My Memories of John Mayall at a Ground-breaking Gig in Guildford Nearly Six Decades Ago

Published on: 25 Jul, 2024
Updated on: 26 Jul, 2024

Blues legend John Mayall, who has died aged 90, played a trailblazing set with Eric Clapton at a Guildford nightclub 58 years ago. Dragon reporter David Reading was there in the audience.

At the time, few of us understood the significance of John Mayall’s set at the Harvest Moon Club in Guildford in March 1966.

John Mayall. Picture: Wikimedia Commons.

Mayall’s partnership with Eric Clapton was about to make an unexpected mark on British rock music. And that Guildford audience had a privileged preview of what was coming down the line.

The Harvest Moon was located on an upper floor of the Rodboro Buildings in Onslow street / Bridge Street. (it’s where JD Wetherspoon pub and the Academy of Contemporary Music is today).

The Harvest Moon Club’s press advertisement listing John Mayall and his band’s gig at the venue on March 17, 1966. Picture from 1960s band The Rivals’ website.

It stayed open most of the night and was notorious for what was known by the locals as its “drug problem.”

Many of the young clientele found that a few tablets of Drinamyl (nicknamed purple hearts) would keep them going all night. You couldn’t buy alcohol – it was coffee and soft drinks only.

The music was loud and non-stop. If you were very lucky, you could earn £40 in a single win on the fruit machines – for me, a month’s wages.

The windows of the club were painted over with red paint giving it a dark, atmospheric feel. It was here that John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers presented the sell-out audience with a preview of their forthcoming album. I was an 18-year-old trainee reporter for the Surrey Advertiser, writing for the midweek edition’s quaintly titled youth page, The Go-ahead Generation.

Cover of the Blues Breakers album with Eric Clapton pictured second from left. It has become known as “the Beano album”‘ as Eric is pictured reading the famous comic.

Mayall’s band, with Clapton only recently recruited, played two sets featuring songs from their album Blues Breakers. This is the one nicknamed “the Beano album” because Clapton is pictured on the cover reading the children’s comic.

I had been on the paper for only seven months and my interviewing skills were, understandably, not up to Fleet Street standard. I remember trying to chat with Mayall during the break but irritating him with questions that presumably he found naive. He had a reputation for being difficult and demanding with fellow musicians, so maybe it was that side of him I encountered.

Back at the office in Martyr Road someone had heard Mayall had once lived in a tree-house, which was true. The singer rebuffed my question about this, turning his back on me and walking away.

The Ricky Tick live music promotors used The Harvest Moon Club as one of its venues. This is its poster that featured John Mayall with Eric Clapton on March 17, 1966. Picture from 1960s band The Rival’s website.

I didn’t have the foresight to interview Clapton, who was about to rise to superstar status. Nor did I give much thought to other members of the band, even though they too were on the edge of big things: John McVie on bass (later with Fleetwood Mac) or drummer Hughie Flint (McGuiness Flint and later the Blues Band).

In was years later, in hindsight, that the history books made it clear that under Mayall’s direction, the Blues Breakers album was legendary and inspirational.

When Mayall hired Clapton, he knew exactly what he was doing. On Blues Breakers Clapton developed a technique and a sound that changed the way the electric guitar was played.

For years to come, you could put on a rock or blues album, or walk into a pub where a live band was playing, and you would get a flashback to Eric Clapton in his mid-1960s period. On just a handful of songs on that one album, Clapton plotted the direction followed by rock and blues guitarists all over the world.

Egged on by Mayall, Clapton let his guitar scream out at high volume – both on the album and on stage. As Clapton wrote years later: “I would have the amp on full and I would have the volume on the guitar also turned up full, so everything was on full volume and overloading. I would hit a note, hold it and give it some vibrato with my fingers, until it sustained, and then the distortion would turn into feedback. It was all of these things, plus the distortion, that created what I suppose you would call ‘my sound.’”

I remember Clapton as being a key element in Mayall’s Bluesbreakers at that Guildford gig almost six decades ago, but Mayall was always in charge: a solid front man whose distinctive vocal style and individual interpretation of black American music justifiably earned him the title of the Godfather of British Blues.

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