual mix of lively paint (acrylic) and fat chalky lines (oilstick) looking like the bastard offspring of a blueprint and a Brooklyn wall. The white ladder shape on the chest and body of the main figure reminds me at once of one of those bone breast decorations Red Indians wear and a railway line reaching westwards. In other words JMB seems to really capture that essence of America.

 

TWO Lot 4: Peter Lanyon – Trevalgan (1951)

Peter Lanyon – Trevalgan (1951)

Hot on the heals of the excellent Lanyon exhibition, Soaring Flight, at The Courtauld last Christmas, Bowie/Collector afforded an encounter with another group of Lanyon’s fresh, original landscapes, of which this stood out the most. Trevalgan is a landmark work in Lanyon’s journey of reinvention of landscape painting, tilting it up to become a fusion of map, aerial photo and abstract expressionist take on the Cornwall countryside, the horizon curved around the picture surface on which sea, fields, cliffs and sky are transformed into a gigantic emerald of England.

Peter Lanyon – Picture of the Month

THREE lot 43: Patrick Caulfield – Foyer (1973)

Patrick Caulfield – Foyer (1973)

I’ve always had a soft spot for Caulfield as one inclined to a very graphic style in my own drawing and painting. This large acrylic captures much about modern life in a bland space of the hotel lobby variety (which is not much variety) – to get to anything of interest or colour you have to penetrate to the bar, a small bejewelled space of coloured glass and decorated alcoves, tucked away small in the background distance of the image.

FOUR Lot 101: David Jones – Crucifixion (c.1922)

David Jones – Crucifixion (c.1922)

I suspect Bowie bought this one because the artist shares his real name, plus of course Jones was a highly accomplished religious artist in the vein of Eric Gill. This sparse, stripped down pencil and watercolour drawing captures the agony of the Crucifixion, remembering even to bloody the knees, not just the stigmata. He achieves something truly ancient and in touch with the roots of Christianity.

I felt two things as I left the exhibition. (i) There was so much of it. Too much for any one person to own. It made me feel a bit sick being amongst so much. It must have been a relief for Bowie and his family to offload All This Stuff. David Jones #1’s Christ departs with just a delicate blue loin cloth and a crown of thorns. (ii) Having gone to so much trouble assembling some very fine sub-collections among his overall Collection (mainly of the 20th Century British Art I really love) I wonder why he broke it all up again? Why didn’t he donate little groups to museums to keep them together? I suspect his family don’t really need all £33M of the proceeds.

What Bowie did give – from my little perspective – was an introduction to my ideal drawer and one of my favourite artists, Egon Schiele. I heard him talking about this artist (who I, like most people at the time, had never heard of) on Radio 1 around the time of his Lodger record, the last of the Berlin trilogy. From there a life-long love sprouted. If Bowie had any Schiele’s he kept them back from the sale. The nearest is a single Oskar Kokoschka litho and an Eric Heckel woodcut figure with long boney hands. He certainly had a heroic eye for art. (Though he could have gotten arrested by the design police for his taste in furniture.)

 

 

Passing the baton

I had the great honour and pleasure of explaining to Enfant Terrible No. 2 this afternoon how a record player works – and indeed how a record works. “So if you turn it over are there more songs on the other side?”

It reminded me of the time the four of us were in the car listening to a Sherlock Holmes story and I had to pause the tape to explain what a ‘typewriter’ was, as the mystery revolved around a typewriter with a dodgy E.

So I walked down to Alan’s record shop on our high street with the ETs and No. 2 bought his very first piece of vinyl, a Rolling Stones (later) hits LP – he was after the track Wild Horses. He asked me to show him how to play it in the shop. I demoed on the knackered old deck. “So the lines are different songs?”

I showed him how to check the record for blemishes, how to handle the disc, how to check the weight/thickness.

It’s interesting how they came to this place, to the point of being introduced to Alan as customers after one and a half decades of just being local kids. After years of wall-to-wall rap the younger one recently got into reggae, then Dylan and The Stones; the older one into The Doors and Dylan. When Snoop Dogg put out a reggae album as Snoop Lion he provided the bridge for ET2 into the rasta world. And Yelawolf’s Nashville connections prompted thoughts in the head of ET1 of Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan. After years of Mac Miller and Wiz Khalifa how amazing to get a text saying: “Just been listening to Bob Dylan’s song ‘Hurricane’ – the man’s a genius”.

What’s also interesting to see is how all the musical education/indoctrination did actually get in and get noticed. I used to make them tapes for their birthdays based on what they were interested in – so at 4 for example it was cops, robbers and superheroes – cue Police & Thieves, The Batman theme (The Jam), etc. Now tunes like Riders on the Storm (from the cowboys & Indians phase) are resurfacing in their consciousness.

