EDITOR'S CHOICE LOCAL NEWS Now it’s beach polo It's play time . . . LOCAL SPORT Call for help with festival OTHER SPORT Boulton’s a winner GET OUR NEWS BY E-MAIL Just register

Most read Comments 1 Card skim fraud is back 2 Man who stopped a burglar faces assault charge 3 KICKING OFF: Togetherness in Terras camp is uplifting 4 Fighting on . . . the girl who was born 'dead' 5 Now it’s beach polo 6 Women are wanted for top county jobs 7 Go-ahead move 8 Boulton’s a winner 9 Olympic talks go on air 10 Evans outraged by two-and-a-half year ban Today | 7 Days 1 'Killjoys' halt pub's fun days 2 Man who stopped a burglar faces assault charge 3 Carry on drinking 4 Ten post offices to close 5 Setback hits Lidl bid to open store 6 New parking scheme ‘a disaster’ 7 Sailing centre in the spotlight 8 Second monster crab is caught 9 Pay parking likely at County Hall 10 Battle of the wordsmiths

Comment

STILL CHIPPER: Veteran rocker Joe Brown

VETERAN rocker Joe Brown may be a wizard with a guitar, but you should see him with a chisel, plane and pile of wood.

A skilled craftsman, he likes nothing more than relaxing with a spot of joinery.

Over the years he's made everything from sets of windows for his 17th century country home to a rocking horse.

"Yup," laughs Joe, "if all this rock 'n' roll business ends tomorrow I've got something to fall back on."

Fifty long years after he first strapped on a guitar and launched a career that would find him working with Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, Johnny Cash and Billy Fury, it seems highly unlikely that he's going to need that second string to his bow, but he has a point.

After all, as Joe points out, he can hardly go back to his original trade as a fireman on the railways ...cos they've got rid of all the steam trains'.

Yes, it's been a long old career in the music business, and an illustrious one too. In the early days The Beatles used to open for Joe, he gave The Shadows the echo unit that defined their sound and can still count Keith Richards and Mark Knopfler among his long-time fans.

Joe is currently out on the road celebrating his half-century with a string of gigs that includes a concert at the Regent Centre in Christchurch on Thursday.

There's a new album too, titled with stunning originality The Very Best of Joe Brown. It features 25 tracks ranging from early hits like What A Crazy World, That's What Love Will Do, Picture of You and Sea of Heartbreak right through to recent years with Bob Dylan's Well Well Well and Paul Simon's One Trick Pony. It also includes such stage favourites as I'll See You In My Dreams, the number that brought the house down when Joe performed it at the George Harrison memorial concert. Joe, who has also been working on a new studio album, told me that he feels his longevity in an industry notorious for its short-termism is down to a combination of factors.

Partly hard work and the good fortune to have been the right age and in the right place when rock 'n' roll was in its infancy, but also a willingness to learn from others.

"I've never been one of those guys who saw good players as a threat. I feel it's a privilege to share a stage with them. Whoever it is, however young, if I can learn from them I will."

Joe Brown is at the Octagon Theatre in Yeovil on Wednesday, May 7 at 7.30pm. Tickets are £20 from the box office on 01935 422884.

11:32am Thursday 1st May 2008

Print

Email this

Comment