Monday Long Song

Some time ago, probably several years by this point, John Medd and I were having a back and forth on the subject of guitar solos in rock. The exact context of the discussion has, like so many things as dotage encroaches, slipped my mind, though John, being still a mere slip of a lad, might be able to remind me. Anyhoo, my foggy memory is just clear enough to recall that during the course of our conversation I alluded to a particular formative guitar solo to which I remained inordinately, perhaps even irrationally, fond and that I would share full details in due course. Well John, the day has finally arrived!

The one-two Alan Lancaster/Rick Parfitt segue of Backwater and Just Take Me are, for me, the most exciting nine minutes in the storied history of Status Quo. The songs opened the band's third Vertigo LP, 'Quo', in 1974 and the guitar solo in question commences at 3.07, running for just 40 seconds. If I was hearing it for the first time in the cold light of 2025, there's every chance that the fairly primitive solo would slip by virtually unnoticed, but half a century ago, as a wide eyed 15 year old, I found it, and indeed both songs, utterly thrilling. 

Status Quo - Backwater/Just Take Me

Monday Long Song

I was very sad to hear of Danny Thompson's passing a couple of weeks back, at the age of 86. Unless you've tried particularly hard to avoid him, it's difficult to imagine that you don't have something or other in your collection featuring this extraordinary double bassist, whose career goes back as far as the early 1960s. I was fortunate enough to see him play with Richard Thompson on a number of occasions, with whom he also recorded, but he's also all over records by the likes of John Martyn, Nick Drake, Talk Talk, Tim Buckley, Kate Bush, The Incredible String Band and, of course, Pentangle, amongst numerous others. His first appearance in my own record collection occurred as far back 1972, when I picked up Rod Stewart's marvellous 'Every Picture Tells a Story' LP and he popped up again in 1974 on T.Rex's 'Zinc Alloy & the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow'. These days I have any number of records featuring Danny's talents sitting of my shelves, including a couple by fellow Pentangler Bert Jansch. Chief among them is 1978's 'Avocet', an instrumental paean to a selection of  various sea and wading birds. The title track is just sublime.

Bert Jansch - Avocet

Monday Long Song

For a period during the 1970s, Sweet were second only in my pop affections to the mighty T.Rex. The band's run of Chinnichap hit singles and the string of self-written hard rock nuggets tucked away on the flipsides, were chewed over and eagerly devoured by me and my music loving pals back in the day. One old school chum and I managed to see Sweet at The Rainbow twice in their 1973 glam pomp, their final UK show with the classic line-up at Hammersmith Odeon in 1978, plus a three piece Sweet show at The Lyceum in 1981, the last concert I ever attended with that particular old mucker as life gradually drew us in separate directions. About 10 years ago, 30 years after losing contact altogether, my pal and I reconnected, thanks to the miracle of the internet. We exchange Christmas cards, birthday greetings and the occasional email, but in spite of living less than 40 miles from each other, we've yet to actually meet up again.

Had he lived beyond his tragically short 51 years, Sweet's lead singer Brian Connolly would have turned 80 yesterday.

Sweet - Healer