Coda

Photo taken at Uxbridge Folk Club, The Load of Hay around 1968. From The Hayes Gazette


The continuing saga of the Jugular Vein story. (New readers start here)

Just when I thought I’d finished with this topic I received another contribution from Venlafaxine, AKA Griff. As promised, he has contributed an audience-eye view of the JV, so I guess I’ll have to keep my part of the bargain and post the lyrics to the songs he requested. Given that I haven’t performed some of them for forty years this means I shall have to transcribe them from the recordings. I lost the original manuscripts during a house move years ago. Unfortunately one of those songs was never recorded. Griff refers to it as ‘Hayes’ but in fact its proper title was ‘Purple Hayes’ (a pun that I have no intention of apologising for). The chorus is the only part that I can properly recall and it goes like this:-

Hayes! That’s where the lovely people’s homes are
Hayes! That’s where ten thousand garden gnomes are
Hayes! That’ where everyone’s a saint
And I’ll kick yer bleedin’ ‘ead in if yer tell me that they ain’t

And if that leaves you wishing that the rest of the song survived then you’ve no one to blame but yourself…

THE JV IN RETROSPECT
By Venlafaxine AKA Griff

Trying to put your finger on what makes one form of music appealing and another not so really taxes the old grey matter. The psychologists would pin it all down to some ruthlessly logical outcome of the individual psyche and life experience, but musicians would be more likely to have little idea as to what constitutes ‘IT’. And how do you assess the impact of a band forty years down the line?

John Peel once said that he was attracted by outrageous sounding vocals. With me it didn’t matter if ‘it’ came from voice, lyrics or the sound of the instruments, just as long as it felt honest and had elements of the outrageous. This was something of an alchemical mix required if the music was to resonate with my alienated and often angst-ridden psyche.

The late 1960’s, with all that hippydom and radical politics offered plenty for the alienated and angst-ridden folkies. It was a time for ‘letting it all hang out’: Al Stewart rambled on about impotence. Roy Harper sang – no – raved about mental illness, head rocking in time, but also reminiscent of the severely ill. I loved it all.

The JV didn’t fit in with this lot but I loved them too. They had their idiosyncrasies, but in a clean and wholesome way: they had no preoccupations with the tragic and the sordid. And there was no whining on about mining disasters, the IRA, nor getting your balls frozen off on a trawler in the North Sea, nor was there any flowers and fairies stuff.

Pete and Richard looked a bit scruffy, but that of course was de rigueur. Pete had his Kalamazoo jazz guitar, not too many of them around. Max affected a 1920s dress sense, and his was the only cornet I ever heard on the folk circuit. That whopping great jug took so much attention that it was possible not to take in the (outrageously?) restrained character that whoomped into it with such aplomb. Muff could have gone to school in the clothes he wore.

The JV came with guitars, mandolin, harmonicas and kazoo, but it was the jug, cornet, swanee whistle, washboard, cymbal etc which were indispensible to that wonderfully WILD jug band sound. It was uniquely appealing and refreshing, good time music belted out by versatile musicians intent on having a good time.

Jug Band music has its origins in American folk, blues and probably jazz, but the JV also produced original material that couldn’t be more English. Topical, satirical and above all FUNNY, they brought to mind The Bonzo Dog Band, Leon Rosselson and Jeremy Taylor. And what could be more authentic than ‘Hayes’, played at the Hayes Folk Club, by musicians that came from that benighted place? I don’t think that it was ever ‘collected’ by the E.F.D.S.S. however; they weren’t interested in ‘Bovver an’ Agro’ either, but it was the Freeman Syndicate, not the JV that penned that one.

To sum-up, the JV produced good, honest, shit-kicking music which ENTERTAINED. Thanks lads, you hit the spot.


I thank you Griff, for those few kind words. I also thank you for sending me a copy of the newspaper photo that graces the top of this page. Now all I have to do is keep my side of the bargain and transcribe the rest of those lyrics. I’ll post them before the month is out – honest! Incidentally, Griff has also sent me another piece about the Hayes guitar-building fraternity and I shall be posting that soon as part of an entry about the Hayes and Southall music clubs and their various spin-offs.

Music in a jugular vein 8

This is part eight of the Jugular Vein story. New readers start here.

The Album that never was

When Bill Leader had first approached us with the idea of recording the band, I could barely contain my excitement. I had a lot of faith in what we were doing and thought that it might be possible for us to become fully professional. By this time I was supplementing my income from the band by working in a shop that sold the unusual combination of records and motor accessories. The theoretical arrangement was that my employer would give me the flexibility to pursue the band work as a priority, in exchange for me accepting somewhat less than the going rate in wages and being self-employed. In practice this didn’t always work, as I was often given a hard time for taking days out for gigs, despite the fact that during my time in that shop I turned it into the fastest growing record outlet in England – but that’s another story. The immediate effect of this arrangement was that I had great difficulty getting time off to record so most of our recording sessions were on Sundays.

Bill was in the throws of setting up his own labels at this point and was working for both the Topic and Transatlantic labels on a freelance basis. This meant that he was operating on a shoestring and scrounging studio downtime whenever he could. As a consequence the process of making the Jugular Vein LP was spread out of over quite a long period of time and a variety of locations, although thankfully, they were all in London.

There were to be two labels: Leader, for the traditional folk music and Trailer, for the more contemporary material. We were to be amongst the first releases on Trailer – which was somewhat ironic given that we were resurrecting a musical style that dated back to the early 1920’s. However, we were definitely not playing traditional English folk music so we were grateful for the opportunity to record, and it speaks volumes for the ‘Folk’ ethos of that period that folk clubs and a folk music record label seemed like our natural habitat.

The truth was that our music defied categorisation. It included blues, spirituals, original songs, parodies, jazz standards and dance band music from the twenties, and was played on a wide range of instruments both primitive (kazoo, washboards, swanee whistle, jug etc) and sophisticated (guitar, cornet, mandolin, etc). Unlike most of the other jug bands that were beginning to emerge at that time, we never called upon the recorded repertoire of the original jug bands for our material. Our approach was to do what they did, which was to play whatever music we fancied on whatever instruments we could get our hands on. The main thing was that – however you cared to describe our music, there was somebody who wanted to record it.

