HW: Old masters

[Jon Jarrett]

On Fri, 23 Jan 2004, Stephe wrote:

> Why should Alan bother? He's much better than Lemmy. He's good enough to not
> waste his time on covers.

        Well, I think there's a big genre gap now. Alan's keyboard skills
are obviously greater than Lemmy, and maybe he's even a more technically
able player, but Lemmy never plays that sort of show-off music
now. Equally, Alan can't write rock'n'roll like Lemmy can. And there's
still an attack Lemmy has which is entirely personal which Alan can't
replicate. Alan's a better space bassist now, though whether he's better
than Lemmy was for 1973 Hawkwind, I'm less sure. Lemmy's better for
Motorhead, being all-round frontman/musician/song-writer in a way that
Alan's not.

        I mean, Phil Campbell (hell, Jerry Richards too) is a technically
better player than Dave Brock. But Dave's irreplaceable, because of the
way he plays being so personal. Meanwhile, I've no urge to hear what
Phil's solo material sounds like and I'm not over-impressed with what
I've heard of Jerry's so I guess I *would* rather they played someone
else's songs. Do you know what I mean? And there's a technicality to both
Dave's and Lemmy's (and Alan's) sound which is down to how they like to
play and similarly isn't replicable by someone else using different kit,
and that's part of the experience too. Just my two penn'orth, yours,
                                                                   Jon

--
                Jonathan Jarrett, Birkbeck College, London
    jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk/ejarr01 at students.bbk.ac.uk
  "As much as the vision of the blind man improves with the rising sun,
       So too does the intelligence of the fool after good advice."
       (Bishop Theodulf of Orleans, late-eight/early-ninth century)