Y Blew

 1967 was the Summer of Love.  It was born and nurtured in the Haight-Ashbury neighbourhood of San Francisco but spread nationwide and internationally as the hot summer progressed.  Originally it was a musical phenomenon but it quickly grew to include drug use, anti-war movements and a general free-love counter-culture.  It expanded and it spread but music was always at its core.

That summer Bob Dylan released Blonde on Blonde, the first Rock double album, blending blues, country, rock and folk into a unique dense sound.  Hendrix released Are You Experienced and The Velvet Underground released an eponymous album and although they only sold 10,000 copies, it was said that everyone who bought it formed a band.

Meanwhile, in London, The Beatles released ‘Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band’.  It came out on the first of June and remained at Number One in the charts, for the rest of the year.  Probably one of the greatest albums ever, it is seen by many as a cultural turning point.

The world was changing, culture and attitudes were changing, and music was at the core.

 

In Aberystwyth, South Wales, Maldwyn Pate decided to give music one more go.  The previous summer he had formed a band with some fellow students but their first public performance in Aberafan saw them booed off stage. They were known as the Branches and their musical adventure was short-lived. In 1967 Pate found a new friend in Dafydd Evans and they formed a band called the Hairs, or Y Blew in Welsh.

1960s music in the Welsh language was still largely influenced by male voice choirs, chapel and traditional singing.  Pate and Evans set out to change all that and to create the first Welsh speaking pop group. They were both native speakers but their motive wasn’t political or educational. They simply wanted to sing in their own language and they thought there was a market for it.

There was a mixed response from those who felt Welsh children wanted to listen to pop music so they might as well do it in Welsh versus the musical purists who felt electronic instruments and amplification had no place in Welsh music.  Pate and Evans and their new band cared for neither view and just wanted to play music.

Pate was the wordsmith and he penned a few of his own songs but the majority of their set was translations of popular hits. The band would start by shouting ‘Mae eisiau i bobol sgrechian mewn Cymraeg sâl - We need to get people to scream in bad Welsh’, before going straight into a Welsh cover of ‘Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band’. They played ‘os ydych chi'n mynd i San Francisco’, some songs by Cream and some by Jimi Hendrix and timeless classics of their own like “Come with me to see the fairies and hear the town clock strike thirteen”.

Y Blew met with spectacular local success that summer and completed three tours of South Wales.  There were accusations of a lack of ambition and a fear of crossing the A470, to hotspots like Barmouth and Wrexham.  But Pate and Evans said they were earning their stripes.

Later that summer, on the 8^th of August, Y Blew played their first serious gig at the National  Eisteddfod which was held that year in Bala.  The Eisteddfod was a big cultural gathering celebrating Welsh literature, music and performance. Dafydd Evans had tried for months to arrange a gig but had failed, then almost at the last minute they were offered a slot at a session that would be held at the Literature Tent. It was uncertain how Y Blew would be received but to many peoples surprise it was met with some praise as well as criticism.

On Saturday 30th September, they went into the BBC studios in Swansea to record a single. Most of Y Blew’s repertoire were translations of current chart records, but ‘Maes B’, the A side of the single, was an original Welsh composition by Dave Williams and Maldwyn Pate that they had composed only the day before the recording.

This is how Dafydd describes the recording session at Swansea:

            ‘We went through the new song once. It was so new that we had to read the chords from scraps of paper in front of us. To a great extent, then, the song was an improvisation on the part of everyone. We then went through the song once more and that was the recording.’

            ‘The second side was quickly recorded as we had a dance in Aber’ and we had to be back by eight o’clock.’

The record was released in early November and sold shockingly few copies.  Their one air play on the BBC was described by the DJ as ‘A bit of a gimmick record’.

In his 1968 diary for 1st January Dafydd wrote, ‘It’s obvious by the way, that Y Blew are now over. We’ve decided to sell all the equipment. The van is on the road outside. There’s a ticket on it as the tax has expired. I wonder how much the fine will be…’

The Summer of Love was over for Y Blew, their moment gone, the village clock had struck thirteen.