I think that our first studio efforts were on two-track but we soon graduated to a four track machine and ultimately to an eight track, although all of our efforts were recorded ‘live’ and we never resorted to multi-tracking. Experience soon revealed that some of our material simply didn’t transfer well to tape and we slowly filtered out the less effective stuff and began to focus on those things that worked well in the studio. We made frequent visits to Bill’s home as well as to the various studios, and we would listen to the rough mixes and receive advice and gentle criticism. This seemed to be Bill’s standard operating mode because we often encountered some of the other people that he was recording, who were undergoing the same process as ourselves.

During the course of various visits we encountered Royston Wood, Heather Wood and Peter Bellamy (The Young Tradition), Gerry Rafferty and Billy Connolly (The Humblebums) as well as Henry McCullough (who was at that time playing with a group called Sweeney's Men), Robin and Barry Dransfield and The Boys of the Lough. I have particular memories of Roy, Heather and Peter practically hugging themselves with delight over the playback of the track they had just finished mixing – The Agincourt Carol (from the ‘Galleries’ album) – which was a stunning track and featured The Early Music Consort. It is salutary to think that not one but two of the people that made that glorious piece of music subsequently committed suicide. Both Peter Bellamy and David Munrow (of the Consort) took their own lives – Munrow in 1976 and Bellamy in 1991.

On a happier note, I encountered Billy Connolly a couple of times. On the first occasion - a Sunday – we were having dinner at Bill Leader’s place, along with the Humblebums and The Boys of the Lough. As the front man of the JV I fancied myself as being fairly entertaining, but I was totally outclassed by Billy Connolly, whose comic pyrotechnics kept us all convulsed for the duration of the meal. I don’t think any of us got much work done that day. On another occasion I had to meet Bill for some reason and had made my way over to the particular studio he was working in that day. At this time the Dolby noise reduction system was just beginning to find its way into studios. I was standing in the control room talking to Bill when the door burst open and a loud Glaswegian voice cried out “Hey you! Get off yer arse an’ start Dolbyin’”. It was Connolly.

Eventually we had assembled enough tracks for the album and thoughts turned to marketing. We did a photo shoot for sleeve art purposes early one Sunday morning, down by the water’s edge at Wapping. Two images remain in my mind from that morning. One was a huge sign on the front of a shop that we passed on our way there. It was in Day-Glo orange and yellow and simply said ‘IT’S FLOGGO TIME!’ The other was of Mr Murfet hopping carefully backwards from the tide line to ensure that no filthy water got onto his heavily bandaged big toe (he had recently had an operation to remove an ingrown toenail and the offending foot was clad in a custom-butchered sandal and a large woollen sock). Alas, the photographs have long since vanished into the mists of time.

Bill had stressed the need for us to be out there gigging regularly so as to promote the album as and when it was released, so Richard’s announcement in late 1969 that he was leaving the band rather took the wind out of our sails. To be fair, despite becoming increasingly dissatisfied with what we were doing he had hung on because of the album. But we had started that project early in 1968 and it was now late in1969 and Richard was keen to hit the circuits with his new partner in music, John Coverdale. We parted amicably and recruited Mike Deighan to replace him (see Music in a jugular vein 7).

Ahead of us was second tour of the North, which we did in April 1970 and a booking for a big festival which was planned for August of that year, so it looked as if we might be moving up a league at last. The tour was a success and the work continued to roll in. Derek McEwen had become our manager, and it was he and his partner Brian Highley that were organising the festival, which was to take place on the outskirts of Halifax at a place called Krumlin. Between May and August Derek was a regular guest at my house, requesting use of the spare bed whenever he came down to London for negotiations with various bands and their management. What had started life as a small folk and blues festival slowly grew into a monster as Derek became more and more adventurous with his bookings. At one point he was talking about booking the Rolling Stones and came down to London for a meeting with the legendary Chip Monck.

By the time August arrived I was certain that we had a chance of going professional. Mike was bringing a whole new bunch of material to the band, and had a track record as a published songwriter. There was talk of a single being released featuring one of Mike’s songs, The Krumlin festival was growing in significance every day as more and more names were announced for it, and we had an LP ready and waiting to go. Alas, the best laid plans and all that. A few days before the festival my marriage – which had been in a bad way for some time – went into meltdown, and I was left with two small children to look after when my wife left me without telling me where she was going.

And that was it for my ambition. As my children were aged 5 and 6 respectively, I had no choice but to resign from the band there and then and take on all the domestic chores and childcare duties. I went to the owner of the record shop and asked if he could take me on full time and he replied that he no longer needed my services at all as he was bringing his son in to his (now) successful business. In 24 hours I had experienced an across-the-spectrum reversal of fortunes. I will draw a discrete veil over my marital and employment adventures. Those stories are for another day.

The band did attend the Festival but the event itself was to go down in history as one of the great promotional disasters of the times. Even as I write this blog a book is being written about it. The band went on without me but the Bill Leader-produced LP was shelved. All that remains of it is a tape of tape of a mix from the master tapes. The originals disappeared when Leader and Trailer went under and their entire library of master tapes ended up in the hands of the bailiffs, subsequently being sold at auction to the somewhat mysterious Celtic Music label. There is much debate on the web about the ethics (or lack of them) of the proprietor of this label but all my attempts to track the tapes down and buy them back have ended in failure.

The Jugular Vein did go on to record an album that was actually released, and I rejoined the band in the late seventies to help with promotion, even though I didn’t actually play on it (although it does include one of my songs – The Saki Drag). The band actually survived – with various changes to the line up but retaining two of the original members throughout right into the new millennium and made its last appearance at a Young’s Beer Festival in2002. But fate plays some funny tricks and there is now a strong possibility that the founder-members will reunite with Nobby the Roadie for a One-Off Gig sometime in August 2009. Watch this space!

