Alex Gitlin - Meeting Keef Hartley

Meeting Keef Hartley

It was a weird journey - mentally - travelling from star to star, being overawed and overwhelmed with my encounters and revelations, I was bracing to store as much as I could into my memory vaults, as things seemed to be happening too fast... John Lawton one evening, Paul Newton the next (even if it was only a phone conversation) and finally Keef Hartley - one of my life's biggest heroes - the night before my flight back to Boston...

We (I and Mike Taylor, my faithful stalwart and host) made a 5-hour pilgrimage to see one of the living drumming legends to Preston, Lancashire on Tuesday, December 15, 1998. Woke up at an ungodly hour of the morning, no time for showers, straight into the car, to the ferry from the Island to the mainland, barely caught one (and it had some nice cows inside one of the lorries on board!), then back into the car and the journey began for real. It was a rainy, damp, typically British morning for us, getting stuck in the congestion, as we were making our way past Manchester, Birmingham, etc., the cities and towns we were passing seemed to be a blur, stopping over for coffee at a roadside "Little Chef" - a nice little place - against the rain and the odds..!

We entertained ourselves by playing some Heep and Keef Hartley Band CDs, singing along, making comments and simply talking whenever I was not dozing off... How Mike managed to stay alive, afloat and awake during those weary hours of the journey remains a mystery to me - such stamina, my hats off!

Finally, some 5 hours later, we took the Oldham junction - that's deep in the heart of Lancashire, and I could tell as much: there was sheep everywhere! Mike told me an interesting anecdote, if you see sheep with a red or a blue imprint, that means it's been shagged by a ram, who they provide with the paint in advance. This way of marking helps farmers to identify which sheep is expecting... All sorts of ungodly images of Gene Wilder in the famous Woody Allen movie, "Everything you've always wanted to

know about sex but were afraid to ask" permeated my mind, and so we carried on... The house we were staying at, Mike's sister's, is a huge one, isolatedly situated in the midst of the Lancashire mountains, not too far from John Lees' house. John, of course, is the lead singer, guitarist and the founder member of British prog legends Barclay James Harvest... Take the sheep away, and you find yourself deep in the midsts of Vermont - the climate is very similar, and so are the surroundings. Alas, John wasn't

home, so this was not to be.

Back "home", I phoned Rob Corich and we chatted for 15-20 minutes about all things Heep, Gunhill, Red Steel and of course his superb work on Castle remasters.

The rest of the evening before our journey to Preston went by quite uneventfully, socialising, eating broccoli and showering (at last!) - I only remember a lot of dogs and a lot of kids in the house, so I was stepping around very lightly, trying not to trip over either of them.

At about 6 pm, we were off to Preston, and - deja vu - on the way I saw the places I'd remembered from my stay in 1994: Bolton, Wigan, Blackpool and Blackburn, painted on the road signs... Only 4 years ago, I was riding the British Rail, on the way to Quo gigs taking place in Blackpool and Blackburn, this time I was inside a warm and cozy 1998 Daihatsu (English Toyota - same manufacturer), technically in the driver's seat, although it was weird looking at Mike holding the steering wheel and driving in the

passenger's seat on the right. :-)

It didn't take us too long to find the place, it was one hour's drive, but during that one hour, I kept thinking about the man, the legend, the giant of rock that I am going to meet - what would he look like? I had expected an old, wrinkly, bearded man who never smiles... Well, I was dead wrong about the "smiling" bit. :-) Yet, I'll challenge any one of you to find me a photo of Keef from the 60s or the 70s where he smiles.

Keef's career has been well documented in Miguel's excellent "Musicians Olympus" Page - he's played with the likes of the Artwoods in the 60s, featuring Jon Lord, and John Mayall's Bluesbreakers (I once bought Mayall's 1967 "Crusade" album BECAUSE I saw Hartley credited for playing drums on it!), and in the 70s, he put together his own, very successful jazz-rock combo, the Keef Hartley Band, featuring such luminaries of blues and rock as Chris Mercer on sax (ex-Mayall), Mick Weaver on keyboards (one of my most favourite keyboard players), brilliant guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Miller Anderson and of course would-be Uriah Heep bassist Gary Thain. KHB, amongst other places, have played at the Whiskey A Go Go in L.A., The Orpheum Theatre in Boston, and right before Santana (I believe) at the original Woodstock festival. They were a very popular attraction in the late 60s/early 70s, pioneering, along with the likes of Chicago, Ashton Gardner & Dyke, Colosseum, If and many others, this big, in-your-face, brassy, jazzy

and ballsy progressive rock style, before the trends changed towards glitter and glam with the arrival of David Bowie, Gary Glitter, et. al.

[At this point I think it's worthy of mentioning that KHB were part of the Bron organisation (Bronze) which is how Heep got hold of Thain and that Del Roll was Tour Manager for KHB before transferring to Heep.]

