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MC: That’s lovely. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you. Right, how did ‘Barbecue Bob’?
I’ve got a very good book here by Paul Oliver and it’s his old essays and articles from the early
50s and what have you and there’s a good chapter in there about Barbecue Bob, and I didn’t
know much about him. I’d heard Clapton’s ‘Motherless Child’ and as I say on my website, I
thought it was nice the way he just said, oh, it’s a Barbecue Bob song, like everybody knows
Barbecue Bob, and of course, nobody knows Barbecue Bob really in the big world. But the
article’s very interesting and it talked about how him and his brother worked in a gas station.
You could get your Model T – you’d buy a can
of petrol for your Model T, and he’d cook you a
burger and I just wondered, I wondered what
his burgers were like [chuckling]. Ridiculous
random thing that goes through your head. I
thought I’d love to have a burger from
Barbecue Bob, and I suppose the song then just
kind of wrote itself and I set it to that kind of,
he had a particular kind of style on the 12-
string, that’s jinga, jinga, jinga, jing, on a lot of

his tracks. So I set it to that and the song just
kind of wrote itself and I played lead on my
lovely old 1930s Harmony Archtop that I got a
couple of years ago.

BiTS: The guitar part, Mick, sounds absolutely
fabulous.

MC: Oh, that’s great.

BiTS: I recognised the 12-string sound as soon
as it started and I thought that’s a wonderful Robert Hicks (Barbecue Bob)
tribute anyway.

MC: [Laughs] Yes, it’s a good combination. It’s a lot of fun. I enjoy every aspect of the recording
and I’ll enjoy putting on a sort of electric Clapton-y kind of thing, but I’ll equally enjoy
strumming away on an acoustic. So the whole thing was just enjoyable to put together.

BiTS: I won’t take any more of your time.

MC: No, you’ve got a lot of writing up to do [chuckles].

BiTS: I’ve got one more question to ask you. On your website and in this conversation, you
have referred to a number of guitars that you’ve got. Have you any idea how many you’ve got?

MC: Is the wife listening? It’s not that many. It’s not that many. It’s about 12, I think. It’s too
many because I don’t know where to put them. I’ve got them scattered around the house and
the studio’s just ridiculous now. You can’t move in there. I probably don’t need as many, but
the thing is each guitar will inspire you to play in a different way.

BiTS: Thanks so much Mick. It’s been great.
MC: Thanks , have a great day!