I was struck by Chris Dreja’s commitment to the all but pointless maracas contribution to this newly colourised Yardbirds TV performance. Do we have any other ‘giving it 110%’ examples of people with inaudible or, shall we say, secondary musical instruments?
‘And on maracas…’
I can’t find a clip but it was widely known that, in his Hollies days, Graham Nash often used a guitar without any strings on it!
Depeche’s Fletch used to often forget that he should sometimes at least pretend to play his keyboard.
He had some great moves though, including ‘air guitar’, ‘pushing stuff up’, ‘jumping up and down’, ‘practice tennis swing’ and ‘eating a banana’.
Didnt Levon claim they turned Robbie’s vocal mic down. Tho unreliable source given Levon’s spite towards RR
Ditto Linda McCartney and Wings.
Davey Jones in the Monkees as seen in the Listen To The Band thread lower down.
Still love him though.
Dave ‘Call me Amitri’ Ross’ recent post of the Monkees and friends going all psychedelic features a nine-minute tambourine wig-out from Davy Jones. At least I assume it does, I couldn’t get past the first minute or so, but considering the cacophony around him it’s a noble effort
There are of course various people playing earnest, inaudible congas in the Jimi Hendrix Woodstock film.
Mick Jagger as guitarisr.
No, he drives the Some Girls songs live with decent rhythm guitar, I presume he played a lot on the original album as Keith was not at his best. Have also seen him play some passable blues licks live on Back of My Hand from A Bigger Bang
I’ll give you Some Girls, and I expect he can play ok, but overall, the guitar is decorative.
I think Fred Schneider is looking great on tambourine in this performance by the B52s, but it is really a Kate and Cindy song.
He shouldn’t “sing” either
And this is obviously a classic, but Jeremy Spencer is literally on maracas (I believe he was not on the original recording so had no other part to play live)
Similar to the Jezza Spencer ‘solution’, Tull pianist John Evan was not on their 1969 recording of ‘Living in the Past’, so something had to be found for him to do on this 1975 ‘Supersonic’ performance of it (presumably what they were asked to do along with their new single at that time)… I don’t believe any of us can fault John’s commitment to those maracas:
Not quite on topic, but back in the 80s I was asked to “play” piano on a Jenny Morris video. She and I had been in a band together a few years earlier, and she was now a rising solo star. The shoot was at the then disused Capitol Theatre in Sydney – for some reason they thought a grand piano in a wrecked old theatre was a suitable setting for the song (written by Neil Finn). The thing was, there’s no piano at all on the song, apart from a couple of flourishes in the bridge, at about 1.56 and 2.10, and none in the intro where you see me solemnly “playing”. In the end the video wisely focuses almost exclusively on Jenny and not me, or the piano, or even much of the rubble-strewn theatre
Nice! Great song, I remember it well. A sizeable hit too.
The shock of recognition of some of those artfully lit shots of Jenny’s back suggest they must’ve featured highly in my adolescent experience of ‘feeling a bit funny’.
I have reconsidered the new thread idea ‘Ever Had One Off The Wrist to a Video Unknowingly Featuring a Fellow AW-er’.
Wow! Chiaroscuro, Mousey…
I do like the fact they wanted a piano player to play the ‘piano’ I mean it could have been anyone.
John Peel pretending to play the mandolin on Maggie May on TotP. The mandolin wasn’t superfluous, but he was.