Acoustic City Rockers

I got a new guitar this week.. an Ovation (it’s a ….er – 1986-6 if you’re in the guitar geek business) because we’re going to America…. the album is out there and we leave on the 28th November …and I’m really excited, really excited to be going there, for another bite………. I better re-read “Diary of a Rock and Roll Star” written by Ian Hunter, a brilliant book about life on the road, and especially life on the road in America – it pretty much is the Rough Guide to travel – through the eyes of a rock star. It all sounded so amazing to me as a young man, reading about driving through America, buying guitars, playing shows coast to coast, the weather changing from sun and snow – mesmerising reading when you are a boy from Shepherd’s Bush……….. When Mick and I met oh some 32 years ago we were both reading this book – it was pretty much part of our initial bonding, that AND we were also both reading “The Tale of Willy’s Rats” by Mick Farren (actually I’ve never met anyone else who’d read that and you never see it in the great rock book lists – you should check it out)..all those romantic visions of being in a band – will it be the same when we go this time?…………………… Anyway, part of the inevitable round of radio station interviews is that they always want you to play something on acoustics and although we’ve never done that before with C/S.. it feels like we will this time… it will be interesting to look at the songs from the “Dylan” angle, unplugged, focused on the tune and the lyrics… to this day I am stunned by Kurt Cobain in that ‘Unplugged’ set – what if that had never happened – so I think we’ll be doing some acoustic sets…… Which is why we’ve both had a bit of a strum and figured out what songs work…… well actually we agreed that we’d let fate figure it out for us………although we worked out a couple of old songs too.. you know, just in case……………….. So I’m sitting here playing along to my own album and singing to the neighbours in London – hopefully my audience is going to be a bit bigger and a bit more receptive in the near future…..