by Ian Hunter
And so on to McLaughlin - peace reigns. The man has found the ultimate in happiness. The songs start in the middle and end in the middle, and the audience loves it. Too frameless, tuneless, formless, but as I said the kids loved it. Perhaps love and happiness add up to utopia, but to be without hate, jealousy, envy and greed you’re just not alive. You're a fucking Zombie - and that to me is what John is, although I admire his principles. Phally disagrees; I take a mandy to avoid an argument and I don’t even see the journey back to New York, waking only briefly for a deli bacon sandwich thrust down my throat by Tru back at the Squire.
Sunday, 3 December 1972
Valley Forge is just outside Philadelphia. It's not very far from New York. At 42nd Street we go through the Lincoln Tunnel past the rocks where I’ll swear Dave Mason posed for Alone Together and out onto the road. I read Rolling Stone and it tells me how Carlo Santana went religious from John McLaughlin, and the ins and out of a band I never really dug anyway. Each to his own.
The radio's going strong for underprivileged children, perhaps the products of the Vietnam War. It’s funny how Nixon was considered such a weak president when he entered office and is now considered so very strong. Apparently he’s shitting on everyone at the moment. The election’s just been won - his great campaign over the heads of everyone. He has problems. Dutch barns fly by and one is reminded of the people who were more brutal than even the British - or was that just an illusion. Again, that Black Country scenery - nothing - and into Valley Forge. The Howard Johnson’s motor inn is just off the turnpike and we check into room number 114.
John, Neil, Trudy and I have a look at the room. Howard Johnson's like Billy Butlin gone mad. Every turn off sports a Blue-Boar-like Howard Johnson café, and motels are everywhere as well - although this is the first I’ve been in. We are on the upper deck of an L-shaped two-storey building. A half-empty, filthy swimming pool is in the centre of a lot which is full of girders and planks waiting to form a foyer and restaurant - which will file us in, feed us, fuck us, and file us out - but that’s the future. Meanwhile mine and Tru's room is quite nice. Asbestos for a roof and ye old wooden beams. Colour T.V., chequered carpets, walnut walls, leather chairs, bath and shower fill our needs. I mean, everybody knocks Holiday Inns, Howard Johnsons, Sheratons etc. but they are O.K. by me. The basic amenities are there for speed and quick adjustment. You need this on the road. My bowels are in a ridiculous state and Trudy braves the smell like a trooper.
The gig which goes under the name of the Valley Forge Music Fair is . . weird. Not unlike Belle Vue on wrestling night. The seats surround a central stage, so someone is going to lose out no matter what. We sound check with a crew who belong to Savoy Brown. Savoy are paying them, but they are trying their best for us as our lights just finished off Bowie’s tour the night before. Strange stories of naked Spiders knocking on every door in the Warwick - it’s great when the heat’s off. They are in New York to record new records whether they be singles or albums.
Meanwhile, a voice on the outside speaker placates the irritable cold, waiting crowd and we learn that the third band has given up having been delayed in Ottawa, so its just us and Savoy - A bloke says, ‘Right you guys, sound in 10 minutes.’
‘FUCK OFF!’
Forty-five minutes later, we take the stage to a partly fanatical partly indifferent audience. An hour later we leave to almost total satisfaction, having done an atrocious version of Dudes and a great version of Honky Tonk as encores. A load of groupies looking like Tussaud’s Waxworks wait for us and I tease them. Not too successfully though because they suss me and say they've had nothing to laugh at all night. This calls for a throating and the chick amends her statement to ‘someone to talk to’; then I release my grip. Tru watches in amusement. Well, I was pissed and they were stupid; it was six of one and half a dozen of the other. John tries my old Echo and doesn’t say much. I try to con Tony into buying Trudy a fur coat, but Mick puts the block on it thinking the band would have to pay but I wasn’t trying for that. I was trying for a Mainman coat.
Tony's happy with the gig and he and Melanie will be with us non-stop from now on as David’s tour is over. It’s nice to have your manager around, something we badly missed with Island.
