{"id":23250,"date":"2022-06-28T05:30:01","date_gmt":"2022-06-28T09:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=23250"},"modified":"2022-06-29T08:44:13","modified_gmt":"2022-06-29T12:44:13","slug":"whenever-youre-ready-brian-auger-celebrates-60-years-in-music-part-2-of-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2022\/06\/28\/whenever-youre-ready-brian-auger-celebrates-60-years-in-music-part-2-of-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Whenever You\u2019re Ready: Brian Auger Celebrates 60 Years in Music (Part 2 of 3)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part On<\/a>e\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

Not long thereafter, Auger was leading an organ trio at a Manchester club called The Twisted Wheel. There he was approached by a \u201crather tall guy.\u201d Long John Baldry, as he was known, was a household figure in British music, having been a guest on two Beatles TV programs. Baldry asked Auger to come around to his office and meet his manager; they wanted to put a new band together.<\/p>\n

Auger was happy to help. \u201cI can use my rhythm section \u2013 Micky Waller on drums and Ricky Brown on bass \u2013 and I can add a guitar player,\u201d he said, suggesting Vic Briggs. Baldry insisted on having another singer in the group, a young Scotsman called Rod Stewart. \u201cRod was somebody who was just flitting around the scene at the time\u2026 very nicely dressed,\u201d Auger recalls. And Auger suggested adding yet another<\/i> singer, siren-voiced Julie Driscoll. \u201cI\u2019d done a couple sessions for her,\u201d he says. He told Baldry and his managers, \u201cThere\u2019s nothing like her out there at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Auger had the whole presentation sorted out. \u201cI’d go on, and I’d play a couple of tunes with just the rhythm section and the organ,\u201d he says. \u201cThen Julie could come on, and she could do her stuff, and I could sing backup. Then Rod could come on, and me and Julie could sing backup for him if we needed to. Then, John comes on as the star \u2013 doing Tamla\/Motown and blues stuff \u2013 and we could all sing backup for him!\u201d They would call the band Steampacket. The group was a hit everywhere it went, but would record less than an album\u2019s worth of material during its short time together.<\/p>\n

In early 1965 Auger received a phone call from Paul Samwell-Smith, bassist and producer of The Yardbirds. He was asked to play keyboards on a session for the group\u2019s latest single. He showed up at the studio, looked around and asked, \u201cWhere\u2019s the organ?\u201d<\/p>\n

Samwell-Smith explained that there wasn\u2019t an organ, and that Auger would be playing an instrument that had been stored in a corner of the studio, under a tarpaulin. Auger pulled off the cover to find a double-tier harpsichord. \u201cAre you guys crazy, or what?\u201d he exclaimed. The producer insisted that he was serious. \u201cBetter give me five minutes then,\u201d Auger recalls telling him. \u201cBecause I\u2019ve never played a harpsichord before.\u201d<\/p>\n

The session was completed in about two hours. \u201cI remember leaving the studio and walking down towards the Tube,\u201d Auger says with a laugh. \u201cI was thinking to myself, \u2018These guys are nuts! Who\u2019s going to buy a pop single with harpsichord on it?\u2019\u201d Lots of people, as it turned out: \u201cFor Your Love\u201d was The Yardbirds\u2019 first smash hit, top-tenning in the UK, Ireland, Canada and the United States.<\/p>\n

After Steampacket split, Auger and Driscoll put together The Trinity. Between 1965 and 1969, the group released quite a few singles in the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy, along with several albums. The Trinity\u2019s energetic jazz foundation and the mesmerizing vocals of Driscoll helped propel the group to the top of the charts. Among their biggest successes was a distinctive cover of Bob Dylan\u2019s \u201cThis Wheel\u2019s On Fire,\u201d a #5 hit for The Trinity on the UK charts in 1968. (The new Auger Incorporated<\/i> collection includes \u201cJeannine,\u201d a previously-unreleased Trinity track with Driscoll.)<\/p>\n

Looking back, Auger doesn\u2019t characterize his style of that period as easily fitting into one or another genre. \u201cI just thought of myself as a musician<\/i>,\u201d he explains. \u201cBut I realized that, at that time, I had the chance to try and make a bridge between the new rhythms of the rock world and jazz.\u201d He recalls seeing Duke Ellington interviewed on a TV program. The composer\/bandleader was asked what kind of music he listened to for pleasure. \u201cI\u2019ll always remember this, man,\u201d Auger says. \u201cHe said, \u2018There are only two<\/i> types of music: good and bad.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Auger\u2019s successes in music would be enough to keep most artists busy, but he found time for extra-musical pursuits as well. When theatre and television producer Jack Good invited invited Auger to co-star with The Monkees in a television special called 33-1\/3 Revolutions per Monkee<\/i>, the keyboardist gamely agreed. \u201cJack Good was a very straight [conventional] Englishman,\u201d Auger says. \u201cBut funny as hell. We hit it off immediately because \u2013 of all things \u2013 my Latin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like many of his generation in England, Auger studied Latin in school. And before becoming an impresario, Good had taught<\/i> Latin. So the two men bonded. \u201cMy family motto is non donamus rectum rodentus<\/i>,\u201d Auger jokes, \u201cWhich basically means, \u201cWe don\u2019t give a rat\u2019s ass!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Good outlined the role in 33-1\/3 Revolutions<\/i> that he envisioned for Auger. \u201cYou’re going to be the mad professor,\u201d he explained. \u201cYou’re going to have a psychedelic organ, and you will be in a studio like the transporter on Star Trek<\/i>.\u201d Auger deadpanned, \u201cWell, that shouldn\u2019t be too difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

He and Driscoll tore into their roles with glee; their campy, over-the-top performances would be a highlight of the program, which aired in April 1969. Among the special\u2019s notable musical performances was The Trinity\u2019s \u201cCome On Up,\u201d featuring a bewitching vocal by Driscoll and incendiary organ work by Auger. The Monkees \u201cseemed to really enjoy having us around,\u201d Auger says. The TV special would turn out to be The Monkees\u2019 final bow as a foursome; Peter Tork quit that group as soon as filming was completed.<\/p>\n

Auger\u2019s next endeavor was the launching of a new group, Oblivion Express. He had the commercial wind at his back, but chose to use that moment for his own purposes, not in cynical pursuit of hit records. \u201cI had decided that I would push the envelope forward,\u201d he explains. \u201cWith Julie I had tried to bridge the gap, so now I was going to push on the jazz side and see if I could make this music go wherever I wanted it to go.\u201d He says that he was fully aware that this new group would be \u201cwading against the commercial tide. I thought, \u2018Maybe I\u2019m headed the quickest way to oblivion.\u2019 So I named the band Oblivion Express.\u201d<\/p>\n

Click here to continue to Part 3 (conclusion)<\/a>\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One\u2026 Not long thereafter, Auger was leading an organ trio at a Manchester club called The Twisted Wheel. There he was approached by a \u201crather tall guy.\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23242,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,32,41,42,49,62,69],"tags":[4009,4872,4871,4870],"class_list":["post-23250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-compilation","category-fusion","category-interview","category-jazz","category-new-release","category-rawk","category-soul","tag-brian-auger","tag-julie-driscoll","tag-oblivion-express","tag-the-trinity","cat-19-id","cat-32-id","cat-41-id","cat-42-id","cat-49-id","cat-62-id","cat-69-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23250"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23281,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23250\/revisions\/23281"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}