Rockpalast

WDR
17 Mar 1978

66 minutes
Solo concert at the Audimax, Hamburg, broadcasted by German television in Rockpalast series (WDR).

Rare and essential solo performance with lots of beercans and lots of tuning.
The episode was broadcast Saturday 17 Jun 1978. It got a rerun Sunday 06 June 1982 and also during the Rockpalast night of 10 December 1995.

John's intro: "Hi fans! Welcome to the furniture auction. Good evening, tables and chairs."

Track Listing

nr track time comment
01 One Day Without You [3:49] After electric burp at start: 'It's the beer, don't worry about it, you'll be alright'.
02 Outside In [10:24] Beverley intro.
03 Bless The Weather [5:51] Great and rather violent version with Spanish intro.
04 Certain Surprise [2:39] 'A Gringo love song with a Gringo tuning - I've had a couple'.
05 Big Muff [6:11] On acoustic guitar with dub echo on the vocals. 'Co-written with a friend of mine who is a nasty little negro person.'
06 Couldn't Love You More [3:04] 'Quiet love song'.
07 Small Hours [4:33] Only track played on electric guitar (John starts with making faces at distorted sounds.) After turning on drum machine: 'You see? This is magic! God has sent me a drummer. I hope he doesn't expect me to go up there and play. I wouldn't know anybody up there...' And: 'This is a real hippy song, I like it.'
08 Solid Air [5:19] Starts singing in musical style about a broken string. Good version.
09 May You Never [4:01] After striking first chord: 'This is a very respectable chord. You can take that chord to dinner. You can take it to your mother and she wouldn't be offended - I'm running out of beer here.'
10 'The Visual Guitar Solo' [Seven Black Roses] [2:34] Solo with John moving his capo d'astro up and down the guitar neck. Has a nice introduction (see below)
11 Singing In The Rain [2:53] Encore starting with Status Quo joke: 'Careful, careful, we all get carried away now and have a good time. You're not allowed to do that. No smiling, no laughing. [burp]'

Intro to Seven Black Roses:

"I'd like to do an instrumental which is a funny instrumental. At one time when I used to play, there was like... You could play in guitar clubs, right. And all the guitarists were there, they would watch your fingers. And all the guitarists would watch each other, it was very heavy. If you couldn't play Angi *, you weren't anywhere. You weren't in the fucking running, you couldn't get a gig. So I invented a guitar instrumental which is very very impressive. It's for people who own clubs; it's really a kind of musical joke. It's a very visual guitar solo - as you will discover. (If I can remember how to play the bleeding thing.)' After the first melodic line: 'I can see clearly now the rain has gone, right!"

* sitenote:
Famous Davey Graham tune, HB.

Credits: 
Production: Peter Rüchel