Sam Gopal – Escalator
What’s that? A joke? Well… I don’t usually but… Here’s one for ya. What do you get when you cross Ian Fraser Kilmister (known to the world as 190% proof hairy warthog, Lemmy) and a Malaysian born tabla player?
Sam Gopal’s Escalator, that’s what you get.
I didn’t say it was funny. I don’t think I actually said it was a joke. And neither is this album. Sam Gopal’s Escalator is serious stuff. Serious, acid-induced psychedelic rock, chiselled from a slab of blackest granite.
Travelling on a subsonic undercurrent, 1969′s Escalator menaces and petrifies in turn, and the very presence of future Hawkwind and Motorhead bassist Lemmy, should be enough to ward off the faint of heart. Probably for the best as I fear they wouldn’t survive the trip.
Firstly though, a brief history lesson. Please pay attention there at the back; I may be asking questions at the end.
Tabla playing Sam Gopal came to Britain in 1962 to study music. In 1967 he fell in with the hairiest of hippy-types circulating around the enormously hairy Ladbroke Grove underground scene and launched the Sam Gopal Dream, featuring amidst its fold the eponymous members of Clark-Hutchinson. A year later the band had changed, Lemmy had joined and they were simply called Sam Gopal. Lesson endeth.
Lemmy, who provided vocals as well as playing lead and rhythm guitar, claims to have written all the songs on Escalator in one night, whilst spannered on speed. Anybody who cares to dispute this is welcome to take it up with the man himself, though with the reputation that precedes him, you could well crawl away sporting his bass guitar as a head ornament.
All I can say on the matter is if Methedrine be the drug of creativity, then toot on. You may have sore gums in the morning, but you might also have something as good as this. Escalator is dark, heavy psych, shot through with a mean streak and sense of forboding that’s as far from peace, love and bloody flowers as one can get without actually killing anybody.
Speaking of which, the shot emblazoned proudly across Escalator’s cover depicts a band with physical harm on their minds, and woe betide whoever it was they’d caught looking at their pints.
Is it any good though? You might as well ask if the chance of Aston Villa bringing home any silverware next season is zero. Of course it is. Keep believing.
Yes, Sam Gopal’s Escalator is a crackling, fuzzed out journey through the murkier waters of British psychedelic rock, underpinned by the menacing snarl of a perpetually throbbing bass, courtesy of one Phil Duke. I could pick out individual tracks, such as the bowel-loosening ‘Cold Embrace’ or the trippily mellow ‘Yesterlove’, but that would be pointless. It’s all good stuff! There’s even room for an unsettling cover of Donovan’s ‘Season of the Witch’, which is no bad thing.
Sam Gopal’s percussion antics, mainly on the aforementioned tabla (a type of Indian drum), add the almost required air of late sixties Eastern promise, occasionally tempering the more sinister elements throughout.
The 2010 reissue of Sam Gopal’s Escalator features two bonus tracks, the single and heroin metaphor ‘Horse’ and its B-side ‘Back Door Man’.
And so to end: how hairy was the Ladbroke Grove underground scene? Hope you were paying attention. Answers on a postcard to the usual address.
Escalator by Sam Gopal is reissued on Esoteric and available from Amazon.co.uk
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