Some key questions for this video:
1. How the hell does Steve Walsh keep it together when he must have consumed shedloads of … something?
2. Is this the most ‘out of it’ performance ever captured on video?
Performing while off your t*ts on something
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Apparently he did lose his voice completely after a while and had to leave the band to sort himself out.
The version of “Blue suede shoes” on “Hendrix in the West” is introduced by a refreshed sounding Jimi as “Be bop a Lula” and is somewhat out there. Good though.
The heffalump in the room here is the late John Martyn. Of course many of his performances suffered badly, especially in later years, but in the 70s he turned in absolutely transcendent performances whilst he was clearly epically wankered.
Similarly, check out the way Tim Buckley giggles between the songs in Dream Letter.
Mind you that footage of Amy Winehouse wandering around the stage looking completely lost whilst being booed took the biscuit for me.
Don’t know about performing, but you’d have to be off your tits on something to want to listen to Kansas…
…am I alone in finding that the presence of a Yamaha drum kit is usually a bad sign?
Kansas Greatest Hits is a cracking album!
Carry On Wayward Son is the only thing of theirs I’ve ever heard and it’s shite.
Obviously they realise it’s the only memorable thing they’ve ever done because they have milked it on every live album ever since they released it.
If they were a UK football club they’d be in League Two.
Unfair @mike_h! There are times when “Carry on Wayward Son” just hits the mark. Once every ten years or so is enough but still, it’s a cracker of its genre.
Agreed. In the right mood it’s a masterpiece. The extended version opens my Stadium Rock playlist which I am now going to inflict on the family – we’re mid way through a 9 hour drive back from rural France. Nice one!
Hang on @twang !
There’s extended version ?!
I have the album it’s on(Leftoverture…it’s not much cop!) which has the only version on it I know. Got a guitar solo on it and everything and lasts 5.22 minutes according to my trusty classic iPod. Do you know of a different version…maybe a radio edit?
Enjoy your drive!
I need to check mine. I’m sure it calls it “extended”. I’ve only got the greatest hits, which I remastered because it sounded weedy and it’s well beefy now.
This is my favourite Kansas song:
I like Dust in the Wind too. Silly and over serious but he’d found God so you have to make allowances. Anyway no one expects Kansas to be restrained? Video is not for the faint hearted BTW.
He’s a rank amateur. Here’s Iggy giving a masterclass from the Australian show Countdown in the 70s. Make sure you watch through until his performance.
Aha! I always thought it was rather lazy the way the Australian version of Channel 4’s Countdown programme was called “Letters And Numbers”, but if they already had a pretty famous show called Countdown that would make sense..
I presume that “Letters And Numbers” is a direct translation of the original French programme “Les chiffres et les lettres” which has now been running for a mind-boggling 52 years. FIFTY-TWO!
Alternative names for Countdown (UK):
Big Fuck-Off Clock
Thirty Seconds To Comply
Have I Had Me Tea Yet?
No mention of Rachel Riley Moose? You’re slipping, hurr….
Not for me. RR is a horror of a woman.
Susie Dent on the other hand….
You’ll love this then. The fragrant Ms Dent gets all potty mouthed.
https://www.channel4.com/programmes/susie-dents-guide-to-swearing/episode-guide
Plenty of swears on the 8 Out of 10 Cats version. But then the camera switches to Jimmy Carr and it’s instant detumescence.
They used to be all over Radio 4 like a rash, back in the day.
Oh, sorry, Instant Sunshine. ‘What you must do is tune to Moneybox’.
Noone ever comes to see me. . .
I remember seeing a clip of Ron Wood almost tripping over onstage with the Stones, but it must have been taken down. As for Keef he always looks a bit of out it, or used to
Baked.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dn2MrEACLU
In a good way.
Julian Cope on TOTP – you can read his description of what was going on in his head here:
https://bristlingbadger.blogspot.com/2009/03/passionate-friend-on-acid.html
You’d never guess it from the performance – it suggests Copey is a true pro and even when tripping his nuts off he doesn’t miss any cues and is always looking in the right camera.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38utfIScDgg
Wow, I’d never known Bill Nighy had been young!