This afternoon’s lads’ trip down the road was a real landmark and a deep pleasure.

A Perfect Day (Day 76)

Pretty much the best day so far. Started out from Terri Hooley’s house in the company of Stuart Bailie, radio presenter on BBC Ulster, head of the Oh Yeah music centre and expert on Van Morrison, having grown up in the same hood. The pair of them gave me a beautiful tour of Van’s East Belfast taking in not only his birthplace in Hyndford Street but all those mythically poetic names like Orangefield, Cyprus Avenue and the like. Stuart really knows his shit, he recently made a radio tour of the place and is making a longer programme along the same lines to be broadcast soon. That’s the pylon where Van arranged to meet, the third one over. That’s where he drunk alone under the bridge, chips in Terri. It was such an evocative way to experience the city.

a gift from my nephew repatriated – and signed by the ‘old puffin’

When we got to Oh Yeah in the Cathedral Quarter, all within spitting distance of Terri’s Northern Irish Punk hub at the old Harp Bar, I took my leave of Terri, a warm hug from a genuinely warm and charming personality, at the entrance to the former whiskey warehouse which is now one of the physical legacies of Terri’s activities over the years, Oh Yeah indeed, and Stuart gave me a really insightful interview, shedding light on some of the more mysterious parts of the Good Vibrations story.

From there I trotted round the corner along the alleyway where Wizard Studios used to be, where Teenage Kicks was recorded. At the end is a red door which marks the new home of Atto Partners, a digital and design agency I work with, having introduced them to the emerging world of multiplatform TV on 4thought.tv . They gave me a bag of Christmas tea – happy days!

KVLR says hi

Within a literal stone’s throw is the John Hewitt which seemed as good a place as any to hook up with my old friend KVLR, Kev Largey to dull mortals. He’s an artist who does a lot of top class work on the streets of Belfast and Dublin. One of his pieces opposite where we were seated happens to be on page 194 of Terri’s book Hooleygan. It’s beside the Art Deco arcade where Terri’s shop was immolated by the forces of darkness. [see Day 75 post for eejits and incendiary devices].

Kev took me on a splendid tour of the best of the top-notch street art around North Street where Good Vibrations currently resides. He gave me a bag of dried seaweed – happy days! It’s a Belfast favourite, which he picked up as we passed a greengrocer’s stall, to give me my first taste  – it brings the sea to you like nothing else, even shellfish and fishfish, the minute you start chewing. It brought back memories of the seaweed baths my beautiful young bride and I visited in Enniscrone, Co. Sligo on our honeymoon.

To round off a perfect day we popped in to the record shop below Kev’s studio where I found some of Malcolm Garrett’s finest work for Buzzcocks [more of him in the new year] and a bootleg or promo album entitled On The Road with, yes you’ve guessed it, Allen Ginsberg on the cover sitting with Bob Dylan beside Jack Kerouac’s grave.  Waiting for me or what?

Content incubation (Days 67 and 68)

I started Day 67 on non-book business in Marylebone to do with my main non-exec directorship – it was a nice change to be immersed in a thoroughly commercial world. I moseyed on though Mayfair in the direction of BAFTA in Piccadilly and briefly immersed myself in the art world courtesy of the Halcyon Gallery which has a big show of Bob Dylan’s iron sculptures and paintings which was fun. Once I got to BAFTA I dived back in to the Music chapter happily. Bumped into a couple of people who were helpful in making connections to interviewees (both for Music chapter). And set up some more interviews. Wandered across St James’s and through the dark park to Channel 4 HQ for Xmas drinks, my first visit to the building in several weeks, only my second since 1st September kick-off day, refreshing.

Day 68 began in the British Library with more tapping away about Tony Wilson. Had a lovely lunch round the corner in St Chad’s Place with Jesse Cleverly of the newly established Wildseed Studios, which he describes as “a content incubator looking to invest in great new ideas”. We talked Book, multiplatform, Royal Court (where he used to work), Nigella, creative process, etc.

Then bee-line home for more writing and to speak to the other protagonist of my Music chapter – Terri Hooley of Good Vibrations. He was totally charming and warm, and I really look forward to heading over to Belfast to hang with him in the next few days. He offered me a tour of Van’s East Belfast which will be a real kick.

And the day ends here in the Adam & Eve on Mill Hill’s Ridgeway – as much my home turf as Cyprus Avenue is Van’s. I’ve got mulled wine, crisps, seat by fire, Sinatra on the pub stereo, and my fresh little Air. Happy days.

