Rod Clements saw considerable chart success with folk-rockers Lindisfarne, penning their hit Meet Me On The Corner. He currently works as a solo artist and with his band, The Ghosts of Electricity. He also collaborates with other musical kindred spirits and has worked with the late, great Bert Jansch, Michael Chapman, and Rachel Harrington, among others. We trust you’ll enjoy the latest of Rod’s musings in which you'll find he’s NICELY OUT OF TUNE Michael Chapman called me the other night to tell me that our onetime drummer Keef Hartley had passed away. Keef and I played together in various line-ups with Michael during the mid-70s, mostly touring the UK and Europe. I was approached to join Michael’s band when I quit Jack The Lad, the Lindisfarne spin-off band, in 1974 and duly presented myself for an audition in Soho. Michael and Keef were the only ones present and we ran through a few songs before going to the pub. Something must have gone right because a few days later, I heard I’d got the job. Playing alongside Keef made me feel like I was playing with the big boys at last. After all, he’d taken Ringo’s place in Rory Storm and the Hurricanes when Ringo joined The Beatles. He’d gone to London and played with most of the major names of the sixties R&B boom, players I’d held in awe since my teenage years of reading about them in the Melody Maker and seeing them at the Club AGoGo in Newcastle. Keef was in the Artwoods (along with Ronnie Wood’s brother Art and future Deep Purple organist Jon Lord) until one day their management decided they should go for a “Mod” image and gave each member £50 to spend in Carnaby Street. Keef went straight to the pub. The band reconvened, flowery-shirted and kipper-tied, apart from Keef who was in the same clothes as before but rather the worse for drink. He was sacked on the spot. Luckily he was offered a gig by John Mayall, whose band had a more congenial dress code – at the time, Peter Green and John McVie were in competition to see who could keep the same t-shirt on the longest. I first saw Keef playing with Mayall’s band at Durham Students’ Union. A highlight of the night came when my mate John (who was mercifully some way away from me at the time) interrupted the set with a request, receiving in reply a well-aimed drumstick from Keef right on top of his head. Touring with Michael and Keef was something of a baptism of fire. Michael and his wife Andru shared the driving while Keef and I sat in the back playing cards, usually a somewhat flexible game of Keef’s own devising which proved (for me) an expensive way of passing the time. We did a tour of Finland in winter, enduring arctic road conditions and punitive licensing laws. On the last night the promoter treated us to a meal at our hotel in Helsinki. We had barely sat down before trouble started: the waiter wouldn’t bring us any drinks because Keef was (as always) wearing his cowboy hat. Arguments flew back and forth (in Finnish and English, the unfortunate promoter acting as mediator and translator) until Michael, Andru and I got up to fetch our own hats to join Keef in a show of solidarity. We returned to the table hatted and indignant to find Keef, bare-headed and sheepish, with a very large gin & tonic in front of him. Keef disappeared from the music scene, returning north to hold down a second career as a joiner and shopfitter in his native Preston. There has been little acknowledgement of his passing so far in the press, though that omission may yet be rectified; his contribution and character certainly deserve it. I hadn’t seen him for years but still smile remembering our time on the road together, and tonight it will be my turn to take off my hat and raise a large glass in his memory.