Just A Shot Away:69 Revisited is veteran author-journalist Kris
Needs' highly-personal account of 1969 as he experienced it
happening; from starting the year as a wide-eyed 14-year-old
Rolling Stones/Hendrix nut and turning 15 the day Brian Jones died
to becoming part of the UK's longest-running club and befriending
its hottest new band. There have been endless books that take a
well-researched look at that tumultuous year but few that actually
live it in real time. Rather than recycle hoary cliches about
Manson and Altamont snuffing the 60s after Woodstock's brief
optimism, or any ludicrous rivalry between the Beatles and Stones,
Kris remembers the gigs, bands and records that bombarded his own
young radar and helped shape his future life as a music writer, DJ
and, briefly fan club secretary. With John Peel a lifeline, 1969
was pivotal for Kris, including the births of the legendary Friars
Aylesbury rock club, for which he designed the membership card and
flyers, Pete Frame's Zigzag magazine, which he later wrote for
before becoming editor, and Mott The Hoople, who he befriended
after they played his school dance and ended up running their fan
club. As a member of the Jimi Hendrix fan club, he witnessed the
guitarist in concert, plunging himself in black music and becoming
fascinated with the Black Power movement. As a lifelong Stones fan,
he saw them early and ended up hanging out with Keith Richards in
later years. There was never time to care about the death of a
decade in which he was coming alive, let alone any loss of
innocence when he couldn't lose his fast enough. With Foreword by
his mentor Pete Frame, Kris's 45 year career as a music writer
impacts on the narrative time machine fashion, including sessions
with Keith Richards, Captain Beefheart, George Clinton and Marianne
Faithfull, epic conversations with Ian Hunter, the Doors, the Magic
Band, the Fugs, Traffic, Silver Apples, Last Poets, "voice of
Woodstock" Chip Monck and many more. Obviously, the book gains
perspectives and knowledge from 50 years reading, writing,
listening, investigating and living a life the teenage Needs (or
anyone else, for that matter!) could never have imagined, some of
those leading characters becoming lifelong friends. The book also
carries a sad back story as, while Kris was writing it, his beloved
partner Helen, who he fell in love with at a Mott The Hoople
reunion gig in 2013, succumbed to cancer, his grief inevitably
tangible and casting a tragic shadow over the story. Helen's death
instilled a greater appreciation of life when it was just getting
under way, along with the romantic notion that none of his many
experiences can ever compare to finding his true soul mate. Helen's
death resulted in Kris moving back to the family home with his
93-year-old mum; now writing in the same bedroom where he
experienced 1969 as it unfolded, and still getting told to turn
down his Rolling Stones records! Once Kris finished writing the
book, it was twice as long as the average music tome so will now
come in two volumes, each covering half that year.
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