On Friday 20 April, 1973 the first John Otway and Wild Willy Barrett single, Murder Man, was released on Track Records, home of Jimi Hendrix, Thunderclap Newman and The Who, and produced by The Who’s PeteTownshend at his own Eel Pie studios. Despite the involvement of one of the biggest rock stars of the time, the record failed to trouble the chart compiler, so the pair split.
Now, more than 50 years after that first release, the mismatched but dynamic duo are on the road again with their WHAT THREE WORDS: OTWAY AND BARRETT tour.
Dr John Otway (he received an honorary degree from Oxford) has performed over 5,000 gigs since first launching himself in Aylesbury, building a sizable cult following of amazingly loyal and adoring fans. He has released 15 albums (six withWild Willy Barrett), sold out The Royal Albert Hall and headlined the London Palladium. His self-made biopicOtway theMovie: The Story of Rock n Roll’s Greatest Failure premiered in Leicester Square, was shown at Cannes, voted 2nd best film of 2013 by Guardian readers and is still popular on Netflix. He has also written two volumes of his autobiography. His song Beware of the Flowers was voted the nation’s seventh favourite lyric in a BBC poll.
Wild Willy Barrett is an English experimental musician and multi-instrumentalist known for virtuoso fiddle and guitar skills, ability with a great number of stringed instruments, playing slide guitar with a whole raw egg (known as egg-necking) and his ‘wah wah wheelie bin’. He has performed alongside musicians as varied as Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, GordonGiltrap, Ralph McTell, George Hamilton IV, Madness, Steeleye Span and reggae legends Sly and Robbie. More recently, Willy has been focused on the all metric Plucking Banger, an instrument co-designed with Rob West in order to perform Willy’s original concept of ‘metric music’. As a skilled instrument maker, woodworker and carver Willy has produced some highly unusual furniture over many years.
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