Post by petrolino on Jul 20, 2019 0:00:27 GMT
Joe Moretti once shared a flat with John McLaughlin and he played sessions with Jimmy Page & John Paul Jones. He sent a shiver up the spine and a quiver down the backbone, revolutionising British rock n roll and influencing a generation of future guitarists that included Mick Jones, John McGeoch and Johnny Marr.
'From 1955 to 1962, it seemed only the Americans could create convincing rock'n'roll, and few British records could compete. One exception was the atmospheric "Shakin' All Over" from Johnny Kidd and the Pirates (1960): the tense stop/start song, Kidd's belligerent vocal and Joe Moretti's dramatic guitar breaks combined to make a remarkable record.
Joe Moretti was born in the Glasgow docklands in 1938, the son of a Scottish-Italian father and an Irish mother. He taught himself to play his grandfather's piano, although he had ambitions to be an artist. With the advent of rock'n'roll and skiffle, Moretti acquired a cheap guitar and then a Hofner Senator. In 1957, he entered a newspaper competition for Glasgow's Tommy Steele. At the audition, he met the eventual winner, Alex Harvey. Harvey offered Moretti a place in his group, the seven-piece Kansas City Band (all from Glasgow).
In 1958, Moretti made his TV début on Six-Five Special with the Rikki Barnes All Stars. After marrying a young trainee nurse, Pina, they moved to London with £11. He went straight to the Two I's coffee bar in Soho, where he jammed with Tony Sheridan and Brian Bennett. He was offered a job with Tommy Steele's brother, Colin Hicks, and then he joined Vince Eager for a pantomime, Mother Goose, in Southport. "There was just me, Joe and Tex Makins so I don't know what we sounded like without a drummer," says Eager, "but Joe was a very good guitarist and ahead of his time. He left me and joined Vince Taylor and the Playboys, but I never got on well with Vince. My real name is Roy Taylor so I accused him of taking my name."
Vince Taylor, an American from Hounslow, had determination, if not talent, and he looked the part, with long sideburns and a black leather suit. Moretti played electrifyingly on "Brand New Cadillac", but it was banned by the BBC because of advertising, even though Cadillacs were not available in the UK. Taylor was later rediscovered and influenced David Bowie's creation, Ziggy Stardust. After the Playboys, Moretti moved to Johnny Duncan and his Bluegrass Boys then to the middle-of-the-road trumpeter, Eddie Calvert.
In 1960 he joined Johnny Kidd and the Pirates (Brian Gregg, Alan Caddy and Clem Cattini) for a session as Caddy felt nervous about playing the solo on "Shakin' All Over". Moretti told Dave Burke of Pipeline Instrumental Review in 2002: "I created the introduction, the backing figures, the solo, and slid a cigarette lighter across the strings to get that shakin' guitar sound. We had it down in a couple of takes." The single went to No 1 and he also played on the follow-up, "Restless".'
Joe Moretti was born in the Glasgow docklands in 1938, the son of a Scottish-Italian father and an Irish mother. He taught himself to play his grandfather's piano, although he had ambitions to be an artist. With the advent of rock'n'roll and skiffle, Moretti acquired a cheap guitar and then a Hofner Senator. In 1957, he entered a newspaper competition for Glasgow's Tommy Steele. At the audition, he met the eventual winner, Alex Harvey. Harvey offered Moretti a place in his group, the seven-piece Kansas City Band (all from Glasgow).
In 1958, Moretti made his TV début on Six-Five Special with the Rikki Barnes All Stars. After marrying a young trainee nurse, Pina, they moved to London with £11. He went straight to the Two I's coffee bar in Soho, where he jammed with Tony Sheridan and Brian Bennett. He was offered a job with Tommy Steele's brother, Colin Hicks, and then he joined Vince Eager for a pantomime, Mother Goose, in Southport. "There was just me, Joe and Tex Makins so I don't know what we sounded like without a drummer," says Eager, "but Joe was a very good guitarist and ahead of his time. He left me and joined Vince Taylor and the Playboys, but I never got on well with Vince. My real name is Roy Taylor so I accused him of taking my name."