Tru, Elaine, Phal and I go back to the hotel and after a meal discuss the eternal argument. Elaine is very pro family and that’s everything I am against. See I'm anti parents. Ireland is a typical case in hand. I really believe the only solution to Ireland’s problems is to take a generation of kids away from their parents at birth. I know this sounds inhuman, but is it any more cruel than the bombs, left snidely in cars that blow up innocent people? Parents are steeped in religion and Victorianism, relics of a bygone age. I’m not knocking religion - it’s the way it's used by people. An excuse for power, terror and oppression. By all means believe in the ‘Good Force’ but when it comes to an old white man with a beard, a virgin mother and totem poles - count me out. I’m a confirmed agnostic. Kids lie to keep their idiot ‘betters’ happy and who wants lies? Kids - my God, kids are beautiful. Kids and the old folks are the most beautiful people on earth - it's those bastards in between that worry me. How old am I? I‘ll answer by saying I’m twelve years of age, and I'll stay that way until I'm suddenly sixty-five. Still Elaine's Elaine and I'm me - who's to say who's right? All I can say is reader, think for yourself, if you don’t you’ll miss life altogether. Anyway, Phally can put up with all her parental dramas, but I can’t help putting myself in his place and I think I would have gone mad by now if I were he. Fortunately for Phal, he’s had a very close family upbringing and he can appreciate Elaine’s philosophy. The discussion is broken by Mick returning from the end of Savoy’s set, extolling Jackie Lynton. Jackie is a pro and an amazing singer - nuff said. I always thought Savoy Brown were a dirge blues band, but they are good, not new, but they are really good. I think Kim Simmonds has a point about England but he should tour again with Jackie. He was a legend in Hamburg and Hamburg knew whowas who, whether they were big or small. Jackie and King Size Taylor along with Tony Sheridan were three of the English all-time greats who somehow by a trick of fate just missed. Some people are just meant to miss, I hope I'm not one of them.
Mick says a trip to the Martin factory is in order tomorrow. Neil and John bid us goodbye. Tru and Elaine will go back to Trudy's place on Tuesday as the band moves out to St Louis that day for the next gig. So far four out of four, and for the States we are still remarkably fit and optimistic. As I write, the hour is 2 a.m. and Trudy is asleep to my left. An English horror film is on T.V. and a Budweiser rears its untapped head invitingly. Two standard abstracts decorate the wall and my clothes are strewn about the floor. You are just about to get up for work in Sheffield; I'm 3,000 miles away and I’m thinking about you and the City Hall. Cheers - all the best - up the lads! My God! Hereford United have done well on the quiet. Norwich comes to mind - I've always loved pirates, but my teams Northampton and Shrewsbury and Hamilton remain infuriatingly middling in the lower leagues. I can't believe Shrewsbury’s consistency - they've been in the same place for God knows how many years. Of course the rest of the group support Hereford fanatically - and secretly so do I! Dave Bowen - do it again for fuck’s sake! If I were a millionaire - but that’s another tale altogether. Goodnight. I just remembered, I told one of the promoters to fuck off when he tried to get us on stage at 8. I hope he didn’t take offence. I offered him some wine afterwards and he accepted. People are like models in a fleeting painting. Worries come and go and paranoia swings from side to side like a Satyricon see-saw. The ‘art’, the real art is to avoid and calculate but l fall sometimes. That’s my nature; I'm a mug. In fact, I might even call this thing I'm a Mug. That's what it amounts to - or does it? Ah, bollocks. I'm just a rock ’n’ roll bum. . . .'
Monday, 4 December 1972
Valley Forge was held onto bravely by George Washington for a whole winter against the evil British. That’s what someone told me, and frankly I didn't see what t
he fuss was about. Perhaps I’m on the wrong side of town. Anyway, there is a historical park here which, if I were John Betjeman I would describe in detail, but I’m a musician so today you are going to get C. F. Martin instead. In case some of you don't know, Martin is a famous make of acoustic guitar; so famous that I've never quite been able to afford one, but I admire them anyway so there's no harm in going. Mick rings them up and they say they’ll take us for a tour round if we get up there at a reasonable time.
