Monday 3rd October

Seems so long ago now, I was just going out with Joy and exploring our musical likes and dislikes and she said she had just bought ‘River’ by Terry Reid.  I had never heard of him; he had been for a while the lead singer in ‘Peter Jay and the Jaywalkers’, hardly at the forefront of late sixties rock.  And then he had made a couple of solo albums which though raved about by the critics had sold poorly.  He was really a musician’s musician, known to the cognoscenti but largely ignored by the general public.  And so he has remained, despite an incredible voice.  He has been quite unlucky too; he was asked to be the lead singer in Led Zeppelin but turned it down to concentrate on his solo career, he actually recommended a friend of his Robert Plant – who of course got the job.

He has made very few records, only four more and one late live album and his reputation rests on the first two records on the early Seventies.  Terry, although English had re-located to L.A. and made ‘River’ with American musicians and this record and its follow-up ‘Seed of Memory’ are wonderful and so different from everyone else’s records of the time; they are a lazy mix of jazz and soul that is really impossible to describe.  His vocals which seem effortless are perfectly married to the often lazy and sparse backing and Terry’s own seemingly simple guitar playing.  The voice carries the melody perfectly, woozy and swooping and soaring at times.  And the songs themselves seem timeless, listening over forty years later and they are still fresh and sound modern, they could have been made in any decade.  He made a covers album which was okay but not outstanding and another record which sadly seemed but a shadow of his early seventies albums.  But on the recent live album he seems genuinely happy with his life in America and his relative obscurity, regaling the audience with tales of Jimi and the Stones in the Sixties.

If you want to sample Terry at his best try ‘Brave New Awakening’ on YouTube.