Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Your mind and we belong together

I've already indicated an interest in the band Love - their roots are in the 60s but they are still playing today, and in fact are due to tour in the UK again shortly.

I was first introduced to Love in about 1968 by my great friend Liz - now Barnett but at the time Coulson. We both lived on the outskirts of Newcastle on Tyne - we weren't at school together in our teens but had been when we were very young, and then had met again via a drama group , Northumberland Experimental Youth Theatre - sounds pompous but was in fact great stuff. If you can imagine being a teenager in 60s Newcastle - it wasn't exactly West Coast USA, we were a bit too young to be tuning in and turning on, but the music coming out of Los Angeles / San Francisco blew our minds. It was like nothing you'd ever heard before - not just Love but also the Doors, the Byrds, Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band etc etc.

To cut a long story short, I lost touch with Liz when we were in our late 20s / early 30s - until early 2003 that is. I received a card out of the blue from her at Christmas 2002, containing a list of the forthcoming Love Forever Changes gigs - no address but a Newcastle postmark, she'd been living near London when I'd last known her. I managed to trace her parent's address, wrote to them including my email address, and then lo and behold an email arrived. Liz, now normally known as Lizzy, was living back in the North East with her husband Chris and two children , working in education and still a big Love fan. We arranged to meet up at the Royal Festival Hall when Love were appearing there in January 2003 and the rest, as they say, is history...

To be continued

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