Shindig! issue 34

Shindig! No.34

HARRY NILSSON
Before Nilsson Schmilsson spawned a massive smash hit reworking of Badfinger’s ‘Without You’ and its successful, bearded singer was enjoying his ongoing “drunken weekend”, propping up bars with a coterie of boozy, coked-up rock star friends, Harry Nilsson was a prolific clean-cut songwriter who became an unwitting pop star himself. In the first part of our Nilsson odyssey Jon ‘Mojo’ Mills follows the aftermath of penning ‘Cuddly Toy’ for The Monkees through the baroque-pop delights of Pandemonium Shadow Show and Ariel Ballet… and, oh yes, The Beatles.

GENE CLARK
GENE CLARK hit it big with The Byrds in 1965, left them a year later and spent the rest of his life trying to replicate their success. His post-Byrds career is rife with false starts, blown chances and commercial failures. Critics labelled him an underachiever.
TOM SANDFORD examines the period leading up to Two Sides To Every Story, Clark’s last album for a major label, and comes to a very different conclusion.

MORGEN
Until recently STEVE MORGEN, the main man behind 1968’s extraordinary heavy psych opus, Morgen, was a complete enigma. His continued silence was all the more strange given that the album he wrote and produced stands cheek to jowl with any psychedelic rock LP of the period.
Now resurfaced, Steve tells AUSTIN MATTHEWS the story of the masterpiece his band recorded and how they were waylaid by a frightening group of New York junior Mafioso

THE STEPPES
?Signed to pioneering garage revival label Voxx (although not a garage band) and later pursued by U2’s Mother Records (even if far from mainstream rock), Irish/ American quartet THE STEPPES and their genuinely literary psychedelic music sat in its own unique space throughout the late ’80s and early ’90s.
“We really did want to be a big, popular band, but often our best stuff was too heavy or too odd to be radio-friendly.”
JEREMY GLUCK holds court

CAPTAIN BEEFHEART
GRAHAME BENT speaks with John ‘Drumbo’ French about those far-off, fondly remembered days when CAPTAIN BEEFHEART & HIS MAGIC BAND first set foot in the country that was shortly to become their spiritual home

DAVE DAVIES
If any one musician requires no introduction in these pages it’s DAVE DAVIES. Some of you will regard him as the guitarist with the finest sound, style and swagger ever to have strapped on a Guild or Flying V, others as the vital creative counterpoint in the greatest band this country ever produced.
Kinks-krazy VIC TEMPLAR kompiled the kollected kwestions of the Shindig! kontributors and here’s what happened

SWAMP DOGG
Just like David Banner became The Incredible Hulk, R&B singer and producer extraordinaire Jerry Williams Jr grew in epic proportions to the larger than life, no holds barred, soul/funk one-of-a-kind SWAMP DOGG.
MIKE FORNATALE learns new tricks

THE COMBUSTIBLES
Highly explosive out of time garage-punk from India!
JON ‘MOJO’ MILLS marvels at the wyld sounds of Bombay’s THE COMBUSTIBLES