Bowie: A Biography - JFK247

Summers, later of the Police), Georgie Fame and
the Blue Flames, Brian Auger and the Trinity, Chris
Farlowe and the Thunderbirds, Graham Bond
Organization, Alexis Korner’s Blues Inc., Cyril
Davies All-Stars, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers.
By ’63 London’s sweaty underground clubs,
modeled on the Parisian jazz cellars, could no longer
accommodate the blues-crazed teenagers, and one
by one these acts came up from the caverns and
took over proper jazz venues like the Marquee. To
some, playing the blues in a “trad” jazz venue was
tantamount to Dylan going electric a few years later.
“All the bollocks the snobby jazz fan put on the
blues,” Taylor says. “They thought if you’re a
musician somehow you can’t just enjoy playing.
You’re selling out.”
To David Jones, now sixteen, the blues boom
raised his hopes that a suburban outsider could find
a thriving scene in the city, make a living, meet girls
and mates, and feel, for once in his life, like he was a
part of something massive and growing, rather than
some marginalized art school pocket. “You’d have
lots of people who’d come around the stage at the
end of our shows, from Bromley or Sidcup Art
College. Lost souls who, like us, thought they were
weird and different and yet, when they were in a
place where music was played, suddenly said feel
such a weirdo,” Phil May, the Pretty Things’ lead
singer, has said.
“The clubs were all full,” Joe Boyd, the legendary
producer (Pink Floyd’s “Arnold Layne,” Nick Drake’s