A Horse With No Name

The Brickmaker's pub was a ten minute walk from my house and I often went there. The beer was ordinary but what attracted me was the music which could sometimes be quite special. Danny Bryant, The Hamsters, The Brew, The Quireboys, Wilko Johnson have all been on there, and I consider that this was where Ed Sheeran first started his career with the Next Big Thing competition.

     One Thursday evening I turned up there to listen to Barry Homan, a real blues rocker from Austin, Texas who played very loud jazzy rock and blues such as Santana and Stevie Ray Vaughan, a great tonic to listen to after a day at work. Due to the high standard of his performances he had a large local following and the pub was heaving with excited music lovers. I stood next to a blues colleague , Peter, who was very keen to tell me that

     “Not only do we have Barry tonight” he said with his eyes shining, “we also have a man singing in the interval who used to be with Dr and The Medics, this will be a great night”. Well, did he mean Clive Jackson who had the number one hit from a copy of Norman Greenbaum's Spirit in the Sky? This would be a “glam” event. So I took my place on one of the shabby but comfy upholstered seats next to the stage, and enjoyed Barry Homan's first set, loud electric blues and excellent guitar playing; and looked around for a long thin man with black spiky hair wearing Kiss like makeup and long white flowing robes. I couldn't see anyone like this.

     Barry's first set finished and he stood down, so who would be next? I was very curious when an older man, tall but not as tall as Clive Jackson, with long grey hair, an experienced face and much denim and cheesecloth took to the stage with a guitar and sang a few electric folky songs that I did not recognise. I talked to the pub encyclopaedia who informed me that this was John Fiddler, half of Medicine Head, who had several number one hits in the seventies along with a continuing presence in the music industry; not Dr and the Medics but Medicine Head. Can't you get your facts right Peter?

     By now I was feeling more relaxed after a pint of Stella and my ears were ringing with the noise of the two finished sets, and John Fiddler sat down next to me. Oh My God!!! He has sat down next to me! What do I do? He is so good looking and handsome and he is looking at me and smiling, looking at me!!! I say the first and most stupid thing that comes into my head.

     “Didn't your group get to number one with A Horse With No Name? I was trying to impress him with my wide and deep music knowledge. His face went dark, blank and bored

and I knew I must have said something dreadful and stupid.

     “No, no, no, A Horse With No Name was done by America” he sighed , “ My group got to Number Three with One And One Is One, and had other hits such as Pictures In The Sky, Slip And Slide, and Rising Sun.”. He sounded disappointed and bored, though I could hardly hear him as my ears were ringing. I tried to reply intelligently and meaningfully but I could hardly hear my own voice and could not be convincing any more. I felt small and stupid and was fighting a loosing battle. Mercifully Barry Homan's second set started and I was rescued from my own petard. So that was that.

     A few days later I was analysing all this and remembered that in the nineteen-seventies when I was a teenager some posters of Medicine Head, John Fiddler  sitting next to Peter Hope-Evans, were printed in the the teenage magazine Jackie. I had stuck them on my bedroom wall, and I had listened to One And One Is One and liked it a lot. I had even made a crude “mix tape” containing this song by taping music straight from the radio onto a reel to reel tape recorder, although the joins when I turned it on and off to cut out the disc jockey's rantings could be clearly heard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_Head
And a memorial of Barry Homan RIP
https://barrydavidhoman.com/