Glastonbury Festival 2019: Part 3, A Face From The Past.

Friday had arrived at Glastonbury and I was looking forward to a long day of music. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and even early in the morning it was already quite hot. After breakfast Odele was off to do some yoga so I walked with her as far as The Park. We stopped off at the Terence Higgins tent where they were giving away free sunscreen which was essential. After I said cheerio to Odele I had a couple of hours to kill before the music started so I thought I’d go up to the top of the Ribbon Tower. It has been a feature at Glasto for at least ten years, but I’d never been up there before. You get a fabulous view of the whole site from the top and I took a few photos.

View from top of Ribbon Tower.

After that I went for a walk along the pier which is a new feature at Glastonbury. It is built on the side of the hill so you really get the feeling that you are at the seaside. The sounds of sea gulls and waves adds to the effect. The only difference is you look out at a sea of tents and not a real sea. They have all the seaside attractions such as Punch & Judy, fortune tellers and amusement arcades. I wanted to play on the machines but didn’t have the right change on me. It was all good fun. At the entrance to the tipi field there was a café in a yurt so I sat in the shade and had a cup of tea.

Punch & Judy on the pier.

Then I wandered on towards the Stone Circle. As I approached the stones an ambulance drove by me. There was a woman unconscious on the ground, and they couldn’t wake her up. She must have been up there for the party the night before and passed out. Why it took until 10.00 in the morning to notice her I don’t know, and where were her friends? Anyway, they put her in the ambulance and drove away. I expect she was ok because I didn’t hear any stories about fatalities or bad injuries this year. You have to remember that it is a temporary city of nearly 200,000 and any city is going to have incidents over a weekend.

Incident at Stone Circle.

Finally, it was time for some music. Lankum were the first band I wanted to see. They were on the Park Stage at 11.30. They are a young folk band from Dublin who I had heard great reports about and seen on YouTube. They are Ian Lynch (uillean pipes, tin whistle, vocals), Daragh Lynch (vocals, guitar) Cormac Mac Diarmada (fiddle) and Radie Peat (harmonium, accordion, vocals). They didn’t disappoint and played a blistering set of songs and tunes. They aren’t afraid to voice their political views either. You could say they are Irish folk with a punk attitude. After that rousing set, I had my first pint of the day in the shade of one of the beer tents.

Lankum on the Park Stage.

We get these things called lanyards that you hang around your neck. It has all the info about the acts on the various stages. Sheryl Crow was on the Pyramid Stage at 2.00 which I would liked to have seen but the sun was really hot now and I didn’t fancy sitting in it. I decided to head for the bucolic shady area of the Acoustic Stage. It is nice there and if you sit at the edge there is a nice cooling breeze blowing. When I arrived, there was a singer on called Grace Petrie. She is a socialist, activist singer who isn’t afraid to say what she thinks. By the end of her gutsy performance I thought she was great. 

Julie Felix at Isle Of Wight 1969.

I met up with Peter and Helen and Helen’s mum. The next act was called Lucy Rose who I had never heard of although she has made four albums. I thought she was boring because every song sounded the same. She claimed to have technical problems and kept stopping and restarting songs and complained it was difficult to sing when the audience were talking. I suspect they were talking because they lost interest in her. I passed the time telling silly jokes to Peter & Helen.

Julie Felix at Glastonbury 1987.

The next act I was really looking forward to seeing. In the 1980’s at Glastonbury I used to do a little unofficial bookstall. It was quite successful and used to pay for my festival. I had some famous people visit my bookstall. John Martyn was one and actress Margie Clarke, but my favourite was American folk singer Julie Felix. I had a nice little chat with her back in 87 and I thought she was a really nice lady. I have several of her albums although I hadn’t seen her in the 32 years since. I was delighted to hear that she was on the Acoustic Stage this year. “I bet she does Masters Of War”, I said to Helen when Julie appeared, and she did!. She played a wonderful set. I can’t remember every song but one highlight was “Hey,That’s No Way To Say Goodbye”, which I remembered from her TV show in the 60’s. Julie was a good friend of Leonard Cohen before all the fame. You can see a video below if you scroll down. I wish I had written down a setlist, but I didn’t. Another song I remember was Tom Paxton’s Last Thing On My Mind. Julie is 82 now but still as politically active as ever, campaigning for peace, feminist issues and other left-wing causes. I think she is great.

