Where's my Pick?
As a drummer, I have learned the importance of carrying a pocketful of plectrums/plectra for the emergency which seems to afflict guitarists before the beginning of pretty much every tune - the loss of the pick. The pick has become the drummer's responsibility.
This also allows me to link tenuously to a question about frankly the most important Pick of all, Pick Withers, the original Dire Straits drummer (later replaced by 80s muscle-and-chewing-gum type Terry Williams). I often have to defend my unfashionable (some would say unfathomable) liking of early Dire Straits - I promise you their first (eponymous) album is a truly wonderful piece of work.
But if you cut through the various layers of Knopfler and listen with finely tuned ears, you will notice that the rhythm section is second to none, and the drumming is some of the most inventive and yet most light-touch, understated playing you will ever hear in rock or, indeed, roll. Pick Withers is my hero.
But where the hell did he go after 1982? That's 26 years ago, folks. How could one so good become so unheard? I think he did some stuff with Bob Dylan, but then so have most people. Other than that he seems to have gone into obscurity (and not a Syd Barrett/Adam Ant-type reclusiveness, just a 'getting an allotment and growing prize leeks' obscurity). This is most unfair.
Please, World of Word, help me where Mr Google has failed. Help me find the lost works of Pick Withers.
I thank you.
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Well...
...I can certainly help with what he did before! Pick Withers was the drummer on an album recorded by a band called Spring, only there he was credited as Pique Withers. It's an early 70s progressive rock album but most of the songs are around 5 minutes or so if daunting lengths put people off! I think it's a wonderful album, myself. No idea as to is whereabouts now though...
Terry Williams came from a similar progressive background, having played with Welsh band Man for many years.
I have no idea
But on a point of useless trivia, Mark Knopfler is highly unusual for a rock guitarist in that he never uses a pick.
Google. . .
on pick withers rab noakes and then get back to us.
Pick Withers
Is still drumming. I read with delight of his name in the context of a newish minor league outfit in the americana idiom, recently at that, I think. Let me see if I can recall....
BTW, going to see Mark Knopfler tonight. He is certainly ripe for re-appraisal. I agree about the early Dire Straits, indeed if one disassociates from the sweatbandy money for nothing (and soundalikes), most of their output is with merit. A good deal more of his solo output is better still. Much more than just a JJ Cale copyist
Googled him and found the one I had spotted!
He is the drummer on the rather good Dave Kelly/christine Collister live CD of last year, wherby they combine to give an expert thrashing of their back catalogues and rootsy standards. I would expect the live shows are fab, but the cd is well worth a punt.
Desperate apologies for suggesting Mr Kelly and Ms Collister to be minor league, as both anything but, and I have many of thir earlier outputs, solo and with Blues Band/Clive Gregson/RT as applicable. Sadly probably minor league as far as box office draws...........
Fantastic, thank you. I
Fantastic, thank you. I guess if I follow these collaborations closely enough I may eventually get to see Pick playing live. (I was only 9 when he quit Dire Straits, so I missed out on that!)
And he is on tour with them......
....from now until July, albeit mainly in the north.
Bad advice ignored
MrsP used to be acquianted with Pick Withers. He disclosed to her a dilemma: he'd been invited to join two bands - Claire Hammill's backing band and Dire Straits. MrsP advised him to go with Claire Hammill.
For me, at the time,
the first Dire Straits album was a huge breath of fresh air. There didn't seem to have been any bands that had such a command of their intstruments for a year or two, with a few honourable exceptions there had been a glut of poorly played, poorly written, poorly produced crud by 1978.
I fondly remember the sheer thrill of hearing Knopfler's fretwork on Sultans and literally being unable to stop grinning at the immense chutzpah of his playing.
Everything they did up to Telegraph Road is worth hearing, and some of the songs are just perfect little vignettes. It's the guitar sound and technique that always gets my ears zinging though.
I dare say...
...a lot of people felt the same in 1978. It was a collection of good songs that were well played and thus it was a massive hit and evidently still sells.
I wouldn't say I was a huge fan but I posted here before that of all their output that I know, there are only two tracks I seriously take serious exception to- those poor novelty-dance affairs 'Twisting By The Pool' and 'Walk Of Life'. That pair are cringeworthy...
Thank you
Such a quick and helpful response from you all. Can you do my ironing, too?....
Amazon marketplace here I go. Cheers.
Fuck Yeah!
So thanks to you lot, I'm going to see him play, in a few weeks! That's what I call timing. Probably going to the Grey Horse, Kingston upon Thames, despite my being from App North. Splendid.
Anyway, whilst rummaging through the interweb I found this on someone else's blog...
"There has been a sign posted on the inside of the elevator of my building that I have been following with interest. for a week:
Hey Neighbors
I have a friend who is in
DIRE STRAITS
and needs an apartment
ASAP
as in today or tomorrow.
Please Email her (Krystal)
At (handwritten e-mail address)
If you can assist her.
Thanks Liz from (Apartment Number)
Well, hell, I had a pen on me, and I'd had a little to drink the first night that I saw this in the elevator. So of course I wrote a little something right next to the Dire Straits part:
I'd room with Mark Knopfler, hell yeah!
A few days later, someone else had written under my comment.
Fuck yeah, I would!
A few days later, in a different handwriting:
But not Pick Withers, fuck him.
Later, a note that I think was by the "Fuck yeah, I would" guy:
Fuck Pick Withers!
The sign had been taken down this morning by the time I could reply/steal it."
Nice to see some good, solid American humour there. See you in Kingston?
Dire Delight
Pick was great, here he is. Off to see Knophler week after next at The Albert Hall, hope Pick is playing. Great feel on this clip:
Just dire.....
Maybe a tad harsh, as it wasn't that bad, but my editor deems it essential. Saw Mark Knopfler at the NEC Arena on friday night with higher hopes than were realised. In the way I have been taught, heres the positive first: beautiful guitar sound, a good selection of tunes across his whole career, including, for me the highlight, an exemplary "Telegraph Road". Prompt finish(!?). No Pick Withers, but nice to see Guy Fletcher still hanging on in there, and fabulous to see John McCusker (Mr Kate Rusby) on a stage befitting his talent. But.....
possibly the muddiest and murkiest sound I have heard in a long time, even by the NEC's low standards, wasting Mr McCusker, aprt from very brief bars of his fiddle, flute and whistle. Indeed, given 7 on stage, hardly a whisper of a solo from anyone, bar Mr K, and maybe rather too many of those? (I appreciate it was his show etc etc.)On at 7.50, no support, off, after 2nd encores, by 10.(I confess that Mrs Path and I slunk off as it became apparent that it was not our collective favourite, Darling Pretty, that he was going to play, but what sounded suspiciously as going to be Walk of Life or MTV, which at least he had avoided before.) I thought a pretty lukewarm reception, but probably deservedly so after a lukewarm show: you could argue he let his guitar do all the talking, but it would have been nice to let someone get a word in edgeways. Apart fom the band introductions, in the styl of trendy dad at a disco, no talking at all. Tickets £35 a pop, plus booking fee and £8 parking, nah, sorry Mark, love the albums, but I ain't gonna waste my precious time no more. 3/10, it was, contrary to my opening line, that bad.
For those who need to know, yes, he did play Romeo and Juliet, Sultans of Swing and Sailing to Philadelphia, but all 3 totally reliant on my brain playing the original alongside in my head, to, um, cover the vocal and soundmix deficiencies.