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   CLUB SANDWICH 61

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HAMISH'S UNFORGETTABLE GIGS

Playing live is usually the staple of a musician's career, but so too is watching others in the act. As participator or spectator, Hamish Stuart has been to rather a lot of gigs in his time, and he tells Mark Lewisohn about ten of the best

PHOTOGRAPH: PETER MOUNTAIN

            FIVE I SAW Club Sandwich 61

            1. The first concert I ever went to was a Beatles show, at the Concert Hall in Glasgow, October 1963, a few days before my 14th birthday. I won tickets from a competition in the Glasgow Evening Citizen - there were five questions and I knew the answers because I was a fan. I went with my elder cousin and she stood on her feet and screamed the whole time but I just sat there, listening. They opened with 'Roll Over Beethoven', which I could barely make out, and then the audience settled down a little bit and the songs became clearer. 'She Loves You' had recently conic out and it was the newest thing that they played. I was beginning to think at that time: four guys, guitars...yes - maybe this is what I could do. I'd been singing for a while and had just formed a school group, and seeing the Beatles spurred me on. I got my very first album, With The Beatles, as a present that Christmas of 1963.

            2. Soul music was big in Glasgow. I developed a particular interest around 1965 when I started to play around town and go to the clubs, especially the Picasso in Buchanan Street. Then, in spring 1967, when I was 17, I went to see the Stax-Volt revue at the Locarno, a big Glasgow ballroom, and it was an amazing show: Arthur Conley, Eddie Floyd, Sam & Dave, Otis Redding, and maybe one other act too, and the band backing everybody was Booker T & The MGs. Sam & Dave were great - there was a lot of showmanship, the way they inter-acted, and there was a lot of drama in the ballads - but Otis was incredible, the real tour-deforce. Sadly, he died a few months later.

            3. I saw Jimi Hendrix at the Glasgow Odeon on a very strange bill indeed, with the Walker Brothers and Cat Stevens and also, top of the bill, Engelbert Humperdinck. I'd seen Jimi the week before on Top Of The Pops and realised that he was great, and then the tour came through town so I went along to see him. It was a strange little package because there was also a surf band that opened the show and then the Jimi Hendrix Experience came on and did just two songs, 'Hey Joe' and 'Wild Thing'. There were about ten people in the whole place - including me -on their feet, but the rest of the audience were simply gobsmacked, they didn't know what was going on at all. At the end of 'Wild Thing' Jimi destroyed practically everything that was on the stage and then left and we were all there going "Wow!" He was such a great player and what he was doing was so fresh. He looked wild too - nobody had ever seen anything like him - but he also had the talent to carry it off.

            4. In 1972 or early 1973, I can't remember when exactly, I went to see Weather Report play at Ronnie Scott's elub in London. It was an amazing experience for me because they were playing very, very free jazz and although I didn't understand what they were doing it just knocked me out. I still don't know what it was but it changed my views about music: you don't have to understand it if it creates a feeling. I left the place about two feet off the ground.

            5. Around about 1977 or 1978 I went to the Roxy Club in Hollywood to see guitarist Joao Gilberto. I'd been to see a lot of shows at the Roxy but this one was different: it was only him, a guitar and an amazing atmosphere. All the Brazilians in town were there and he came onto the stage with a little foot-stool, and a stool for himself to sit on, he had his set-list taped on the top of his guitar, he wore a dark suit, white shirt, no tic, and he just sat there, with one spotlight, and played all these great songs. It was like sitting in somebody's front-room, really wonderful.

            FIVE I PLAYED

            1. The year before I saw Otis Redding and the Stax-Volt revue there, I played at the Glasgow Locarno with a band I had just joined, the In-Crowd. There were a couple of thousand people and it was not only my first gig with the band but also the first time I'd played in front of so many people. The show was a "clan ball" promoted by the pirate station Radio Scotland and they were always jam-packed events, with the best Scottish bands playing and maybe somebody else from down south. I don't know why we were chosen or how it all came together but it was very exciting. Until then I'd been used to playing in church halls and YMCAs.

            2. The Average White Band played as the warm-up act in Eric Clapton's big comeback concert at the Rainbow in London in January 1973. That got us a lot of attention because we had a great night, we really hit it off, the reviews were good and it kind of launched us. It was an amazing event - the party in the dressing-room was spectacular and pretty much everybody you'd ever seen in the British music scene was there. I think we were the last people out of the theatre. From that night on, for a couple of years, we could do no wrong. Even the gigs we thought were terrible would get glowing reviews ...until we had a hit single after which we could do nothing right! Funny.

            3. There were many good times with the Average White Band but the most memorable gig was at the Capitol Center in Washington DC, around 1977. We were driving in towards the venue, commenting that the traffic was bad, when we suddenly realised that all the traffic was going to the gig and that we were stuck in it. Then people in the cars saw that we were the band and it all got very silly, with people running up to our car, waving and asking for autographs while the traffic was moving along. The gig itself was amazing - the venue was absolutely packed, something like 20,000 people, and from beginning to end the entire place was crazy. It was the most I've seen an audience react as one person, and I couldn't see a white face anywhere. To have an audience with us for a whole two-hour show was a real high point, our peak, really.

            4. The Average White Band played a real against-the-odds gig once, in New Zealand in 1976. There were a ton of acts there at the same time - the Doobie Brothers, Ike & Tina Turner, Frank Zappa, the Eagles - all coming through in the space of about two weeks, and when we got to Auckland Town Hall we discovered that the promoter had sent the PA system off with another act. But the old show-must-go-on spirit came out: having gone so far we didn't want to call it off, so our roadie went around the local radio stations and borrowed some speakers to put the vocals through. We had nothing else, though, and everything that could go wrong did. I remember the bass-drum skin went during the act, and a little Maori guy from the opening act came running on to lend us his. Everybody mucked in and we turned it into something special.

            5. Then of course there was Rio, with Paul. There were lots of great shows all over the World Tour but the ones that really stuck out for me were Montreal, Rome and especially Rio de Janeiro. It was the biggest show that any of us had ever played, including Paul, and it was two nights: something like 130,000 the first night, in the pouring rain, and 184,000 the next. You couldn't even see the back of the crowd, it was so big. And I have a feeling that there were even more than 184,000 because people were also packed behind the stage, unable to see anything! The weather was really against us and then it all turned out wonderfully, particularly the second night. It was such an event and I'll never forget it.