Mick West
Guitarist and Goldhanger
resident
Mick was a
professional guitar player and composer who played with many top bands during
his long career. He was perhaps best known in Goldhanger for his windsurfing
ability. He originally moved to Fish St. for the fishing, but became hooked on
windsurfing.
short clip from Mick's recording of Who am I... |
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...auto-starts for PCs
but not Ipads,etc. |
He made a very
significant impact on the music scene over a large part of his live and there
are several websites that record his achievements, including 4 videos, 24+
audio recordings and information about his career. Extracts from current and
past websites with links to some are given here...
from... https://www.radiosparx.com/music/artist...
from... https://www.ents24.com/uk/tour-dates/mick-west-2
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- Biography and History : Mick West – Mick
Who ? |
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Those
of you who were around in the mid sixties may well remember (they say that if
you can remember etc etc!!!)-a rock / blues band called “YELLOW
DOG”-featuring a seventeen year old Mick on guitar-already being compared
with the recently established greats such as Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff
Beck, Peter Green, Rory Gallagher etc. |
Early
Start... |
In fact
- Mick started playing a "Tommy Steele" guitar (actually a toy
plastic ukelele - later to be re-labelled as "Beatles" guitars) at
about age 7 and managed to actually get tunes out of it. Micks
first "real" guitar was bought for him on his tenth birthday - a
very basic acoustic costing 3 guineas (£3.15p) - and his first "public
appearances" were at the Elim Church in Dagenham accompanying gospel
music. |
Mick
consequently got a Saturday job at the shop- and got involved with his first
"group"-who were all much older than him. For months he travelled
to Canningtown every week to rehearse in a pub hall, and did his first
"proper" gig on his 13th birthday. "I
remember we were sitting around a table before going on to play - I've never
suffered with nerves- and I couldn't understand why the others were shaking
with fear, as we had rehearsed the numbers about 50 billion times!". Of
course the Beatles had arrived by this time - and we did a mixture of
Beatles, early Stones stuff and other pop songs. " "I
don't think we had a name at first - but after a while Brian (the
"leader") came up with "The Lanterns" - that was probably
the beginning of the end of that band!". I got to know all the local
musos by working at the shop - and sometimes depped with other bands. The
owner promised me a full time job when I left school - and I remember being
bitterly disappointed when it didn't happen. |
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Early
influences... |
Meanwhile
back in about '64 I had joined my second band ,all fellow schoolkids from Barking
and all smashing blokes -(see picture - me on the left - we are purposely
"playing" different chords - even the drummer!!) . The
other guitarist "Mally" (next to me) -was a really good player -I
rated him much better than myself- his guitar had a tremelo arm and he
aspired to play like Jeff Beck, which was all new to me. |
The
others are Pete on drums (Mallys' cousin) - and Nig on bass (pictured here
using a Colorama same as mine before he made himself a bass ) Again more
rehearsals, this band played better stuff - Yardbirds, The Who and other
British R&B material, the only name I remember for this band was the
"Nightwalkers",after a creepy film that came out at the time. We only
played a couple of gigs - but I don't remember why we split. My last
year at school was 1966 - one of the teachers played the new John Mayall /
Eric Clapton Bluesbreakers LP in class which knocked me out. Around this time
I started another band with a local bass player , Rob Johnson - and a drummer
called Ernie Humphries. We were
supposed to be starting a six or seven piece "white soul" band -
but we went to see this new "supergroup" at East Ham Town Hall
called "Cream". That
night totally changed our plans - we saw how only 3 players could sound great
- and the soul band idea went straight out of the window!.We called our 3
piece band "Faction" - doing mainly Cream and Hendrix stuff and
blues covers - this was the blues band era - eg: Fleetwood Mac , Chicken
Shack etc. Again
we rehearsed but didn't do that many gigs - but I managed to blag some
recording time from a guy I had met who worked at Pye studios ,and we did a
demo record of two original tracks - (one being "Wheels On My
Wagon" which I have just introduced in my acoustic set). The demo wasn't
good at all though , and the next gig was our last - as this was when
"Yellow Dog" was formed. Cracked
it.. nearly... The guy
who ran this gig was a drummer called Dave Jones -a great guy who is sadly no
longer with us - whose own band were also playing - as well as another band
