Terry Reid really should write a book.
Stories involving, in no particular order, Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jackson Browne, playing at Mick and Bianca Jagger's wedding and serenading Helen Mirren take little coaxing from the man who, perhaps most famously, turned down the job of singing with Led Zeppelin. Reid can also claim no small part in putting that band together as he not only recommended Robert Plant in his stead but also suggested that Jimmy Page hire the drummer in Plant's band, John Bonham.
Shortly after this, Reid had one of his songs recorded by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young for their DéjàVu album, only for it to fail to make the final cut. Deep Purple coveted Reid's vocal talents but he turned them down, too, and to add to the Led Zeppelin episode, having decided to honour touring commitments instead of joining what would become the most successful rock band in the world, Reid found his recording career promptly frozen by his producer, pop impresario Mickie Most. For the first three years of Led Zeppelin's history, Reid had to concentrate on live work, a situation that was finally resolved by Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegün.
So, to the suggestion of Reid being the nearly man of rock music, runs the counter boast that he has friends - and admirers - in high places. This, after all, is the singer who caused soul queen Aretha Franklin to remark in the 1960s that "There are only three things happening in London: the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Terry Reid" after she heard him singing in the Revolver Club.
Not so long ago, Reid, who returns to Glasgow this weekend, was playing in another club, The Joint in Los Angeles, when another admirer, Keith Richards appeared in the kitchen that serves as the dressing room and said, "Right, what are we playing, then?"
"I said to him, Keith, you want to get out more," says Reid. "He said, yeah, but it's different playing in a club like this. He does that sort of thing all the time when he has a night off on a Stones tour. And the great thing about him is, even in a small place like that, he just plugs in and he's immediately the guy you see on a stadium stage with the Stones. After all these years, he just likes playing."
The same might be said for Reid. He may never have become a megastar, although having songs covered over the decades by a cast including the Hollies and Marianne Faithfull through to The Raconteurs and Rumer must have its compensations. But he's never lost the sense that, come a certain time of night, he should be on a stage somewhere, sharing the songs and vocal talent that earned him the soubriquet Superlungs.
The Cambridgeshire-born Reid always sang. The early chapters of the missing autobiography would tell of a short-trousered Terry, entertaining fruit-pickers in their lunch break when he accompanied his mum to the local orchards and of him entering talent contests at holiday camps. By the age of thirteen he'd graduated to fronting his first band, the Redbeats, from whom he was poached by Peter Jay and the Jaywalkers, who were looking for a soulful voice to deliver their Motown-style material.
Graham Nash, a friend who went on to produce Reid's Seed of Memory album, shared Jay's enthusiasm for Reid's singing and recommended him to EMI, and with the promise of emulating Mickie Most hit-makers The Animals and Donovan, Reid formed a band and toured the world with the Rolling Stones and Ike & Tina Turner. He also opened for Cream on a U.S. tour that included Madison Square Garden, where his quick-thinking repartee saved him from being booed off by impatient Cream fans.
In the 1970s Reid relocated to the U.S. permanently. Signed to Atlantic Records and then ABC, he released the albums The River and Seed of Memory that he says weren't so much released as allowed to escape. They've since been re-issued and acclaimed as lost classics but aside from finding it a source of stories, he seems less interested in the past than getting on with the next gig.
"I love an audience," he says, "and for me, setting up and playing to people is what music is all about. When I come back to the UK to tour, there's just me and my guitar and Jim, my driver. I don't need a set-list, well, I might write one out but someone will ask for a song, or just say something, and the set-list goes out the window. There's always at least one character in the room who shouts out and the whole thing about going out on to a stage and not knowing what might happen still gives me a thrill after all this time."
Terry Reid plays the CCA, Glasgow on Saturday.
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