It is time for our next 6 Degrees journey.
This time, in honour of his headlining set at Glastonbury on Saturday, we start with Paul 'Macca' McCartney himself.
Not content with celebrating his 80th birthday last weekend, we now give him the 6 Degrees treatment and try and link him through to My Bloody Valentine's, Kevin Shields.
Now, we all know Paul McCartney best for the Frog Chorus, but before that he had his own band - Wings. He formed Wings with wife Linda in 1971, in the aftermath of the breakup of the Beatles, and with Denny Laine, this was the core trio for the decade and eight albums that the band was together.
Denny Laine (born Brian Frederick Hines) had first made a name for himself as the original lead singer with the Moody Blues (1964-66), including lead vocals on their first big hit, Go Now. He participated with many bands over the years, including in 1970, a brief stint (along with Trevor Burton of The Move) in Ginger Baker's Air Force. This was a jazz rock fusion supergroup, that also included Ginger Baker (obviously) of Cream and Steve Winwood (Spencer Davis Group, Blind Faith etc.).
Ginger Baker spent much time through the 1970s living and recording in Africa - starting in Lagos, Nigeria before he travelled across the Sahara. He was often found with Fela Kuti, including on the 1972 album Stratavarious.
Kuti was a legend of African music, labelled as the pioneer of Afrobeat, as well as being a political activist and Pan-Africanist. He said that sang in pidgin English, so that everyone in Africa could enjoy his music. His long time musical sidekick, was fellow Nigerian, Tony Allen, who was his drummer for twenty years.
Allen had grown up on a mix of African sounds and jazz, and indeed he worked with jazz luminaries including Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonius Monk and Charlie Parker along the way. But towards the end of his life, he worked a lot with Blur's Damon Albarn on various projects, including Gorillaz, Rocket Juice & The Moon and The Good, The Bad & The Queen.
The Good, The Bad & The Queen was a supergroup active on occasion between 2007 and 2019, releasing two albums in that time. The band consisted of Albarn, Paul Simenon of the Clash, Simon Tong from the Verve and Allen. Their second album was called Merrie Land and was released in 2018.
Merrie Land was produced by iconic producer, Tony Visconti. He has worked with a veritable who's who over the years, but is probably best remembered for working on and off with David Bowie, over almost his entire career, including his last album, Blackstar. He also worked on a lot of stuff by Marc Bolan and T Rex and produced three songs on the Manic Street Preachers seventh album, Life Blood, in 2004.
The sixth album by the Manics was Know Your Enemy, which came out in 2001. Some guitar was added on the track, Freedom Of Speech Won't Feed My Children, by one KEVIN SHIELDS.
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