[michelej1]

[This is an old interview with Webb that I just saw wherein he wishes Christine would acknowledge Chicken Shack]


Sixties guitar hero back in the limelight Performance Arts
By Trevor Hodgett
14/01/06

Stan Webb, leader of Chicken Shack, who are still best known for their remarkable 1968 hit I’d Rather Go Blind, was a guitar hero in the late sixties British blues boom, alongside the likes of Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck.

But whereas those contemporaries became rock gods Webb still, decades later, finds himself gigging around the same old clubs and small theatres he always did. Inevitably, watching his peers becoming squillionaires has been frustrating for Webb, whose first four Chicken Shack albums have just been reissued on a triple CD.

“It does frustrate me, yeah,” he admits. “All the opportunities were there: it was just that they were not exploited fully.

“At the time of I’d Rather Go Blind we were still doing blues clubs but we should have been doing the Albert Hall. That’s where my frustration lies.”

Webb also feels mismanagement sabotaged his chances of cracking America. “We toured with Deep Purple playing Madison Square Garden and all the biggest gigs. But at the end of that seven week tour they stuck another seven weeks on it which just burnt the band out. It was greed on the part of management.

“Then I was told that money had been lost. And that’s when a little light went on on top of my head!”

Still, unlike so many of his more successful contemporaries – Clapton and Page spring to mind – Webb did at least manage to avoid damaging his health through addiction to Class A drugs.

“For a start I’m needle phobic – I have an actual phobia about needles,” he explains.

“And also I never wanted to get into any sort of physical damage like that. I used to think that if I’ve had a drink and got my head down a toilet at least I know why!

“So I never did drugs. I didn’t fancy the idea of getting into anything like that.”

Chicken Shack’s greatest hit – well, OK, only hit – I’d Rather Go Blind was of course sung by Christine McVie who later became a bonafide megastar with Fleetwood Mac. Webb, sadly, feels let down by his erstwhile partner.

“She’s never acknowledged Chicken Shack at all which is ridiculous because we were the whole stepping stone for her,” he sighs.

“I’m afraid it’s a trait in the entertainment world: people forget where they came from and the people who help kick them off.”

Nearly 40 years into his career, Webb feels he is playing better than ever.

“I like what I play now. It’s more fluent, more creative and more individualistic.

“I was a late developer. I never liked much of what I did in the sixties and through the seventies and eighties but from the nineties onwards I started to enjoy much more what I was doing.”