I’m on the pavement thinking about the government (Day 45)

Savoy Steps on 5th November 2013

Started the day off track at a coffee shop meeting inspired by Russell Brand’s interview by Jeremy Paxman a couple of weeks ago. Chris Ward, who gave me some publishing advice on Day 22, gathered together a small bunch of people who were struck by the Newsnight interview to discuss its implications and possibilities. We met up in Somerset House for a couple of hours and kicked about some ideas. This is an appropriate location in that it’s within yards of both The Coal Hole and the site of The Fountain Tavern (home of The Kit-Kat Club) which were places of political gathering and activism in the 17th and 18th Century. Given his increasing activism, Allen Ginsberg would have approved of this tangent.

Having spotted Ginsberg in the background of DA Pennebaker’s Subterranean Homesick Blues promo (shot in 1965) on an ad on Channel 4 the other night (Day 43), and being just a couple of streets away, I decided to seek out the location. And very atmospheric it was. Totally unchanged since 1965 (though the scaffolding has finally gone). Documentary-maker DA Pennebaker came back around 1985 and they were still working on The Savoy building on its left-hand side. The streets and alleys around The Savoy remind you of the rich palimpsest of history and stories that lays over this fabulous city.

I set up office in Westminster Reference Library, the Art bit, and carried on with my current pass at the Literature/Ginsberg chapter. Research-wise I pushed on with Hettie Jones’ memoirs, How I Became Hettie Jones, taking it into the legendary Gaby’s for lunch (it’s as perverse as ever, how many Cash Only restaurants can there be in Central London?)

In the late afternoon I spoke to the Allen Ginsberg Project / Estate in the East Village, NYC who are kindly helping with some interviewees, thanks to documentary-maker Yony Leyser whom I met in Leipzig last week.

{photo cortesy of http://www.popspotsnyc.com}

Update 6/11/13

I found out today while researching the Ginsberg chapter that the term “subterraneans” was one Ginsberg coined to describe the intellectual hipsters and hip hedonists who hung out in Greenwich Village bars like the San Remo and Fugazzi’s. Dylan took the term from Kerouac but Kerouac had actually adopted it from Ginsberg.

Stoned Immaculate (Day 43)

Picked up where I left off yesterday, ploughing through the tail-end of a key Ginsberg research book. Was watching telly last night and saw an ad (on Channel 4) for The Greatest Hits of Bob Dylan, made up largely of archive film clips, and I noticed, for the first time, Ginsberg in the background of that famous clip for Subterranean Homesick Blues (which was the promo film for DA Pennebaker’s 1967 documentary Don’t Look Back). I’ll go pay homage to the spot behind The Savoy Hotel, London next time I’m in that area.

Took the Enfants Terribles out for lunch down the street to mark their half-term, which was fun.

Then rounded the day off with a trip down to Gospel Oak (I love that place name) to do my first interview of a contemporary exponent of openness and generosity in the realm of creativity, namely Carole Stone.  Carole is a former journalist at the BBC and has latterly been working with YouGov. Over the years she has built up and nurtured a huge network of interesting people, old and young, successful and starting out, all bound together by her charm, warmth and genuine love of helping people get stuff done, worthwhile stuff of all kinds. Carole gave me a frank and insightful interview in her cozy front room, with languid cats and equally charming husband Richard in attendance, on how she operates and why, which I’ll weave into the Ginsberg chapter, as he was also renowned as a great networker of the authentic variety.

Here’s a brief extract from my draft Ginsberg chapter on this theme:

Ginsberg was proactive in his connecting to and of people. He was referred to by one friend as “the central casting office of the underground”. He was habitually seen carrying a purple bag and in it was an address book in which he wrote the details of people he encountered who were kindred spirits or of potential help moving the world in the right direction. He took delight in connecting people he thought might spark off each other, regardless of whether they were underground or establishment. The purple bag contained in effect a global network of the like-minded.

Shelter from the Storm

Walter Pater, the art and literary critic much admired by Oscar Wilde, wrote that “All art aspires to the condition of music.” I read that as other arts striving for the direct impact music has on the heart and spirit without recourse to any physical medium and being able to by-pass the intellect. Much though I love music I’ve never tended to listen to the lyrics of songs in a coherent and systematic way. Phrases and lines emerge over time in their own way and hook themselves into the brain.

I was jogging along yesterday morning listening to a podcast of the evergreen Desert Island Discs when a Bob Dylan song came on and a line really resonated for me as a perfect expression of what women mean to men. When I got home and sat down in front of my machine for the first time that day I whacked the line into Quotables for posterity – and to look at it on its own for a moment.

