Alone, yet together….Sippin’ Wine

Phil Hendricks

Kev Moore

Throughout my career, I have collaborated on various projects with different artists over the years, and before the internet age, it usually involved me being in the same room with them.  However the session I’m going to highlight today differs from that.  It is a blues duet (for want of a better term) between me and Phil Hendricks,  Singer and guitarist with UK punk band The Stiffs, who my old mate and Gonads cohort Garry Bushell referred to (in his capacity as a Sounds journalist) as: ” pile driving pop-punk of the first order…a band to be reckoned with I’d wager..”

The project that involved us both was “End of an Era” -the solo album from Saxon’s Graham Oliver, his first release following the acrimonious split of the NWOBHM legends into two camps.  The song that we worked on has a fascinating history. When Graham was touring the States with Saxon, he went to Seattle to visit Jimi Hendrix’s grave, and met Jimi’s father. He gave him an old notebook of Jimi’s containing half-scribbled song ideas and lyrics. One of these was “Sippin’ Wine”. A track Graham fashioned in the way he thought Jimi would have finished it, and some extra lyrics from me.

Phil and I had never met, and put our vocal parts down at different times, and were not sure if we’d contributed to the finished product or not, and then, suddenly it was released, and we could both hear the finished version for the first time.

Over the ensuing years, I found the album in record racks in stores the world over, from Boston to Barcelona.  Then I noticed that later pressings of the disc omitted the track. Apparently, people acting for the Hendrix estate (not Jimi’s Dad) had asked for the track to be removed from the original running order.  The result is that the track is now a bona fide rarity, only to be found on a couple of thousand of the original pressings of the disc.

You can listen to it at the bottom of this entry.

Fast-forward to 2009, and a show I did recently in Germany with BC Sweet.  We were performing at a 70’s festival with The Rubettes and Eric Faulkner’s Bay City Rollers. During the soundcheck, the guitarist came up and introduced himself. It was Phil, and the circle, begun eight years previously, was complete.

LISTEN TO SIPPIN’ WINE: