Fiddler on the hoof
By his own admission, Eddie Jobson is a detail-oriented kind of bloke and always has been. As a 16-year-old, with a picture of Curved Air on his bedroom wall, he’d dissect Daryl Way’s violin parts, listening to the albums time and again in order to get every note exactly right. Exactly right.
Like every kid that’s ever played along to the albums of their favourite band, he harboured thoughts of what it’d be like to actually be on a stage with his heroes. But unlike nearly every other kid, Jobson did just that. He’d perfected Daryl’s signature solo piece, Vivaldi, and not just the brief version that appears on their 1971 debut Airconditioning, but the live version that often extended into a rigorous 10-minute virtuoso performance. Jobson had it all under his fingers and would pull off the solo note for note as a member of Fat Grapple, the Newcastle-based band that acted as support whenever Curved Air came north.
“We were opening for them at Redcar Jazz Club,” Jobson recalls, “and the band were still driving up to the gig from London and so I asked their roadies if I could play Daryl’s violin in.”
