Category Archives: Music et al

Birthdays, Music et al, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Bassist Gary Thain

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Bassist Gary Thain

15 May 1948 – 8 December 1975
Bassist Gary Thain
illustration from http://www.travellersintime.com/

The Keef Hartley Band is not the best known band that played at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair and Gary Thain, it’s bassist, is known better through Uriah Heep, the group he played with after the Keef Hartley.

New Zealand

Gary Thain was born in Christchurch, New Zealand and began performing as a teenager.  He was in The Strangers in New Zealand and when he was 17 Thain moved to Australia and became part of The Secrets.

UK

Then to the UK where he became part of Me and the Others until 1967. After that, it was New Nadir.

In other words, there was a common relationship. Music and Gary Thain got to know each other for a long time before Thain joined the first band that at least more than a few people know the name of.

Keef Hartley Band

In 1968 Gary joined the Keef Hartley Band.  He was with them for all six of their albums and was with them for their 45 minute Woodstock set. Unfortunately for Thain and the band, they were not included in either the triple album nor the movie the following year.

KHB had toured with Uriah Heep in 1971 and in 1972  Uriah Heep asked Gary Thain to join. He did and stayed with the band until 1975.

Electrocuted

While performing at a concert in Dallas on September 15, 1974 Thain received an electrical shock. He survived, but felt the band and it’s management had left him on his own to recover.

Bassist Gary ThainAccording to the site Audio Culture site: “Thain tried to pick up where he left off but his addiction and his darkening attitude toward management meant he was increasingly unreliable and erratic. He was sacked in January 1975.” 

Gary Thain

Bassist Gary Thain

27 Club

Rock and roll’s temptations and perquisites took their toll. Thain died in London from respiratory failure as a result of an heroin overdose on December 8, 1975.  Another member sadly joining the so-called 27 Club.

Bassist Gary Thain

Anniversary, Music of the 60s

Eric Burdon Animals Sky Pilot

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Eric Burdon Animals Sky Pilot

July 1968

Eric Burdon

Eric Burdon with the Animals were part of the British Invasion in 1964. Their “House of the Rising Sun” stuck an earworm into  American teenagers’ heads that still resides there. What Boomer can hear those first few guitar notes without immediately recognizing the song? Perhaps it was one of the first licks you learned on guitar? (click and see!)

American blues dominated the Animals’ early albums, but like Bob Dylan’s job on Maggie’s farm and John Lennon’s Norwegian wood lover, Eric Burdon did not stay with the girl he brung to the dance.

Eric Burdon Animals Sky Pilot

Eric Burdon & the Animals

With his release of Winds of Change (the title echoing,  of course, Dylan’s “The Times They Are a-Changin” as well as his line in “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”), Burdon allowed the times to change his content.

Such compositions as “The Black Plague” and “San Franciscan Nights” signaled those changes.

The Twain Shall Meet

Eric Burdon Animals Sky Pilot1968. The Vietnam war raged and demonstrations regularly filled streets. Campuses seemed to have become places to sit in to protest, not to sit in a desk.

In May, MGM record released Eric Burdon and the Animals single, “Sky Pilot.” The following month, the song would be part of the “The Twain Shall Meet” album.

Even more than the popular “Monterey” on that album [Burdon’s reflections on the Monterey Pop Festival, an event he and the Animals performed at], “Sky Pilot” is the album’s strongest song.

Sky Pilot

Eric Burdon Animals Sky Pilot

He blesses the boys

As they stand in line

The smell of gun grease

And the bayonets they shine

He’s there to help them

All that he can

To make them feel wanted

He’s a good holy man

In some ways the song is as powerful as Jimi Hendrix’s Star Spangled Banner. Hendrix’s performance declared that those who were anti-Establishment were also entitled to our nation’s anthem.

“Sky Pilot” (particularly with its inclusion the traditional bag piped “All the Bluebonnets Are Over the Border”) questions not only war, but whether God was on our side, or whether God’s self-appointed representative, the Sky Pilot, was even on God’s side.

Released as a two-sided single, many radio stations stated that its length too long and style not “pop” enough.  Be that as it may, the song remains among the elite of anti-war songs.

The whole band wrote the song: Eric Burdon, Vic Briggs, John Weider, Barry Jenkins, and Danny McCulloch

Eric Burdon Animals Sky Pilot

All the Blue Bonnets

It is interesting to listen to just the bag pipes song after listening to the Animal’s song with its inclusion.

Eric Burdon Animals Sky Pilot

Birthdays, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Woodstock Mountain Steve Knight

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Woodstock Mountain Steve Knight

12 May 1935 – 19 January 2013
Woodstock Mountain Steve Knight
(photo from Woodstock Times)
Woodstock Mountain Steve Knight

Woodstock from the start

Steve Knight lived a lot of Woodstock. He spent most of his early life living in the Ulster County, NY town with his parents. Then family moved to New York City when he was 15 because his father got a teaching position in Columbia University.

Columbia and the Village

Knight attended Columbia University. And we can add his name to the long list of young people in the early 1960s who were attracted by New York’s burgeoning music scene. According to Wikipedia, “Knight recorded with or was a member of various bands including the Feenjon Group, the Peacemakers, Devil’s Anvil and Wings” (not Paul McCartney’s group).

Mountain

He played in several bands and along the way met producer Felix Pappalardi who was forming the band Mountain fronted by Leslie West.

With Mountain, Steve played keyboards. And from growing up in the town of Woodstock, Steve obliquely returned by playing with Mountain at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair.

Though successful, the band quit (for the first time) in 1972 and Knight left the band permanently.  Though he never left music, it became secondary to his life.

Back to Woodstock

Knight moved back to Woodstock, NY where in 1999 he won election to the Town Board. Voters re-elected him in 2003. According to the Woodstock Times obituary, “His tenure was characterized by temperance and evenhanded attempts to reconcile the passionate rifts that characterize local politics.”

The article continued, “For a 2002 community play to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Byrdcliffe Arts and Crafts community Steve wrote “Valley Finale,” which went on to become the Town’s official song. The words…explain why so many Woodstockers loved Steve as much as he loved them.”

Steve Knight died 19 January 2013 in New York of complications from Parkinson’s disease at the age of 77. [NYT obituary]

Woodstock Mountain Steve Knight