Me & Julie Felix.

After her performance I thought I would check out Bastille on the Pyramid Stage but as I was leaving I noticed some people hanging around the merchandise area. I wondered if Julie might come out, and she did. I bought a programme from her 80^th birthday concert at the Royal Albert Hall and Julie graciously signed it and we took a photo. I tried to tell her about our previous meeting 32 years ago, but she was probably in shock after her triumphant performance and had other people to talk to as well. It was certainly a highlight for me I can tell you.

The Mavericks.

I watched some of Bastille on my way back to base camp. I had a shower and dinner then set out again for the evening. On the way back down I watched about 20 minutes of Ms Lauryn Hill who I have an album by but I couldn’t get into it. I made my way back to the Acoustic where I had a wonderful evening. The Mavericks were fantastic. They deserved to be on the main stage. After that it was Nick Lowe & Los Straitjackets who were brilliant. I have seen Nick Lowe many times but this was the best performance ever. You must go and see them if you get the chance. Nick took a break and the band played some amazing guitar music. What’s So Funny About Peace Love And Understanding? And I Knew The Bride When She Used To Rock And Roll were great songs I remember and Nick came back for a solo performance of Alison which was a hit for Elvis Costello.

The great Nick Lowe.

On the way home I listened to a bit of Stormzy on the Pyramid but it’s not my cup of tea I’m afraid. I got back to Tom’s field and sat around drinking with a few people until I finally went to bed at about 2.00. Another exciting day at Glastonbury was only a few hours away and what a day it would turn out to be!

TO BE CONTINUED……………….

Glastonbury Festival 2019: Part 2, Crisis At The Crossroads.

It was Wednesday morning at Glastonbury. The sun was shining, the gates were open, and 130,000 music fans were pouring onto the site. I collected my veteran’s t-shirt and my gloves from the office and met up with my team at 8.00. Because I had broken my litter picking stick Odele had lent me hers as she didn’t need one in her job of trader information. I was a bit wary of borrowing it because she had used it for about ten Glastonbury’s and I was worried about losing it or breaking it. (More on that later) 

Tipis & Yurts.

Our team leader was Andy who I had worked with before. There were fifteen in our team and I remembered a few of them especially Pete and Sean. Once we had all arrived, we set off across the top of the site following our leader. There wasn’t all that much rubbish to pick up as people were only just arriving, so Wednesday was quite an easy day. Every year at Glastonbury there is less and less waste for various reasons. Firstly, this year there was a ban on the sale of single use plastic bottles. That made a huge difference, people could refill their own water bottles at various places around the site. Secondly, people don’t smoke so much these days. Every year there are less cigarette packets and dog ends to pick up. Thirdly, people are much more environmentally aware these days and conscious of looking after the planet, especially with speakers like Caroline Lucas and Sir David Attenborough at the festival. Another thing that made the job easier this year was the nice weather which meant you weren’t picking stuff out of mud.

One amazing thing I had never seen at Glastonbury before was that we met hundreds of people out on an organised early morning 5K run around the site. They had all the running gear on and were taking it very seriously. That never happened in the olden days. We wandered all over the site picking up any garbage we could find. Stopped for an hours break at 1.00 and went round the same route in the afternoon and finished at 5.00. The afternoon was the most tiring because of the heat. In the evening I had a couple of drinks in the Bread & Roses saloon and went for a walk to the stone circle to see what was going on. I was tired though and it was too hectic. There was about 10,000 people up there partying. I sat in the Peace Garden for a bit of tranquillity and then wandered home and crashed out about midnight.