Aside from these, Keef has played drums on 4 albums by renowned English folkie Michael Chapman, 2 early 70s Vinegar Joe albums (featuring Robert Palmer and Elkie Brooks) and participated in numerous reunions of the Bluesbreakers in the 70s, touring with John Mayall along the way, before fizzling out, sadly, as trends in music had changed, resorting in the 80s to cabinet making - well, apparently, in addition to being a really brilliant drummer, he must be a mean carpenter!!

We found Fazackerley Drive very fast and without a problem - it was a lone, desolate street in a not-at-all crowded city of Preston, paved with boulders... I kept thinking, what does Fazackerley stand for? Sounds like a bloody shag. Oh well... Keef later explained that Fazackerley was a surname of this South African-born war general in the 18th or 19th century, but I don't remember exactly what he said. Keef's a walking encyclopedia - he seems to know everything about everything, a truly amazing individual.

With trepidation, I entered the door of the town house, belonging to Ian, Keef's manager, and looked around... Well, of course I shook hands with Ian first!! There was such mess everywhere - a very eclectic place! There were record LPs lying around on the floor (Ian is a second hand LP shop owner), a

TV set playing cartoons, Ian's lovely 8 year old daughter (well, I think she's 8) running around, her mother sitting on the couch in front of the TV, a dog, a "halfbreed" German Shepherd that looks very much like the one captured on the cover of Keef's 1973 solo record, Lancashire Hustler, a very lively scene. In the left hand corner, near the window, there was this old bearded man in a ski hat, not uttering a move or a sound, as if he was stoned, sat in a chair. "Hello Keef", said I with a fake bout of courage, and the magic moment took place - we shook hands. Keef has this warmth and this ironic sparkle and a smirk in his eyes, and, yes, he does smile and has a great sense of humour. He was dressed like a village drunk, but who cares,

thought I! I wasn't expecting Rolls Royses or champagne - that's for Robin Leach and Ed McMahon - this is a genuinely nice, down to Earth, English bloke who feels right at home where he is - in Preston, Lancashire - this IS, effectively, his home, always was, always will be.

It was hard to take the "we're not worthy" stance with someone like him - he looks nothing like a rock star, and people around him treat him like an equal, with not a tiny little bit of reverence, and at times, oddly enough, with irreverence, when they joke about (all in good humour, mind you). For example, Ian's wife saying about this new album Keef has played drums on, in a broad Lancashire accent, "The drumming is crap!" No, she doesn't mean it. :-) Keef is very easy going, he doesn't get offended easily...

He was, however, a bit overwhelmed with this weird American bloke, who travelled half way around the world just to meet him. A weird 28-year old bloke!

"So how did you get into my music then", Keef bemusingly quipped... "Well, the Heep connection is quite obvious - Gary Thain - that was one channel via which I've found out about KHB. Look At Yourself is my

favourite Heep album and I've been a Heep fan since 1981, but I've also taken active interest in yourself and other prominent session musicians of that time period, and once even bought a John Mayall Bluesbreakers CD "Crusade" just because you played drums on it". That's a bit like tossing

out the entire chicken just to get to the wishbone, right? Not to me, it isn't.

"You've been one of my life's biggest heroes for years now", I added, to which Keef quickly replied, "Ah, so you're the one!" :-)

I kept adding bits and pieces to the conversation which continued to make the situation weirder and weirder as far as Keef was concerned, "Mick Weaver is one of my biggest keyboard influences" (Keef said, yes, he's the best: Peter Dines was good too, but not nearly as good as Mick), "Chris Mercer is now on the internet, you can contact him..." - "Yes I know, I've received his Peter Green gig report, he's quite a sarcastic individual these days"...

Seemed there was nothing there was to know about KHB that I didn't know: names of full time members and session players who only stayed around for one album, the famous "sacking" incident with John Mayall... John Mayall sacked people left and right, from his band, as there was a general understanding that no one would stay in his band for good - it was a good jumping ground, a springboard of sorts, for many a prominent musician, from Peter Green to John McVie and from Mick Taylor to Aynsley Dunbar and Keef himself... In fact, personnel lists of various incarnations of the Bluesbreakers in the 60s and the 70s read like a gigantic "who's who of British session scene" book.

There was never any kind of animosity between the sacker and the sackee, but to play up the "firing" bit in a humourous fashion, Keef had put on a taped recording of a telephone conversation between himself and John Mayall, in the beginning of his first album, where John sacks Keef. At the end of that same album, there's another one in which Keef fires John!

Melody Maker printed the news about Keef's sacking at the time, completely distorting the facts! "Due to musical differences", it read, "The two had decided to part ways". Keef phoned them the next morning, saying, "It's bollocks - I've been fired!" - "Well", said the voice on the other end, "We don't print stuff like that - we print, Musical differences"...