Entr'acte II

An intriguing (yet relevant) interruption to the Jugular Vein story (New readers start here.)

Life throws up (if you’ll pardon the expression) some surprises from time to time, as well as some strange coincidences. Regular followers of this blog will know of my long-time friendships with luthier (and ex- Jugular Veinist) Richard Bartram, and fellow blogger (and ex – Blue Fiveist) Leigh Heggarty, therefore it should not surprise you to learn that these two know each other. However, a few weeks ago Leigh was doing one of his regular stints in Pro Music International, the Ickenham music store, when a customer came in with a guitar that needed repairing. The customer said that this was a guitar that he had built himself, and added that he had been friendly with the well-known luthier Richard Bartram when he was making his first guitar. Within a short while the conversation had got round to The Jugular Vein and my blog. It soon became apparent that the customer had been an avid follower of the JV, as well as being very active on the same political scene as me, and that we knew each other.

Today I received an email from Leigh, attached to which was a note from said customer (see top of page), and a short essay about first attempts at guitar building which I now reproduce here verbatim. I have since spoken to the customer - or ‘Griff’, to give him the name I knew him by and I have promised him the lyrics of the songs that he requests in exchange for further reminiscences about the JV so – watch this space!

PLANE SONG, A ROMANCE
By Venlafaxine aka Griff

When I walked through Pro Music’s door clutching a guitar wrapped in a blanket tied with electrical wire, I didn’t know I was walking through a portal in to the past. Leigh took the box which I explained was hand-built by me way back, but had run out of steam to finish properly: “I had big trouble working the ebony, the fretting is all over the place, can you sort it out?” I mentioned that I had known Richard Bartram when he was playing with the Jugular Vein. We fell into conversation; he showed me the “Voltarol” blog, and suggested that I might like to write something…
It would have been about 1966 that Richard sought me out at a local folk club. He had heard a very tall friend of mine – who he dubbed “Fred Length” – play an unusual guitar. Length told him it was built by me, and that he too was building one. The box had a mellow sound and various faults, but looked immaculate in its French polish. Richard would have taken in the too-shallow rake on the head straight away; intrigued, he got me talking. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I was never really a musician, but then I’ve always had the feeling of not being cut out to be anything specific; more an observer who indulged his passions for this or that, until they were exhausted. But I had a useful background for such a project: father was a cabinet maker, mother was an artist; both preferred to make if possible rather than buy; we had a neighbour who was a French-polisher.
Length lived close by too, had played in a rock band as a bass player, and of course knew how to play in tune – a feat which at that time I found hard to master. We shared a common interest in Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Bob Dylan et al. Length had a great ability to pick up and play near faultless copies of accompaniments and Instrumentals, from the above heroes.
Thwarted by financial cramp from having Martins, it was Length who first suggested that maybe we could build our own. I dismissed this at first but then got down to reading “Make Your Own Folk Guitar” by John Bailey, a well known specialist builder, and was soon won over. It didn’t seem so far removed from model aircraft (another faded passion), and I had some knowledge of engineering. I got started building a mould in plywood, Length craftily keeping a step or two behind, so he could use my experience.
Mahogany and cedar for the box appeared when prompted by a 2oz tin of Golden Virginia. Mahogany for the neck came from a Southall timber yard, rosewood for fingerboard and bridge was donated by a double bass playing uncle. My father took the materials in to work, where he got it thicknessed (illegally) on a drum sander, saving loads of work.
Mama did allow the temporary red-staining of our bath, while the sides soaked prior to bending. She also allowed Length, a gas fitter, to partially dismantle her gas cooker and connect it to a home-made gas poker. Thus we had variable heat for a steel tube appliance, made by me, as a bending iron. We spent ages coaxing the sides into shape, the wood steaming and popping, sometimes charring(!) if not kept sufficiently wet. With the sides held in the mould, everything else followed -eventually…
Getting back to Richard: Like us, he was no doubt inspired not just by a shortage of cash, but also by the thought of producing a unique instrument built to his preferences, and in defiance to mass production; this is romance with a capital “R”. At a more basic level he probably thought that if Length and I could do it then nothing was going to stop him! The only trouble he had was in marking out the fret board; I showed him how to use my vernier callipers, and soon after, the first of many Bartram guitars appeared.
Having passed on my limited knowledge, Richard reciprocated by showing me how to play better, But all that “diminished ninth” stuff failed to penetrate – still at least by now I could play in tune: Progress! And I could appreciate also that the neck on my box was too thick and the action too high. Beautiful finish notwithstanding, I took the spoke shave to the neck and filed down the saddle. I was getting to feel like an expert, luthier even. (romance!)
Interest in music waned when I became involved in an ill-starred marriage, but after her passing it revived. The early 1980’s saw me at Touchstone Tonewoods, buying at vast expense, pukka materials for my fourth guitar, which I fondly thought would be a magnum opus:
I’d spent a lot of time thinking about keeping the neck straight; pre-stressing from a truss rod seemed to be the thing. My analysis assumed that the ebony fret board would easily handle the direct compressive forces, whilst the inclined truss rod would counter the tendency of the neck to bow. The tapered infill piece (also ebony) over the truss rod, formed an ebony T beam with the fret board, providing additional stiffness. I chose a head tapered towards the end to keep the strings as close to the centre as possible, to limit any torsional forces arising from unequal string tensions. Voltarol, by the way, sold me machine heads from the shop that he once had in Uxbridge.
Setting aside sporadic work stretching across fifteen years(!) all went well until the fretboard, the very last thing. As mentioned, I just could not complete the job, so I wrapped it up and put it away. That was in ’98. It was not until this year I decided that even if I never play again, I wanted the box sorted out. It is symbolic of those years when I felt I could do anything. Stewart duly sorted it out. And yes, I am playing again – sort of…
To Voltarol: On the JV blog, could you please provide the words to Saki Drag, Hayes, Got to Move Again and the WWII air raid warden’s songs?
To Richard, Length: Please get in touch. You can email me at Mike Hopkins care of csboyle@tiscali.co.uk

Music in a jugular vein 7

Me, Nobby and Max by the van in Halifax, just behind the Upper George. A minimalist pointing picture (note ubiquitous Melody Maker)

This is part seven of the Jugular Vein story. New readers start here.

