Hideaway - John Mayall and the Blues Breakers
In recent years there have been many documentaries on Los Angeles hill district Laurel Canyon, the mountainous, wooded valley that in the late sixties became home to the West Coast American elite. These documentaries talk of the magical moment where Graham Nash met David Crosby and Stephen Stills at Joni Mitchell's house, of the great parties held by Mama Cass Elliot (of the Mamas and the Papas), and stories of residents who included Neil Young, Carole King James Taylor, Jim Morrison, the Byrds, the Monkees and so on. One of those seldom mentioned as a Laurel Canyon resident is Timothy Leary (see last post) who moved there after his release from prison in 1976 and lived there until shortly before his death in 1996. Another is English blues legend John Mayall who died last July 22nd and lived there from 1969 to 1979.
Around about 1960 a friend, Laurence Baylis, was playing saxophone in an r&b covers group that was gigging in south London pubs, and featured the brothers Robin and Peter Sarstedt (later two-hit and one-hit wonders respectively). One Saturday night, after a gig, their lead guitarist walked out on them, leaving them just enough time to get an ad for a replacement into Melody Maker for the following Thursday's issue so that they could fulfil a booking for Friday night. They had only one response and a quick phone call established that the respondent could play all the songs on their playlist as well as make the following night. In the event the band thought they had blundered when the kid - for he looked no older than fifteen - turned up a mere five minutes before they were due on. As soon as they launched into their first number, however, all worries evaporated: he played like a dream.
At this point in the story, Laurence paused, then sadly intoned, "the next day we rang him and laid him off". "But why", I asked, "you just said he was a superb guitarist?" Another pause. "The problem was, he was so good, he made us all look like shit, like the amateurs we were. His name was Eric, Eric Clapton".
From late 1962, Mayall was a vital component in the London blues scene that was the kindling for the heavy rock explosion of the mid sixties that began with Cream and Jimi Hendrix. His band, called the Bluesbreakers from '63 onwards, gained a reputation of being among the hottest performers on the capital's blues/rock scene, but it was only when Eric Clapton joined, his reputation recently established with his stint in the Yardbirds, that they reached the notice of the wider public through album sales. Clapton had left the Yardbirds because he thought they'd "sold out" with their latest pop-orientated release, the hit "For Your Love", and hitched up with Mayall to get back to his beloved electric, Chicago-style blues
Mayall's first studio album, "John Mayall Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton" reached number 6 on the 1966 UK album charts, is a classic of blues/rock and did much to set in motion Mayall's reputation as the "John the Baptist" of blues/rock as well as Clapton's as one of the foremost British guitarists of his time.
Here, on Freddie King's instrumental "Hideaway", he shows why, carving out a template for what was to become the de rigueur rock solo format, complete with early hints of distortion and fuzz feedback, as well as his picking in which he somehow seems to have all the time in the world to fit in those notes, like a sportsman "has timing" as he hits the ball, or runs through a gap, and everything seems to slow down around him.
Due to Clapton reading a copy of the iconic kids' comic "the Beano" on the cover photograph, the album is popularly known as "the Beano Album" and it's an apt title considering the word means "any noisy celebration, a party".
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