MICK MIDDLES (From Warrington Guardian)

MICK MIDDLES

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trange breed ... guitar heroes. I have always felt this. To be a guitar hero, (or 'ax-man' if you like, but I can't believe anybody really uses that phrase), is to slowly grow into a certain look. To begin with, you have to have jet black hair ... that's an essential. You also need to be stick thin and blessed with an angular face. That's the blueprint.

You then need to spend 20 years drinking a couple of bottles of Jack Daniels a day while engaging on all the other sexual and chemical rigours of incessant touring. You need to eat very little and practice the art of sullen indifference. All this will effectively crag those cheekbones, add a leathery sheen to that skin and transform a few of those black hairs into elegant greyness. Dress yourself in black, develop a taste for devil for the occult and Alister Crowley and there you go. Some of you may have noticed the flaw in this theory ... the fact that I haven't actually mentioned the playing-the-guitar part. Well, this is rather interesting. There is a purism that runs through ageing British guitar heroes that keeps their craft firmly within the realism of 12-bar blues. This is very handy indeed and, once the initial standard has been attained, improvement is not strictly necessary, in fact it is generally discouraged. One stays true to one's blues roots.

Which brings me, very sadly, to Jeff Beck. In the eyes of many blues aficionados, Beck remains the ultimate white blues guitar hero. Cut from the same diamond R'n'B training as Clapton and Page, with framework of The Yardbirds, Beck went on to shine in various guises before ushering out one of the classic albums of British blues, the stunning Beck Ola. It was a purist's dream and featured, among others, the impassioned vocals of Rod Stewart. (I know it is difficult to believe but there was a time, through the darkened mists of early memory, when Rod the Mod was a truly inspirational R'n'B singer, especially on the live circuit ... before, of course, he launched into a career of destroying perfectly good Tom Waits and Primal Scream songs and asking audiences, with increasing desperation I feel, if they think he is sexy).

Alas, the golden days of Jeff Beck also seem to be disappearing into history. I caught the man live, at Manchester Apollo last week, and was horrified to discover that he had started to sink into a mid-eighties jazz-rock glue that would have been complete if his grim ensemble had arrived onstage wearing pastel coloured jackets with sleeves that finish at the elbows. Despite wearing a black capped sleeve t-shirt and striking the kind of poses that would enhance only a Spinal Tap performance, Beck's current strain of tepid jazz-rock wouldn't have seemed out of place as the muzak in a Hampstead Sushi bar. I felt that Beck's reliance on keyboardist Jan Hammer, who still appeared to be playing variations of Crocket's Theme from Miami Vice was, at best, unwise. After 20 minutes of this I started to develop a worrying yearning to re-grow my celebrated mullet and dig out those yellow leg-warmers. Four songs in and I started to receive flashbacks of the time when the great Miles Davis upset me by employing an offensive curly haired, spandex-wearing lead guitarist. Risking the chagrin of the car park attendants, I left in a flurry of studied disinterest and sought solace in a glass of Merlot and a Stooges album.

I

recall a tiny figure, resplendent in appalling tartan trousers and a super-human capacity to bounce while playing a guitar.

He was the lead singer on a post-mod band from Hyde called Ignition, who were briefly championed by mod-writer Tony Flecture, later to become esteemed biographer of Keith Moon. Sadly, the little man's ego burst the band's dynamic and, taking the name Johnny Dangerously, he humped a bagful of exceptional songs - including the lost Manchester classic Black'n'Blue - to increasingly ecstatic audience responses. Unfortunately the music critics - well, most of them ... not me - were too immersed in the hype of Madchester and dance to pay any attention to something as archaic as a singer/songwriter.

Johnny Dangerously floundered in the face of their mindless apathy and settled for a disappointed life as a small budget Granada television personality.

How things change. Having reverted to his real name of Johnny Bramwell, the diminutive front man now enjoys life as the driving force of 'I Am Kloot', championed in every corner of the media, it seems, and surging through a glorious year, to be capped this coming weekend by what seems certain to be a climactic appearance at Glastonbury. Contrary to popular belief, cream doesn't always rise to the top and I had reluctantly formed the conclusion that Johnny Dangerously would fold obscurely into Manchester's history. Not so, it seems. Following a series of apparently legendary appearances in Manchester last year, I Am Kloot's reputation is now seeping impressively through Europe and is starting to be backed by apparently mushrooming sales.

It took a long time but, for once, it's great to see apathy folding in the face of talent instead of the other way around which, sadly, tends to be the norm.