A Complete One-Off
JULIAN NORRIDGE
Pete Brown, one of Hastings’ most respected musicians and song writers, who wrote the lyrics for many of supergroup Cream’s greatest hits, has died at the age of 82 from what he recently described as “various forms of cancer”.
Born in Ashtead in Surrey on Christmas Day 1940, Brown began his creative life as a poet. He had his first poem published in the American magazine Evergreen Review when he was 14. In the early ‘60s he was involved in the Liverpool poetry scene and began doing public readings.
He became a significant advocate of British Beat Poetry and began writing in partnership with Michael Horovitz. In 1965 they recited their work together on stage at a fabled event at the Albert Hall, featuring some of the best American beat poets, including Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg.
By this time, he had also formed The First Real Poetry Band so that he could read his work accompanied by jazz. This led to a residency at the Marquee Club in Soho every Tuesday night. It was Pete Brown’s luck that the Thursday night residency was held at the time by Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated. That band included Graham Bond and Dick Heckstall-Smith, who had both played with Brown’s poetry band. Through them he met two other members of Korner’s band, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, who would go on to form the legendary supergroup Cream with Eric Clapton.
They liked what Brown did and effectively recruited him as the band lyricist. He wrote some of their biggest hits, including I Feel Free and White Room with Jack Bruce and Sunshine of Your Love with Eric Clapton. When Cream split up, Brown continued writing with Jack Bruce for the next 46 years, one of the longest song writing partnerships in history.
In subsequent years, Brown wrote for and performed and recorded with a wide variety of bands and musicians, including his former collaborators Dick Heckstall-Smith and Graham Bond.
In 1977 he set music aside for a while to concentrate on writing scripts for film and television, but the only film actually produced was in America, a children’s film called Felix the Cat: The Movie. He subsequently wrote his autobiography entitled White Rooms and Imaginary Westerns.
But Brown couldn’t stay away from music for long. During the 1980s, he performed extensively as a sideman, both as singer and percussionist, working with African jazz pianist Mervyn Afrika and The Barrelhouse Blues Orchestra. Over the years, he also produced records in Europe and the US.
From 1978 he had a song writing partnership with Phil Ryan (Man, Eyes of Blue) until Ryan died in 2015. They co-led the Interoceters, and then Psoulchedelia, making four records together and touring extensively.
In the months leading up to his death, Brown recorded a new solo album, Shadow Club, which partly harks back to the clubs and artists who featured in the British R&B boom of the mid-1960s. Eric Clapton features on the title track and Malcom Bruce, Jack’s son, is the bass guitarist.
Other guests include Arthur Brown, of Crazy World of and Fire fame, a very old friend; major American guitarist Joe Bonamassa; Bernie Marsden, formerly of Whitesnake; and Mississippi blues veteran Bobby Rush. The producer, musical director and piano player and co-author of many of the tracks on the album is Hastings-based pianist John Donaldson, who is also a driving force behind Jazz Hastings, the monthly jazz club where Pete Brown performed several times.
“It’s so sad he didn’t live long enough to see the album released,” says John (it’s due out in the autumn). “He was a lovely guy, a counter-culture hero with huge intelligence and an incredible memory – he could remember detailed personnel and track listings on a 1930s Ellington album for instance! He was a complete one-off, loved by so many of us and will be missed terribly.”
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