It’s grim up North

One person who frequently popped up at some of our London gigs was a red-haired and moustachioed Northerner who was no mean hand in the blues department, wielded a tasty guitar and went by the name of Roger Sutcliffe aka Ginger Blues. We enjoyed each other’s performances and shared a very similar sense of humour. Roger decided that his part of the world needed to see the Jugular Vein and suggested that he might possibly be able to get us a gig or two. As a consequence we were soon winging our way up the M1 with a week’s worth of Northern gigs ahead of us. We were to do two tours - one in late 1969 and one in May 1970 - before I left the band, and I acquired a fondness for that part of the world that has remained with me to this day.

At some point between the first and second tours, in about April 1970, Richard Bartram left the band. He had been getting together with another of our friends – John Coverdale – to play guitar duets and they had decided to take their music out into the world at large. They were to be quite successful during their time together. Wizz Jones, who had helped the JV by recommending us for gigs, now did the same for Rich and John. The ‘Bartram and Coverdale’ heading was soon appearing in the Melody Maker Folk Forum as often as ‘The Jugular Vein’.

Richard’s replacement was Mike Deighan. Mike – who was himself of the Northern persuasion - joined us at short notice just before our second tour but fitted in to the band ethos and general sense of humour almost seamlessly. He was a long-standing friend of Max’s, and had sat in with us a few times. Mike was a good songwriter, played excellent guitar, banjo and ukulele and sang. He was also not averse to the odd glass or two. As well as bringing new material to the band, he brought the skills of a highly effective weaver of scatological fantasies (“I’ve invented a new cocktail. It’s called a Badger’s Nose. It’s a pint of Guinness with a saveloy in it”) – good – and a penchant for self exposure when thoroughly in his cups (turning both his trouser pockets inside out, unzipping his flies and announcing “I shall now do my celebrated impersonation of the famous Pink-Nosed Trouser Elephant…”) – bad.


The first gig of the tour was at The Upper George folk club in Halifax and during the course of the evening we met the man who was to put us up for the next few nights. His name was Derek McEwen and his day job was as a reporter on the Halifax Evening Courier, but he had built a small stable of up and coming Folk acts and was attempting to further their careers. He offered this service to us, too. With the exception of the J.V, all his acts seemed to be Irish. There was a guitar duo – Sam and Dave (Sam Bracken and Dave Shannon),a female singer/songwriter – Gillian McPherson and a male singer/songwriter – Christy Moore. We were to spend a lot of time in the company of Sam, Dave and Gillian, and jolly good company they turned out to be. (Here are links to two articles that appeared in The Halifax Evening Courier about Derek and Christy)

Derek’s flat was on the seventh or eighth floor of a council high-rise in Mixenden, near Halifax and 83, Jumples Court was a legendary address within folk circles. Many of Derek’s protégés had stayed there at one time or another and Christy Moore was a co-tenant for a while. Christy was never in residence at the same time as us but his favourite drinking vessel – one of those hospital-issue Pyrex urine bottles for bed ridden male patients – took pride of place on the sideboard.

The tours tend to blur one into another but various images remain in my mind. Not the least of which is the band – half way through a song – suddenly noticing a camera being aimed at us, stopping mid-chorus and pointing randomly. One evening, Derek had showed us a scrap book which he had assembled. It consisted entirely of photographs from local papers, in each of which dignitaries, celebrities and other people in the news were to be seen pointing at some unlikely object or other. In common with local paper photographers everywhere, the Halifax variety were much given to trying to make pictures more interesting by having the subjects point at something. The resultant wooden postures and selections of fixed grins and stern grimaces were a source of huge amusement to Derek and to his mind, well worthy of collection. We were so taken with this concept that, for the duration of that trip, whenever anybody pointed a camera anywhere near us, we would all instantly assume the face and the pointing pose, regardless of what we were doing at the time. As a result I suspect that there are some people out there who are still trying to work out exactly why their attempted study of the Jugular Vein in concert came out quite the way it did. Having recently rediscovered a box of old slides I now know that this was on the second tour.


Another strong memory is of the Mixenden folk festival, a one night event promoted by Derek at the Mixenden community centre and for which we were the headline act. This was another one of those occasions when we came on to the stage without having to go through the audience. In fact there was an actual green room and an actual stage, rather than the empty area at the back of the pub function room that was our most common performing environment. We had all tuned up in the green room before trooping on stage, where we took up our positions behind the closed curtains. We heard the compère’s voice announcing “…so without further ado, Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you – The JUGULAR VEIN!” and the curtains opened to reveal us to the audience and a row of beer glasses to us. Our reputation as a ‘drinking band’ had once more preceded us and in front of each footlight stood a foaming pint.

As a consequence of this generosity we were all (with the exception of Nobby) three sheets to the wind by the end of the evening. We had managed to pack up and load the van when somebody asked us if we would like to go back to his place for a drink. After a brief consultation we agreed, and were soon being driven through the night as Nobby followed a car through the Yorkshire countryside. Eventually the van stopped and we got out in what appeared to be a car park that was dominated somewhat surreally by a huge anchor. We stumbled after our host who led us to a door and opened it. Dim light bulbs flickered in our sodden brains. Surely…no, it can’t be…bloody hell. It is! The lights were switched on and revealed that ‘his place’ was a pub. Result! Our host was in fact one Brian Highley, the landlord of the Anchor Inn just outside Sowerby Bridge.

