I’m just in time for Roger Dean’s talk from the stage. I plonk my chair down in a good spot, say hello to my neighbours and watch Roger’s slide show. He shows some footage of the Topographic Oceans set I have never seen before and mentions that there is some of the Relayer set that has never seen the light of day. I wonder if he means Yes’s QPR gig which was broadcast by the BBC in 1975 and has never been released commercially except in Japan on Laserdisc and VHS some years back. If I have the opportunity to meet him, I’ll ask him.*

My first interview isn’t until the middle of the afternoon so I decide to queue up for the merchandise stall. I did try yesterday but after half an hour it had barely moved so I gave up. Today the queue moves faster and having paid for my swag, return to my chair for my first beer and to watch Joshua Burnell or more correctly, The Joshua Burnell Band. This man can rock. He can also deliver a sweet tune acoustically, do a bit of Prog and play 1980s synth-pop. It was a midday kick-off for him this Saturday and he delivers an hour of Premier League entertainment. His band are tight and are having the time of their lives. His penultimate song is Lucy, a crowd-pleasing singalong and he ends with the folky, Sing For The Island. A bit of an all-rounder then, I make a note to catch up on his catalogue. 

Kiki Dee’s voice I’ve loved since she recorded Amoureuse in 1973 and today she is in a duo with Camelo Luggeri. His guitar playing and arrangements compliment Kiki’s voice and harmonise with it in an extraordinary way. They take Don’t Go Breaking My Heart to a whole new world and do the same with Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill. They are called out for an encore and there’s a nice reunion when they are joined onstage by Fairport drummer, Dave Mattacks, who was the drummer on the original recording of Amoureuse. Tony Kesley from Robert Plant’s band also joined in the fun and nostalgia swept across the arena. Robert, by the way, is at Cropredy most years, including this year, just because he loves it.

Actually, I thought I was prepared for everything today but nothing can prepare you for Peat & Diesel if, like, me you have never heard of them. Three blokes shamble onto the stage, they seem disinterested in the crowd. All three sit down, one behind a drum kit, one with an electric guitar and the third with an accordion, decorated with the St Andrews cross. They take a while to start, I wonder what’s going on and then BAM! Somehow this trio creates a wall of sound Phil Spector would envy. I can’t understand what the singer is singing, the guitarist doesn’t play the solos, there’s no bass player, none of it makes any sense…and it is fantastic! I’m hypnotised, can’t take my eyes off them. I think the third song is called Call If You Matter† and scribble that in my notebook as they finish it, after which the accordion player speaks to the audience. ‘We’re not a professional band. We played to a hundred people at a beach party last night so we’re a bit surprised to see all you’ after which he turns to the guitarist and says ‘Do you want to say anything Boydie?’ ‘No’ says Boydie without looking up and then they go into another song I can’t understand. It doesn’t matter. Music transcends all languages, right? That includes broad accents from the Western Islands of Scotland.

I have to split towards the end of their set as I now have to go and do my first interview of the day. Stevie is enjoying the sunshine when I arrive and sets off to find John Ford for me.

John Ford

I interviewed John at length some years back online (link) so this was really just a catch-up and to meet the man in person. Here for the Strawbs farewell gig, he now resides in the US.

Q: Good to be back in England John?

JF: Yes! I haven’t been here for ten years, I think.

Q: Been putting your feet up and watching the BBC? (a rather pathetic attempt at humour on my part, referring to one of John’s songs from his last solo album)

JF: No, I haven’t watched any TV. I don’t know why but I switched it on and I was looking for Blue Peter and Tomorrow’s World and Top Of The Pops and it wasn’t there…I mean, what happened to the BBC? (laughs) The rest of it was cable channels so I never watched it.

Q: Thanks for sending me the Lucky Dangerous CD. Did you have any involvement in it? ††

JF: No I’m not involved; it’s just my son’s band. Similar to the White Stripes, it’s just the drums and him. I went to see them out on the island a few weeks ago, there were five bands on and they blew the rest of them off the stage. Somehow it works. The reason there isn’t a bass player live is because he hasn’t found a good one and he plays bass on the record. He produced it as well and he also plays in my band, The John Ford Band.