C. F. Martin, Sr, was born where all good inventors are born, in Germany. Markneukirchen, Saxony to be exact, and as all good beginners did at the time, he emigrated to New York arriving in 1833. The first Martin guitars were made there but as his wife did not like New York, he moved to Nazareth, Pennsylvania, where a lot of Germans had settled; just to keep her happy.
Nazareth is not far from here so Buff, Mick, Trudy and I get into the car and away. First the wrong way and we muck about in Philadelphia before more or less returning to square one. At last onto Route 76, east and then a left onto the P.A. Turnpike, north. Turn off right at Allentown and a tyre bursts just down Route 78, west. This still doesn't deter us and our resourcefulness pays off. We get to Nazareth at about three in the afternoon. The snow has been falling here and chunks of hail lie all around. A typical American quirk brings Northampton, Barry, Bethlehem and Nazareth within a few miles’ radius, but if you are pushing romantic illusions, don't. If Jesus decided to do an encore here, he would have to find a parking meter first.
A small sleepy midland town, Nazareth sits comfortably about four miles north of Route 78. Sure enough, there is a definite European flavour in the architecture. No hedges separate, that's the thing that's always peculiar to England. In England we’ve always had hedges. A signpost says the winner of some big race, I think his name was Andretti lives here. We pass a road diner that looks like a couple of buses knocked together, a couple of baseball grounds, and ask the way from a sleepy man at Trumbowers back yard.
Life-size Santas stand in the porches of houses as the district gets better along South Broad Street. The C. F. Martin sign watches us as we steer into the visitors’ parking lot. Frozen rain on other cars tells us it’s pretty cold in Nazareth, much colder than in Valley Forge.
Martins is a one-storey, wide, rectangular building, about the size I had imagined, employing perhaps 200-300 people. The firm is still as family as it was back in the 1800s. Frank Martin is the latest head of the family and he's only 39 years old so there's no sign of them ‘going public’. Consequently, the product is reputable, and indeed handmade. Obviously machines are in use, but the necks of Martins, the graceful curves at the back are all hand carved. The various woods (mahogany, rosewood, cedar and ebony) are stored high in one corner. They’re imported mostly from Africa and South America. I’d always wondered how they bent the sides of guitars and here was a guy soaking wood in boiling hot water and bending it by hand around a wooden mould. Seams which the eye can’t detect hold the bottom of a Martin together and the top of the guitar (the bit with the hole) has small slate criss-crossings on the inside; the more delicate in size, the softer the tone. Frets are inserted by water. The wood loosens slightly enabling the fret to be hammered in, then the water expands the wood, holding the fret in firmly. No glue is needed. Beading is glued on the lips of the side of the guitar for a bigger glueing surface to connect the top and bottom. You can see hundreds of clothes pegs around every frame holding the beading until it dries. Fine wood is checked by passing it across a special light which exposes any flaws there might be in the wood. If there are any flaws the piece of wood is thrown away. The neck has to be chipped and filed in order to fit the body perfectly and then, when it’s together for the first time, it is cleaned thoroughly in a machine. Now they fit a small plastic cup inside the hole in the body to prevent lacquer from messing up the sound. The guitar is then lacquered and sanded up to seven times! Fret boards have previously been put on over the neck which houses a wire rod to strengthen it. Mother of pearl inlays, not done with strips as I had thought, but with tiny lengths of sea shell. Very patient ladies take up to two months on one guitar getting them perfect.
The chick who is showing us around, a little officious blonde with baggy pants, says it takes six months to finish one of the better guitars, their current pride and joy being the D-45 Dreadnought (rosewood) which would cost $1,650. The average Martins, the D-35 and D-28 come cheaper at $610 and $570 respectively. My mate Miller Anderson has a D-35 and it's great. The girl says, ‘A lot of people are saying Martins aren’t as good nowadays, but like good wine, they mature with age. The older your Martin gets, the better it sounds.’