The fact that I had come from Russia with my family in 1988 was really the straw that broke the camel's back. I don't think I was the only one having this massive hallucination of meeting Keef Hartley that evening - Keef himself probably thought he was going through some sort of a weird, transcendental trip - maybe too much ale... After all, how real is this, a Russian bloke from the States who knows everything about Keef and his entire career???

It was time to bring Keef up to date about all things Heep. He didn't know David was dead. He didn't know about Ken's current whereabouts, the fact that Ken has left Heep in 1980 or what he'd been up to musically and socially since. I must say, he wasn't too pleased to hear about Ken's choice to become a born-again Christian (which happened after Ken had suffered a heart attack), but there was no animosity there - it's just that to him, Ken as a priest or a preacher sounded mind-boggling, unrealistic.

After all, the last time he'd seen Ken would probably be 1972 or thereabouts. But people change...

Keef Hartley Band have opened up for Heep many times on various tours, as I understand, which is how they got to know each other. Keef described the famous episode with the vodka bottle which has been well documented by Todd Fisher in the past - at the end of the show, Heep would introduce each member of the band and as each member was introduced, they would do a short solo. When Mick did his solo he would do it one-handed with his left hand doing hammer-ons on the fretboard and his right arm in the air. The roadies would then lower a Vodka bottle filled with water from above the stage into Mick's hand where he would proceed to drink it. This was the standard stage trick!

One day, the group decided to play a prank on him, and Del Roll filled the bottle with real vodka. As Mick played his first chords of the solo, he took a large swig and nearly choked on the stuff - Bloody Hell, what is this?? But being true to his wild stage persona, he completed the solo and finished the bottle in one go after that... and swiftly proceeded to fall down on his face!

Keef did speak a bit about Gary Thain, his old friend... Gary really enjoyed the jazzier music of KHB, but not the straight-ahead gothic heavy rock of Uriah Heep. The money was good, so Gary decided to stay and see what happens. And we all know how precious his contributions on bass were to the formation of the classic, most definitive Heep lineup's sound... Effectively, though, by joining Uriah Heep, Gary embarked on a very self-destructive path - as he was now in a company of drug addicts, he started using drugs himself, which is what eventually killed him.

I'll make a small interlude here and go back to one of my previous nights and my encounter with John Lawton. John said (and Keef has confirmed) that the amount of shock Gary had received from the microphone was enough to kill a human being. What Ken said about Gary being out of it, weakened by drugs and drink, etc., may have been true, but if he was of sober and clear mind and had a physique of Arnold Schwarzenegger, this would've been enough to blow him off stage and put him straight into

the hospital. So this is the rebuttal to Ken's words from 1988.

We remembered also other great luminaries of the British blues and rock scene of the time, Alex and Lesley Harvey - Alex, of course, being of the Sensational Alex Harvey Band fame, died in 1982 of heart attack, and Lesley (died of electrocution in 1972, on stage), his brother, played guitar in the early 70s rock combo, Stone the Crows, fronted by Maggie Bell. "So what was Alex like in person?" - "A typical

Scotsman - always heavy on the bottle..." - "But did he speak?" - "Oh, did he ever!" And true, Alex was one of the most unlikely but also one of the most prominent spokesmen of the early 70s rock generation - the kids loved him, and he was near 40 at the time - in the age when a rock musician past the 30 mark was considered as a "has been".

I don't remember the exact order in which things happened at this point, but I think this is where Mike inserted his tale about seeing Heep and Alex Harvey Band at the Alexandra Pallas some time in 1972...

We talked about various other members of KHB - Dave Caswell, Spit James, and Mick Weaver (who Keef would very much love to hear from in the near future), as well as Vinegar Joe. As you all probably know, Robert Palmer and Elkie Brooks went on to bigger successes in the 70s and the 80s, but the three classic albums (on two of which Keef played drums), "Vinegar Joe", "Six Star General" and "Rock'n'Roll Gypsies" remain undeniable rock classics of the era, as they've always been. "So what happened to the fringe jacket,

Keef, the one you were wearing on the cover of Lancashire Hustler?" - "I sold it to Elkie. It was cold, and she kept borrowing it. She seemed to really love it, and so the distances between the times when she'd borrow it and give it back became longer and longer, so one day she simply came up to me with the money, it seemed a reasonable amount, and I accepted".

Perhaps it's not fair to those who are eager to find out the basic details and anecdotes from the life of Keef Hartley Band, Dog Soldier and so forth, in a sense that I'd already known them all, so I didn't focus on any of them - if any of you are interested in further details, please e-mail me, and I'll try to provide some of them for you. In the meanwhile, a lot of that stuff has been very well documented by John Tracy in the liner notes to various KHB album reissues. Ian says that all of those CDs have now been deleted - sadly -

as has been the Repertoire reissue of Miller's 1971 solo album, "Bright City". Deram/London own the rights to all KHB albums, and unlike the original records, Keef hasn't seen a penny off the KHB CD reissues, for as many years as they've been in circulation. Jon Hiseman of Colosseum, Keef's

good friend, has taken it upon himself to investigate the matters and so there might be a court case looming on the horizon.