Another memory is of recording a programme for Radio Leeds. We had returned to our Mixenden base somewhat late the previous night, and had stopped off for supper on the way. We had been in the company of Roger Sutcliffe, who had introduced us all to the wonderful ‘Pie Herbert’s’ in Bradford. This pie shop specialised in hot pies of all meat varieties – mutton beef and pork – black pudding, mushy peas and pig’s feet. Most of us had ‘pie, black and peas’ but Max had a penchant for the trotter and left the shop with a large bag of pig’s feet, which he proceeded to munch on with great relish. The following morning saw us sitting in the van outside Radio Leeds, having got up early and left base without breakfast. We had arrived a little ahead of schedule thanks to some nifty driving by Nobby, and were now bemoaning our lack of breakfast. Suddenly Max’s face lit up and he reached under his seat. “I’ve just remembered” he said, “I’ve still got some left. Anyone want a pig’s foot?” and he surfaced with his treasure – a cold and greasy bag of cooked porcine extremities. The rest of us - somewhat hung-over with the exception of Nobby – declined somewhat vehemently and suggested some novel ways in which the aforementioned feet could be disposed of. Despite all this – or possibly because of it – Nobby remembers the four tracks we played for the radio programme as being the best performances that we ever recorded. Needless to say, they have not survived.

Another Radio appearance was at Radio Sheffield, where we were interviewed by the late Tony Capstick, who had a Folk Music programme there for many years. His style was wonderfully anarchic and we felt instantly at home there. We had made friends with Tony on a previous trip to Sheffield and he knew how to get the best out of us. Once again we recorded four tracks and then played them in as if performed live during the course of the interview. When the show was over we all went out to lunch together and much ale was consumed, then Tony took us around some of the Peak District – Bakewell, Castleton and the Blue John Cavern. I don’t remember much about the rest of the afternoon but photographs indicate that both Derek and Gillian McPherson were present on this jaunt.

Inevitably, when you are spending every waking hour in each others company for a week at a stretch, little things start to irritate one. Woe betides the band member that made an unguarded remark. The ensuing teasing was merciless. We were sitting at the breakfast table one morning when Max suddenly announced “That’s a coincidence. Here we are sitting in 83 Jumples Court and my Gran lived at 83 Rectory Grove.” There was a stunned silence. Richard looked up from the pages of the Melody Maker and said “I see there’s a new chart entry at number 83”. Nobby was already on his feet and counting the repeated motif on the wallpaper. “Who’d have believed it? What a coincidence. There’s 83 flowers on this wall” Muff had spilled the contents of a box of Swan Vestas and was busy counting them back in. “…eighty one, eighty two - yup. Who’d have thought it? It’s uncanny”. And so the mickey taking continued relentlessly as the tour progressed.

Nobby took us all to one side after a few days and asked us to back off for the time being. “Why?” we said. “Trust me” he replied. So we did. And a few days later we were driving along in the van when Nobby suddenly stomped on the brake and pulled in to the side of the road. “Look at that!” he shouted. “What a coincidence!” and he pointed at the mileometer, which clearly displayed the numbers 83838.3. Max’s response was what it always was when taunted to the point at which any of the rest of us would have broken and lashed out. He chuckled gently, grinned and said ‘You rats.”

At the start of that first tour we had been beset by snow, resulting in some very perilous negotiations of the steep and icy country lanes that surrounded our Jumples Court base. On one occasion we had made several attempts to find a more manageable route back but were still no closer to warmth and conveniences than we had been fifteen minutes previously. As we had, as usual, been consuming beer for most of the evening, the ‘convenience’ part was becoming more and more important. Finally, Max, who was wearing a rather fine hat with a feather in it, succumbed to hydraulic pressure and requested that the van be stopped so that he could hop out for a pee. We coasted to a gentle halt on the icy road and Max leapt out and hastily unzipped. “Oi!” shouted an indignant Nobby. “You ain’t pissing on my wheel” and with that the van started moving again, leaving Max fully exposed as a car came round the corner in the opposite direction and illuminated him with its headlights. As the rest of us burst into fits of unkind laughter, Max cried “You rats!” snatched the trilby from his head and did his best to cover his dignity. The hat never smelt quite the same after that…

Max had also discovered to his horror that he had not packed enough socks to last him the week. To be precise he hadn’t packed any socks apart from the ones he had travelled in and so resorted to going sockless most of the time and washing the one pair whenever the opportunity presented itself. Much to his surprise he was spared the ribbing that he expected and was lulled into a false sense of security. A few weeks later The Jugular Vein performed at the 1969 Freeman Syndicate Christmas Party at the White Hart Southall. Unbeknownst to Max we had arranged for a special guest to appear with us and at the conclusion of our first set I announced the arrival of Santa.

Enter Nobby the Roadie, clad in a red PVC mac, sporting a ‘Crazy foam’ beard and crying “Ho fucking Ho”. He was accompanied by two strange and capering, bizarrely dressed figures who announced themselves as ‘Santa’s helpers but were actually Alan Bridges (see A leg end in our own lifetime) and my younger brother, known to these pages as Ganja the Dwarf. Between them they carried an array of garishly wrapped Christmas presents which ranged in size and shape from the small and square (matchbox sized) to the huge and multi-faceted (an elaborate confection created by Rich, which was based on a two foot by two foot cardboard box and had many extensions and protuberances grafted on to it with packing tape). There was also one, somewhat flagon -shaped package that made a distinct slopping sound as it was carried to the stage, and was large enough to contain at least a gallon of liquid.

Each package in turn was inspected by ‘Santa’ who then announced “Why! It’s another one for Mr Emmons!” before handing it to Max, who unwrapped each one in turn to reveal yet another single sock. At last it was time to unwrap the flagon. Surely there would be beer or cider as a recompense for this ritual teasing. The paper was scrabbled away from it to reveal a pickled sock – an effect achieved by stretching a sock on a bent coat hanger and suspending it in blue liquid (thanks to the food dye left over from the Band Box Barry prank). Max’s reaction was predictable. “You rats” he said, mildly. “Still, they’ll come in handy”. However, he had obviously acquired a taste for the sockless mode, because all the pictures from the second tour show him either barefoot or wearing flip-flops.

