Losing our musical heroes and very few to replace them

By Peter Butler Redstone Review

LYONS – I can still remember what I was doing on Saturday December 4 1993. Deirdre and I were driving out of London on the A3 highway after a couple of hours spent at one of the very few places in England where you could buy decent woodworking machines.

mood and we were listening to the BBC on the radio.

But then a tune came on the radio and my heart sank. It was Peaches En Regalia by Frank Zappa and it could only mean one thing. Peaches was not the sort of thing that the BBC normally played. Frank Zappa’s music, although esteemed by passionate fans like me, was usually too edgy and frequently too scathing of modern culture to get much air time on polite radio.

for life. So in 1971 I was in love with Led Zeppelin, Yes, Pink Floyd, Steely Dan, Mahavishnu Orchestra and Frank Zappa to name a few. It was time when popular music was still evolving and saw a move away from the 3 minute song with nice vocals and a polite backing to a rebellious noise with loud guitars and drums.

Deirdre had been a real sport and let me spend some big money, for us at the time, to get a lovely big bandsaw and a nice professional table saw. I still have both of them and after many rebuilds and modifications over 30 years they are still the mainstay of my woodworking and have seen the birth of several guitars and pieces of furniture. So as we made our way home on this dark evening I was in a happy

But Peaches En Regalia was the opening tune on his album Hot Rats, maybe the closest FZ ever got to easy listening. So hearing it on prime time BBC could only mean that Frank Zappa had left us after long fight with cancer.

That was nearly 30 years ago, but it represented the thin end of a wedge of losses of musical heroes from my youth. I have a theory that 17 is the age, when all the music that you love, adheres to your brain