Thursday was much more dramatic. Emily Eavis had asked us to go to the Park area. Because the music didn’t start till Friday everybody had been up that end of the site partying till dawn. The rubbish bins had overflowed and there was quite a mess. We worked really hard that morning and got it all looking nice again. I had a disaster. I went to pick up a can with Odele’s stick and the handle broke in half in my hand. Oh no, I felt really bad about that.

In the afternoon I had another disaster. We were working our way along to the old railway line where it was very busy with multitudes of people going in all directions.

In The Woods.

 I was having a chat with Sean about music. I stopped to pick up some rubbish around some bins, looked up and I couldn’t see my team anywhere in the crowd. It was at a crossroads, which is the worst place to get lost. I had to guess which direction they had gone. I walked one way for about 100 yards but then noticed some rubbish on the ground. “If they had come this way they would have picked that up”, I thought to myself. So, I retraced my steps and tried another direction and the same thing happened. I was getting more and more frantic. The world had suddenly become a lonely and threatening place.

Some of our team.

 I felt like a little kid who had lost his mum. I was the only member of the team who hadn’t bothered to take Andy’s phone number in case of such an eventuality. I decided to go to the Glade and stay there and hope the team walked by. After half an hour there was no sign of them. The only thing to do was go back to the office and report myself lost. By the time I got there I was really hot and bothered I can tell you. The office staff phoned Andy and found out where they were and I was finally reunited with my team by the John Peel stage at about 4.00. I had been missing for about two hours. It made the afternoon go quickly that’s for sure. We finished work at 5.00 and had no more work until Sunday evening.

Fiona with Michael Eavis.

That evening it was the recyclers party. I was watching a band from the entrance to the marquee when a security man tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to move slightly. I turned around and there was Glastonbury organiser Michael Eavis and Fiona which gave me the chance of a couple of close up photos. Later on, a couple asked me if I knew the way to the Rabbit Hole so I said I would show them. That involved a long walk. I had a couple of drinks up in The Park then walked back via the Tipi Field, Strummerville, Field Of Avalon and ended up in the bar at the Acoustic Stage. It was nice and quiet in there which suited me. I had a chat with a nice couple from Northern Ireland and said I'd meet them at the Park Stage tomorrow morning. I finally went to bed about 2.00 but I was quite excited because tomorrow the music would finally begin!

TO BE CONTINUED……………

            

Glastonbury Festival 2019: Part 1, Return To Avalon.

Two long years had gone by and it was time to return to Worthy Farm once again. This year was the 40^th anniversary of my first visit to Glastonbury Festival. If anyone had told me back in the summer of 79 that I would be still going to festivals 40 years later I would have thought they were bonkers, but here we were. I caught the 1.02 train from Westbury for the short journey to the normally sleepy little town of Castle Cary. Although the gates didn’t open to the public for another three days the train was crowded with site crew workers. At Castle Cary we boarded the shuttle bus which took us to the festival site at Pilton. Sitting on the front seat who should I meet but my friend Odele who I first met at Glasto in 2013. As the bus drove us through the Somerset countryside, we caught up with all the news since last time we met. Soon we arrived at Red gate A and made our way to the recyclers cabin where we handed in our letters and collected our wristbands. Then we hauled on our rucksacks for the long walk across the site to our camping area in Tom’s field near the farmhouse. It is called Tom’s field because a horse called Tom used to live in there. The walk seemed a lot easier than last time, maybe because it wasn’t so hot. Almost the first person we saw on arriving was Fiona who organises the huge crew of recyclers. We had a little chat with Fiona then set up our tents. When I unpacked my rucksack, I discovered I had broken my litter picking stick which was a bit annoying.

Odele in her tent.

Once I had sorted my tent out, I went for a walk down to the market area. There weren’t many places open because most traders hadn’t arrived yet, but I found one nice place and had some food and a cup of tea. Later in the evening I spent a pleasant couple of hours drinking cider in the crew bar at the back of the Acoustic Stage. When I got back to Tom’s field there wasn’t a lot going on, so as soon as it got dark I retired early because I knew I had many long days ahead.           

