Terry Reid: “He didn’t see himself as the guy who missed out…”

If there’s one fact that’s best known about Terry Reid, who has sadly passed away aged 75, it’s that in 1968 he turned down Jimmy Page’s offer to join The New Yardbirds, instead recommending Robert Plant and John Bonham of midlands outfit Band Of Joy for the group that would go on to conquer the world as Led Zeppelin. “When I saw Robert Plant and John Bonham, to me, it was like, ‘Wow, that’s exactly what he’s looking for,’” Reid told MOJO’s Tom Doyle last year. “The trouble is, it worked so bloody good, [people say], ‘Why didn’t you do it?’ But it’s quite the feather in my cap that I put the thing together!”

Reid was much more than a footnote to other bands’ stories, however. A singer of extraordinary talent – described by Graham Nash as “phenomenal”, who Robert Plant said “was probably the best singer of that period”, Reid was a 15-year-old schoolboy when he first sang lead professionally, 17 when The Rolling Stones invited him on tour, and 18 when Aretha Franklin heard him and declared: “There are only three things happening in England: The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and Terry Reid.”

Born in Cambridgeshire in 1949, Reid formed his first band, The Redbeats when he was 13. The group supported The Kinks and The Hollies (where he first met Nash, aged just 14), while his second, Peter Jay and The Jaywalkers attracted the attention of both producer Mickie Most, and Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, who came to watch them perform at London’s Marquee.

“I didn’t see them but Uncle Stew [Ian Stewart], their roadie and piano player, came back and said, ‘The boys want you to tour with them…’” Reid told MOJO’s Sylvie Simmons in 2016. Two days later, Reid found himself playing the Albert Hall. “All screaming girls. It was scary. You couldn’t hear anything, your ears were shut down.”

The Jaywalkers released one single in 1967, and Reid recorded two albums with Most, 1968’s Bang Bang You’re Terry Reidand 1969’s Terry Reid. However, when Reid wanted to break ties with Most and follow the musical direction being signposted by the likes of Traffic and Cream, who invited him on their 1968 US tour, Most wouldn’t release him from his contract, something that would hinder his recording career for the next three years.

However, Reid’s next career decision was more of his own making. In late 1968, The Yardbirds, who Reid had toured with, were breaking up and Peter Grant – Reid and guitarist Jimmy Page’s mutual manager - told the singer Page wanted discuss a new band he was putting together.

“So Jim called me up and said, ‘You'd really be good as the singer’ and I said, ‘Who else is in the band?’ He goes, ‘Well I’ve got John Paul Jones on bass…’” Reid told Simmons in 2016.

“I went, ‘Hang on a minute, what kind of band is this, The Incredible String Band?’  Because I’d heard John Paul Jones in a studio with Donovan; I hadn’t heard him play through two stacks of Marshalls yet. So I said, ‘Well, I don’t know what you're going to do, but I’d like to take a stab at it. But just one thing, I've made this commitment to Keith Richards to do a tour with the Stones.’ We never had paperwork with the Rolling Stones, not even a handshake. So I said ‘I'll be back in a few weeks’. And [Jimmy] was ‘Oh no, we’ve got to do it now’ - because Cream had broken up and everybody in London was trying to put one of those groups together, so it’s a big scramble who’s first. I said, ‘Give me a break, I can’t turn down Keith!’”

However, rather than being remembered as singer who turned down Led Zeppelin, Reid preferred to be seen as the singer who got Led Zeppelin together.

“My band was doing some college gigs in the north of England, with Tim Rose and I’d just bought this great PA system from Sweden called Ackuset, gorgeous, cost me a fortune,” Reid continued. “We got ours set up and the roadies all went to the pub and a group called the Band of Joy go onstage. They’re halfway through a song and the PA blew up. I’m thinking, ‘Aw, that’s rotten’ and then I’m thinking, ‘I paid all this bloody money for this PA, here’s my chance to be a sound mixer!

“So I throw this guy Robert a mic and they kept playing and of course now it sounded unbelievable. I’m thinking, ‘Jesus Christ. Who is this guy? And that frigging drummer, Holy shit, I daren’t turn the drums up or I might blow my speaker! When we went back I told Peter Grant, ‘Get Jimmy on the phone, I’ve got a drummer that’ll knock his socks off and a guy who will sing rings around his guitar licks.’ So Jim gets on the phone and goes ‘What does he look like?’ I said, ‘Better than you do’. That didn’t go down very well. But Peter forced Jimmy into trying them out - and that was that.”

The following year, Reid turned down a similar offer to replace Rod Evans in Deep Purple, with the job instead going to Ian Gillan. “They were going into a real hard rock thing that I wasn’t so into so I said, ‘Very flattering but no thanks,’” he recalled.

More fortuitously, Reid left the aforementioned Rolling Stones US tour before the final date – Altamont. “We were in Boston, doing the Garden, and Keith came by my room and goes, ‘Tomorrow we're going to San Francisco to do a free gig. There’s no money but do you want to go or not?;” Reid told Simmons. “I said, ‘Well, God I’m tired, between the parties and the tour. If it’s all right with you I’d rather go home’. He said, ‘That’s fine, I don’t particularly want to go myself…’

However, traffic problems meant that Reid, alongside Joni Mitchell, couldn’t make his scheduled appearance at that year’s era-defining Woodstock festival. Yet as his friend, Animals singer Eric Burdon said of Reid: “He doesn’t see himself as the guy who missed out.”

Eventually freed from contractual obligations with Most, Reid was able instead to follow his own path in the following decade. By then signed to Atlantic, with 1973’s The River Reid recorded what would become regarded as his masterpiece. A rootsy, soulful exploration of blues, folk, jazz, R&B and Brazilian music, The River was closer to Tim Buckley or John Martyn than the stadium-slaying rock of labelmates Led Zeppelin.

“When Ahmet [Ertegun, Atlantic boss] heard it he said, ‘You’ve given me a jazz album.’ Which it was, in the sense that David Crosby’s If I Could Only Remember My Name or Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks … were jazz.” Reid recalled.

Atlantic let him go, but in 1976 he made Seed Of Memory, produced by Nash, who also harmonized throughout. “It was total freedom,” Reid remembered. “Making Seed Of Memory was the most fun I’ve ever had making a record in my life.”

It was another artistic, if not commercial, success, but in 1981 Reid retired from his solo career and focused instead on session work, recording with Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Don Henley and others. He returned to his own music on 1991’s Trevor Horn-produced The Driver and continued to collaborate and tour.

When MOJO last spoke to him in 2024, Reid was writing his memoir, which he said would focus on the “cast of characters” he met in the rock world along the way, including The Rolling Stones and his good friend Keith Moon. “That’s where I got my education… the Keith Richards school of hard knocks,” he said. “And Keith Moon’s whole plan of life was to lead society down a blind alley… with a bomb in his hand.” Following Reid’s involvement in Joe Perry of Aerosmith’s 2018 solo album, Sweetzerland Manifesto, recorded at Johnny Depp’s home studio, Depp was reportedly keen to turn the autobiography into a film.

Having undergone heart surgery in 2022, which forced the cancellation of his UK tour, Reid reported that he was also back in the studio, preparing two new albums: one song-based, one “more of an experimental idea”.

Reid was keen to get back on the road if possible. “I like to do it if I can do it,” he told Tom Doyle. “If I look at people’s faces and they’re having a good time, then it’s fine. As soon as I start to feel it’s not happening… that’s when you’ve got to hang it up.

“What I’m considering,” he added, “is getting a wig and really good make-up and doing my own tribute band (laughs). You earn more bloody money. I’ve just got to find the right wig…”

Sadly, however, Reid was forced to postpone his European tour last month due to medical issues from his recent cancer treatment, as his friends and family organised a GoFundMe page to help with the cost of his care.

Photo: Ian Dickson/Redferns