TERRY REID THE LAST INTERVIEW

Watching Woodstock with Joni Mitchell, making Donovan's song his own, being pals with Aretha Franklin, turning down Led Zeppelin, making wonderful solo albums... the British singer/guitarist had quite the life.

- Rob Hughes

When Classic Rock spoke to Terry Reid in June this year, the veteran singer-guitarist was looking ahead to his biggest tour in years, a month-long trip around the UK and Europe, due to start in early September. He was on terrific form. By video call from the Californian home that he shared with his wife Annette - “We're in La Quinta, surrounded by palm trees. It's beautiful. I love it out here in the desert” - Reid took us on a fabulously digressive journey through the highlights of his long career.

Despite being resident in the USA since the early 70s, Reid's speaking voice still carried a strong East England snap. Wearing a white sleeveless T-shirt, and a chunky pendant hanging from his neck, the 75-year-old looked every inch the rakishly-aged rock star. He was quick to laugh - a cackle born of a mischievous spirit that had endured since his childhood in postwar Huntingdonshire.

Reid caught his first break while a teenager in 1965, when he accepted the offer to join Peter Jay And The Jaywalkers. But it was as a solo artist that he truly shone. Lauded by his peers, Reid was blessed with an extraordinary voice, capable of the most emotive white soul or searing R&B, as powerful as anything by 60s better-known contemporaries Steve Marriott or Stevie Winwood. He was nicknamed 'Superlungs', after the seismic version of Donovan's song Superlungs My Supergirl that opened his second solo album, 1969's Terry Reid.

In 1968, Jimmy Page wanted Reid to front the new band he was forming, The New Yardbirds. But, already committed to US tour dates with the Rolling Stones, Reid had to turn down the offer.

Management disputes, bad luck and record label troubles clipped Reid's wings during the 70s, a decade in which he nevertheless hit creative heights with the loose, multifaceted album