Folk musician

Born:

Died: October 7, 2016

CHRIS Adams, who died on October 7 following a long illness, was a musician who might not have achieved success on the level of Jimi Hendrix, Genesis and the Bay City Rollers but whose career connected him to all of these artists at various levels.

A singer, songwriter and guitarist, Adams formed the folk-rock group String Driven Thing in Glasgow in 1967 with his wife, Pauline, on vocals and percussion and guitarist John Mannion. Their first, self-titled album, released in 1970, did not sell in big quantities but it helped to spread the word about the group and as they gigged around Scotland and beyond they made some useful contacts, one of whom, Dave Cousins of the Strawbs, was indirectly responsible for the Genesis connection.

Early in 1972 Adams went down to London with a demo of three new songs they had recorded, hoping that the Strawbs’ management might take String Driven Thing on. Finding himself in a Soho pub with time on his hands, he looked through the music agency section of Yellow Pages and found a promising entry with an address nearby.

Stratton-Smith Enterprises turned out to be the agency wing of Charisma Records, which was then having success with Lindisfarne and nurturing Genesis’ gradually building profile. “Strat” as Tony Stratton-Smith was known loved the String Driven Thing demo but as Adams only had one copy, he refused to hand it over. Undaunted, Stratton-Smith drove up to Glasgow the following week, heard String Driven Thing in the Burns Howff, a local proving ground at the time, and promptly signed the band on a £20 a week retainer.

Stratton-Smith had connections and he was able to secure String Driven Thing a decent slot at the prestigious Reading Festival in the summer of 1972. The gig went well, with the band’s addition from the Scottish National Orchestra, violinist Grahame Smith making an impression as a virtuoso showman. A few weeks later, String Driven Thing recorded their first album for Charisma with producer Shel Talmy, who had previously worked with the Kinks and the Who.

In an interview with The Herald some 40 years later, Adams recalled that the artwork for the album’s gatefold sleeve turned out to have cost more than the recording itself. The music, however, was well received. A single, Circus, reached the lower end of the charts and when String Driven Thing flew over to support Genesis in New York at the end of the year, they were being tipped for bigger things.

Then it all began to go wrong. Adams suffered a collapsed lung which almost led to String Driven Thing pulling out of a major tour, again supporting Genesis, and although he was back in action in time for the UK tour, which was documented on a 2012 album release, the band missed out on the US dates. This may have had something to do with String Driven Thing earning up to four encores at some gigs, much to the displeasure of some, but not all, of the Genesis team.

The band’s second Charisma album, The Machine that Cried, sold disappointingly despite extensive tours of Europe and America to promote it, and a single – It’s a Game - earned strong radio airplay that did not translate into major sales. Losing patience with the management-recording company set-up, Adams left and returned to Glasgow. Grahame Smith took over and drafted in Scottish singer Kim Beacon.

Chris Adams opened a recording studio in Glasgow and then started a taxi company. He had an unexpected stroke of luck when It’s a Game became a massive hit for the Bay City Rollers in 1977. As he told The Herald, his initial reaction was that his artistic credibility had been compromised. He soon realised, however, that his artistic credibility only went as far as the bank. The royalties allowed him to buy a house for his family. “It also showed me that I hadn’t worked for nothing for all these years,” he said.

In 1991 Adams, who had continued writing songs, released a solo album, The Damage. He and Grahame Smith then reformed String Driven Thing initially for occasional performances only, one of which resulted in the Suicide – Live in Berlin album in 1994. Then with Adams's son Robin, a singer-songwriter in his own right, joining the band they played on, releasing two albums, Moments of Truth and Songs from Another Country, until Adams was diagnosed with cancer towards the end of last year.

There is another chapter, a book in fact, in Adams’s story, though. When he spoke to The Herald in 2012 he mentioned that he ha subsequently discovered that the white Fender Telecaster he had bought as a back-up guitar for the Genesis tour in 1973 might once have been owned by Jimi Hendrix and might even have been the guitar that Hendrix had played on Purple Haze before it mysteriously disappeared.

Turning detective and author, Adams set about discovering his guitar’s provenance, trawling through Hendrix’s career to produce Hendrix’s Grail Guitar. It was published, to critical acclaim, by Rowman & Littlefield in February this year.

ROB ADAMS