When I woke up on Monday morning, I looked at my alarm clock and it was 4.45, the sun was shining, and the birds were singing in the trees.  I tried to get back to sleep but at Glastonbury that is impossible. I crawled out of my tent and went to the workers marquee where I sat outside drinking coffee and talking to people I remembered from previous years.

Giant crane in Arcadia.

Then I set off on a long walk around the site. In Arcadia they had replaced the giant spider with a huge crane which they had salvaged from Bristol docks. At night-time it looked awesome when all lit up. They were also frantically putting the finishing touches to Glastonbury On Sea which is a huge pier they have built to give the illusion of being at the seaside. I made my way to the Tiny Tea Tent which has been a favourite place of mine since the 1990’s. I sat there for about two hours chatting to other people, drinking tea and watching the world go by. 

In the West Holts field, I visited Leon’s Vegetarian Cuisine which I knew from previous years. Leon is a nice guy who takes real pride in his food. He has even written a vegetarian cookbook. He was explaining to me all the different dishes he had available. I couldn’t decide what I wanted so he offered to give me a bit of everything for a fiver. That was a great deal and I ended up with a huge plate of delicious quiche, aubergines, red cabbage salad, tomatoes and some sort of green beans that I had never seen before. I eat a lot better at Glastonbury than I do at home.

Tiny Tea Tent.

 It was getting hot now and I stopped in Williams Green for a rest and another cup of tea where I bumped into Odele who was on her lunch break from work. After that I returned to the Acoustic crew bar where I spent the afternoon sitting in the shade.

That evening Martin and Peter and me decided it was time to get a campfire going. We had a bit of trouble getting it started at first until I remembered a trick I learned in previous years. The hand sanitiser outside the toilets has alcohol in it so a couple of cupfuls of that soon got the wood blazing away. Then we sat around the fire drinking and telling jokes. It is amazing how quickly a fire attracts people. Before long there was quite a gathering around the fire. People have sat around campfires since man first learned how to control fire thousands of years ago. There is something prehistoric and magical about it. It was a shame that this year our wood pile was depleted by certain people nicking our wood. I had intended being sensible and having an early night but ended up drinking about six cans of Thatcher’s Gold cider. It was only when it started spitting rain that I finally went to bed.

Leon's Vegetarian Cuisine.

When I came to my senses on Tuesday morning it was to the sound of rain on my tent. That didn’t matter though because it stopped at 9.00 and there was no more rain for the rest of the week. In fact, later in the week another drop of rain would have been welcome because it got very hot indeed. After breakfast I sat outside the marquee chatting with Bob & Paula who are a nice couple from Nottingham who I know from previous years. Then I set out on another epic walk. My feet were aching from the previous two days of walking and not having the proper footwear. The grass was still wet from the rain and hadn’t been cut around the edges of the big ground in front of the Pyramid Stage, so I took my shoes and socks off and walked barefoot through the lush clover. My feet loved it. It was really refreshing. I walked all the way to the Beat Hotel before I had to put my shoes on again. 

Lush grass in front of Pyramid Stage.

Then I carried on through Silver Hayes and had a look at the amazing shanty town that had been built.  I carried on past the John Peel stage and into The Wood. This is a very peaceful area and you can go right up into the canopy of the trees and look at the view. This year they had Shakespeare being performed in the wood, but I didn’t get to see that. Eventually I had a slow meandering walk back to Tom’s field for lunch. I discovered some rain had got into my tent, so I sorted that out then had a kind of a nap.

At the quiz, Robin, Odele & Me.

In the evening it was the recyclers quiz. Our team were The Glastafarians. We won the quiz when we first entered it a few years ago and came second another year. We were hoping to reclaim our crown. There were four original members, me, Odele, Peter & Robin. This year we also had Peter’s wife Helen plus a couple of Peter’s friends. Sadly, we only came 3^rd this year. That was a bit disappointing, but we will get our revenge next year. I was quite sensible and was in bed by midnight because tomorrow at 8.00 I would start work. As I drifted off into restful slumbers little did I realise the dramatic events that lay ahead…….

