guitar yard

The Monkees 1960s

THE ROLLING STONES photographed during rehearsal for the Hyde Park free concert, July 1969

“Mick Taylor remembers their first rehearsal as ‘really ragged. I thought, how do these guys make such great records when they’re so sloppy and spontaneous? But it was because they had this great chemistry.’”

📸 Alison Braun

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I remember Tracy Pew falling flat on his face, his bass exploding in a sub-sonic boom as he hit the floor with all the weight of the near unconscious. It takes a good minute – a long time in a song – for Tracy to find his drunken feet and locate the song.

We begin the next number, the introduction lasts a lifetime: Nick Cave is too involved battling some maniac in the crowd to be bothered singing. The song does start, but it’s like we’re all in different rooms, not for the first time Mick Harvey and I, extreme left and right, just stop playing and look at each other in disbelief.

Nick is trying to scale the PA stack, but keeps falling down. Everything is falling down. I’m finding this hard to believe, we are onstage, nominally playing a song and Nick is beating a maniac over the head with the mike stand. The song dies – the hall is filled with the sound of the microphone, in all its reverberated glory, repeatedly smashing someone’s skull.”

Rowland S.Howard The Birthday Party 4/1/83 Mercury Cafe, Denver, Colorado, US World Art Magazine, 1999