Hammond organs don’t bend
Well put together documentary on Jon Lord before Deep Purple. It covers in fair detail the evolution of the Art Wood Combo / The Artwoods / St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.
This documentary is apparently from the same people who were behind the The Unusual Story of How Deep Purple Were Formed that we featured some time ago on these pages.
Thanks to Uwe Hornung for the heads-up.
More from Art Wood, the snippets in the above documentary are from this lengthier feature with him:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7XMVS3ohKA
I’ve always preferred the music of The Artwoods to most things Ritchie did in the 60s or even to Episode Six or The Maze. That the band didn’t really make it was down to two things if you ask me: (i) not a strong and consistent songwriter in the group, they were better at new arrangements of other people’s material, (ii) Art Wood was a fine singer, but not a frontman in the Mick Jagger, Roger Daltrey or Phil May (Pretty Things) mold. Born in 1937 he was considerably older than them and not a sexy, much less androgynous youth.
When the Artwoods folded in 1967, he was 30 years old – that was rather ancient for the times. Ian Hunter, who was two years younger than Art, is on record for saying that by the mid-60s he himself was regarded an old geezer with hardly a chance to still gain entry into a young band – he simply got lucky with Mott the Hoople who let him join at a point in time when he had practically already given up any prospect of a lasting professional career as a musician.
November 5th, 2024 at 02:52Thanks for the Jon Lord video, hilarious in many ways. I sure as hell will never complain again about lugging a drum kit around after those Hammond Organ stories, very amusing indeed. I am a little confused though, Uwe was recently bemoaning the lack of DP bass guitarist attention & he then goes & finds this video. Oh well not to worry, we can hope he finds something to pay homage to the other half of the engine room. Oh I nearly forgot, nice to see all the young ladies ‘covered up’ back in those innocent days. Some of them even had flowers in their hair. Cheers.
November 5th, 2024 at 05:51“Oh I nearly forgot, nice to see all the young ladies ‘covered up’ back in those innocent days.”
https://morrisonhotelgallery.com/cdn/shop/files/the-jimi-hendrix-experience-electric-ladyland-cover-london-1967david-montgomery-141605_1024x1024@2x.jpg?v=1712617118
Even the good old days were never as bad as we remember them, Herr MacGregor!
November 5th, 2024 at 13:00Nick and his uncorroborated claims all the time 🙄, sure it bends!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9RWvIwZte8
November 5th, 2024 at 16:16I just came across this on YouTube which I thought was quite a good performance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8rVcpTPas0
November 6th, 2024 at 19:12Ah, so the first demos for the new album with Simon have already cropped up, excellent!
November 6th, 2024 at 22:11