8. Tim RoseTim Rose
The tenderness in a lot of Tim Rose’s singing, like on ‘You’re Slipping Away From Me’ and ‘Come Away, Melinda’ is obvious, but the songs are so heavy. I like the murder ballads, me. The first track, ‘I Got A Loneliness’, is a statement of intent, although it’s funky as fuck. When I DJ, I still play that record and the minute it starts – with that wonderful kick drum and hi-hat pattern of Bernard Purdie, who’s one of the greatest drummers of all time – without fail, there’ll be ten kids in front of the PA, with Shazam on the iPhone. But they get really pissed off, because the fucker doesn’t come up! They have to do the old-fashioned thing and ask me.
The story I heard regarding ‘Hey Joe’ is that there was a football team in London and Hendrix and the Experience were part of it; so was Tim Rose and Hendrix nicked the slowed-down version of the song. The band who had the hit with ‘Hey Joe’ was The Leaves and The Byrds nicked it off them, but the slow, menacing version is more in keeping with the spirit of the song. After this record, Tim really went off on a tangent that aligned with the mainstream of hippiedom, to my mind, and he never again captured the rage that is in this record. I met him many times from 1991 and he’d be really chatty and enthusiastic and great to be with, but he’d get some drink in him and by the end of the night, you’d avoid him. It was like chalk and cheese, really, but when he was straight, he was really sweet.