Derek McEwen and Brian Highley had been hatching an idea for a Festival to be staged near Halifax, and by the time of the second JV tour they were well under way. We were booked to appear at it as were the rest of Derek’s acts, as well as a number of luminaries from the folk and blues world. When we finally headed back down the Motorway at the end of the trip, it was in the expectation of returning in August that year for a nice little folk festival in the lovely Yorkshire countryside. However, things were not to work out quite as planned for any of us – but that, like the first JV LP, is another story.

Entr'acte

Richard and I discuss the finer points of an arrangement. Richard is playing his Epiphone Texan. I am playing my 1930's Kalamazoo

The Jugular Vein story so far – some corrections and clarifications. (New readers start here)

I have found it very difficult to assemble the next part of the story because, all though I have a whole succession of very clear memories of events during our tours of the North of England, I have found it almost impossible to sort them out chronologically. The importance of doing this is compounded by the fact that between the first and second tour there was a personnel change. Richard Bartram left and Mike Deighan joined. As a consequence I have been pestering the life out of the former band members, as well as contacting many people that I haven’t spoken to for forty years. So – before I proceed with the next part of the tale, here are some contributions from the others.

Max confirmed the basic details of our original meeting but with one caveat – “I did sit Phil on my lap that day but he didn’t pee on me. It was a little more substantial than that” he said. We’ll swiftly draw a veil over the subject of my – then – one year old son’s incontinence and move on to the matter of the jug. Again, Muff confirms the main details but reminds me that there were in fact a number of old jugs in the outbuilding. He says – “I picked up the biggest one, turned it upside down and shook it. A couple of dead mice fell out”. A certain amount of sterilisation had to be indulged in before it was fit for use. Indeed, it was common practice for Muff to spend some time at the sink with the jug on a fairly regular basis. The ensuing vigorous rinsing process was known somewhat charmlessly as ‘de-grollying’ or ‘getting the oysters out’.

Muff also had a collection of jugs of various sizes that he had lashed together with adhesive tape for 'multi-jugging' purposes. Richard reminds me that I would frequently announce Muff as 'The Reverend B. Sprules Murfet, Spinster of this parish and Roland Kirk of the jug world. My own washboard set up would be announced item by item. The cymbal on its stand was known as the 'Junior Bus Driver's kit. The cowbell was 'a present from my mother-in-law' and the red-painted skol or woodblock (see photo at top of Washboard Blues) was christened 'The Fat-lipped Parrot' by Richard. "Simply take an ordinary household parrot and punch it in the beak..."

Both Richard and Nobby reminded me of a famous occasion when we were travelling back from a gig on the Uxbridge Road. We had – as usual – partaken of a number of pints during the evening and Muff suddenly announced a very urgent and desperate need to empty his bladder. We were passing Queensway Underground Station at the time, where there was a public toilet. Unfortunately there was nowhere convenient to park. “Just let me off here. I’ve got to go! I’ll get the Greenline bus back or something!” Nobby stopped the van just long enough for Muff to leap out on to the pavement. As we drove off we saw him dashing into the station in search of the Gent’s. About ten or fifteen minutes later we were waiting in traffic near Ealing Broadway Station when there was a banging on the side of the van. We looked out to see a much relieved but somewhat out of breath Muff. He had used the facilities then dashed down the escalator and caught a train, on the off-chance that he could catch up with us at Ealing. On this occasion the Gods were smiling.

Richard has reminded me that the very first assistant in the ‘Letterphone’ routine was in fact Ron Bartholomew (later to be a Labour Councillor in Hounslow for seventeen years), who was also partly responsible for the idea. Nobby shed further light on how he came to meet Ron. “I was round at my girlfriend’s house one afternoon when there was a knock at the door. I opened it and this big bloke was standing there. He said ‘Is that your van outside?’ When I said it was, he asked me if I wanted to go to Brighton and said there was a fiver in it for me. Apparently he was due to take the band to a gig but his vehicle had broken down. So we got in to the van and he directed me to your house. The next thing I knew I was a full time roadie”. I asked Nobby if he had any regrets about his time with the band. “Not really” he replied. “On the whole I enjoyed the driving, I enjoyed the music and I enjoyed the company. The only thing I didn’t like was the smell. What with all the bitter that you lot drank, you could fart for England. If you remember, the van was known as ‘The House of Blue Lights on Four Wheels’". I’ll leave that charming image to fester in your minds for a few days whilst I sort out the remaining details of the next episode…

Music in a jugular vein 6

This is part six of the Jugular Vein story. New readers start here.

A Star is (not quite) born

I had totally immersed myself in the band by now as an escape from my increasing unhappiness at home. I saw the Jugular Vein as my potential saviour. If you were to have asked me how I thought this would work I would not have been able to answer you very adequately, although I did suspect that song writing might have something to do with it - that and the anaesthetic effects of large quantities of beer. The beer meant that not only did I begin to put on weight at an alarming rate, but some of my song writing efforts veered sharply between the maudlin and the pretentious. One particular lyric that was to come back and haunt me was ‘The Song of the Wastelands’ – a rant about our rubbish laden environment. Fortunately, the other members of the band were quick to deflate any hint of pomposity, so most of the worst material got filtered out at rehearsals.

As our reputation spread we began to get bookings from further afield as well as from the more prestigious London clubs. We played colleges and universities in addition to the usual folk venues, and these were generally fairly well paid. The quality of the heckling was frequently quite good too. Whenever I used a capo on my guitar I would refer to it as a ‘Bessarabian jock strap’. At a college in Lewes, this quip was greeted with a rather pained voice from the audience saying “I happen to be Bessarabian and I can tell you it isn’t”.

We became regulars at the Troubadour in Earls Court, and played to packed houses at the Saturday night sessions under the auspices of the late Redd Sullivan and (the equally late) Martin Winsor. The club was in the cellar beneath a coffee house in The Old Brompton Road in Earl’s Court, and those Saturday night gigs were the folk world’s equivalent of ‘Sunday Night at the London Palladium’, but without the glamour and the television cameras, and in considerably less salubrious surroundings. The stage was tiny and was located directly underneath the pavement. It was also the location of the air conditioning unit, which made so much noise that it had to be switched off when anyone was performing. The walls frequently ran with condensation – most of which. I’m sure, started out as perspiration - but as we never used a P.A. system we were not at risk from electric shock. It was here that Bill Leader first saw us and suggested that he might be interested in recording us at some point. He was then in the throws of setting up his own record labels – Leader and Trailer - and suggested that we might be suitable candidates for the Trailer label. We were eventually to record an album with him over a period of about a year, but in the meantime we continued to establish ourselves outside of London.