Q: He comes from good stock John.

JF: Thanks, but he’s done it all himself. I’ve showed him nothing.

Q: No doubt you know there’s a lot of controversy in America at the moment about AI being used in Hollywood. It’s only a matter of time before it comes to the music business – experiments are already being done. Could AI write a John Ford song?

JF: Well, who knows in the future? I don’t know. A lot of people have been saying that computers just don’t have the integration of the brain. For all we know, when we are long gone, AI may take over the world like in 2001: A Space Odyssey and the ship’s computer. Maybe or maybe not but there are people like Elon Musk saying we should stop researching that stuff. We may be witnessing the birth of a new species, things develop so fast these days. Look at the last ten years; can you walk around without a cellphone?

I reply that I can but that I am unwillingly, becoming more and more reliant on them and there we have to end as Stevie is signalling that I have another interviewee ready.  After photos, John says ‘Thanks, we’ll catch up later’ and strolls off back to Strawbs dressing room. Two minutes later, Stevie informs me that the next interview is with Kiki Dee and Carmelo Luggeri in their dressing room. My pass doesn’t admit me into this part of the backstage area but Stevie is a magic wand at security and I swish through with her. As it happens, Strawbs dressing room is next to Kiki and Carmelo’s who haven’t quite finished their current interview so John and I start talking again. This time it’s about old friends. John grew up with Dave Dufort, the drummer with Angel Witch, Dave’s sister, Denise, is the drummer in Girlschool who I was a roadie for in a previous life; we’ve been friends for over forty years. As we are talking, Dave Cousins appears at the dressing room door. He recognises me as the bloke who did an interview with him on Zoom a few weeks a back (link) and comes out to say hello; that was a nice moment. We just have time for a photo before Stevie signals that Kiki and Carmelo are ready for me. It’s a case of outside in the sunshine and the current band onstage or the dressing room for a bit of peace and quiet. We opt for the latter.

​

Kiki Dee & Camelo Luggeri

As a kid, I bought all Kiki’s 45’s in the seventies and later, was amazed to discover she was the backing vocalist in the sixties for one of my favourites, Dusty Springfield. Carmelo’s name I have on albums by Julian Lennon and Andy Williams and was transfixed by his playing today. Kiki offers me a glass of wine as we take our seats. How could I possibly refuse?

Q: So Kiki, what’s the secret of eternal youth?

CL and KD: (laugh)

KD: I don’t look like this when I wake up in the morning. I scrub up well as they say. It’s quite an athletic thing to keep your voice and it mentally keeps you young when you are out there challenging yourself.

Q: You do look terrific…

KD: Thank you!

Q: He’s quite a guitarist, isn’t he? (I gesture to Carmelo) Where did you find him?

KD: Yes! We met through Steve Brown who was instrumental in Elton’s career. He’s a very creative man and he put us together in the mid-nineties saying that he thought we could work together and felt that we both wanted to move on and do something new. Carmelo did a couple of tracks for a ‘Best of Kiki Dee’ album and we’ve been working together ever since.

CL: I saw Kiki as a schoolboy and when I heard her in the studio I just thought ‘Oh my God!.’ You know, we both came from band backgrounds. I had long hair like yours and I was an electric player and when Kiki and I did a promo tour and I played acoustic guitar, Steve said there was something happening and he kept persuading us to go that way. We were kind of under his mentoring at the time and doing all kinds of stuff and it’s been twenty-nine years now and it’s been a ball. Obviously it’s been a great gig for me but one of the things I want people to see is that there is a lot more to Kiki than Don’t Go Breaking My Heart. I know she’s sat here next to me but she’s a writer, an improviser…she ‘s brilliant.

Q: Well, you’re doing a good job of that and I agree. When you sing with Dusty Springfield, you just have to be good.

KD: Oh I loved Dusty! I sang on some of her earlier records.

Q: I know you did and I have footage of you from the NME concert in 1966 singing onstage with her.

