It started as they always do, with this phone call;
`Alright mate, do you buy old records?…well I’ve got a few…how many?..I dunno..nah, I dunno what they are…they’re in an old tea chest in the loft…’
So far, this was the call I have received several times a day, every day of the year, including Christmas Day, for the last 20 years. What I don’t usually hear was this;
`Where did I get `em?..off of one of the Stones…’
That was how I found myself driving to west London to meet Ronnie Wood’s builder.
It was a Sunday morning, 11AM. Outside it was grey, wet and 2003. Inside it was Saturday night in 1972, backstage wiv Keef. Ronnie Wood’s builder had that thing you often find with the children of the sixties: it was the greatest time of their life, they didn’t want it to end, so they just didn’t stop.
Ronnie Wood’s builder was drinking Bells and smoking roll-ups in grey trackie bottoms and thick greasy lensed specs when he opened the door and showed me in.
The place was in chaos, but I know that’s standard for a builder’s house.
`Yeah mate’… he told me..`I had to redo Ron’s garridge after the boiler burst… all the water went into his record collection…’
I started to feel very sick.
`…so when I’d done the job he let me have `em. That’s them there, take what you like…’
Ronnie Wood’s builder gestured to two watermarked tea chests, and left me to it.
It was a tribute to Ron’s taste but not his housekeeping that these records were one of the greatest collections I have ever seen in terms of taste, and also in the worst condition imaginable. The records appeared to have been poured into the chests by a troup of argumentative gibbons using a dumptruck, who had then taken them out of their sleeves, mixed them up, torn up the sleeves, stubbed out their fags on the vinyl, and pissed on the lot, 30 years ago. But what records they were; classic Stax soul, country blues, cool bebop, jump RnB, funk..; Rev Gary Davis, Little Willie John, Howlin’ Wolf, Otis, ‘retha Franklin, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Ann Peebles…I unearthed hundreds of superb pieces of vinyl, each one was so mullered that even though I personally wanted to keep each one…forget the money!..that I couldn’t find anything that I would have had a hope of being able to listen to, let alone sell. However, I am a professional optimist, so I dug deep to the bottom of the crates.
That was how I found the four blank acetates.
4 test pressings; aluminium records with an acetate veneer cut in the studio so the artist and producer can hear different versions and mixes prior to finalizing one for release. 4 unique items that had belonged to a Rolling Stone thirty years ago. The acetates were totally blank apart from one which had a label. It read `Apple Recording Company’.
This was the record dealing equivalent of finding the grail in Indiana Jones 3.
I reached for my wallet and decided on the truth,
`This is a brilliant collection…but it’s totally knackered. I can’t do anything with it. I’d just like to buy these, they are damaged too, but they look interesting, I’ll give you £…
to be continued…
- in which our hero begins to relate a murky saga variously featuring records, girls, gigs, vinyl, drums and love –
Born.
…ten years is wasted…I don’t go to see any of the classic acts of the Seventies as I am in primary school…anyway, on with the formative years with their clearly marked clues as to what I would become…
No early memories of music being played around the house. Mum is musical..but it’s church related…bells – big and small…singing…
Sister and I are allowed to linger in the attic (sounds cruel but it was big and basically derelict) and play parents’ 45s…all were stored in a plastic concertina folder I still have…majority of awful sixties pop crap but…Kismet…lots of Beatles, some Stones and a Dylan 45 as well as the only good thing Cliff ever did; Move It b/w Dynamite…45s are played by a stacking phonograph which drops the 7”s and plays them in sequence… to get bass you shut the lid…
…our attention is concentrated on these records as we are not allowed to listen to pop music on the radio and I don’t think we were allowed to watch ITV either…