"had six kids from different dads"..wow a very raw song started in 1974, last few months before Nick Dake was gone. Not sure why images of Nico and Velvet Underground come into my mind.. No videos existing of NIck Drake performing and I still read on amazement on how Drake ran off the stage between or during songs when performing (which was rare).. a treat is to listen to Nick and Gabrielle's mother's voice and the songs she did..
Beautiful song. I have Hazy Jane on a compilation by Nick Drake. She could have been somebody too. The talent was there..Love the strings. Typical Nick Drake stylings for sure..
Lovely to see this. Davey and I used to live close to each other in Camden in London in the late 1970s. We became friends and we would regularly busk together at Camden Lock Market with me on banjo or mandolin and Davey on guitar. He was a gentle soul, hugely encouraging of others, and modest about his own playing. He had the knack of injecting quirky little riffs and runs into straightforward music and bringing out something new in the process. It was sad to see his decline in later years but great to know the power of his legacy.
mmmmmm thing is just like john martyn jack bruce being a drunk junky brian wasted ex folky siting nixt to bert jansch. its disrepectfull you have to know when to put the always a martin shit away. in his youth he was a truly great singer player with dadgad etc but dont show this. ffs have some respect.
I do not see any decline others comment on. Davy was absolutely disintrrested in playing his old stuff. Bert is playing stuff he copied of davy, not so well IMHO, and davy, who flatly refused to play blues in 80s (I've done all that) is forced to humor bert and camera. Yet when he sings he sounds more genuine and soulful
This is remarkable, what a player. Up till now the only piece I knew of his was Anjie a must play for any 60s player. (I tried it today but had forgotten it. More practice required!)
Met davy, from 3 pm he played in my friend's kitchen non stop, just for me, explaing tunes, tunings , guitars and so on. 7.45 he said :time for tbe gig. Gig was 8 to 10,amazing,you could hear a pin drop. First hour on oud. Than back to my friend's, he played non stop till 4 am, never repeated a tune. Again plenty advice on my guitar playing. Perfectly nice guy and a musical genius. Anything from renaissance music to Ellington, monk, from india to Ireland and all stuff in between. That is how i remember him. I was told by his brother and good friends, he had some mental issues hence periods of medication, sometimes self applied
I knew Davy, me, a face on the scene, in late fifties, early sixties, London. Hanging out and jamming at the Gyre & Gimble and other, of the many, Soho venues. Also too, as an on and off resident, of a Notting Hill flat sharing, where Davy, was a member of the live-in conglomeration of musicians and artists. Angie was also a good friend. I remember, very distinctly, the morning when Davy came back to the flat, very elated, and told us he had, for the first time, taken hard drugs. At that time, hard drug users were not all that many in number. It was in fact, at that time, treated as a medical concern, and users, received prescriptions from their doctor. It was a pattern, correct me if I am wrong, of usage he followed for the remainder of his life. He was a great and original musician and performer who seemed to disappear from the public view. What makes a musician shine on a global level? There are quite a few, who do, in spite of obvious, though not obvious to the public, limitations. I was thinking about Davy earlier in the year when I heard of the passing of my old friend Victor Brox, another potential stadium filler, who did enjoy life, but had the talent and charisma to have achieved much more. It is not always the best who bubble to the top.
Beverly is the real deal . She can be seen in the picture in the background, which is the cover to Bert Janch's 1965 solo album "It Don't Bother Me." Besides being a talented singer-songwriter she was also a muse, friend or partner to some of the greatest recording artists of her age. At various times, she has worked with John Martyn (with whom she was married from 1969 to 1980), Levon Helm (of the Band), Jimmy Page, Dave Pegg, Richard Thompson, John Renbourn, Ralph McTell, Davy Graham, Nick Drake and Sandy Denny. Her early association with Donovan resulted in her recording his song "Museum" in 1967. Paul Simon invited her to New York in the very same year. On the Simon & Garfunkel album "Bookends", she contributed to the track "Fakin' It", in the middle of which she is heard saying "Good morning, Mr Leitch, have you had a busy day?" She later appeared at the Monterey Pop Festival on 16 June 1967, as did Simon & Garfunkel.
I'd like a copy of the whole concert. I saw it on the BBC a few years ago and was blown away by this and several other performances to0, particularly Mara Carlisle's take on It Doesn't Bother Me.
You get that very odd feeling that maybe he was trying for much more in one voice than could be communicated as if, you don't have to wait for the whole of the sense of the idea to be known just an impression was enough or needs to be given. that you must try and hear that which is not said.. only hinted, in his conversational banter and that mumbled or even if it sounds so, his verbal short hand for his a over energetic mind, kind of work's maybe, nonverbal communication of ideas not said and the subject idea are spoken in a clipped way a private language if bothered to be learned as it stops the casual eavesdropping of the crowd they thinking he' a bit of an eccentric fellow that old manic magician musician and his wild humour and his guitar eccentricities that sounds so odd on the first listening.... But.... Brilliant His chatting guitar or even odd amalgam of philosophic hints of how to be really real amongst the synesthesia of lies of the everyday living we humans all endure.. Davey Graham just ordinary bloke no! extra extraordinary yes...extraordinary to the very end RIP
I've known about Davy Graham since my teens, through collecting second hand vinyl. The telling thing is that I have never, ever found any of his records for sale. It is nice to see a collection of his performances here.
It hurts to see people use this as an admonishment. People are human, artists more than most; the amount of drug use, mental illness and life problems in your heroes is astounding and you need to recognize them as human beings with or without the amazing contributions that Graham and others gave us. He's still 10X the guitarist most these folks in the comments are and it makes me angry. He's still a goddamned work of human art and you should treat him like it.
I sang this as a bedtime song to my young daughter. I would tell her to close her eyes and imagine she was running in a field at night. The field begins to slope downhill... run faster... then you realize, your feet have left the ground and you're flying. And that brought sleep. Who knows what dreams followed? Years later, my daughter Erica recorded the two of us playing the song on her cel phone. It is here on You Tube somewhere.
Folk, Blues and beyond is a masterpiece of an album. Anybody that helped create the magic of Bert Jansch deserves his place in the honour room of legendary musicians.
