![[hand]](/hs-pics/portraits/hands/gillan2.jpg)
![[face]](/hs-pics/portraits/faces/gillan2.jpg)
Grateful for the blind faith
An interview with Roger Glover, originally published in the issue of New Musical Express dated June 19, 1971. Roger very prophetically talks about retiring from the incessant touring in a couple of years to focus on the production work. As we all know, this is pretty much what actually happened, albeit for all the wrong reasons.
Quote of the day:
We have been criticised for not changing the stage act but people don’t want us to change. It’s a bit frustrating because you get very stale playing the same numbers. Another frustrating thing is you don’t get time to rehearse, we haven’t rehearsed since January — you come back from a tour and the last thing you want to do is rehearse.
Sounds like not much has changed in the intervening fifty-three years 😉
Read the whole thing in My Things – Music history for those who are able to read.
Many thanks to Geir Myklebust for putting this up.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
Speaking of Blind Faith, a fucking awesome band. RIP Ginger Baker and Ric Grech.
April 15th, 2024 at 04:48“I heard a Led Zeppelin bootleg that was so bad it cheered me up, I realised other groups have their off nights as well!” Man is that going please someone here, whoo hoo, go Uwe. Cheers.
April 15th, 2024 at 06:38Yo,
@1 said qt.”Speaking of Blind Faith, a fucking awesome band. RIP Ginger Baker and Ric Grech”.
+1 here…Too bad they didn’t stick together for a few more albums, as the music remains timeless & most excellent. But then, we wouldn’t have received “Layla”…
Peace !
April 15th, 2024 at 10:50Hopefully Roger won’t mind me revealing – it was all very long ago and we were all younger then – that the “illness” he’s referring to in the interview was a very heavy and painful dose of clap. Trust the least promiscuous band member to have the bad luck of catching it! 😣 And as Roger hobbled in pain on stage, Ritchie would helpfully offer that if he, Roger, really insisted on dying he should perhaps consider doing so on stage so that he could be subsequently cremated as part of the show! With friends like these … 😂
Roger would years later surmise on the experience: “It sounds funny now, but it sure wasn’t at the time.” Ouch!
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/PenicillinPSAedit.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPP1xkgjnA8
There we have it, The Highway Star selflessly committed to public health policy!
April 15th, 2024 at 13:32Zeppelin baby @2: I never kick a man when he’s already down.
April 15th, 2024 at 13:36Yeah Gregster
April 15th, 2024 at 22:27It would have been great, I know Clapton wasn’t too keen on working with Ginger again after Cream, but Winwood begged Clapton to let Baker join, at least they even put one album out.
@ 5 ha ha ha
April 16th, 2024 at 07:10May I
https://64.media.tumblr.com/ac8c767c693e36ee863c41af09b9ae6a/155b46bc39a3b6dd-95/s500x750/9b55daef5f4a1cc3318b8b53864e52bcbccb30f1.gifv
contribute that I think the Blind Faith album rather boring and safe after what Cream had done before, ja? A yawny jamfest on quaaludes …
https://i.giphy.com/8cqVIPHCKLhfO.webp
April 16th, 2024 at 13:06@ 8- I have noticed that lynch mob before Uwe. They can get around though as we know, he he he. Cheers.
April 16th, 2024 at 22:19LOL..
Leiber Uwe said qt.”May I contribute that I think the Blind Faith album rather boring and safe, after what Cream had done before, ja ?… A yawny jamfest on quaaludes” …
*Yes, well…I don’t think it was ever intended to be heavy, or even meant to be recorded…It just happened by chance, & that’s what makes it quite special…Tunes were written overnight via a jam-session, & then a wanting to record them.
Every tune however is memorable, melodic, & you can sing the melody & words quite easily, so that’s why it was & remains so successful I’d imagine…But as the band said in their final tunes title in 5/4…
“Do what you like”…
Peace !
April 18th, 2024 at 11:54Jawhol Herr Gruppenfuhrer Cream better than Blind Faith!
April 19th, 2024 at 06:40—> sidroman: At ease!/Stehen Sie bequem!
April 19th, 2024 at 23:58That’s exactly right Gregster. as far as the album, Can’t Find My Way Home and Presence of the Lord alone make it a classic.
April 20th, 2024 at 02:21Hippie music! 😜
Next thing we know, we‘ll have a Traffic thread here!
It‘s fine, I‘m ok with Blind Faith,Traffic and Steve Winwood today, but as a teen I would have needed more oomph.