“Come in,” she said, “I’ll give you shelter from the storm”

Not particularly poetic. Quite ordinary really. But in its context perfect and to the heart of the matter, to the matter of the heart.

So I felt inspired to pick out 10 great lines from songs that are worthy of the condition of music, that have the resonance and penetrative power of the supreme art. I tried being strict about one stand-out line per song only (only cracked once with a couplet).

1. Bob Dylan, Shelter from the Storm (1974)

“Come in,” she said, “I’ll give you shelter from the storm”

2. John Lennon, Oh Yoko! (1971)

In the middle of a cloud I call your name

A powerful yet simple expression of romantic love.

3. John Martyn, Couldn’t Love You More (1977)

If you kissed the sun right out of the sky for me

Song lyrics straining to capture Love (is there a theme emerging?)

4. Jimi Hendrix, Purple Haze (1966)

‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky

This could be love or drugs that’s fogging Jimi’s brain – either way it’s a great line.

5. The Clash, Garageland (1977)

Back in the garage with my bullshit detector

A spirited (spirit of Punk) response to an early bad review (of a gig with The Sex Pistols at Islington’s Screen on the Green): “The Clash are the kind of garage band who should be returned to the garage immediately, preferably with the engine running”. [Charles Shaar Murray – what did he know?]

6. Bruce Springsteen, Atlantic City (1982)

Well now everything dies baby that’s a fact
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back

Reckon there’s a load of philosophy buried in this couplet.

7. David Bowie, Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed (1969)

As I am unwashed and somewhat slightly dazed

Loved this phrase for a long time, the “somewhat” is just what’s needed to throw it off kilter.

8. The Doors (Jim Morrison), The Wasp (1968)

Out here we is stoned – immaculate

One of those lines that throws a word into a whole new light.

9. John Coltrane, Acknowledgement (1964)

A Love Supreme

Sometimes you don’t even need a whole line or clause – this is a transcendent chant. They’re the only words in this track and all the more striking for that.

10. Well, why don’t you add this one? What song words do it for you?…

[I’m treating this as a work in progress – going to be putting some more bath time into it]

UPDATE 11.ix.11

After some more bath-time reflection here are some other stand-out lines, plus some picked out by commenters below that strike a chord with me too:

Michael Franti & Spearhead, Oh My God (2001)

I slept with Marilyn she sung me Happy Birthday

Magazine, Song from Under the Floorboards (1980)

I am angry I am ill and I’m as ugly as sin

The Passenger, Iggy Pop (1977)

We’ll see the city’s ripped backsides

Marvyn Gaye/Dick Holler, Abraham Martin and John (1970)

Has anyone here seen my old friend Martin?

PJ Harvey, Let England Shake (2011)

England’s dancing days are done

You seem confused by your own ideals

You will not be able to stay home brother

Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way

It took it 3.5 billion years to decide that you live just where you live [it = the universe]

Summer of the Sixties

A piece of the 60s: I've got Don Hunstein's contact sheet for this shoot in my small but perfectly formed photograph collection

Two nice Jewish boys bookend my summer of music, both of the first generation of singer-songwriters, both strongly connected with New York, both out of the Sixties which has been the theme of my live music over the last few weeks. The first was Bob Dylan at the newly revived Feis in Finsbury Park a couple of weeks ago (18.vi.11), the last Neil Diamond at the Millennium Dome last night. In between two unique evenings of singer-songwriters recorded for BBC4 at Porchester Hall for the ‘Songwriters’ Circle’ series.

The last time I wrote about ‘Songwriters’ Circle’ on Simple Pleasures part 4, magic of the internet the fella who makes Boo Hewerdine’s guitars got in touch. At this summer’s Feis I spotted Boo going into the artists’ entrance round the back with his kids and his trusty guitar case, on his way in to play with Eddi Reader. Little wheels spin and spin big wheels turn around and around…

Bob Dylan I have seen from time to time over the last few years and this was his best performance in London for the best part of 15 years (since Hammersmith Odeon). Because he was evidently enjoying himself. ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ was the highlight, him singing in his reinterpretive style (see his memoirs ‘Chronicles’ for something of an explanation), the crowd singing along reverting to the 60s style as recorded (on Blooms Day, 16th June 1965 in NYC, so its anniversary just two days before this performance), everyone enjoying themselves hugely. I was on a (musical) high for a week after the Feis – I think I’ll make this my last time seeing Bob live, go out on a high.

