Clearing out old photos. I’d remarked last week how when I threw out CDs to the charity shop, I felt the artist looking over my shoulder asking why. It’s worse with old photos, particularly the ones I’ve carried around with me from address to address for over 30 years. But a cull was coming and tonight it began.
But here are a couple that may amuse, especially as most people who know me through music know me as an old bald git.
Here’s a portrait my parents paid for on the occasion of my 21st. Sometime around that time anyway, Glasgow.
(Click the photos for full size, if you dare).
And here’s a band I rehearsed with in Glasgow for pretty much the whole of 1974. I’d been in bands before but never ones that rehearsed seriously, with 4 part harmonies and songs in F minor (the thought still chills my blood!). The driving force of the band (called Window Bill because many banks had posters in their windows advertising changed opening hours, headed ‘See Window Bill’) was Dave Christopher, still a friend of mine in Edinburgh and still a great songwriter. But there were four songwriters and singers in the band and we all got our turn. It must have been mine when this photo was taken. We rehearsed furiously, played one gig and split when Dave decided to seek his fortune in London.
A post-script to Window Bill is that one of the songs I wrote for that band eventually became, with a complete set of new lyrics, Best of the Blues on the Roadblock album.