Our first breakthrough in the north of England was a booking in Sheffield at the legendary Highcliffe Folk Club. By this time our reputation had expanded to include the fact that we were a bit of a ‘drinking band’ and people came to our gigs expecting fun and games. They were not disappointed that night. I had already become unsteady enough on my feet to sit on my own pint during the course of the first set. Most of the audience seemed to be under the impression that it was all part of the act that I was performing in a pair of beer-reeking, sopping wet jeans.

At this time my oldest brother, Alcohol (by no means as booze-inclined as his nick-name implies) was a Liberal Studies lecturer at nearby Mexborough Tech. He and his Head of Department, together with a fellow Liberal Studies lecturer from Doncaster Tech, had been attending a lecture given by the historian A.J.P. Taylor at Sheffield University. My brother felt the need to see exactly what it was that his younger sibling had got himself into and so had unwisely persuaded his fellow academics to come to see our performance after the lecture. They had arrived shortly before the beer incident and had seated themselves at a table near the back, where they observed our antics with a certain degree of bemusement. The Department Head, who was somewhat older than his companions and had in fact served as a bomb disposal specialist during the SecondWorld War, was still wearing his overcoat. At the end of the first set I went over to their table, where my brother was just offering to take his coat and hang it up. The Head, who stammered somewhat, replied “N-n-n-n no thank you dear b-b-b-boy. It gives me a c-c-c-comforting sense of imp-p-permanence”.

I have chastening memories of a gig that we did somewhere on the south coast. The performance had gone extremely well and we were about to head for home but, as was often the case, the need for post-gig food kicked in and we looked around for somewhere to eat. Eventually we found an open fish and chip shop and were soon sitting in the van and munching our way through cod, chips, saveloys and ‘wallys’ (large pickled cucumbers) out of newspaper-wrapped greaseproof bags that were soggy with vinegar. I finished eating, wiped my fingers as best I could on the newspaper, slid the door open and – without a thought –deposited the greasy rubbish in the road. Muff glanced up from his food, raised one eyebrow and murmured “’The Song of the Wasteland’, was it?”

In September 1969 we finally got booked for a festival – the first ‘Buxton Blues and Progressive Music Festival’ as it was billed – which was an all night event at the Buxton Pavilions. I don’t remember how we got the gig but I for one had high hopes for us. The event took place on two stages - we were booked to play on the small one – and featured all the big names of the day: Fleetwood Mac, Family, The Spirit of John Morgan, The Edgar Broughton Band, The Third Ear Band and East of Eden. It was compèred by John Peel I didn’t think much of the music and found it incredibly loud, but it was an extraordinarily cold night even though it was only September, so we stayed inside and put up with it. We finally got to go on at the same time that Fleetwood Mac – who had had major chart success earlier that year with ‘Albatross’ - took to the main stage. The net result was that we performed to a rather sparse audience and I can’t say that we made much of an impression on them. In fact John Peel wrote a four page article about the festival in ‘Disc and Music Echo’ ( a now defunct music paper) the following week, in which he commented on every band that had performed there. Of us he wrote “The Jugular Vein also played”.

We celebrated our third birthday that year, with a benefit gig at the Angel, Hayes End, for the Middlesex Housing Association, and the poster for that event (see above) shows me at my fattest. However, it was not me but the slender Mr Murfet who won the pie eating contest! It could be that my eating form was affected by toothache. Thanks to a bad dental experience in childhood that had ended with me being carried home in a blood-soaked towel, I had a deep fear of dentists and would tolerate incredibly high levels of discomfort rather than have my teeth seen to. This state of affairs was to last until my early forties, when I finally overcame the phobia and began visiting a dental surgery on a regular basis, but at that time my first resort was aspirin and my second resort was whisky. I was often in considerable discomfort and on one occasion when returning from a gig in the small hours of the morning, became so desperate that when we were passing a pharmacy, I insisted that Nobby stopped the van, then jumped out and went and hammered on the door of the shop. Given that it was about three in the morning I suppose I should not have been surprised at the – extremely Welsh – pharmacist’s reaction when he finally answered the door in his dressing gown. “TOOTHACHE? TOOTHACHE? You get me out of bed at this time of night for bloody TOOTHACHE?” But to his credit, he did give me some painkillers.

One other gig that was memorable for the wrong reasons was a Communist Party social that we were booked for, that took place in a function room above a pub, somewhere in the depths of Southall. We were not required to put on an actual show. They merely required us to provide music in the background. This meant that we had to stretch our usual set with a selection of traditional jazz tunes. Fortunately, Max had a large repertoire of these and we spent most of the evening playing in ‘cornet – guitar – washboards – jug’ format. All was going reasonably well when, towards the end of the evening, a couple arrived at the ticket table just as we were between numbers. A heated argument rapidly developed and it became apparent that the female half of the couple’s very recent ex-partner was already at the function and took great exception to his replacement being there.

In no time at all, the heated argument had escalated to an attempt by the ex-partner to throw the new partner out of the window. The next thing we knew, we were playing in the middle of a full-on bar-room brawl. Women were screaming, men were shouting, fists and feet were flying and the band was desperately peering around for an escape route. It soon became apparent that the only route other than the stairway was through the window and we did not consider this to be a reasonable option. There was only one thing for it. The great American film cliché is that the band starts to play the National Anthem and the conditioned reflexes of the crowd make them stand to attention and salute, thus affording a chance for the mob to calm down and the band to escape. But this was England not America and furthermore this was a Communist Party event. Max turned to us and said “Quick lads, ‘Maryland, my Maryland!”. It was an inspired choice. For those of you not familiar with the tune, it shares the second part of its melody with ‘The Red Flag’. The mêlée ground to a halt and we were able to escape unscathed. We never did get paid for that gig…

Music in a jugular vein 5

The usually placid Mr Murfet in pipe and concertina mode

This is part five of the Jugular Vein story. New readers start here.

