Sopwith Camel - Frantic Desolation

Excerpts from interview by the thepsychedelicguitar.com with lead guitarist/keyboard artist Nandi Devam (fka Terry MacNeil): "When I was 9, I memorized Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata' and played it for a school recital. You could say that was the first project I was involved in. That would have been 1953. When my family moved to Germany so my father could work for the Army as a Crafts Director in 1959, teaching the soldiers jewelry- making (to keep them off the streets), I got interested in classical guitar, having heard Andre' Segovia's albums at home and having seen him perform in Washington D.C. before we left. I started taking classical guitar lessons from German-speaking-only instructors in Augsburg and the next year in Kaiserslautern. I learned a few pieces that Segovia had played and played two of them in a variety show at our High School.

"The Camel was the longest project that I was ever involved in. From its inception in 1966, writing songs with Peter Kraemer in the flat where I rented a room while I was going to the Art Institute in San Francisco, to the end of the second reconstruction of the band after I broke my left wrist, roller skating backwards in the parking lot of our hotel while on our promo tour for our second album in 1973. In between those two albums, I wrote the score (or rather composed it and memorized it while the choreographer created the parts for the dancers) for a play called "The World We Live In" for the theater department at College of Marin in 1968."

Are there particular moments on album that you feel "define" the Terry MacNeil years?

"The second song on our first album... Frantic Desolation was said by Elvis Costello to be one of the best examples of psychedelic guitar from the period. I was humbled to hear that, because I felt there were definitely better guitarists around than I. What was interesting about the session is that I really wanted to reflect the meaning of the words, which were sort of desperate and desolate and I sat really close to my amp so it would feed-back and played as weird a solo as I could muster. I was making it up as I went along, unlike some of our songs which we performed a lot, so it had a freshness that shows. We were looking for material for the album and that song was one of the first Peter and I wrote and we sort of threw it out right away, never performing it. I do think it is one of the best examples of my guitar playing because of its freshness."

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Sopwith Camel
• Nandi Devam
• Terry MacNeil
• psychedelic guitar
• Elvis Costello
• Beethoven
• Moonlight Sonata
• San Francisco
• psychedelic rock
• tragic love
• tragic romance
• frantic desolation
• Andre Segovia

[Jm01394]

I lived at that time .the fuzz guitar sounds great

[dodo3bird]

I feel like doing a dance♥j.

[67psych2]

perfect song! & all in just over 2mins! Dig that Guitar Man!!!

[frizzlefrap]

glad to see sopwith camel on you tube .... about time ..... awesome group ..... very different to most groups ..... very original .... and talented. my older brother had their albums and i would listen to them often. brings back many great memories ..... LONG LIVE SC!

[Teonareine]

Very nice !

[ABOCHITO]

Love it!