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that in order to understand the Welsh, you first must gain a
sense of Wales. Unfortunately there are almost as many
different colourful facets to the principality as there are
people: in the south alone blue mountains rise from green
valleys to hug the clouds, silver light drifts across
granite castles, white cottages pepper the landscape and
grey seas nibble at the coastline. What the tourist guides
often fail to mention however is that this is also a
landscape scarred black by the ravages of coal mining and
tainted red by the rusting hulk of iron foundries. Where
Ireland often gives the impression of having moved directly
from the eighteenth century into the twenty-first without an
industrial age in between, South Wales today still wears a
curtain of steel. It’s an increasingly thin curtain in this
post-industrial age, but the signs are all around
nonetheless.
In the mid-1960s though the coal mines, oil refineries and
steel mills were still ablaze. One way for young men on
leaving school to avoid immediate conscription into industry
was to grow their hair and join a rock and roll band, and
there was already a vibrant scene emerging: Love Sculpture
and Amen Corner out of Cardiff, the Eyes of Blue from Neath,
the Jets and the Iveys (later to become Badfinger) from
Swansea - and from the sleepy South Welsh town of Merthyr
Tydfil, a group called the Bystanders.
As with so much at that time, the Beatles had a lot to
answer for in terms of the Bystanders’ musical style, and
indeed their dress sense, which ran to matching mohair suits
with blue knitted ties. Guitarist Micky Jones, an apprentice
hairdresser by trade, was given the “cooler sounding” stage
name of Mike Steel, and keyboard player Clive John bizarrely
reverted to his real name, Clive Morgan. In 1966 they signed
to Pye Records (home of the Kinks and the Searchers),
incorporated Beach Boys and Four Seasons songs into their
stage act, and headed out onto the cabaret circuit.
By 1967 the shock-waves from the explosion of psychedelia in
America finally reached South Wales. The ace up the sleeve
of the Bystanders, which set them apart from their rivals,
was their guitarist. Having been well schooled in rock and
roll, Micky Jones was now ready, able and willing to listen
to, and be influenced by, more experimental guitar players
such as the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia and Quicksilver’s
John Cipollina. Although venues like the Camarthen Bay Power
Station Recreation Club were a million miles away,
culturally speaking, from Marin County or Big Sur, The
Bystanders accordingly varied their live set to take in
covers of such songs as the Byrds’ ‘Eight Miles High’ and
Moby Grape’s ‘Hey Grandma’. They began writing their own
material (Jones and John’s ‘Cave of Clear Light’ – “one of
the few songs of the period I can still listen to without
wincing”, according to Clive John – reveals fashionable
middle-eastern influences) and, in November 1968, they
shuffled their line-up, brought in second guitarist Roger
“Deke” Leonard and changed their name to Man. Progressive
rock was becoming the dominant force. I was ten years old at
the time.
It’s funny how a profound an effect an unexpected and at the
time seemingly insignificant incident can have. I was stood
at a bus-stop not so long ago next to a beautiful girl who
had a smile like the wires strung between two pylons; wide,
curving and powerful enough to melt your shoes into the
ground if you dared get too close. All too soon she was
gone, who knows to where: but in my head at least we went
there together, on the top deck of a bus with the breeze
ruffling her blonde hair, her breathtakingly attractive eyes
gazing into mine and the noise of the engine carrying her
golden voice away like leaves on a swollen river. I was
reminded of an earlier event which had quite literally
changed my life forever.
I was 10 years old, and the blonde on the bus this time
attended the same school as me. She announced to anyone
who’d listen that her uncle was in a pop group called Man,
who quite frankly I had never heard of. Then again, given
that we lived in a remote rural location I sadly lacked
exposure to anything approaching culture during my formative
years. Even by 1968 psychedelia had yet to reach Somerset:
the first Glastonbury festival was still some two years
away, taking place
in September 1970 on the fields of Pilton Farm, organised by
dairy farmer Michael Eavis.
From
filing away in the Rolodex of my mind
the name of the girl’s uncle
(who,
it subsequently transpired, was
Man’s original bassist and former Bystander Ray Williams.
Sadly, he passed away in 1993), and of course the name of
his band, it was but a short chronological step for me to
the age of thirteen, moving to the city and meeting a guy
who actually owned a record by them. The fact that I’d even
heard of Man immediately made me a member of what seemed at
the time like some kind of secret society. It was a society
I knew I desperately wanted to be a member of, though. From
the very first moment the needle landed on ‘C’mon’, the
opening track of their then new (1972) album ‘Be Good To
Yourself Once a Day’, I realised my life would never be the
same again. In short, I fell hopelessly in love; and the
fact that the band was obscure and unattainable only added
to their lustre for me.
