before we turned 'pro' and headed South... for Cape Town.
I don’t know what it was with Mac and his gi-normous guitar lead. It was ludicrously long. We're talking at least 60 feet in length in an age when most, if not all, shop-bought guitar leads were between nine and twelve feet. Yes, Mac’s lead was in a league of its own...if it was a snake it would have been an Anaconda.
It has only just occurred to me while writing this that there was nowhere Mac could buy such a beast off the shelf. Which means he must have made it himself ...which beggars the question why? Was there an eureka moment when Mac leapt out the bath – figuratively speaking – and shouted or sang, “Of course! That’s it! What the world needs now is not love, sweet love, but a gi-normous guitar lead - the like of which the world has never seen!”
Mac use to stow his lead in his bass guitar case, coiled up like some kind of cowboy’s lasso…
Oh, yes, I forgot to mention it was white…when all self respecting 60’s guitar leads were black.
Oh, yes, I forgot to mention it was white…when all self respecting 60’s guitar leads were black.
At the hall or the club or wherever it was we happened to be playing, Mac would plug one end of the lead into his amp and the other into his bass and then, once the doors were open and the place was heaving, he would bid us ‘au revoir’ and disappear, threading his way through the throng of heaving bodies playing the bass line to the song as he went on his merry way.
Lord only knows what he got up to on his walkabout... Lord only knows how he didn't get himself tangled up with the audience or trip up dancers or, as what happened to an unfortunate member of a beat group in Umtali, find himself being throttle with a length of guitar lead by some bolshie love-struck okie. Apparently at this session in Umtali the above mentioned okie thought the guitarist was eyeing up his 'goose' (girlfriend) - it's been known to happen - and tried to throttle him with a guitar lead ... talk about being 'hoisted by your own petard'.
We never knew what went on during Mac's jaunts. Once gone he wouldn't return to the bandstand for at least two songs, that's about five to six minute, possibly longer. We’d catch glimpses of him from time to time – well, glimpse of the top of his head bobbing above the audience…he stood 6’4” -- 6' 6" if you took into account the Chelsea boots with 2" Cuban heels all us Chequers wore...
When I say all us Chequers wore... I mean we all had our own Chelsea boots...we didn't all wear the same pair...that'd be ludicrous as well as impossible.
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