Vince Taylor, an American from Hounslow, had determination, if not talent, and he looked the part, with long sideburns and a black leather suit. Moretti played electrifyingly on "Brand New Cadillac", but it was banned by the BBC because of advertising, even though Cadillacs were not available in the UK. Taylor was later rediscovered and influenced David Bowie's creation, Ziggy Stardust. After the Playboys, Moretti moved to Johnny Duncan and his Bluegrass Boys then to the middle-of-the-road trumpeter, Eddie Calvert.
In 1960 he joined Johnny Kidd and the Pirates (Brian Gregg, Alan Caddy and Clem Cattini) for a session as Caddy felt nervous about playing the solo on "Shakin' All Over". Moretti told Dave Burke of Pipeline Instrumental Review in 2002: "I created the introduction, the backing figures, the solo, and slid a cigarette lighter across the strings to get that shakin' guitar sound. We had it down in a couple of takes." The single went to No 1 and he also played on the follow-up, "Restless".'
- The Independent
'With “Shakin'” originally intended as a B-side, the band was relaxed and loose for the take, which contributed to its spooky energy. Moretti’s solo, though preceded by an ill-timed drum fill that was left in to pad out the track, remains a marvel (it’s reminiscent of Vic Flick’s playing on Adam Faith’s “Made You,” though “Shakin'” was cut before the Faith track was released). Mick Ronson paid homage to Moretti by playing some of his lines in Bowie’s cover of “I Can’t Explain” on Pin Ups.
Bowie had a history with the song: he had played “Shakin'” with some of his early bands (the Lower Third had opened for Johnny Kidd at the Isle of Wight, in the summer of ’65), as well as in the early 1970 Haddon Hall rehearsals that had generated most of the songs for the Man Who Sold The World. (Bowie reconnected with the drummer from that era, John Cambridge, at the Bradford gig on 2 July—Cambridge told him the lyric, which Bowie said he’d forgotten.)* But playing “Shakin'” with Tin Machine, Bowie just oversang, blowing his voice out on the choruses. Similar to their “Maggie’s Farm,” the Machine turned “Shakin'” into a mash-up, here a Fifties rock ‘n’ roll catch-all, with Kevin Armstrong playing Duane Eddy riffs throughout while Bowie seemed on the verge of spinning into other “period” hits—“Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On” and Sam Cooke’s “Shake”—as if he was back on the Cher Show.
So the Machine took a 1960 track that sounded like nothing else from its era, a proto-modernist hard rock groove song, and turned it into an “oldie”; the audience cheered them for it. In the 1991-92 tour, Bowie incorporated “Shakin'” into his long “Heaven’s In Here” medleys.'
Bowie had a history with the song: he had played “Shakin'” with some of his early bands (the Lower Third had opened for Johnny Kidd at the Isle of Wight, in the summer of ’65), as well as in the early 1970 Haddon Hall rehearsals that had generated most of the songs for the Man Who Sold The World. (Bowie reconnected with the drummer from that era, John Cambridge, at the Bradford gig on 2 July—Cambridge told him the lyric, which Bowie said he’d forgotten.)* But playing “Shakin'” with Tin Machine, Bowie just oversang, blowing his voice out on the choruses. Similar to their “Maggie’s Farm,” the Machine turned “Shakin'” into a mash-up, here a Fifties rock ‘n’ roll catch-all, with Kevin Armstrong playing Duane Eddy riffs throughout while Bowie seemed on the verge of spinning into other “period” hits—“Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On” and Sam Cooke’s “Shake”—as if he was back on the Cher Show.
So the Machine took a 1960 track that sounded like nothing else from its era, a proto-modernist hard rock groove song, and turned it into an “oldie”; the audience cheered them for it. In the 1991-92 tour, Bowie incorporated “Shakin'” into his long “Heaven’s In Here” medleys.'
- The Colonel, Pushing Ahead Of The Dame