TO BE CONTINUED.

Glasto by night.

Rolling Thunder.

I had never watched anything on Netflix before, but thanks to my nephew Dominic, last night I watched the new film by Martin Scorsese called The Rolling Thunder Revue which is the story of the show that Bob Dylan took on the road in America and Canada in 1975 & 76. It was the time the USA was celebrating its bi centennial. I found the film fascinating, but as with everything associated with Dylan, nothing is as it first appears to be.

At the beginning of the film Dylan claims not to remember the Rolling Thunder Revue, it was ‘before he was born and wasn’t about anything’. He comes out with a great quote, “Life isn’t about finding yourself; it’s about creating yourself”. Early in the film I was pleased to see Bob meeting a very young Patti Smith at a party and they both hit it off immediately, both being poetic kindred spirits. Patti shows him a photo of Rimbaud who was a big influence on the pair of them. I started to think the film wasn’t exactly the straightforward documentary I thought it was when this character called Stefan Van Dorp appears and claims to have filmed all the original footage. I had never heard of him and when I googled his name it turns out he was entirely fictitious. Maybe Dylan and Scorsese are making a point about us living in the age of fake news. We shouldn’t believe everything we see. Songs which would shortly appear on the Desire album are a large part of the film and there is a lot of footage and an interview with the violinist Scarlet Rivera who appears to be almost as enigmatic as Dylan himself. There are fabulous versions of One More Cup Of Coffee, Isis and Oh Sister from the Desire album.

When on stage Dylan wears white face paint throughout the film. When asked about that he said, “Everyone should wear a mask, a person wearing a mask tells you the truth”. This reminded me a little of David Bowie during his mime period and I wondered if that was where Bob got the idea, especially with Mick Ronson being in the band. Actress Sharon Stone appears and claims that she gave Dylan the idea when he saw her wearing a Kiss t-shirt. In reality Sharon Stone never saw Dylan on that tour and the whole interview with her is pure acting. By now I was beginning to think that all the interviews in the film were scripted, especially when a character claiming to be a Republican congressman said that Jimmy Carter phoned Bob to get him a ticket for a show.

Bob & Patti Smith.

One of my favourite people in the film was Allen Ginsberg who seemed like a voice of reason in all the craziness and a peacemaker. One of the best scenes is where Allen is reading his mad poetry to an audience of old ladies in a community hall. I also enjoyed the scenes of Dylan and Ginsberg visiting Jack Kerouac’s grave in Lowell and reading from Mexico City Blues. Beat poetess Anne Waldman also appears in the film. It is a very Beat film when you think about it.

Bob & Allen Ginsberg

Other scenes I enjoyed were when Joni Mitchell joined the tour and sang Coyote with Bob & Roger McGuinn. Also, when Dylan visited an Indian reservation and sang The Ballad Of Ira Hayes to an audience of Native Americans. That song was written by Pete La Farge. A very moving scene was Bob singing The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll and visiting Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter in the Clinton Correctional Institution. I should also mention the large contribution of Joan Baez to the film although now I’m not sure if all her interview is real or not either.

One thing you can’t doubt is the music which is fabulous and the genius of Dylan who remains a mystery shrouded within an enigma. It all ends in Montreal with Bob and McGuinn singing Knocking On Heaven’s Door. The film is over two hours long, but I was so engrossed in it that the time flew by. I highly recommend this film which is a must see for all Dylan fans.

Bob Dylan, Rolling Thunder Revue "Hard Rain" 1975 | Netflix

A Dark Place.