April 21st, 2024 at 13:49(Almost) completely off-topic, Steve Winwood attended the end-of-tour party that took place after the last March 1991 Hammersmith gig (S &M U.K. tour). Very nice guy.
April 21st, 2024 at 19:32The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys album I always liked, especially that title song. There are a couple of excellent live clips of Traffic & or Steve Winwood performing that one. I found it hard to get into other music of theirs though. Excellent musicians though. Cheers.
April 21st, 2024 at 22:59Lol Uwe and Purple wasn’t Hippie music?
When performing on Playboy After Dark, Rod Evans was wearing a Peace Sign around his neck.
Peace!
Also I never was a Traffic fan, I like Blind Faith, some of Winwood’s solo stuff and Gimme Some Lovin.
April 22nd, 2024 at 00:05Rod Evans wasn’t even a credible Hippie, image-wise there was always something early 60ies cabaret singer about him.
Sure DP Mk II had a Hippie look (and there was nothing wrong with that), but their energy wasn’t. Both Roger and Big Ian looked more Hippie (and wasn’t Roger even referred to as such by the other DP members?) than Nick and Rod ever did.
April 22nd, 2024 at 13:33Uwe, to quote an episode of Night Gallery – a Matter of Semantics
Here in the USA in the 60’s and 70’s particularly in the South, if your hair even touched your ears, it was considered too long. I’m sure you’ve seen the diner scene from Easy Rider. So all the guys from Purple, especially Glenn Hughes were way past acceptable grooming standards. Tommy Bolin was suspended from school at 16 for having long hair, that would have been 1967, I’m sure Bolin’s hair was only touching his ears or his collar. The funny part is Tommy’s parents let him quit school instead of a visit to the barber. Mine, I would have been in school the next day with a crew cut!
April 23rd, 2024 at 06:51Peace!
@19 said…
qt.”Here in the USA in the 60’s and 70’s particularly in the South, if your hair even touched your ears, it was considered too long. I’m sure you’ve seen the diner scene from Easy Rider. So all the guys from Purple, especially Glenn Hughes were way past acceptable grooming standards. Tommy Bolin was suspended from school at 16 for having long hair, that would have been 1967, I’m sure Bolin’s hair was only touching his ears or his collar. The funny part is Tommy’s parents let him quit school instead of a visit to the barber. Mine, I would have been in school the next day with a crew cut”!
*What a great film “Easyrider” remains…I have the “anniversary” edition DVD with all the extra’s. The soundtrack is sublime, the acting sublime too, the story is amazing, & I can’t get enough of the scenery that was shot…And though a small role played, Jack Nicholson really delivers the goods, & makes the film more of a real-life documentary than anything else. I guess that’s why it resonates to this day.
GH would have been fine in the Deep South imo, he only had to announce himself as “Cousin It” from the Adams family series & say they were shooting-an-episode to avoid the rusty razor-blade lol !
Peace !
April 24th, 2024 at 11:02“Well, you walk into a restaurant
Strung out from the road
And you feel the eyes upon you
As you′re shakin′ off the cold
You pretend it doesn’t bother you
But you just want to explode
Most times you can′t hear ’em talk
Other times you can
Oh, the same old clichés
“Is that a woman or a man?”
And you always seem outnumbered
You don′t dare make a stand”
Bob Seger said it all in Turn The Page.
True, 1967 Tommy Bolin didn’t exactly look like Charlie Manson!
https://www.sonicrendezvous.com/images/prod/I00/595/00595628.jpg
There is actually a release from his first band (pre-Zephyr) ‘Patch of Blue’ imminent, I just stumbled accidentally on it:
https://www.sonicrendezvous.com/product/bolin-tommy/patch-of-blue-birth-of-a-legend/595628
Rod Evans otoh was a handsome man, but in a very early 60ies film star way, square jaw and brute charm, none of the androgyny of a young Ian Gillan (or, for that matter, of Tommy Bolin of course who was probably a gay man’s dream in the early 70ies). Even with longer hair, Rod looked more like a Las Vegas crooner à la Neil Diamond (I hasten to add: I like Neil’s work!) than a rocker or hippie:
https://i.pinimg.com/564x/77/bf/5e/77bf5e88a65d82143efa6814d30121c7.jpg
And he obviously intended to make music to match following his ‘de(e)parture’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHYkzB5ZIzI
April 24th, 2024 at 13:42