KD: Oh bless you! Yeah, she was amazing. That’s a whole story in itself. I got signed to a record deal when I was sixteen and they gave me a manager (Vic Billings) and then two weeks after he signed me, he signed Dusty and I was completely star struck! I loved The Springfields and those frocks she wore. The hoop skirts and her hair…star struck. I got to sing on Little By Little and Some Of Your Loving and a couple of others we did live. It was just lovely to work with such a great artist. She was a very special lady.

Q: I bet she was. Carmelo, let’s go back to your guitar playing for a moment. When you write, you write for Kiki but arranging is a completely different thing. Let’s take Running Up That Hill as an example. You have a great singer with Kiki but Kate Bush is a completely different range…

CL: Yes. Good point.

Q: …so how do you set about doing that? I’m watching you and you are playing some weird chords up there.

KD: Sorry to interrupt but I must say the production of that is quite beautiful.

Q: Interrupt as much as you like Kiki. (smiles)

CL: That particular one, there was an Italian guitarist who terrified me because he was so good and he showed me A-tuning. When I got home, I changed it a bit and I came up with that arrangement but then, looking for Kiki’s tonality, is almost the most important thing. I might do three different versions, each one just a semi-tone apart until I say ‘That’s the one’ because her tone is like a Rolls-Royce to me. Lyrically as well, we tend to look for things that have a bit of depth to them. Onstage, we normally do about two hours so we look for a lyric that Kiki can get into, some of them are our songs and others are interesting covers and some of Kiki’s songs as well as you heard. Sometimes we do a cover and it might be in the set for three or four weeks but it’s not great. You’ve picked on one that when we first played it, I thought ‘This is a keeper’ because even I think we’ve written it.

All: (laughter)

CL: We did send it to Kate Bush actually and she wrote us a nice letter and she loved it.

KD: I think she liked the fact that we hadn’t stolen here song. We had taken it and put something else to it.

CL: When you listen to the studio version on the A Walk Of Faith album, what is amazing about it is that hardly any of Kiki’s melodies are the same as Kate’s – she’s just completely changed it. That’s what Kiki does. She can twist a melody. You saw in the set we do Don’t Go Breaking My Heart but we don’t do the little Pop version. We had to do it in a way which is more mature. She sings it on her own, slowed down and it gives a slightly different feeling to it and it fits what we do.

Q: And a stroke of genius putting it in as the second song I might add.

CL: Thank you very much! Kiki wanted to change it around!

KD: I did!

All: (laughter)

Q: The covers/arrangements are lovely but I also did notice today that your songs went over just as well as the more familiar material.

KD: There’s nothing greater – and I think I speak for Carmelo here as well – than to do a song that you’ve written, to put it out to an audience and to feel they are with it. You can’t buy that, the connection they have with it. I started off so young as a product, still developing as a person at sixteen years old, so I’ve always loved artists who go on regardless, just being who they are. You know when Bob Dylan went electric and he was criticised, I don’t know what he was feeling inside but he certainly came across as if he couldn’t care less. I love that and I suppose I aspire to a bit of that. Just being yourself and when you are relaxed these days, you have more chance to be yourself.

Q: So here’s a big question for you. Carmelo, you are very pedantic about your playing and arrangements and Kiki, I noticed today that your voice is a lot more expressive now than it ever was…

KD: Wow…thank you.

Q: …so, could AI write or do an arrangement for you two?

(Camelo has fits of laughter. Once he settles down, Kiki answers the question)

KD: I’ll tell you what my take is on it. When things are too perfect – like a lot of Pop production now – it loses something. There’s a Johnny Cash AI thing we heard but we knew it wasn’t him because it’s too in tune. The extraordinary thing about Johnny was that he could sing out of tune and still sound amazing and that’s what makes it human. Hopefully, in my mind, the more AI comes into society. I think people will revert to stuff that’s slightly out of tune. The sixties Pop music is so out of tune but it’s so good! It’s that humanity that music needs. It does worry me a bit I have to say.

Q: It’s never going to happen live though Kiki.

KD: No. There will be an audience that want to get a bit drunk, hear a few songs they know and jig about and they will like it but anybody who wants that connection and that musical experience, they won’t.

