David Ackles: On Radio & TV
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| John Peel's Top Gear session | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| My first experience
of hearing David Ackles - and possibly the
first time for many people in the UK - was on the BBC Radio One Sunday
afternoon
programme, Top Gear,
presented by John Peel. At that time, radio was limited by
rules on "needle time", which restricted the number of records that
could be played. The Musicians' Union had agreements with the BBC that
were intended to protect their members, but instead they led to
additional opportunities for work for the many groups and performers
that Radio One featured. For the three hour Top Gear programme,
four performers would go in to the BBC studios in the week before and
each record four tracks. They would be played throughout the programme,
alongside vinyl recordings and "needle time" would be satisfied. So it was that David reported to the BBC Piccadilly studio on Tuesday 1 October, 1968 with four unnamed musicians (organ/harmonium, bass, lead guitar & drums) and laid down several tracks. He wasn't allowed to bring along the members of Rhinoceros that had recorded the first album with him, but had to use British musicians, because of another example of the power of the MU. It would have been enough of a battle for Bernie Andrews, the Top Gear producer, to get an actual American onto his programme, so he would have found appropriate British people to accompany David. And then, on Sunday 27 October, I heard, for the first time, Down River, along with Laissez Faire and When Love is Gone. Interestingly, on the same programme was the Brian Auger Trinity, who played The Road to Cairo. It's possible that the other musicians on David's tracks were Auger himself, Ricky Fenson, bass, Gary Boyle, guitar, and Clem Catini on drums. Another suggested possibility is that the musicians were Gary Wright, Greg Ridley, Luther Grosvenor and Mike Kellie from Spooky Tooth. A further suggestion has been made that the band is Glass Menagerie from Manchester, according to the John Peel Wiki page.. The two other tracks that were recorded by David on 1 Octeober, Be My Friend and Road to Cairo, were played, along with a repeat of the other three, on Sunday 24 November. Thus David's work was introduced to the UK. Of course, the big question has to be: does the BBC still have these recordings? It was quite common in those days to wipe tapes and reuse them, simply because of the cost of tape. The concept of archiving material and even thinking that these recordings would have some value in the future just wasn't there. Even if there are copies of these tracks, members of the public cannot access them. They can only be obtained "for personal use" by the artists themselves or members of their families. It is unlikely that the BBC, even if it has the tapes, would consider issuing a CD David Ackles at the BBC, with only five tracks. Sadly there is no record of him doing any other sessions, although John Peel played tracks from later albums (and owned them). There are two further BBC broadcasts by David, although I cannot trace any more information on the contents. In 1968 (September 28), David was filmed for the BBC2 Late Night Lineup spin-off, Colour Me Pop, produced and directed by Steve Turner. A recording of one song (audio only) was available on YouTube, but has now annoyingly been removed. The same backing musicians as appeared on the Top Gear recordings are believed to have played alongside him. Later, David performed two songs for the first series of The Old Grey Whistle Test, but as the programme went out live, there's no recording of it and other participants have no recollection of what was performed. |
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| David Ackles on YouTube | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| There's a load of
"videos" on YouTube that simply aren't videos at all. They are just a
picture (or a few pictures) of an album cover or of David, lifted from
the web, and used as images to accompany a music track (or, in two
cases, an entire album). I've ploughed through these in the hope of
finding some actual material showing David on a TV programme, without
much luck. It's also the case that a number of videos that did appear
have been taken down, citing copyright reasons. Often, videos I list on
this site disappear quite soon after they are listed. However, some of
the more interesting videos are shown below. I have tried embedding these songs to allow readers to view them on this site, but the technology has overtaken me, so all I can now do is offer links to the YouTube website. I'll persevere with this in the long term, but for now, here are the links: |
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