I worked backwards and scored copies of every other LP I
could find by Man. From reading interviews with them in
music papers and magazines I discovered that they in turn
had been influenced by a band called Quicksilver Messenger
Service. I bought their records and immediately fell in love
all over again. Man toured with a band called Help
Yourself. I bought their records and immediately fell in
love all over again. I was a fickle teenager when it came to
affairs of the heart. I bought United Artists Records’ ‘All
Good Clean Fun’ double LP compilation because it featured
songs by both Man and Help Yourself and through that
discovered other fine underground bands like Cochise and
Hawkwind, Can and Amon Duul II, which opened a whole load of
new doors of perception and in turn led me to German music.
In short, I owed my entire early musical education to the
Man band. Through them I discovered west-coast American
psychedelia and down-home English country rock, and
indirectly I discovered folk-rock and kraut-rock. Most of
all though, through Micky Jones’ guitar playing I discovered
an abiding admiration for improvisation.
When Man had emerged, phoenix-like, out of the Bystanders in
1968, swapping increasingly psychedelic harmony pop for
full-on progressive rock, they quickly discovered that their
future lay overseas. Faced with playing to an average
audience of 20 people in England or 200 in Germany, they
began a campaign of saturation-gigging over there. As
keyboard player Clive John explained: “There was a
tremendous feeling of musical freedom. You could easily get
away with playing a flower pot on stage in Germany in those
days. We were listening to people like Stockhausen at the
time. The band was spaced out, but the music was really
interesting.” Deke Leonard: “In Britain we were expected to
play for two hours – but Germany expected five hour sets, so
we stretched what we had.” The key to all this extended
jamming was of course improvisation - and in Micky Jones
they had a master of the craft.
Deke Leonard, again, speaking recently: “Micky’s the best
improvisational guitarist in the world. I’ve played with him
for 30 years now and once he goes into an improvisation I’ve
never heard him play the same thing twice. It would be so
musical, so structured and beautifully laid out, that you’d
think he’d worked it all out – but we’ve shared rooms and
nobody ever took their guitars into their hotel room. It
just all came pouring out of him.”
The Man band were always at their zenith in the live
setting, therefore their studio albums aren’t always
representative of what they could achieve: the self-titled
LP for United Artists in 1970 for instance suffered through
having to condense their everlasting jams from lengthy shows
in Germany down into fifteen or twenty minutes. Thereafter
they gave up trying to capture their live sound in the
studio and instead concentrated on the job in hand, with one
honourable exception: the aforementioned 1972 album ‘Be Good
To Yourself At Least Once a Day’, during the recording of
which tensions within the group were allegedly running high
following a line-up shuffle. Deke Leonard had temporarily
left to pursue a solo career, the new guys in the band had
brought a backlog of songs with them that they were keen to
try out, but they met with considerable resistance from
Micky Jones, who preferred the group to improvise new
material. Clive John suggested a pragmatic new approach:
“Let’s just forget we’re supposed to be making a record and
have an electric blow”. The result was a four-song set with
a strong instrumental bias which gave Micky Jones’ guitar
work and songwriting style completely free reign. It remains
arguably Man’s finest moment and included two songs, ‘C’mon’
and ‘Bananas’, which according to Deke Leonard, “Will still
be in the set when we play that final celestial set in
paradise... we’ll probably open with ‘C’mon’.”
Photo: Man photographed in San Francisco. L-R
Terry Williams, Ken Whaley, Deke Leonard, Micky Jones
In
1974 Man travelled to America. Initially supporting United
Artists label mates Hawkwind, the tour proved to be eventful
to say the least, with tornados and live telephone link-ups
to LSD guru Timothy Leary amongst their adventures. The band
worked themselves slowly across to San Francisco where Bill
Graham, at the time one of America’s foremost rock
entrepreneurs, took to Man every bit as warmly as he had all
the bands he had promoted in the 60s – bands who had in turn
served as influences for Man in their early days. At the
Winterland John Cipollina, Quicksilver Messenger Service’s
mercurial guitarist, jammed with them on stage; it seemed a
marriage made in heaven, Cipollina’s unmistakeable vibrato
style working so well within the Man context, with Micky
Jones’ fluid lines bouncing off the razor-sharp shards of
Cippolina’s chops while Deke Leonard churned away with his
wah-wah. In fact when a series of live dates in the UK
culminated in a live album named ‘Maximum Darkness’,
recorded in May 1975 at the Roundhouse, John Cipollina’s
guitar parts on Man’s anthemic ‘Bananas’ had to be
overdubbed – ironically enough by Micky Jones. “Everything
on ‘Maximum Darkness’ which sounds like Cipollina is
Cipollina”, according to Deke Leonard, “Except for ‘Bananas’
during which he insisted on playing a pre-war Hawaiian
guitar, with pre-war strings, with a kitchen knife. It was
an appalling racket.”
Man called it a day in the mid-seventies, culminating in
three dates -appropriately enough at the Roundhouse again -
during December 1976. They had released fourteen albums and
had been through nearly as many line-ups, the one constant
member being Micky Jones. “During the last year we had found
little to agree upon”, opined singer/guitarist Deke Leonard,
“but the one thing we were all sure of is that we would
never, ever be one of those bands who re-formed in a futile
attempt to recapture past glories and maybe earn a buck or
two along the way.”