Q: I think you are right.

CL: It’s a difficult subject. There will be a place for it but we all grew up with real players and there are certain productions that I just can’t bear. To be honest though – and I’m going to speak for Kiki as well this time – we haven’t got a clue what’s totally going on out there. We are just doing are own thing and hoping that someone will like it.

I tell them to keep going at what they do because that is what audiences want now, thank them graciously and we step outside into the sunshine. Stevie is still there and both yesterday and today has been taking photos for me so once again, she steps in as photographer. Sadly, I have to leave. I tell them it’s been a pleasure talking to them and Carmelo pumps my hand vigorously saying ‘likewise’. Kiki says it was a pleasure to talk to me and to stay in touch – rest assured I’ll be doing that Ms. Dee. John and Dave are still outside the Strawbs dressing room and I wish them all the best for the gig. Adam Wakeman is there engrossed in a tablet; Blue Weaver sits on the steps without a care in the world. I’d love to hang out in Strawbsville but it’s time to move on.

Easy Star All-Stars are doing their thing as I return to my pitch. It’s good festival music. Their interpretations of Classic Rock songs are clever and evidence that genres are interchangeable. The guy to my right isn’t so impressed and lets me know that ‘he just doesn’t like Reggae much’. Fair enough, we can’t all like everything. We strike up a conversation about the bands that have played so far, the weather and Japan (‘Never been there…don’t like travelling much’). He was nodding his head and had a smile on his face when the Easy Stars play their final number though, Bowie’s Starman, although I can’t say for sure if it’s because he was getting into it along with the rest of the audience or because I had bought him a pint of Hooky.

There’s twenty minutes before the next band and I’m hungry. Yesterday, being lazy, I opted for the closest stall, Flaming Cactus selling Tex-Mex food but today I have a good look around and plump for the Welsh Oggie. They are monsters and they are delicious. Google them. I’m still munching on it when Richie Owens & The Farm Bureau start their first song. I confess to never having heard him before but I immediately love his stuff, that style of American Country music with a harder edge. Think Steve Earle, Neil Young and Beat Farmers and you’ll get the idea. Jada Star – Dolly Parton’s niece – is in the band and they perform five songs from her new album as well; two shows in one act and boy, the lady can sing!

​

Easy Star All-Stars

Back at the press tent for my final interview today with a couple of the guys from Easy Star All-Stars. I’ve never been a big Reggae fan but this group are interpreting some of my favourite songs in ways I could never have thought of so I’m keen to learn about them. My interviewees are Ras Droppa (b) and Shelton Garner Jr (g).

Q: Ziggy is an extraordinary achievement from start to finish. What was the catalyst for taking on that album?

RD: You can look at the albums we’ve done so far and each one comes with that question. We’ve done a wide range, The Beatles, Michael Jackson, Pink Floyd and the answer is that when the Easy Star team is making the choice, the criteria is that it has to be something that is really iconic – anthem like. It could be in any genre and Ziggy Stardust is an amazing work of art.

Q: I’m interested in the process you go through to do these records. I like Reggae but I don’t understand it.

SG: Right. You are our ideal audience!

Q: So, if I just throw a classic song at you, would you immediately know if you could or couldn’t do it?

RD: First, it would have to fit all the criteria that I just mentioned and then we come to the conclusion that it does, then we start to think how we can interpret it into Reggae.

Q: So would you only do albums?

SG: Yes. Why not singles? An album is usually the iconic part. The album tells a story.

RD: All the albums that Easy Star has flipped tell a story and Ziggy is an amazing story.

Q: Could you flip something the other way? If I gave you a classic Reggae album, could you flip it the other way?

SG: Oh I like that question! That’s a great idea. You mean like a Bob Marley album?

Q: Yeah.

SG: So the example is I Shot The Sheriff right?  It’s a Marley tune but the first time I heard it was the Clapton version. I didn’t know who Bob Marley was back then and Clapton took it and did it his way.  Clapton’s band isn’t a Reggae band so he has a different feel. Could the Easy Stars do it? I don’t know but it’s not our thing. We’re a Reggae feel.

