It’s All Saints’ Day and a holiday in Portugal, which means some shops are closed and some shops aren’t. It was a miserable day and Olivia was meeting a friend whilst I took three guitars to luthier Jorge in Gaia for medical attention. I’d been out earlier to get wet and pick up a record, but the record store was closed (the music store was open). I suppose banks and the like would be closed, but you never know with the shops. It was muggy rain, so I was half wet and half dry and I’d cleverly left my LFC brolley behind despite the signs. So instead of going straight to Gaia, I went straight into the shower and then took a Bolt in the rain with three guitars as company.

The taxi can never find the front door for Jorge’s workshop, this time we were at the back of the building, the first time I’d been lost in this spot. But Jorge hung out of a window and directed me to some stairs whilst coming down to help with the guitars. The three were: The nylon string that has a broken machine head, the 8-string bass that needs all kinds of adjusting and cleaning, and its first service since 1968. The story of the guitar is that I bought it in Los Angeles for $200 in the eighties (or was it the nineties). It had a missing bridge saddle and a broken pickup. Noel Redding used one of these on Axis: Bold as Love and Jimi himself used one on some jamming around that time, there’s a pic of him in the link with a sunburst one, mine is white. I lived in Sweden when I bought it and bassist Anders Paulsson, who was looking after my studio there, got in touch with Hagström who were no longer making guitars (they’d apparently moved on to white goods) and asked them if they had any old guitar spare parts. They said they did and sent him a pick-up and a bridge saddle for free.

The other guitar I took was the legendary ‘tape guitar’ which needs a good look at before we do the Spanish and Portuguese shows. Jorge will be sorting it all out whilst keeping the tape in place. The rain came down as Jorge and I left his workshop and I took a tram from the end of the road and met Olivia in the city for a coffee. Whilst in there, the rain and wind roared, making brollies impossible, so we waited for a break. By the time we’d got a takeaway, shopped at the supermarket, and headed home, the rain was again pummelling us. It’s going to be another week of this, but…it’s just not that cold, winter is different in the south.

Music today has been Pink Floyd – Pulse (1994). It was recorded during the Division Bell Tour and has a whole live version of Dark Side Of The Moon (originally released in 1973). With Roger Waters’ new interpretation, The Dark Side Of The Moon Redux (2023), and the 50th Anniversary and remaster of the original album, I thought I might listen to it live first before I listened to these two new studio releases. I saw the original tour at the Empire in Liverpool, my dad knew someone and got me in.

Music Of The Daze