After years of being so far off the radar that many people
believed he’d died, The Action’s Reggie King was spotted in 1994 by a member of
the band Dog in their local pub. They told omnipresent mod about town Dave
Edwards (who now writes the Aggravation Place blog) who phoned me with news of
this mind blowing discovery. The process of then trying to interview Reggie for
my Action-titled fanzine, Something
Has Hit Me, began. Reggie didn’t own a telephone so the approach and
arrangements were conducted by letter, which was slight pain at the time but now
I’m thankful as I received two name dropping letters from him, the first shared here (I can’t
find the other at the moment). If you click on the pages they should become readable.
It’s a revealing little insight into "Reginald King" and even these few words captures his personality well. When
I finally got to visit him at his flat we spent an hour and a half chatting
before he was itching to get to the pub across the road. He was good value and I'm still pleased with how the interview turned out (here if you've not read it before), although we didn’t
discuss his claim to have discovered Jimi Hendrix.
It’s a terrible shame Reggie isn’t here today as he’d be
chuffed with how the recent collection of his unreleased recordings Looking For A Dream has been received to
universal acclaim. If you’ve not yet got it, do so.
Boastful fella that Reggie King! Still an interesting read, I like that he asked for his issues of "S.H.H.M" to be replaced!
ReplyDeleteHa ha, it sounds that way but he wasn't really. I think he just wasn't expecting anyone to be more interested in his own stuff than that of his more illustrious associates. That said, according to some of his band mates, he could blur the line between fact and fiction!
ReplyDeleteWhat a fantastic personal keepsake - brilliant that you still have it. (And an email just wouldn't be quite the same, would it? Long live the hand-written letter... or is it too late?)
ReplyDeleteIs a lovely thing to have. Think it's too late, sadly, to save letter writing. Reckon they're only used now for bad news!
ReplyDeleteI love this! Man, I remember when we picked up 'Something Beginning with 'O',' it was crazy to us this idea that Reggie King was 'lost' with potential amnesia. So glad he was found again.
ReplyDeleteYou have some great history there!
That's right. He did suffer a very bad fall and bang to his bonce at home. Was lucky to have been found.
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