Q: Do you ever have any objections or problems with copyright with what you do?

SG: Not problems because Easy Stars are not foolish enough to go and record a whole David Bowie album and then try and clear the copyright and then get a knock on the door. There is a standard protocol you follow if you remake somebody else’s music. One thing is that of course you are not going to get the song writing royalties – there are other royalties – but you have to get all that cleared before you start recording and that takes a long time. That’s also why we probably wouldn’t do a single. It’s the same process, the same amount of time for a single or an album.

Q: How long does the inception to finished recording take?

SG: This one took a long time. There was a bunch of years where the producer, Michael Goldwasser was working on the arrangements.

RD: Yeah, translating it into Reggae without making it sound two gimmicky.

SG: And there’s many pieces to the puzzle. I played on the record in the rhythm section that put down the tracks but then he always wants to get an interesting mixture of Reggae singers on it so getting Maxi Priest and Naomi Cowan and all the others takes time.

Q: One more question: AI is a big talking point in the entertainment world at the moment. Could AI ever do a Dub version of a classic album?

SG: I like that question. The answer is yes but the next question is ‘How good would it be?’ It’s almost like if you go into a store and they have these entry model keyboards with its drum pre-sets, Rock ‘n’ Roll, Jazz, Reggae and all those. The AI could figure out how technically, it could be Reggae but would it be good Reggae? Probably not.

RD: Reggae music is Soul music and that’s the one thing I feel that AI doesn’t have. Yeah, you can emulate but is it going to enter your mind, body and soul? Are you going to take something from it you know? Is it going to give you something to think about? I don’t think AI has the capability of doing that.

I think they are both right and thank them for their time and they thank me for requesting the interview. I am now off the clock so I can relax and enjoy the rest of the day’s music. Needless to say, that involves more Hooky and whilst at the bar, I see today’s favourite t-shirt, ‘Still Hate Thatcher’. I can’t say I was a big fan of hers either but that’s one severe grudge to carry around for forty years. He must have his reasons though and the atmosphere doesn’t need spoiling so I’m not going to get into a conversation with him about her. Strawbs are announced and receive biggest welcome of the day. As each song is performed, I find it hard to believe it’s the last time I’ll hear Dave sing it live. Such a good band and one of England’s greatest songwriters, a true 20th century minstrel. John Ford plays a lot of Dave’s guitar parts and takes centre stage for Part Of The Union. As much as an anthem today as it was back then, everyone is singing including the man in the Thatcher t-shirt. Dave bids us farewell at the end in the words of his favourite filmmakers “That’s all folks!” The ending feels a little abrupt and I sense melancholy approaching. Fortunately, there is distraction on the horizon in the form of Fisherman’s Friends and an imminent distraction to refill my glass. Like many others here, I first became aware of Fisherman’s Friends from the film and I was delighted to see that they are pretty much as portrayed in it. Their image isn’t as important as their singing of course and here, they excel. Cropredy is miles from the sea but you would never have guessed that as they ran through a set of favourite sea shanties, each one lifting the crowd a little bit higher until the inevitable What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor where the field seemed to be rolling on its own (In hindsight, maybe that was the hooky starting to have an effect on me). Tonight’s headliners, 10CC, open with Wall Street Shuffle and Art For Art’s Sake followed by Life Is A Minestrone. See where I’m going with this? A greatest hits set to die for. Graham Gouldman may be the only studio member on stage tonight but Paul Burgess has been playing drums in the band for fifty years and guitarist Rick Fenn has been with them since 1977. They have the blessing of the other studio members and aided by a bit of technology, they can now reproduced those lavish productions live perfectly. I’m Not In Love was something to behold as it floated over the field and beyond into the English night; Donna performed Doo-Wop style a cappella was inspired.

It’s midnight and the show has come to a close. Even in the summer, midnight in an English field can be chilly and I hurry back to my accommodation for a warm shower and a nightcap. Day 3 tomorrow, rain is predicted but I’ll worry about that in the morning.

* I didn’t.

† Co Leig A-mach Thu
†† Lucky Dangerous EP review here