Goodbye to Jet Harris

On 18th March 2011 the music world awoke to the dreadful news that Jet Harris MBE had lost his courageous battle with cancer.  The first (and sadly, last) time the Shadowers were to play as part of Jet Harris' show Hit Parade Heroes was 5th February 2011.  We were there at Jet's request; he told us he loved performing with us.  The lead up to the show itself was full of complications and changes, but the show was to go on and we found ourselves setting up at the Ferneham Hall in Fareham, Hampshire, from 2pm onwards.
When Jet arrived we could see he was very ill, but at the time everyone - his doctors included - all thought his condition was fully treatable - a "fact" which was even announced from the stage that evening.  Jet was such a trooper.  He played well, even though he was struggling.  He was visibly tired.  It was a privilege to be able to share the stage with him for what was to be the last time, even though we did not know it at the time.  We found ourselves being part of Shadows history when Jet invited Licorice Locking to play a duet with him.  The Shadows' first and second bass players had never before performed on the same stage at the same time, and had certainly never duetted together.  It was to be the last tune Jet would ever perform.  Jet being Jet, though, he decided to sit down for it, after announcing its title: Here I Stand.

What with rushing to pack up and exit the theatre and with everyone, including Jet, try to greet some of the audience after the show, I never said goodbye to him that night - a regret I shall always carry with me.

I had the opportunity, alongside my parents and a couple of the Shadowers, to attend Jet's funeral.  It was a very sad day but also one laced with humour and pride, and it was attended by so many friends, which is exactly how Jet would have wanted it.

Jet had spoken of a new show which he wanted to develop with us.  We had discussed the sort of material which would be included and we were all so fired up for the new project.  Whenever Jet spoke about it his eyes lit up.  He was excited and we were excited.  That it never came to fruition will always be the biggest missed opportunity of my career.  The biggest joy of my career, though, is to have been able to get to know one of my heroes and to get on with him so well.  That I shared a stage with him is a thrill I had never dreamt of.

Goodbye, mate.

Hit Parade Heroes - taking a back seat

Again, a long time has passed since my last post.  The Shadowers have had a small break since Shadowmania, but we're now back on the road backing Jet Harris, Brian "Licorice" Locking and Mike Berry in the show "Hit Parade Heroes".

With this show we're presented with a new challenge.  We are performing in our capacity as a Shadows band, but with so many performing on the bill (including - for some shows - John Leyton and the Flames) there's very little time to play the music that we've been used to performing for all our previous performances.  We've had to heavily condense the Shadows material to an abridged version of our usual show and not be the main feature of the performance.  There's no space for ego.  Time is limited and we have to think of the overall show.

Backing Mike Berry though, is fun, but very different to playing Shadows music.  I personally found it difficult, at first, to play something that fits without cluttering the overall sound of the band, not least because for much of the set we have Matt on the keyboards and a second rhythm player in Mike himself.  I've seen the Rapiers back Mike before, and Colin Pryce-Jones impressed me with his playing, but most of the time he was filling in for an absent keyboard player.  I've decided to only play lead guitar on the tunes that call for it, and for the rest of the time I'm finding it much easier to take a back seat and drop my volume back into the mix to a non-dominant level to play rhythm: mostly different inversions of whatever chord Steve is playing at the time.  Colin often plays arpeggios and very flowery phrases with the Rapiers, and it looks and sounds mightily impressive, but having a keyboard player just doesn't allow me to do the same as he does.  We're becoming well known for just about replicating whatever tune we're playing, and that often means some quite intricate keyboard work from Matt.  It would be a shame to overdo my playing.  In so doing, I would end up overpowering Matt and detracting from the accuracy of the piece.

What we're doing must be working though: the first time we appeared in "Hit Parade Heroes" was less than a week ago as I write this, and there were multiple standing ovations during the night.



The details of future performances of "Hit Parade Heroes" can be found at http://www.theshadowers.com/.

Ciao for now...

J