There has been a decent obituary in The Guardian newspaper which can be read online, the link is below:
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2026/jan/04/brian-smith-obituary
Written by Tony Burke, editor of Blues & Rhythm magazine (apologies for mixing this up in our post), it includes a nice photo of Brian which I had not seen before. Funeral details are in the post following.
Sadly I have to pass on the news that photographer Brian Smith died a few days ago. I informed everyone on the Blues Photo book mailing list last week but am posting this here for any of his friends who may not have heard. As well as being the source of all the photographs, Brian was actively involved with us (for almost a decade) on the book Boom Boom Boom Boom which came out earlier this year. Much of the text based on personal interviews and also hundreds of emails. These continued until recently, with a batch of his lost Jerry Lee Lewis prints rediscovered only a couple of weeks ago prompting a flurry of memories (a gallery of these will appear here shortly). We shall sorely miss his remarkable recall, humour and friendship. I’m so pleased the book was well received and the accolades accorded his work gave Brian much quiet pleasure.
Our condolences to his wife and family.
Above – Brian in one his amazing collection of ‘meeting the stars’ photos, this time with Bo Diddley backstage.
Frustratingly we must warn that two of our titles are close to selling out. The second edition of our best selling Deep Purple biography Wait For The Ricochet has just been hit with a “low stock” notice by our distributors, while The Art Of The Bizarre Vinyl Sleeve has now almost sold out the initial print run. We have just a handful of copies left in our online shop. We will attempt to republish both in the new year but cannot say when this might be.
We had to suspend shipping to the USA in August when they slapped an $80 tariff duty on ALL small parcels, which clearly we could not impose on our customers. It then changed to a blanket 10% tariff on parcels from the UK, plus a per parcel customs handling charge. It now seems somebody pointed out that books are protected in U.S. law (though for how long…) and will be exempted from tariffs though the customs handling charge remains, albeit payable in the UK. We are reading up on the rules on the Royal Mail site, and if we think we understand it all, we will reinstate a USA delivery option next week. And then go for a lie down.
… Montreux. We were doing some sorting out of folders recently and turned up this shot, which shows author Simon Robinson swopping tips on sandals with Deep Purple bassist Roger Glover. Simon’s book Fire In The Sky on the band’s seminal album Machine Head is finally back on the drawing board after having to take a back seat while he wrapped up two other books. The location here is the famous Grand Hotel in Montreux when a special get together was arranged to visit the corridor where the album was recorded in late 1971. The space is the hotel foyer which guitarist Ritchie Blackmore used to get a nice gentle echo on a couple of his solos. The photo was taken by Mike Wiklund. I know I’ll never forget!
The stupidity of Donald Trump knows no bounds but, because of it, today, like thousand’s of other small traders around the world, we have had to take the sad decision to stop all sales to the USA due to his imposition of an $80 surcharge on regular parcels from outside the country. Most European postal services have in any case already suspended shipping to the USA. We apologise for the people who placed orders this week, and have refunded them in full.
Easy On The Eye Books were pushed into updating our main Macbook a couple of months ago as some of our main software was reaching the stage where updates would not run on vintage operating systems! I guess ten years from a laptop is not too bad these days, and it still works fine in all other respects so has gone on to more routine office work. But it also means our Easy Instagram page has suddenly became operative once more after being blocked for some months (without a word of explanation from Meta needless to say!), so there are new links to both that and our Easy Facebook page on the side of our home page. If you’re fans of these socials you will know what to do! However this website is our main internet presence and will remain so. Subscribe to get all the updates.
We appreciate the extra costs and customs restrictions imposed on all books by the ludicrous decision to leave the EU has caused serious problems for customers outside the UK (and for UK customers wanting to order from Europe). So we are pleased we now have TWO stockists in Germany for our Boom Boom Boom Boom Blues Photographs of Brian Smith book, and people across the wider EU can order from them. Details of Copasetic Records in Hamburg (well worth a visit, we have been there!) and Bear Family Records mail order outlets are given on our STOCKISTS page.
Photo : Brian Smith and Carl Perkins, backstage at Sheffield City Hall.
“This is an extraordinary undertaking. Easy On The Eye deserves serious praise for the book’s superb design and the detailed annotations, but most of all for finally making this stunning cache of images widely available.”
Our thanks to Shindig Magazine’s Grahame Bent for a wonderful five start review of Boom Boom Boom Boom, The Blues Photographs of Brian Smith. It is always nice when people get what we’re all about. Our designer will be asking for the afternoon off when he sees this! Though to be honest just about all the reviews for this title have been glowing. Anyhow, we will attempt to get them online over the next week or so but needless to say the Shindig Review is already up there!
In the meantime here is a nice photograph of two blues musicians who had just taken delivery of a copy of the book. That’s Paul Jones on the right and Oli MacDonald. Paul did the foreword for the book and Mark Stratford was able to present him with a copy at the recent UK Blues Awards evening. Proudly showing off the BACK cover!!
Well sadly, Luis won’t be there, but hundreds of equally strange and awful record covers will be as Steve Goldman’s archive of the Worst Record Sleeves has gone on show at Northampton art gallery and museum until June 22nd. It is open every day except Monday and not far off the M1 below Birmingham and Leicester. The tie-in book The Art Of The Bizarre Vinyl Sleeve will be on sale via the gift shop for the duration as well, and it’s great to see a few of our galleries taking on more popular culture themed shows (Northampton did a big Star Wars toy display a few years ago too).
As for El Bigote, Luis’ heavy Latin Funk LP, this came out in 1975. I did go looking for the cover online and the first page I went to said simply “something went wrong”. Well yes, the cover! We can only assume Luis was riffing on the stereotype of all Cuban’s growing Dali like moustaches (el bigote is Spanish for moustache), so at least he had a sense of humour. Dusty Grooves adds “Plenty of moustaches on the cover — and some pretty hairy grooves within.”
easy on the eye books 