Chris Farlowe is seventy years old and is still working the clubs. On stage the Londoner is a volcano - whether with the Hamburg Blues Band or with his own troupe. Almost exactly sixty years ago he began his career with the John Henry Skiffle Group. He performed his heroic deeds in the sixties ("Out Of Time") and in the seventies with Colosseum. Mick Jagger and Jimmy Page count him among their favorite singers. So it's a worthwhile undertaking to look back on eventful rock, blues and jazz rock decades with Farlowe before an HBB gig.
The singer Chris Farlowe was born during the Second World War, on 13 October 1940, as John Henry Deighton in Islington in northern London. That explains why he's a great collector of war memorabilia. Like many of his peers, he was fascinated by skiffle king Lonnie Donegan and founded his first own skiffle band at the age of sixteen. From that moment on there was no stopping John/Chris. In the early sixties he joined the Thunderbirds, and in the middle of the decade Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham brought him to his Immediate label.
What followed were Farlowes most successful years, when he breathed a second life into the charts with Mick Jagger as producer of the Stones songs "Out Of Time", "Paint It Black" and even "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction". When Farlowe joined the bluesy-progressive jazz rock troupe Colosseum in 1970, the musically most exciting phase began for him - even though his collaboration with Jon Hiseman and Co. was interrupted for twenty-three years in 1971 and Farlowe joined Atomic Rooster. Another important companion was and is Led Zeppelins Jimmy Page, with whom he worked in the studio in the sixties and on whose albums "Death Wish II" (1982) and "Outrider" (1988) he sang.
eclipsed: I didn't even know that you changed your real name from John Henry Deighton to Chris Farlowe early on. Did you find your birth name so terrible?
Chris Farlowe: I don't know if I'd do it again today, but I just thought it was smarter then. Besides, everyone mispronounced and mispronounces Deighton. I think it was the right move that I came up with another name.
eclipsed: Under the pseudonym Little Joe Cook you released "Stormy Monday Blues" in the sixties, and everyone thought there was a black man singing.
Farlowe: That's still a nice story, isn't it? And it's when you play the blues and sing, a compliment when people think you're a colored guy. Just for a pale Englishman.
eclipsed: Before you even worked with Mick Jagger, you met Jimmy Page.
Farlowe: We at the Thunderbirds were pretty young in 1961, but our producer for a demo was younger at sixteen. (laughs) It was Jimmy's first production ever and the beginning of a lifelong friendship.
eclipsed: How did you get to know Oldham and Jagger? Coincidence?
Farlowe: I'd rather not, I knew them both when they were still dreaming of world fame. And they always observed exactly what I was doing musically.
