Goodbye to Eddie Baird and John Gladwin of Amazing Blondel
The bad news of the day came to me from my friend Luca Bernini, to my knowledge one of the other two fervent Italian admirers of the English group. Eddie Baird died on 13 January, and John David Gladwin also passed away on 16 May. I realize that for the majority of those who are reading me these names we are almost unknown, as well as that of the only survivor of the trio, Terry Wincott. For me, who had discovered them 55 years ago and I never failed to listen to them frequently, the news is equivalent to that of the loss of two old friends.
To remember them, I propose a profile of Amazing Blondel.
I am quite sure that it was one of Enzo Caffarelli’s reviews on “Ciao 2001” to intrigue myself against this trio of rather anomalous musicians on the British folk scene. Today the encyclopedias of music, in addition to relegating them to little more than a paragraph, define them “progressive folk”, but of “progressive” – in spite of the contemporaneity with the European progressive scene – the three (John David Gladwin, Eddie Baird and Terry Wincott) had very little. In reality, their music was a sort of reinvention of Renaissance music, also played with period instruments.
At the beginning there were Dimples, a pop band in which Gladwin and Wincott played with Stuart Smith and Johnny Jackson: a single for Decca, “Love Of A Lifetime” https://www.rockol.it/ “My Heart is tied to you” (1966)
The failure of the individual led to the dissolution of the group; Gladwin and Wincott founded a band named Metuselah, who played electrified rock.
Noting the attention of the public for an acoustic interlude in the performances of the Metuselah, Gladwin and Wincott came out of the band in 1969 and began to work on a totally acoustic repertoire, drawing inspiration both from cultured examples such as those of the medievalist David Munrow, and by “style” music, such as those of Elton Hayes for the television series “Robin Hood”.
The duo took its name from Blondel de Nesle, musician of the court of Riccardo I, and recorded the first eponymous album for Bell, (1969), then reprinted as “Amazing Blondel and the Few Faces”.
At this point the duo became a trio, with the entry of his friend Eddie Baird. And he was contracted by the Island of Chris Blackwell, for which he will record his three best known albums: “Evensong” (1970), “Fantasia Lindum” (1971) and “England” (1972). In the records and live the three played traditional instruments such as lute, cetra, chromorno, hamononium, ghironda, harpsichord. At that time they often played in Italy, where a careful and passionate follow -up of followers had developed (of which I was part: I think I listened to them live at least three times, in that period, plus another in 1997, a nostalgic expedition to the past together with his friend Luca Bernini).
I struggle to choose a single song from each of the three albums: so I propose them in full
The Amazing Blondel remained two in 1973 with the release of John Gladwin, and in two, four albums, “Blondel”, “Mulgrave Street”, “Inspiration” and “Bad Dreams”, gradually renouncing the pregially medieval inspiration.
The provisional reconstitution of the three -year training in 1997 led to the release of a new album of unpublished, “Restoration”, which resumed the original inspirations.
But the three albums for Island remain the “textbooks” on which to study Amazing Blondel – which I invite you to do.