Bandbox Barry - Super Fan

Despite the antics described in the previous posting we were in fact very serious about making good music, and all the nonsense would have been to no avail unless we had the content to back it up. It was the combination of the two elements that got us increasing amounts of work, but it was the shenanigans that drew our first major fan to us, as sure as eggs is eggs. I say ‘fan’, but with hindsight I suspect that ‘stalker’ might have been nearer the mark.

He answered to the name of ‘Band Box Barry’ – we never did find out his real name – and he began to show up at every gig we played. We very quickly moved from delight in having an enthusiastic follower to a feeling of dread on hearing the cry of ‘A la Musica!’ with which he would announce his presence in the audience. He invariably wore a blazer and a bow tie and, sometimes, spats and correspondent shoes. He had a beard, a fruity voice and a false tooth which he would frequently remove and drop into ones beer. He habitually addressed one by such anachronisms as ‘Old Fruit’, ‘Old Thing’, ‘Old Horse’ and ‘Old Chap’ and generally carried on as if we were living in the nineteen-twenties rather than the nineteen-sixties, despite the fact that he was probably no older than we were.

One of his many annoying characteristics was a positively pathological addiction to practical jokes. Woe betides the person foolish enough to accept a cigarette from him. Both Max and I were roll-up smokers at this time, and would frequently smoke on stage (if not called upon to blow something, that is). Band Box Barry would catch ones eye from the audience and mime rolling a cigarette and bringing it to the stage. We both got caught by exploding fags at least twice over a period of six months or so.

Barry would come and sit with us during intermissions, and was so thick skinned that no amount of ‘go forth and multiply’ instructions had any effect on him. He would just shrug, draw his shoulders back in a mime of being affronted and bray “I say you fellows! Have a beastly heart!” (or words to that effect) and then make himself comfortable at our table. The truth was that – for all the dash that he cut – he was a somewhat pathetic figure and we all felt rather sorry for him, although that pity was frequently stretched to near breaking point by some of his antics.

As well as the exploding cigarettes he also had a fondness for food dye, and it was not at all unusual to find oneself drinking a green pint. We finally put a stop to this by dying his gin and tonic blue one night, having first forewarned the people around us whilst he was visiting the gents. When he returned to the table and picked up his drink, he shouted in annoyance and drew attention to his blue drink. Everyone present managed to keep a straight face whilst denying that the gin was anything other than gin-coloured. If it had been just us denying it he would have seen through the ruse straight away, but the fact that apparent strangers were giving him the same reaction actually shook him and he was very subdued for the rest of the evening. Again, with hindsight, I suspect that his grip on his own sanity was more than a little fragile, but at the time we just chalked it up as a small victory.

On another occasion he turned up at a gig we were doing somewhere on the other side of London. We were somewhat surprised to see him as one of the few things we did know about him was that he lived near Heston – our side of the river. (The other two things that we knew were (1) that he had switched his allegiance to The Jugular Vein after falling out with his previous band of choice – Spencer’s Washboard Kings (still active today as Spencer's Nighthawks) and (2) that he described himself as a ‘Transparent Wall Maintenance Engineer’ – it transpired that he was in fact a self employed window cleaner.)

During the course of this particular evening he was on especially irritating form and back to all his old habits. Cigarettes exploded, beer turned green or acquired false teeth and we were ‘A la musica’d and ‘Old Bean’ed to near breaking point. The last straw came at the end of the gig when he announced that he was in need of a lift home as he had missed his transport connection. Now, Muff was (and remains) one of the most gentle and affable fellows that you could wish to meet but he had reached near-breaking point. Through gritted teeth he informed Band Box Barry that we would give him a lift but that if he (Band Box) so much as opened his mouth then he (Muff) would not be answerable for his actions.

We stocked up with a few cans of beer for the journey, climbed into the back of the van and set off for home. We had barely travelled a hundred yards or more when Band Box Barry piped up. “The thing is, old bean…” Muff paused with a freshly opened can half way to his lips. “If you call me ‘Old Bean’ one more time, I swear I’ll brain you with this bloody can!” he spat. “I say! Steady on old bean!” said Band Box, but he got no further because a furious Mr Murfet reached across and, with great vigour, carried out his threat. “Nobby! Stop the bloody van! He’s out. Now!” he shouted, as he grabbed our unfortunate fan and attempted to drag him to the back door of the vehicle.

Eventually we managed to calm Muff down and made Band Box Barry go and sit in the front of the van, with the warning that if he so much as uttered a single syllable before we reached his home, we would abandon him in the middle of the road regardless of where we were. The result was that our unwanted passenger managed to complete the journey in silence, and we did not see him again at a gig for quite a long time.

When he finally materialised again he was a much-subdued figure, looked quite haggard and had lost a considerable amount of weight. At first we felt quite guilty to have wrought quite such a change on him but we eventually discovered that he had just spent the last six months in an open prison, where his antics had been received considerably less warmly by the prison inmates than they had been by the band. Apparently, whilst on his window-cleaning round one day, he had spotted some 78 r.p.m. gramophone records through an open upstairs window. Unable to resist the temptation to have a closer look he had climbed off his ladder and in through the window. Unfortunately he was spotted and the police were called and he ended up inside.

Whatever it was that drew him to the band had obviously evaporated during his time away from us, and we did not see him again after that until, many years later I was watching The Last Night of the Proms on TV when I spotted a familiar face amongst the promenaders. The camera had zoomed in on a group of people hanging a garland of some sort around a statue. “…and as the young fans, led by Barry ------- (something I didn’t quite catch), a trainee dress designer from West London, decorate the bust of Sir Henry Wood with the traditional wreath we see…” I thought, at one point during the proceedings, that I heard a voice crying “A la Musica!”, but I might have imagined it.