We had a few guests play on our self-titled album. The following is a story about one of them.

ALL THINGS MUST PASS

by Johnnie Clott

When I think of him, sometimes I see him standing in his best white shirt and tie, on his first day at Teacher's College. He was with his Dad. He had come down from Lithgow and the only teachers that he knew up there wore black caftans or white shirts and ties. And this was, after all, a teacher's college and since there was no way he was going to wear a caftan, a white shirt and tie it had to be. That rapidly changed. So did we.

We became mates and moved into student digs together. Soon we were as mad as the rest of the long haired 'radicals' we hung around with. One of the things we did which was in some way legal and therefore mentionable was to learn to play guitar together. Me on an eight dollar guitar which my sisters had generously bought me one Christmas and he on a Kapok. A Kapok was a Chinese made guitar that at any sign of humidity would come apart at the seams. We figured it must've been held together by flour and glue which it probably was. Regardless, we thought we were something.

Things improved markedly when we were given our annual book allowance. Being students we had no need of books but we did need good guitars. So that's what we got. From that point on many days and nights were spent absorbed in the intricacies of searching for and learning the lost chord. He was, in my mind, the best. Always one step ahead.

Many years passed!

He became a legend of the silver screen bandying words with the high and mighty. I kept playing the guitar.

When I thought of him I most often thought of him playing some George Harrison song. I thought of him kneeling in reverence to the poster from Harrison's 'All Things Must Pass' album that was tacked above his bed. I thought of him travelling for two hours in my clapped out old Austin Cambridge A60 from our prac-teaching school in the bush to the big bright city lights where the 'Concert for Bangla Desh' was playing and Mr Harrison was performing a solo rendition of 'Here Comes the Sun'. Larger than life, up there on the big screen,where we could work out the exact chords he was playing.

So, when I needed a guitarist to play a specific solo for me on one of the recordings I was doing, I thought of him again. When he finished playing his solo I made one comment. I turned to him and said, "George!!". He smiled and knew exactly what I meant.

 

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