MOTORHEAD 1976-1982, BY “FAST” EDDIE CLARKE, Pt 1

I recently wrote a Motorhead piece for Uncut. This allowed me to make contact (via http://www.fasteddieclarke.com – thanks Steve) with a personal hero, the guitarist “Fast” Eddie Clarke, who recorded some of my favourite ever riffs, like “No Class”, and “Shoot You In The Back”. Eddie is a good bloke and a great raconteur, and I suspect that his nickname derives as much from the speed he tells a story as the speed he plays a solo. It was one of those rare occasions where one interviewee could easily have told the story himself, so that’s what I’m doing here. As you might imagine, it’s quite long, so I’ll put it up in bits. Blue Goose sounded a bit like Crazy Horse, incidentally.

BLUR: THE MAGIC WHIP (National UAE)

A review of the new Blur album.

THE KEY OF THREE: HEATHER WOOD AND THE YOUNG TRADITION

A kind of Everest interview, in the sense that I dropped Heather Wood an email because she was there. I wanted to see if she might like to chat to me about The Young Tradition (1965-1969), a folk group that she was in with Royston Wood (d.1990) and Peter Bellamy (d. 1991). Happily, she did.

The Young Tradition mainly made records of traditional songs and one, called Galleries, which is more in the Medieval music vein. There is also an EP of shanties, including “Chicken On A Raft”, which is a song about egg on toast.

At one time, they lived in a flat at 30 Somali Road in Camden, downstairs from Bert Jansch and John Renbourn. “The place was complete mayhem,” Bert told me about five years ago. “They made more noise, drunk more, and smoked more dope than anybody else.”

As it turns out, it’s almost exactly 50 years since the trio first met and started singing together. So here, by entirely planned complete coincidence, Heather undertakes an ersatz golden anniversary interview. Thanks, Heather.