Ian's daughter was buzzing around cheerfully, as an 8 year old would, watching the cartoons one second, playing with the dog the next, and so forth. Ian and Keef hadn't eaten, so rice dishes started to appear in the

living room, as the girl kept bringing them in - "This is for mum, This is for you, this is for Keefy"... Yeah, Keefy... The kid has no idea what a giant he is, how much this man has accomplished in his life, how many

people he has made happy with his music, to her he's simply this old Santa Claus of a man, known simply as Keefy... maybe Grandpa Keefy... God bless her.

Once they were done with the meals, we took our conversation over to the nearest pub... We tried to socialise but as the techno music was coming on too strong, we each had a pint and buggered off to another pub across the street and that's where matters became a bit hairier. As I was getting more and more drunk (well, we all were), I was becoming more and more irreverent - not in a bad way, mind you, but I was no longer keeping tabs on what the hell I'm saying, and speaking more and more loudly... Mind you, this was

their intent - to get me drunk! :-) Or maybe everyone but me in there could hold their liquor better than I could. Maybe it's cause I come from America, and I don't get to drink real ale on draught quite as often in my life... The more we drank, the more times we were going to the loo. At some point, I found myself standing next to Keef, taking a piss. I couldn't find anything better to say than "Now I can tell my grandchildren than I took a piss with Keef Hartley!" - "Oh shit!", gasped Keef and literally ran

away from the toilet. Well, it was humourous of him, really. Several times during the evening, he would stand up and say to Mike, "Nice meeting you, time to change the bar", indicating that he'd had enough of my antics (again, this is not to be taken seriously, all in good humour as a windup), and for a good reason - a serious jazz-rock drummer with a legendary name in the rock industry is not expected to be taking lightly to someone singing in his ear (on top of his lungs mind you!) such pop atrocities as "Saturday Night", "Beg Steal or Borrow" or "Is this the way to Amarillo" - well, the way I look at it is, "I am drunk, so be thankful, I haven't done "Congratulations" or "Power to all our friends".

Keef asked me what I do for living, and when I told him I'm a computer engineer, he made a "shooting" motion with his fingers. -:-)

I don't remember much else of what had ensued, cause at that point, Keef had slipped me an extra strong Theakston, which I downed almost immediately, so I was well and truly rat-arsed. Maybe Mike can fill in the gaps, you know? :-) He was the only one not drinking, cause he had to drive back to Oldham. Keef's friend David, a folk singer, whose new album Keef has played drums on, announced, "And now, Alex, it's time for the wonderful British tradition..." More beers, that is, this time, I had to buy the round. No

problem - I hobbled towards the bar and threw a whole bunch of English coins onto the counter. As I started counting them, a rather attractive looking girl approached me with a comment, "Are you a student?" - "No", I gasped bewilderedly, - "Well, you're acting like one"... My reply was in a typical drunken Lancashire fashion: "If I could only figure out your soddin' money..." - "Where are you from", she inquired, and I said, "Boston" of course. I hope she didn't think Boston, U.K. as there is a city of Boston there somewhere.

Once we were finished with the pints, Keef stood up and made his announcement: "And now it's time for some Chicken... Tikka... Masala"! Therefore, the next stop was this local curry takeaway place where everybody took turns in ordering stuff. In the beginning, they all thought everyone would pay for himself, but when I proposed to pay for everyone (imagine boasting "I've once fed Keef Hartley!!!") the cheeky Keef added a starter to his main course. :-)

The rest of the evening was pretty uneventful, as we returned to the place where we all met and had our curries. I cheekily proposed my candidacy as a keyboard player for the next Keef Hartley solo album (if ever one will see the light of day) and Ian of course requested a demo tape, saying he'll pass it along to Keef and Miller and "we'll see what happens". Completely drunk at this point, and getting perturbed by the fact that he's questioning my credibility, I oddly remember shouting out very loudly, which I think may have woken up the entire Fazackerley Road, "I'll show you that I'm no turd burglar!!" (This is going back to one of our jokes that evening, which I don't care to recount here).

This all ended too soon. At the end, I gave the somewhat bewildered and befuddled Keef a big hug, and thanked him for everything... and we were well on our way back to Oldham.

Extra spicy curries tend to burn holes in my stomach and other intestines, so the next morning and early afternoon, on the way to Heathrow, I was (pardon the expression) shitting my brains out at every Little Chef location we could possibly find. But it was all very well worth it. What a fantastic evening, I only hope it's not the last time we've all met like this!..