The following evening was another flower of the 60s, Van Morrison, doing the sunset slot with style and statesmanship. The last Feis I went to (somewhere around 1996 by my calculation, called the Fleadh back then) was headlined by the same pairing, though both Van and Bob on the same magical night. It was memorably the night of the day I learned to make frozen fruit dacquiris. It segued into a party back at Watermint Quay over in Clapton (the place not the bluesman), dancing in the basement, pharmacy in the attic space. This time Van didn’t get out of orbit (unlike the transcendency of his Astral Weeks gig at the Albert Hall a couple of years ago) but it was the right music at the right time, perfectly conducted by the Man in the softening glow.

The first of this round of ‘Songwriters’ Circle’ comprised Leon Russell, Nick Lowe and Paul Brady. Leon Russell did his Dr John type thing with great shaggy beard, cowboy hat and shades – classic old school. In his time he’s played with Dylan and The Band as well as The Stones and Clapton (the bluesman). He performed with George Harrison at the Concert for Bangladesh. At this more intimate gathering of musos, Paul Brady was the glue, veteran of countless Irish seisiuns, he knows how to accompany his fellow musicians and get some energetic interaction going. Back in the 60s he was playing traditional Irish with The Johnstons, moving to NYC in 1972 (where Dylan had been drawn to The Clancy Brothers a few years earlier and sucked up some Irish know-how himself). The three of them rounded things off with ‘Mystery  Train’ which I know from Woodstock vets the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, although I first became familiar with it in the Paris Metro thanks to my old pals Stu and Jon who made it our theme tune on the legendary Select Latin trip – Train arriving, sixteen coaches long.

I met Paul Brady and Leon Russell fleetingly after the show at Khans, the injun just round the corner from the venue. Hadn’t been in there for yonks. On the subject of we’ll always have Paris, one of the last times I was there I walked in with a new girlfriend (now wife), bumped into a friend from Paris who offered us her flat in St Germain, we ended up going, our first time away together, so I scored a good few impress-the-new-girlfriend points, it’s a place of good happenings for me.

Back to this summer of love, the following night was even more quintessentially 60s with Donovan, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Roger Cook. Donovan was a bit on the charmless side – back from before ‘Don’t Look Back’ he seems to have struggled awkwardly in the shadow of Dylan and he just doesn’t feel comfortable in himself. Buffy the non-vampire did ‘Little Wheel’ (Desert Island Disc choice of Fay Weldon which is how I came across it) and peaked in her Nam protest song ‘Universal Soldier’. Her songs have been covered by Neil Diamond, as well as Janis Joplin and Joe Cocker. And Donovan (a successful version of Universal Soldier). Wheels within wheels.

Roger Cook went from his 1967 composition ‘Something’s Got a Hold of My Heart’ (which I know through Marc Almond’s later duet with Gene Pitney) to his 1971 ‘I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing’, yup the Coke advert one. 1971 was a very special year of the Sixties. Much of what we think of as epitomising the 60s actually happened in the first couple of years of the 70s –  in short, the 60s culminated in 1971, year of  the wonderous ‘What’s Going On’. That’s my favourite record (with words). And one of my first records was ‘Hot August Night’, also released in 1971 (though that’s not when I got it). I spent hours drawing and colouring to it on the dining room table. It has its 40th anniversary next month and is still Neil Diamond’s best selling record. He played some great choons from it last night including his opener ‘Soolaimon’ (1970) with its herald of African drum beats, ‘I Am I Said’ and ‘Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show’. The Brill Building trained songwriter talked a bit about Nam and the assassination of Kennedy, King and ko. He played one of the tunes he wrote for The Monkees, ‘I’m a Believer’. ‘Cherry Cherry’ was a highlight, very 60s sounding. Yet for all his 60s credentials, it was in the early 70s he reached escape velocity and I think of him as a Seventies guy. I contemplated that record cover for hours in the days I only had a couple – I wanted a jean jacket like that, I liked the Jewfro, what was that hand position all about?

A resonant one for me last night was ‘Cracklin’ Rosie’, memorably reinvigorated and given the seal of approval from another great lyricist of a later generation, Shane MacGowan. At one point Neil Diamond also punted his latest record, ‘Dreams’, a selection of covers a la Bowie’s ‘Pin Ups’, including Leon Russell’s “underrated classic” ‘A Song for You’ which he didn’t play live but which idea brings us neatly to the end of last night’s gig, rounding up my summer of music – the Diamond geezer put up a grainy black and white photograph of a 12 year old girl on the screens. She had travelled from Kiev to Rotterdam to New York City, alone it sounded like. She grew up to be his grandmother and he said he dedicated this, like every other performance of his, to her. Not very rock’n’roll but pretty peace and love.

A piece of the 70s: I've still got this LP, my first, in among my large and perfectly formed record collection