Harvey Brooks: 40 years of playing with the greats

Harvey BrooksIn a recent interview with Ynetnews, bassist Harvey Brooks tells pieces of his life story, which for the past four decades includes playing beside Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Miles Davis, Mama Cass and B.B. King, to name a few.

In the interview Brooks recalls playing with some of the greats (an excerpt):

“Jim Morrison, like Jimi, died because of the music industry. Success killed them, they lost their grip on reality, they were overcome. Freedom is a good thing, but it has to be under control. Jimi, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison all needed a good doctor or a serious psychiatrist, not drugs and alcohol, to solve their problems. But they had nobody to help them. Nobody really cared about them. They lived in a time when the monstrosity of the music industry was killing its best and brightest. Morrison would go completely crazy sometimes from drugs and there was nothing to do but to wait for it to pass. When he wasn’t on drugs he was a very nice guy, even charming, but the drugs were stronger than him. When he was under the influence of drugs he was scary sometimes.

“Lots of the musicians were like that. I played with Mama Cass Elliot from the Mamas and the Papas and sadly I saw her friends giving her lots of drugs. She would show up to a performance and her voice was shot, completely gone, and she was a great singer. I also loved Janis Joplin a lot; she was a great singer and a fantastic person.”

Read the entire interview at Ynetnews.com.

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  1. lenwade

    great stuff,harvey
    len Wade