Mojo '60s #3

MY, MY, IT’S BEEN A WHILE since we did this… Four years, in fact. Back in October 2011 we published the second issue of MOJO ’60s. Then came ‘the double dip’ of the following year. It was almost like being in America in 1961 again! It also made it nigh-on impossible to continue our endeavours with this magazine. Thankfully, we are delighted to resume ‘normal service’ with this re-booted version of MOJO ’60s. From our 20-page Dylan ’65 special through to revelatory major inter views with returned garagepunkers The Sonics via major pieces on Sam Cooke, Hendrix and John Coltrane, we hope that you enjoy the breadth and the depth of this issue. We’ve also added a Pin-Ups section in tribute to the great magazines of the decade in question,…

“SYD BARRETT FOR ME IS AN ICON IN EVERY WAY,” SAYS Roddy Bogawa, director of a forthcoming documentary detailing the extraordinary story of Pink Floyd’s enigmatic first leader, who died in 2006. “His look, his songwriting, his riding the cusp of psychedelia – the fact that, as some people say in the film, he was destined for mythical status.” Have You Got It?, named after the non-existent song that Syd once mischievously tried to ‘teach’ his confused bandmates, was begun under the auspices of Pink Floyd’s storied sleeve designer and Hypgnosis art guru Storm Thorgerson, who grew up with the group in Cambridge. When Thorgerson died in 2013, Bogawa took charge of the film, which promises new insights into Barrett’s mercurial career, breakdown and subsequent retreat from public view via…

It’s the psychedelic event of the century, but already there are warning signs. As a vast international audience prepares to fly in for the Levitation Festival (previously the Austin Psych Fest) in Austin, Texas, to witness the first ever ‘proper’ reunion gig by ’60s psychedelic legends The 13th Floor Elevators, a tornado warning is issued. A raging storm is forecast at the band’s allotted show time. If the extreme weather warnings aren’t terrifying enough, the old band dynamics are adding to the drama. Days before the show, drummer John Ike Walton’s participation was looking shaky and a replacement was already in rehearsal. Given that Walton’s unique style is so integral to the band’s sound, it wouldn’t be the Elevators without him. The band lost their original lead guitarist Stacy Sutherland…

They were a bunch of R&B-fixated teenagers from north London, smoking the fag-ends of Mod-dom to the filter, and playing soul covers of Garnet Mimms, Eddie Floyd and Lee Dorsey in any club that would have them. Known as The Soul Survivors, they rehearsed hard and dreamt of the big time. And then, in what is an archetypal ’60s yarn of exploitation and industry machinations, their dream came true – but with disastrous consequences. For a start, vocalist Steve Ellis, keyboard player Morgan Fischer, guitarist Ian Miller, drummer Mo Bacon and bassist Warwick Rose were renamed The Love Affair. “Apparently there was a band with the same name in America, so we had to change it,” recalls Ellis. “But I hated it because it just didn’t suit us.” Ellis also…

You and Peter Tork are playing shows as The Monkees in the UK in September. What can we expect? We’ll do the hits like Last Train To Clarksville, Pleasant Valley Sunday, I’m A Believer and last time we were in the UK we did lots of songs from [1968 psychedelic Monkees movie] Head; I love singing those songs – so we’ll probably do some of them again. We’ve always prided ourselves on having multimedia live. We were one of the first to bring multimedia on the road with us in the ’60s. We took a motion picture screen out of a cinema and big projectors, too, and we showed excerpts from the TV show and home movies. Now it’s so easy to do that because nearly every venue has a…

Date: April 4, 1968 Event: The assassination of Dr Martin Luther King at the Lorraine Motel in downtown Memphis, Tennessee. King had been speaking out in support of striking African American sanitation workers when he was murdered by James Earl Ray. Eyewitness: Stax artist William Bell. “I had met Dr King a couple times. Once at the airport in Atlanta – we flew to Memphis together and talked briefly. I met him and Mrs King and the whole family, actually. And later, I did a couple concerts to help raise funds for his organisation. The day of the assassination, in fact, moments after Dr King had been shot I was passing through downtown, coming from North Memphis, where I lived. I was heading toward Stax Records in South Memphis. What…