They re-formed on All Fool’s Day, 1983. By that time my own
life had moved on and I never again followed the band with
quite the same interest; the love affair was far from over –
in fact, I’d claim Man’s performance at the Terrastock 3
festival in London during August 1999 to be one of the
single most captivating, emotionally moving and powerful
live shows I’ve ever experienced – but, if pressed I’d have
to admit that I stopped working quite so hard at our
relationship after Man broke up in 1976. I’m quite sure the
Man band felt the same way about me too, had they actually
known who I was.
Micky Jones formed a tight little three-piece rock band
named Manipulator after leaving the band. They played a
mixture of Man material, such as ‘Kerosene’ and ‘Breaking Up
Once Again’, in amongst new songs and covers, including
Buzzy Linhart’s ‘Talk About a Morning’. I saw them several
times and they never failed to deliver the goods; compact,
raunchy and powerful, they were the very antithesis of the
jamming juggernaut which was the Man band and yet still a
great vehicle for Jones’ fluid guitar work. It was at one of
Manipulator’s gigs, at the Half Moon in Herne Hill in
October 1980, that I met another person who was to change
the entire course of my life: Nigel Cross.
Nigel had recently launched a new fanzine called ‘A
Bucketfull of Brains’, and was there to interview Micky
Jones for the upcoming third issue. Deke Leonard had been
featured in issue 1 (along with American acts Television and
Michael Hurley), and a mutual acquaintance had recommended
my name as a possible expert on the subject of the Man band.
Nigel phoned me to ask if I’d like to sit in on the Deke
Leonard interview. I would like to! Very, very much indeed,
thankyou!
“It’s taking place here in London on Friday.”
“Great! Oh, wait - shit, I have a job interview that same
afternoon...”
“OK, well maybe next time then...”
Having idolised the Man band from afar for the majority of
my formative years I never thought there’d be a first time
let alone a second one, so it was fairly easy to shrug that
one off. Then the ’phone rang again.
“It’s Nigel again. Sorry... I was wondering if I did the
interview with Deke, if perhaps you’d be able to transcribe
it for me?”
“What, you mean write it up?” I said, proud of myself for
having slipped so quickly into the easy argot of the
professional Music Critic. “Of course.”
I tried to hide the bitter disappointment from my voice at
not having been able to attend in person and settled back to
await the arrival of the cassette tape, which sure enough
turned up a few days later.
I don’t honestly remember a great deal now about what
actually passed between Nigel and Deke during the interview.
There was an incident when Deke Leonard disappeared off to
the lavatory, still talking. A distant tinkling noise. More
words. The sound of a flush, followed by Deke’s soft Welsh
voice slowly growing louder as he drew closer to the
microphone again. I faithfully wrote down every word, every
tinkle. It was my first ever assignment as a music
journalist, and I was completely hooked. I knew that someday
I wanted to publish a fanzine, just like Nigel Cross.
I mailed the piece off more in hope than expectation, never
really expecting to hear from Nigel again, and received by
return of post a rather surprising offer to write more: as
much as I possibly could, in fact. Maybe I’d like to write
some reviews? And could we meet up at the Manipulator gig in
Herne Hill a few weeks hence?
We did meet, and Nigel reassured me that I could not only
write, but that I could write well. Ha. That was one in the
eye for my former school-teachers. I became a regular
contributor to ‘Bucketfull of Brains’. Over the years since
I have met, spoke to or corresponded with just about every
musical hero I’d ever had, and made a thousand more. I ended
up running my own magazine, and – I’m more proud of this
than anything else, I think – engaged the services of Nigel
Cross and, on one famous occasion, even Deke Leonard as
contributors.
Photo: Micky Jones photographed by Mike Ware
This
isn’t about me though: it’s about Micky Jones. Either
directly or indirectly I owe to him almost everything I’ve
achieved.
Micky Jones isn’t the greatest guitarist in the world. He’d
be the first to admit that. He’s not even my favourite
guitarist in the world: I’d probably have to hand that
accolade to Michio Kurihara of Ghost. Or maybe Randy
California of Spirit. Or Nick Saloman of the Bevis Frond.
Truth be told, there’s been a few actually. But whenever
Micky played his instrument really spoke to me, and on those
rare occasions he’s given the opportunity to cut loose and
improvise, there’s nobody who can touch him.
In 2002 Micky was diagnosed with a brain tumour. He left the
Man band temporarily to receive treatment for his illness.
At the time it was understood to be benign, and it was hoped
that following appropriate surgery he would make a full
recovery and return to the stage. He returned briefly in
2004, but in 2005 required further treatment, and despite
constant efforts has suffered a steady decline thereafter.
Micky Jones finally passed away on 10th March 2010. He was just 63 years old. We've lost a wonderful guitarist - one of the world's finest - but much more than that, we've lost a friend, an inspiration to many and a hero to a few(myself included). Rest in peace, Micky.
Phil McMullen, March 2010
Portions of this eulogy were originally
published in Penny-Ante Book #2, San Francisco USA in 2007.
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