Our first episode about Jimi Hendrix & we are joined by Jimi’s former roadie Eric Barrett.

Eric ran into Mitch Mitchell & Noel Redding, bassist & drummer in The Jimi Hendrix Experience in a club & received a phone call shortly after asking him to fly to Milan to work his first gig with Jimi.

Eric had met them on a previous tour working for a band named The Koobas who had opened for The Jimi Hendrix Experience.

It proves a baptism of fire as Eric is expected to learn how to work with Jimi during a gig almost instantly.

Eric attended the famous Saville Theatre show where Hendrix opened with Sgt. Pepper with several Beatles in the audience.

The band live in a house together with Eric in Benedict Canyon in Los Angeles, where they race sports cars, survive drug busts & more.

Electric Lady Studios opens in New York & Jimi’s focus turns to recording, but not before his most iconic gig takes place at Woodstock in August of 1969. Eric tells us about this legendary gig & his role in it along with Jimi’s performance at the Isle of Wight festival the following year.

It takes anything from 5 to 40 hours to prepare each episode of Music Maps - if you’d like to make a contribution to help us cover the costs & time of producing these episodes for you, you can do so at this link: ko-fi.com/musicmaps

It is hugely important for us to get positive reviews & star ratings - if you have enjoyed Music Maps & can spare the time to do either we would hugely appreciate it.

You can see our upcoming live events here: https://rocknrollbookclub.co.uk/events

Instagram: @rocknrollbookclube17

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Hosted, Produced & Edited by Simon Cardwell

Music by Andy Maxwell

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we take a deep dive into the AOR scene of the 1980s, re-appraising some often overlooked bands & music.

We start with the story of Boston, where an MIT graduate named Tom Scholz spends 7 years practicing & making demos before coming up with ‘More Than a Feeling’ & achieving huge success.

Meanwhile Ann & Nancy Wilson form the female fronted band Heart - scoring several number 1 singles.

Journey are put together in a different way, assembled by manager Herbie Herbert. Initially there is resistance from the existing band embers when Herbert brings in lead singer Steve Perry, finding him working on a turkey far in California. But that stance softens once commercial success appears.

Meanwhile in the midwest of the US bands such as REO Speedwagon & Styx are forging their own path based largely on work ethic - playing a lot of gigs & building a local following.

Toto come together via the Los Angeles session musician scene & have previously played on Michael Jackson’s Thriller amongst hundreds of sessions.

The producers are significant part of AOR, specifically Mutt Lange who brings Def Leppard to prominence & is instrumental in Foreigner’s huge fourth album.

Bands like Van Halen & Bon Jovi are on the periphery but manage to sustain their success beyond some of the others as the scene fades once drugs, changing fashions, song doctors & a well worn formula bring one end to the glory days of AOR.

In 2007 David Chase chooses ‘Don’t Stop Believin’ to close the final episode of The Sopranos, opening the song & the genre open t a whole new audience. As of today the track has 2.9 billion streams on Spotify.

Toto also find a new audience via the track Africa appearing in Stranger Things.

It takes anything from 5 to 40 hours to prepare each episode of Music Maps - if you’d like to make a contribution to help us cover the costs & time of producing these episodes for you, you can do so at this link: ko-fi.com/musicmaps

It is hugely important for us to get positive reviews & star ratings - if you have enjoyed Music Maps & can spare the time to do either we would hugely appreciate it.

You can see our upcoming live events here: https://rocknrollbookclub.co.uk/events

Instagram: @rocknrollbookclube17

X: @simonmusicmaps

Facebook: E17rockbookclub

Hosted, Produced & Edited by Simon Cardwell

Music by Andy Maxwell

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Join us for a deep dive into Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska with writer Warren Zanes, author of Deliver Me From Nowhere which was recently made into a Hollywood movie.

In late 1981 Bruce Springsteen is coming off his biggest success to date with The River album & tour plus his first hit single, Hungry Heart.

But rather than offer more of the same Springsteen offers a curveball - a quiet, almost ghostly sounding record with no hit singles, no tour & not even any interviews to support it.

Springsteen had recently relocated to a house in Colts Neck, New Jersey, where he recorded the bulk of the album on the evening of January 3rd 1982 on a TEAC 144 home recorder.

Influenced by the films of Terence Malick, specifically Badlands, the writing of Flannery O’Connor & the first couple of Suicide albums, Springsteen recorded what were intended as home demos in a bedroom.

Later attempts to re-record the material with the E Street Band proved largely fruitless & they eventually went back to the original water damaged cassette recording, which was released as the finished album.

The album proved hugely influential to the likes of Steve Earle & Matt Berninger (The National) & even Johnny Cash recorded two of its tracks.

It takes anything from 5 to 40 hours to prepare each episode of Music Maps - if you’d like to make a contribution to help us cover the costs & time of producing these episodes for you, you can do so at this link: ko-fi.com/musicmaps

It is hugely important for us to get positive reviews & star ratings - if you have enjoyed Music Maps & can spare the time to do either we would hugely appreciate it.

You can see our upcoming live events here: https://rocknrollbookclub.co.uk/events

Instagram: @rocknrollbookclube17

X: @simonmusicmaps

Facebook: E17rockbookclub

Hosted, Produced & Edited by Simon Cardwell

Music by Andy Maxwell

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.