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| Mainstream superstars the Strolling Bones |
The
enthusiasm for the blues was a long time coming, and at the same time
always there. I latched on to hard rock
during my teenage years in the mid-Seventies, becoming a fan of Led Zeppelin,
Deep Purple and Bad Company when they had already peaked. I was too young to have encountered Cream at
the height of their influence, and the Stones were now mainstream superstars,
their evangelism for Chicago blues part of their early history. The Allman Brothers were just a name to
me. But it didn’t take much to recognise
that the blues was obviously an essential ingredient in much of the music I
liked.
So it was
natural for me to take in blues music through the likes of Rory Gallagher, Jimi
Hendrix, Whitesnake (of the classic Moody and Marsden period), AC/DC, Pat
Travers, Lynyrd Skynyrd et al. But my enjoyment was still filtered through the
lens of heavy rock, without much direct connection to its roots. Still, I took
on board the fact that Zeppelin had, shall we say, leaned heavily on a number
of blues artists for much of their early material. I noted too, that ‘Ain’t No Love In The Heart Of
The City’, a key song in Whitesnake's repertoire, was a cover of a hit for some blues-soul
singer called Bobby Bland.
And that’s
pretty much the way things stayed for a couple of decades. My love of rock music took a back seat at
times. But when I did give it some
attention I would occasionally bump into the blues in one form or another. Until a few things began to come together
that started me more directly on a journey to the blues . . .
You can read Journey To The Blues #2 here.
