by Stuart Penney
I was sad to hear that Mick
Abrahams died on December 19, aged 82. We live in an age where our 60s heroes
are dropping off with alarming regularity, so the news shouldn’t have come as
too much of a shock. But Mick’s demise has hit me much harder than I expected.
He was a founder member of Jethro Tull of course and played guitar on their debut LP This Was. It's the only one featuring Mick as a full member and is still my favourite Tull album to this day. He left almost before the record hit the shops to form his own band, the wonderfully named Blodwyn Pig, making way for Martin Barre who stayed with Tull for the best part of half a century.
I saw Jethro Tull with Abrahams on November 13, 1968, at the Velvet Underground Club in Chesterfield. Oddly, there was no stage, so the band was on the same level as the crowd who, for the most part, sat cross-legged on the dusty parquet flooring, the way we often did at gigs back then. This was barely a month after This Was had been released and Ian Anderson was still refining his rock & roll hobo look, affecting an oversized threadbare military greatcoat and wild, matted hair.
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| Jethro Tull playing at the first Hyde Park free concert, June 29, 1968 |
Anderson’s theatrics notwithstanding, it was Mick Abrahams who impressed me most in Chesterfield. He was an old school guitar hero, wielding his trademark Gibson SG Special with great flair and passion (check out the instrumental "Cat's Squirrel" on the Tull album). We would later come to recognise this guitar model in the hands of Pete Townshend, Tony Iommi, Carlos Santana, Frank Zappa and even Angus Young.
Incidentally, the support band in Chesterfield were local lads The Shape of the Rain. The definite article is more or less optional (if not entirely redundant) in most parts of Yorkshire and north Derbyshire so TSOTR were routinely referred to as “t’Shape O’ t’Rain” in the Sheffield/Chesterfield area.
I have reason to remember Mick’s guitar because an SG Special was also my own first high-quality American instrument. In early 1969, after a succession of Hofner, Watkins, Vox and other low budget guitars, I got my dad to sign the hire purchase agreement for a brand-new Gibson SG in cherry red, just like Mick’s. It cost around £160, which was an absolute fortune back then, maybe several months wages for the likes of me.
Things moved fast in 1969 and by the time the Island label released their famous sampler LP You Can All Join In containing Tull’s “A Song For Jeffrey” from This Was, Abrahams had already left the band. So although Martin Barre was pictured on the YCAJI sampler sleeve, he did not play on the track.
Barely weeks after the Chesterfield gig Abrahams quit Tull to form Blodwyn Pig and they began gigging almost right away. Even though their debut LP Ahead Rings Out was still some months away from release, I saw them at the Sheffield City Hall in March 1969 supporting Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac. In fact, so new were the band at the time, their name was cruelly misspelled “Blondwin Pig” on the tickets (what's the betting someone in the promoter's office took those details down over the phone?) When, finally, it did appear, the first LP by the Pig (as nearly everyone called them) reached #9 in the UK album charts, one place higher than Tull’s This Was had managed.
I can’t remember how it happened, but I somehow ended up with a fully autographed copy of Ahead Rings Out, hand signed by Mick, Jack Lancaster (sax), Andy Pyle (bass) and Ron Berg (bass).
Their second album Getting To This (the very first LP on the newly formed Chrysalis label, fact fans) sold even better. It peaked at #8 in the UK and things looked set fair for the Pig to carve out a long career. But it was not to be. Suddenly he went solo with a couple of albums in 1971 and 1972 credited to the Mick Abrahams Band and the momentum gained from Blodwyn Pig seemed to dissipate. There was a guitar tutor LP Have Fun Learning the Guitar With Mick Abrahams in 1973 but nothing much after that until the 90s when low key solo CDs began to appear.
In 2006 I witnessed Mick appear on the “Identity Parade” section of BBC TV music quiz show Never Mind the Buzzcocks. In a kind of "where are they now" scenario, contestants were asked to identify a formerly famous musician amid a line-up of five people. Naturally, the quintet were dressed like sad old hippies and the cool young panelists took great delight in ridiculing them. I can’t remember if anyone picked out Mick, but even though he appeared unfazed by the experience, it was sad to see the ritual humiliation of a great musician.
Mick was originally from Luton and
continued to live in the area for the rest of his life, ending up in Milton
Keynes. In the mid-90s I was introduced to his brother-in-law who was involved
with band promotion at The Pitz, a rock & metal music venue at the Woughton
Centre, Milton Keynes (later incarnations of Blodwyn Pig played there). He’d
collected t-shirts from seemingly every band who had ever appeared at the Pitz,
and we spent a enjoyable afternoon sorting through the countless shirts while
he regaled us with hilarious stories about Mick.
Abrahams was well known for his sense of humour and there’s a great story of him meeting an enthusiastic fan who gushed “I bought the first Blodwyn Pig album.” Without missing a beat Mick deadpanned “Well, I ain’t giving you your bloody money back!” Let’s remember him that way.
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