"The last time I was in Southampton I was support to Emerson, Lake and Palmer," recalls Tim Rose. "Is there anyone here who has seen me before?" A few of the audience shout that they had been at the Emerson Lake and Palmer gig. Others mention the Simon Dee show. Rose nearly falls back off his stool. He recalls events of thirty years before spinning household names like John Peel ("Phew that guy is everywhere, talkovers, radio shows) and Tony Blackburn ("The only guy I know who needs a cue card before he can say anything. I went up to him and said 'How ya doing?' He looked around for the cue card before he answered.)
Tim Rose's audience tonight at the Brook in Southampton is spartan. The support band plus friends, a few curious punters and a hard core of Tim Rose devotees. Tim Rose had played the Albert Hall recently as support to Nick Cave "Who covered one of my songs on an album, thankyou," he breathes raising his eyes to Heaven. Tim Rose is not about to split the difference between a packed Victorian edifice and this rock'n'roll saloon.
"Have you heard of Kylie Minogue?" he asks raising his hand out to describe the Australian soap singer who supports Cave on his Murder Ballads album. "She's tiny, about this high. You've heard of her? Ok she won't leading the summer parade around here then . . ."
Doubtless Tim Rose has seen it all before from the smoky Greenwich Village coffee houses of the early 60s to the relative comforts of his CBS albums. There is a new album and a film with Nick Cave in the offing. That should stall the circus scripts for a while.
"Life is about making mistakes isn't it? And I've made a few. If there is anyone here who has lived their life exactly how they planned it, I want to know your secret." Tim Rose's appeal is simple. He is a born raconteur, lover of life, communicator. There are no dividing lines between his songs or the stories. No division between Tim Rose and the audience.
Tim Rose opened with perhaps an autobiographical song about a gambling man. The vocal was hard and high thrown like a busted flush down over the razor wire guitar chords. I could smell the backroom haze, taste the nicotine and feel the smooth dirty white ivory of the dice.
"I was in Reading today doing a radio interview. The guy who interviewed me set up a song without realising it had about three fucks through it. He had some phone calls," Rose shrugs as he toys with retuning his guitar. "Cass (the late Mama Cass) used to say Tim can't you at least keep six strings in tune?" Tonight there would be the odd point when the vocal and guitar never quite found the same pitch. Rose rough edged guitar picking comes complete with that old bluesman's stock in trade of the hammer on. Shrink wrapped clean nostalgia this ain't.
Tim Rose alludes to sending off a song to Patty Loveless. She's a country gal out of Nashville whose name is heard all up and down the line between Chicago and Texas but rarely here. On this "love and hate" story the vocal drops to a low growl, thumb and first finger gripping the plectrum between the bass notes while three fingers cascade the arpeggios.
Then more storytelling by way of an introduction to the 'song' the curious may have come to hear. He begins by mentioning a plane trip from New York to London with Marc Bolan. "About an hour before we land, Marc gets up to go to the toilet. He comes back dressed to go on stage. I asked him 'Why? We are only going to land and go to a fucking hotel.' He said his fans expected it.
The Bolan aside is prompted by a recent Hendrix tale. Tim Rose was asked to speak recently at the unveiling of a plaque for Hendrix. "It was quite an honour to Hendrix as he is not English. They put it up next to another guy, who is also not English, Handel. So they asked me because all those other rock guys, Clapton, Beck were tight jawed," Rose digging rock guitarists for their limited vocabulary. He grins, laughs, bares a gleaming broad mouth of teeth fit for a 'ceegar'.
There is a dig at local support band Rain for their "1, 2" stage announcements "Only kidding guys," he adds. Having panned the vocabulary of Beck and Clapton, Rose praised the thinking man's rock guitarist "Pete Townsend, who gave a speech, did a good job for someone who is stone deaf." Then he lampooned "Noel Redding, who turned up in the gear he wore on the first album. I said 'Hey Noel . . .', whoooaaaa." This set the scene for Hey Joe.
Tim Rose never wrote Hey Joe on that first album but he handed Hendrix the opening shot of his mercurial career. "Chas Chandler heard it in a discotheque of all places," wide grins Rose. "Can you imagine me in a discotheque?"
Tonight Hey Joe is delivered as close to the original version that inspired Hendrix as Rose could get. Uncanny. Save for Jimi's brooding guitar the signposts are all here. The hard, harsh vocal above the evocative shifting chords.
Tim Rose then moved to another legend. Bob Dylan. He told a Greenwich Village story about a young Dylan playing him a song to record. Rose played the opening bars of a Dylan song. "I said to Cass, no this is the hit," said Rose as he began Come Away Melinda. He asked if Dylan was playing Southampton. "Bournemouth eh, well that's only twenty or so miles away. Go see him. He's still got it. I recommend you."
Towards the back some of the audience were fidgeting for a beer. Rose swung into a fast song that he would describe afterwards as a "Get to the bar song." The clink of bar glasses and talk subsided for the final row of songs. There was a prison song about a 'long time man' called Moonglow. It was followed by my favourite song of the entire set. It was a piece of sterling advice, "A song for the boys". Rose declared that the path to Niravana was to "Marry a rich woman." If the song was not autobiographical it certainly sounded like it.
All night Rose's vocal had pitched between harsh grits 'n' gravel and a low growl. The tone now dropped to a howl. The reflective lines strung amongst the guitar strings. The advice bringing laughter from women and men alike in the audience.
A weeping right eye halts the performer half way through the penultimate song. He restarts the tune with some more of that Greenwich Village flat picking, voice still as stark as it was in the sixties. Only the dark suit, the red handkerchief in the top pocket and a mass of white hair to show a lot of water has gone under the bridge.
There is but one song he could end on. Another classic from his first CBS album. I once heard the Grateful Dead do a stunning thirty minute working of Morning Dew. This was the compressed original. Just a lone guitar echoing a hazy old Greenwich Village club, Rose's vocal wafting through the cigar smoke. Tim Rose back where he belongs. Performing, because it beats selling carrot peelers at Bloomingdales.
On the way out of The Brook Rose is leaning on the counter, drinking coffee and chatting to Southampton's music man Geoff Wall. "How did you enjoy the 12 Bar gig?" I asked him. "It was great, guy wrote a review that was published in the New York Times. Sounded like he was sleeping with me . . ." he laughs. On stage or offstage. Tim Rose you see what you get.
Mike Plumbley