featuring his brother Johnny Jones (also on drums) - making three bands in
all. At the
end of the gig Dave decided to form his own "Cream" - taking a
player from each band - namely himself , me , and a guy from Johnnys' band -
a larger than life bass player called "Yeti" (if you saw him you'd
know why). "Yellow Dog" started playing some local gigs and getting
a following - after a while Dave left, and Yeti and I found a replacement in
Colin "Loz" Victory (you work it out). The
band was really starting to sound good - playing a lot of music totally
ad-lib - and getting much attention supporting bands like "Taste",
"Free", "Family" and many others - we were beginning to
be known and recognised by the industry and getting better gigs - but just as
things were really starting to happen .... our management split up, and the
band were suddenly left without direction . Yeti
left and was replaced by a guy called Ronnie Overson and we changed direction
for a while , but the band was soon to go to "band heaven!". This
was the end of one phase in my life - I really felt that Yellow Dog had been
our chance for mainstream recognition - but it hadn't worked out and so
basically that was it-and I was 18 years old! I
married my first wife Patsy in 1969 (Loz was best man!), and our daughter
Shella was born in 1970. Loz and I had joined a band called Collusion ,
headed by another friend , singer Tony Davison - I had met him at the
original Dave Jones gig and he had occasionally sung with Yellow Dog. Collusion
was a totally different direction - sort of progressive / folk / blues /jazz
- and we did a lot of my original songs. We made
a demo album (all in one day!) which was pretty poor - but we got signed for
a one off record deal for a couple of the songs which we re-recorded , I
think at Regent B- but alas we got no further. We were
then managed by a local club owner - Darrol Edwards (who became big in Virgin
records) - and did the motorway runs for a while - which I got heartily sick
of. I
retired from bands after this (so I thought) -and was working in a hi-fi shop
in about '72 when an old associate came in out of the blue and talked me into
a band he was forming - basically old mates doing pubs for fun - no hassle
etc. Yeah right! This
became "Jackdaw" - actually a band of good musicians doing Steely
Dan, Doobie Brothers, Average White Band numbers. We ended up on what was now
the "disco" circuit - which meant more slogging up and down the
country mainly getting ignored by young punters who had no interest in live
musicians. (who did they think played on those records?) We also got signed
up to our necks by a git of a bloke whos' name I won't mention. I had
started writing for the band -we got an album deal and went into Advision
Studios to record -but again things didn't go too well - I wasn't allowed any
musical freedom - and the git bloke appointed himself producer - excluding me
from the mixes - by the time the album was finished I had totally lost
interest and just wanted out - but the git held me to a full 5 year contract
out of spite - and this really sealed my disillusionment with the music
industry. |
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Nearly lost it!.... |
After a
period backing some reggae and soul artists I left the band and started up a business
based on a studio mixing desk design I had developed - this led to designing
and marketing "UP" electronic percussion worldwide - finally
closing in 1986 - . I had
also been playing pubs / working mens clubs etc out of necessity - working
with various "shunt" bands and duos etc. - those 12 years left me
totally shattered and exhausted and with lots of big problems for quite a few
years to come! I had a heart attack at 39! and the next few years I didn't
play at all - but produced hundreds of backing tracks, recorded other people
and did some teaching. |
Back
on Form... |
Thankfully,
things did then get better. A girl singer knocked on my door for some backing
tracks - and talked me into doing duo gigs with her. A short
time later I met my new love Theresa, who I married last year, and with her
encouragement I started doing solo gigs. |
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These have
now taken me full circle back to the Cream, Hendrix, Blues numbers and I have
now started adding original material. There's also the prospect of recording
about 300 original songs...this time how I want them to sound! ©
mickwest.co.uk 2007 |
from... https://fandalism.com/mickwest1
from... https://soundcloud.com/mick-west-songs
( 24+ of Mick’s recordings
can be played on-line on this site )
Mick’s music on YouTube...
Who am I - Mik West music |
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Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood |
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The Best Love I Ever Had |
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Mick West - Wishing Well |
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Mick at The Chequers in Goldhanger |