7. James BrownJames Brown Live At The Apollo
I listened to James Brown a lot at one point, when I was about 22 or 23, and I absorbed a lot of those songs – ‘Kansas City’ was one that I really liked. I went to spend a Christmas in Berlin with a friend who had a band and he said, why don’t you sing a song, so I sang ‘Kansas City’ every night and when I was in India, I was hunting for vinyl and found a record shop that had all of his stuff, so I picked up Live At The Apollo. The track ‘Cold Sweat’, too, sticks in my mind. I ended up playing ‘Kansas City’ with my band, The Nik Turner Fantastic All Stars, which turned into the Nik Turner Band; I change the name all of the time. I also play quite a lot of Maceo Parker tunes – James Brown’s sax player. I really thought James Brown was the man, although he sounds like a terrible tyrant, when you hear about him going around with a gun in his pocket. I never met him, although one of my kids met him at Glastonbury and all he was trying to do was get drugs off people [laughs]. The film Get On Up, which was produced by Mick Jagger, is really worth watching, too.