Any chances of a cheap ‘second’ are dashed when she tells us any Martins with final flaws are destroyed immediately. Underground stories, however, mainly from roadies, suggest there are indeed a few Martins around which should have been destroyed. Unfortunately, you aren’t allowed to talk to the men who work there, thus rendering a quiet word almost impossible unless, of course, you want to risk a right hander at the gate.
We are hungry, so back to the hired station wagon and Mick speeds us back to Valley Forge and the dubious Howard Johnson’s menu.
Taking no chances this evening I have an orange juice and chef salad, which is a glorified ordinary English salad with turkey, cheese, eggs, tomatoes and a whole load of unwanted lettuce. This, combined with Trudy’s hamburger platter and Coke costs $4.75 (just under £2) which is reasonable by American standards. We try to get Buff to order a huge sundae, but he passes, brave lad.
Today is one of those days when nothing is happening although I did see a couple of painted ladies about and Pete’s been getting obscene phone calls again. Phally comes in with Elaine, tired. They are the usual demonic pair. Ideas come and go, arguments won, lost and forgotten, all in a matter of seconds, and they are gone. Trudy sits bored while I write so I suppose I'd better pack it up for today. She has to go back to New York tomorrow as we’re flying out to St Louis so I think we'll relax a bit now. Everybody needs a little relaxation now and again. P.S. for Bowie - seen Salome (Oscar Wilde). It’s just been on the telly – great!
Tuesday, 5 December 1972
Today is muggy in Valley Forge. Stan wakes us too late, only giving us 40 minutes to get ready and we are all a little disgruntled. Down into Philadelphia, missing the best route, as usual, and running the gauntlet of Broad Street traffic lights, before passing the heap of wrecked cars again. Over the bridge and out to the airport. Trudy and Elaine are dispatched to the railway station terminus, New York bound. We wind up in the airport snack bar chatting to a couple of barbers who saw the show and were suitably impressed. My gut’s starting to protrude, and, as pop stars are not supposed to have a gut, I’ve decided to slim again. No beer and no breakfast. I sit sullenly and watch Buff attack his tuna fish sandwich, an orange juice my only consolation. Pete’s half dead with exhaustion and Mick is worried about this tape we’ve just acquired of our show at the Tower Theatre. Owing to the hijacking precautions, they put you through the metal door-frame detector for guns etc. Mick reckons it might fuck up the tapes. Pete’s also worried so Stan says he’ll handle the situation. As usual, with all Stan's well laid out plans, the operation ends in disaster. The guy lets him through the door, but instead of passing the tapes around the outside as requested, the guy says, ‘Oh, you forgot your tapes,’ and puts them right through the door into Stan's hands. Stan just looks amazed. The usual fight with inefficient airline officials at the boarding-pass desk, and once more we enter the carpeted short mobile hallway that leads us on to (this time) a T.W.A. (Ambassador Service) 727. Down to my seat (14-D) and Phal sits to my right and Buff and Stan over the passage way to my left. Pete's asleep behind and Mick’s way back somewhere trying to forget himself. All airlines have their own magazines and usually they‘re pretty lousy, but there's an article on Charles Munroe Schulz, the creator of Peanuts, perhaps the world’s most famous cartoon strip. Anyway, that grabs my attention for a lit
tle while.
I think this plane's got something to do with India as there's a sign with ‘Bombay’ on it just inside the pilot’s door, and there’s also faint orange paintings of Indian-type buildings on the fuselage walls. I hope we haven't gotten on the wrong one by mistake.
I heard Ritchie, Phil and Dick were put on the wrong plane last night. They usually fly on earlier to sort out the sound equipment, and some idiot put them on a plane to Chicago. They found out while they were still on the ground, but the stewardess wouldn’t let them off as the engines had started so they flew north instead of southwest. Now O’Hare Airport in Chicago is probably the worst place to land in the country and when they finally did get there, they had to circle one and a half hours before landing. Sometime later, three spitting-tempered roadies got a morning flight to St Louis. . . . Remind me not to speak to them today.
