Ain't Bad for a Pink

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Book: Read Ain't Bad for a Pink for Free Online
Authors: Sandra Gibson
another musician at the top of his prowess I met and played with. He was a solo performer before he joined Steeleye Span. It felt good to be accepted by players of this calibre. You always expected them to be miles better than you were but it was not always the case. So it gave you confidence. I also supported Ian Campbell at the Brunswick.
    But my allegiance to the blues was paramount and I did find some of the folkies precious and pretentious, I must say. I was once representing The Brunswick playing my Dobro in the Best of the North West: a competition for folk singers. I looked around and saw a lot of pullovers. “You put your fingers in your ears and I’ll sing. I’m from Crewe – we do things differently there.”
Musical Networking
    As a pedestrian or cyclist when I was very young, I attended youth clubs in the west end of town as well as the south end of town. As soon as I was old enough I had a scooter and a motorbike. I could be a mod or a rocker depending on my mood! At seventeen I got a sports car which allowed me to extend my territory and from then on I made an effort to play clubs as far away as possible: Poynton, Leek, Macclesfield, Whitmore, Chester, Manchester, Bolton, Sheffield, Barnard Castle, London, Cornwall… performing two or three nights a week. The moment you perform you’ve made contact with everyone present and indirectly with the people they know. That’s how people get to know about you and that’s how you get to know about other potential venues. There were territories not strictly associated with musical circles. I’d been halfway round the country with Ralph, at a very early age: climbing and caving in Bristol, the Mendips, Derbyshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire, North Wales and Snowdonia, so this extended my circuit as well. Flying with Phil Brightman meant I could play gigs at the Flying Club at Sleep in Shropshire.
    I remember one Moss Side, Manchester, club in particular: a pub in Denmark Street that might have been called The Denmark – the local of predominantly black drinkers. I would receive £10-£15 a night and a hat would also be passed round, some of the punters showing their appreciation by putting drugs into it. In those days I was not interested in drugs so a friend of mine would sell them and we’d share the cash.
The Cornish Connection
    Pilgrimages to Cornwall started six weeks after my seventeenth birthday when I passed my test. The folk scene there was thriving in the mid Sixties and I did gigs at Mevagissey and The Folk Cottage in Mitchell near Newquay and became quite well known in the area. The Folk Cottage was a derelict house with a pit to piss in. It was during one of these gigs that I met Clive Palmer: Billy Connolly’s banjo hero and one of the founder members of the psychedelic folk group, the Incredible String Band, formed in 1965. Their first album, recorded in 1966 had been Melody Maker’s Folk Album of the Year and one of its tracks: “October Song” had been praised by Dylan. At that time – about 1969 – Clive had a four man band called – perversely – The Stockroom Five, specialising in jug band music and white blues. He eventually went on to do traditional acoustic music. Four decades later he came into the shop with Fluff (Claire Smith) who was playing with ISB in its most recent incarnation. He looked at me and said: “Dobro – voice – Mitchell – Cornwall.” I think that about covered it.
Images From A Darkling Plain
    I was once asked to leave a folk club because I fell off my stool: they thought I was drunk. I wasn’t drunk: I had fallen asleep from boredom. I loathed folk music and bottom of the pile was the sea shanty. From the age of fifteen I visited many, many folk clubs with Pete and although a lot of the music was folk, I was also able to enjoy slide guitar which was Pete’s passion. We went to see Ry Cooder and that really knocked me out. I liked music that was on the jazz/blues part of the spectrum. I listened to Leadbelly,

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