RIP Jackie Lomax, the Almost-Beatle and Ojai Resident

I knew Jackie very slightly from "The Hub" bar in Ojai, but I only learned of his death from The Guardian.

He really did work closely with Liverpool's famous sons:

"It was John Lennon who advised him to embark on a solo career, and Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr played on his first Apple single, Sour Milk Sea, which Harrison also wrote and produced."

The fascinating Guardian Obituary begins thus:  "The career of the Liverpool-born singer and songwriter Jackie Lomax, who has died aged 69, seemed set on a golden path when he became one of the first artists signed to the Beatles' Apple label in 1968. But if an appealingly soulful voice, high cheekbones and influential friends were sometimes all that seemed necessary for stardom in those days, they were never quite enough to do the trick for Lomax, who has died suddenly at the age of 69, while on a visit to Britain from his adoptive home in California.

Lomax had known the Beatles since their early days at the Cavern club and in Hamburg, when he was the singer and bass guitarist with the Undertakers, a popular Mersey Beat band noted for their energetic stage show, in which the musicians wore the frock coats, and sometimes top hats, appropriate to funeral directors in the wild west."

The rest of the story is well worth reading, though they seem to have forgotten that Jackie was a fine Blues guitarist - go to the Link.

Jackie Lomax in later years