London Live: From the Yardbirds to Pink Floyd to the Sex Pistols
by Tony Bacon
Fast paced, densely packed, and stuffed to the gills with amazing detail. London Live sets the scene, tracing the vibe and trends in gigging London from 1950's skiffle, through Rock'n'Roll, R&B, Psychedelia and ends in the late 1970's with Rock and Punk. About half of the book is therefore about London after John McLaughlin had packed his bags, sick of the vacuous music he was being forced to play as a session musician for the likes of David Bowie, Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdink and the Rolling Stones, he explored the European Free Jazz scene with Gunter Hampel, recorded the seminal Extrapolation and crossed the pond to the USA and a glorious future.

London was perhaps a tough place for the young Johnny Mac (a.k.a. Johnny McLaughlin "Electric Guitarist"), but he speaks fondly of the club and pub scene that he shared with the likes of Jimmy Page,

When I was sixteen, I went on the road with a traditional jazz band called '[Big Pete Deuchar and his] Professors of Ragtime.' This got me to London-which, of course, was the center of jazz in England. In those days there were two clubs: The Marquee and the Flamingo. They were great. Everybody met everybody there, and the attitude was that everybody could play with everybody. So this is what I did ... I remember jam sessions with everybody and anybody. I remember the Rolling Stones coming in for an audition. I didn't care much for them. They were out of tune, and I didn't think they were swinging, but at least they were playing Muddy Waters' blues tunes. I started to play with the Graham Bond Organization and with Alexis Korner. Alexis had everybody in his band at some point. But Miles Davis' "Into the Cool" with the Gil Evans big band really did it for me. Miles crystallized a new school of music, and I immediately felt: That is my school. But I kept on playing rhythm & blues and it was great, because they were playing real jazz solos. It was blues, but at the same time it was much more than blues. I played with Eric Clapton and Dick Heckstall-Smith and Ginger Baker and everybody ...
Jazz Times May 1982

London Live paints that scene for you with a well researched, heavily entwined narrative that makes you realise the high levels of musical activity and dense band bookings in operation in most popular venues. Street maps pick out those venues while ticket stubs, newspaper ads, posters and a liberal smattering of photographs really bring the past back to the present. An excellent touch is the inclusion of gig reviews as they appeared in magazines like 'Melody Maker' and 'Jazz Journal'. It's a bit like an annotated 'Time Out'!

The sheer amount of work bands like Georgie Fame And The Blue Flames took on is impressive; "During just one month in the 1963 the band played 43 bookings, including 13 at the Flamingo, eight at the All-Nighter, four at the Roaring 20's, three at The Scene, two at Klook's Kleek and one at Eel Pie Island. 'The busiest band in town bar none', ...". For the 60's enthusiast, the pièce de résistance is an appendix of venues that also lists every gig at the Marquee from 1962 to 1979. It's amazing to see the day-by-day list of headlining acts that were on offer to the hip and swinging clubbers.

Sadly, John McLaughlin is mentioned only once in the book, with respect to the Blue Flames line-up in 1962, and does not feature in any of the photographs, although it is great fun staring at each, trying to spot JM-lookalikes in the crowd and at the stageside. Although more on JM would have been good, simply getting a glimpse of the places he hung out, used in conjunction with snippets like the following all provide quite a rounded picture of how it was,

I first heard of John around 1962/3. I was working with " The Man with the Golden Trumpet " - Eddie Calvert at the time. I, like many guitarists, was involved mainly in Rock, C&W, and various other styles of music. But this name McLaughlin kept popping up. "Have you heard McLoughlan[sic], have you heard McLoughlan[sic]", was the cry. And, the voices were filled with genuine excitement and admiration for this as yet unknown guitarist. Of course I had never heard of him. Most people hadn't. So I forgot about the name until it started popping again up in London. The first time I met him was on a gig at a U.S Army base with Johnny Duncan and the Blue Grass Boys, sometimes affectionately known as "Johnny Duncan and His Blue Assed Flies." Anyway, we didn't have a double bass player for the gig and at the last moment we picked up this guy who was working as a salesman at "Selmers" music store in Charing Cross Road. "Hi, I'm Joe Moretti", I said. "Hi, I'm John Mclaughlin", he replied. And that's how we met. John borrowed a bass from the music store for the gig and off we went. John wasn't a steam bass player by any means, but he needed the money which was about seven pounds. The great drummer Johnny Butts was with us too. I didn't connect the name McLaughlan with the guitarist I'd been hearing so much about, and he gave no indication that he played guitar, so after the gig I forgot about the guy. On Saturday mornings all the guitarists would flock to the music stores to try out new guitars, talk shit, and invariably show off what they could do. Then word started getting around that a certain guitar salesman at "Selmers" was blowing everybody away. Guys would go in there full of themselves and leave totally destroyed by what this Gentleman was laying down. But he sure sold a lot of guitars for the store.
http://www.ifrance.com/vince-taylor/1aenglishv/johnml_e.htm
There possibly could have been merit in providing more extensive first-hand accounts from club-goers of the time, which would have helped describe the vibe, plus there are some surprising omissions, like Duffy Power isn't mentioned. But as it is, and for a slenderish tome, London Live does an excellent job at capturing and evoking a tangible sense of the past. So come on pop-pickers, get on down and lets groove out to those poptastic sounds of London Live!