Category Archives: Easy On The Eye Books

Brian Smith

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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.

We all went down to…

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… 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!

Socials

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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.

social media as it used to be!

Reviews

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“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!!

Singer Paul Jones and blues artist Oli MacDonald at the UK Blues Awards 2025. Paul Jones holding copy of Boom Boom Blues Photo book. Photo Mark Stratford

on show in Northampton

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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.”

Were You There?

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Well yes I was…  quite a lot during my college days in the mid-1970s!  

Were You There – Popular Music at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall 1951 – 1996 (to give this book it’s full title) sets out to document all the pop and rock concerts at this famous venue in detail.  I missed the book at the time but author Richard Lyons, who has been helping us with publicising Brian Smith’s new book (Boom Boom Boom Boom, The Blues Photographs of Brian Smith), kindly sent us a review copy.  The publishers have made good use of one of Brian’s sixties photographs of T-Bone Walker to make the wrap-round dust jacket (and there are a few more of Brian’s images inside). This is primarily a text book though and logs the concerts across the years from 1951 by date, set out in database form then followed by interesting commentary from Richard and others.  Naturally for those who did attend the venue it is the gig dates you check out first (happily I kept most of my tickets too) but it’s not long before you find yourself drawn into the mass of detail, even for artists you wouldn’t normally be too concerned about.  Richard also adds further context by listing some bands at other venues in the city the same year and an appendix of the bigger concert halls at the end too.  There are plenty of indexes to find pretty much anything you want with ease. It all comes to an ignominious end in 1996 with the venue flogged off to be gutted and turned into a hotel.  Clowns.

Pub by Empire. 2020. ISBN 9781909360815

Updating

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All subscribers to the Boom Boom book newsletter were sent Newsletter 7 on Jan 16th. Do check your spam folder as sometimes these mail-outs do end up being sent there by your email system!

In the meantime the photo above shows the full colour digital proof of the book which was checked and signed off last week. At this stage these proofs are for checking that each page is correctly orientated for each folio which as you can see can be a little confusing!

There is still plenty of time to place a pre-release order to ensure you get the book before anyone else has stock.