Green Gartside was on TOTP performing, I think, Absolute. He was wearing a white smock and didn’t appear to be all there. In a subsequent Smash Hits interview he said he’d had a heavy cold and was on medication. I took that totally at face value at the time – but I have since learned that this is a euphemism for being off ones tits on drugs. Similarly “tired and emotional” for being pissed.
Santana at Woodstock is a pretty well known one. Took LSD thinking they had loads of time before their performance then had to go on right away instead. Carlos relates how he struggled to keep it together, hallucinating that the his guitar was writhing snakes. Clearly he feels it was a compromised show but I always thought it was fine, better than fine in fact.
Yeah – that version of “Soul Sacrifice” is a corker!
I’ve often wondered about this — and have a tiny bit of experience — and I think that in all but the most dire cases, something kicks in, and it comes from the same place of self-preservation that gets you home at the end of an evening.
The magic beer taxi – the one which lets you wake up safely in your bed even if you have no idea how you got there? I’m fairly abstemious these days, but in my youth the magic beer taxi came to my rescue many a time.
It’s extraordinary. Many’s the time I’ve woken up after a night I can’t remember, having offended everyone I’ve ever met and done things of unfathomable stupidity, to find that nonetheless I am in my own house, on my own bed, and not lying on my back where I could have choked on my own vomit.
And then there are the nights when I got drunk. Oho!
It’s the old saying “God looks out for little children…and drunks”
Here’s Dicky Thompson to offer some added gloom to your day.
I have played guitar in bands in various stages of coherence, and eventually reached the conclusion that it’s like driving a car – you need the fine motor control to be able to execute properly. While drunk me imagines that this is all brilliant and free and RAW the sober me, listening back to a recording of the performance realises how often my reach exceeded my grasp. And, indeed, knocked over things while grasping for the wrong end of the guitar.
Never say never, of course. The last time we toured France, when we played in Montpellier, the bar staff were greatly amused that this ecossais asked for a pastis. So we enjoyed several, chatting in my limited French, which improved over each drink. And shortly before showtime, a coffee with a brandy beside it was marvellous fuel for a rocking show.
Beer scooter is the perfect analogy.
I learned many years ago that playing guitar drunk is basically a bad idea unless in a small equally blasted group of close friends. A boozy singsong is obviously great fun. For a paying audience, not so much.
spot on!
Many happy nights singing “The Pilgrim” by Kris Kristofferson, three sheets to the wind with mates in North Wales. Happy daze.
I don’t have an Iggy story but I do have one about a bloke called Malcolm who was a pensions administration manager in Surrey in the 80s. I have not met someone like him. A very large man and overweight. Well into his 50s, Malcolm was a functioning alcoholic. His lunchtime routine was a circuit of at least four local pubs. As we had a flexitime systems, he took two hours and threw down 8 (EIGHT) pints. When I say threw down, these were drinks downed in one or two.
And yet…he was one of the most respected figures at work professionally. A real subject matter expert and even though in the afternoon he stank of booze and fags, he never made mistakes and applied himself to his work with a great attitude and was brilliant with clients. As an aside, he was a very nice man – always friendly. Rumour had it that his wife was a top-notch lawyer and his earnings were pin money.
He told me once that he had been out to town (Kingston) the last Saturday just gone with his wife. He hates shopping – so would say to her “I’m just going to look at some clothes over there” and pop out to the nearest pub. Over the several hours they’d been out he’d done this a few times. At the end of the afternoon, she was dead on her feet and asked Malcolm to drive. He said “no” and when she asked why he just said “Er…I don’t want to”.
In the 1993/4 Depeche Mode Devotional tour, Dave Gahan was at his most extreme in terms of drugs and drink. This was the tour that Primal Scream were involved in and even they found the “partying” extreme. And yet Dave Gahan completed the tour, remembered all the words and everything. He was apparently wazzed out of his swede the entire time – but there seems to be an autopilot at play wth him.