Sorry I haven’t written a blog recently, but I have been in a dark place. Yes, the cupboard under the stairs. It is only eleven days now until I go to Glastonbury, so I thought it was high time to dig out my tent, rucksack and sleeping bag. I haven’t used them for two years, but they all seem to be in good order. I’ll take them outside for a good airing once it stops raining. It has rained for days, almost non-stop. I’m not worried about that though. I would rather it rained now and not during Glasto. I got my official letter of invitation from Fiona who is in charge of the recycling crew today, so I’m getting quite excited. I’ll study the line-up in the next couple of days and let you know who I hope to see. I ended up sorting out that cupboard for a whole couple of hours and threw out loads of stuff that had accumulated in there over the last few years. I felt quite pleased that I had achieved something.

I haven’t got much other news. I found a few interesting books on my travels. One was a signed first USA edition of The Falls by Joyce Carol Oates. She is a prolific American author. I have never read any of her books, but I thought it might be worth a few quid as it is signed. It’s not worth as much as I hoped though. I think she must do a lot of book signings.

 I also found a nice biography of James Taylor which I might actually read because he is one of my favourite singer-songwriters. A Glimpse Of Nothingness is a nice hardback copy from 1975 written by a Dutch man about his life in an American Zen community. I have started reading that and it’s very interesting. Finally, I found a first edition of a book called Journey Of Insight Meditation by Eric Lerner.

One of the interesting things about this writer is that for forty years he was a close friend and neighbour of Leonard Cohen. As you know Cohen was Jewish but interested in other religions as well. When he was asked how he could be Jewish and practice Zen Buddhism he replied, "Allen Ginsberg asked me the same question many years ago", he said. "Well, for one thing, in the tradition of Zen that I've practiced, there is no prayerful worship and there is no affirmation of a deity. So theologically there is no challenge to any Jewish belief." Cohen was involved with Buddhism beginning in the 1970s and was ordained a Buddhist monk in 1996 but he continued to consider himself Jewish: "I'm not looking for a new religion.

 I'm quite happy with the old one, with Judaism." Beginning in the late 1970s, Cohen was associated with Buddhist monk and rōshi (venerable teacher) Kyozan Joshu Sasaki who regularly visited him at Mount Baldy Zen Center and served  as his personal assistant during Cohen's period of reclusion at Mount Baldy monastery in the 1990s. Eric Lerner published another book in 2018 about his friendship with Leonard called Matters Of Vital Interest. I’ll look out for that book as well because I wouldn’t mind reading it.

I can’t think of anything else to tell you about at the moment, but if anything exciting happens you will be the first to know. See you later.

Photo taken from official Glastonbury website today.

Van Morrison & Dr. John

When I lived in Peterborough back in the mid 1970’s we used to have all night music sessions at a friends house when his parents were away. A character called Graham used to dominate the proceedings and make everyone listen to his music heroes who were Captain Beefheart and Dr. John aka The Night Tripper or the Gris-Gris man. That was my introduction to the music of Dr. John, although In 1969 I liked a record by Marsha Hunt called Walk On Gilded Splinters but I didn’t know back then that it was written by Dr. John. It was in 1979 that I first saw the film The Last Waltz and Dr. John sang Such A Night. Van Morrison stole the show in that film when he sang Caravan.

I can’t claim to have ever been a huge fan of Dr. John because I didn’t ever see him in concert or buy any of his albums. I mainly liked him because of his collaborations with Van Morrison. I think they first met at the Last Waltz concert and became friendly and Van invited Dr. John to co-produce his A Period Of Transition album of 1977. This is what Dr. John said about that.

“During the filming of The Last Waltz, Martin Scorsese's tribute to The Band, I became friendly with Van Morrison. While we was hanging out, Van mentioned to me that he wanted to do a record of the old R&B stuff that had inspired him. We threw it around for a while, and later he called to hire me as producer and asked if I could get a rhythm section hooked up to come to England. 

