The Beat Goes On
NEW YORK—Andy Fairweather-Low is sitting across the desk in an Island Records office, examining the album just handed him with a blend of shock and tenderness. “It does bring back memories,” he finally sighs, in the lilting Welsh accent of his Cardiff home.
The Beat Goes On
NOT JUST A "LOCAL BOY"
NEW YORK—Andy Fairweather-Low is sitting across the desk in an Island Records office, examining the album just handed him with a blend of shock and tenderness. “It does bring back memories,” he finally sighs, in the lilting Welsh accent of his Cardiff home. “That’s the famous Speakeasy before it burned down,” Andy points out, indicating the tapestried backdrop against which his semilegendary 1960s band, Amen Corner, are performing. The record, called Round Amen Corner, has been sitting in my collection since 1968, filed between “great lost groups” and “whatever happened to.”
Young, cute and screamable, Amen Corner became one of England’s top teen favorites, receiving the same kind of adulation as another hysteria-laden band, the Small Faces. Which is how Andy Fairweather-Low first came to know former Face Ronnie Lane, and was why, many years later, Andy had finally been given his chance to perform here, as the self-styled “lesser mortal” among the raft of Multiple Sclerosis Benefit superstars.