I managed to hijack part of Stevie Wonder's rhythm section--Ollie Brown on drums and Reggie McBride on bass, plus Ray Parker, Jr., on rhythm guitar, along with myself on piano. These guys were absolutely happening at the time; they'd just finished recording Stevie's Songs in the Key of Life, and were considered one of the hipper rhythm sections. We flew over, went up to meet Van in Oxford, and we were sitting at the table eating when Ray Parker started getting nervous 'cause his guitar hadn't come through customs. A high-strung person, Ray began to laugh, which is how he acts when he gets in a new situation that sets him at angles. At one point, Van got the idea that Ray was laughing at him--he'd missed the origin of Ray's hilarity. We wound up the next day with Van firing Ray Parker. Now, this was a time when Ray was playing on sessions with Diana Ross, Marvin Gaye, and heaps of other stars. He'd cancelled stuff like that to come do the gig with Van, and Van shot him down before he even got started. Suddenly we ain't got a guitarist, and Ray's pissed with me because I'm the one who contracted him. I told Reggie and Ollie, "Look, guys, we're going to make this record no matter what," and even though they were a little weirded out, they stuck it out because they wanted to go through with it. 

We all hung in there because Van just draws in musicians on account of his powerful singing; he may not have the best personality to deal with people, but the mystical quality of his voice could make you go through hell in dealing with him. During the session I have strange memories of him auditioning a lot of guitar players--a group that included many of the premier players of England, who had driven up from London to Oxford to make the gig. There were players all over the studio; I'd give one guy a downbeat, he'd hit one note, and Van would cut him off--"Next!" It went on and on like that: The whole Chris Barber Band came there to play on a tune, and they all got axed real fast, too. It was one long continual confusement, and it all came out of the Ray Parker fiasco. We never did find a steady player, so Van and I ended up splitting the guitar duties ourselves. We finally used Marlo Henderson, who along with Reggie and Ollie was a member of Stevie Wonder's recording band. Marlo recorded his lead guitar parts during overdubbing sessions later in LA. 

The same troubles hampered our work throughout these sessions. I had written some horn charts for the album and came to the studio ready to do the horns, but Van had fired most of the horn section! We had to wing it with just Jerry Jumonville and Joel Peskin on saxes, a sudden change of direction that made the horn charts useless, because I had written them for six horns. I shouldn't have been surprised at all this. I'd heard stories about how difficult Van could be from Stuart Levine and Joe Sample and the Jazz Crusaders, who had collaborated with Van on an album not long before. At the time, the Jazz Crusaders were the premier band in the land, but whatever went down, apparently it wasn't right on the nail enough for Van. After they finished the record, Van changed his mind, decided he didn't like the album, and erased it. He's probably one of the few guys that I ever felt like punching out in the middle of a session, but I didn't do it--not because I didn't feel like it but because I respected his singing so much. I really did get that mad at him sometimes; he's a very hard guy to deal with, but he has a thing about him that I iust dig. His music is powerful. He's a mystical cat and I got to respect that in him. I figure the more talent there is in people, the bigger pain in the ass they usually are”.

Despite the difficulties in that recording Van and the doctor became firm friends. They did gigs together. I have a bootleg somewhere called The Wonderland Tapes from a concert they did  in The Netherlands. Van even mentions him in the song Russian Roulette on the Days Like This album of 1995. ‘I think that you've caught on, that you've been used and all, I'm going down New Orleans, I've got to see Dr. John, Got my mojo working everything will be fine. Stop playing Russian Roulette with my mind’. Dr. John popped up again when he appeared on the Skiffle Sessions album of 1998 with Van and Lonnie Donegan. I think that came about purely by coincidence because Dr. John happened to be playing at another venue in Belfast at the same time and came along to Van’s gig and played piano on some of the tracks. Dr. John also co-wrote the song Quality Street on the Hymns To The Silence album of 1991. If you scroll down you can see a fabulous video of Van singing Moondance on an American TV show. As well as Dr. John it also features Carlos Santana, George Benson, Etta James Tom Scott and others. It really is brilliant.

I think because of his friendship with Dr. John and his admiration for other musicians from New Orleans Van has always had a special affinity with that great city which is why he might have contributed the song Blue And Green to an album to raise money for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. The two of them remained firm friends right to the end and I’m sure Van must be upset today to hear that his friend has passed away.