In the final month of 1968, Dave Mason was summoned to a meeting with his band Traffic for a reason that haunts him to this day. According to Mason, the band's biggest star, Steve Winwood, wasted no time in telling him four cold things: "I don't like the way you write. I don't like the way you sing.
I don't like the way you play. And we don't want you in the band any more." "I was in shock," Mason recalls.
"For me, that was the ultimate band." Small wonder he has never fully put them behind him. Though Mason went on to release a string of gold and platinum hits as a solo artist, including a note-perfect solo debut, Alone Together in 1970, he makes clear in a brutally frank new memoir that, for him, Traffic remains the one that got away.
He even goes so far as to cast his entire career as a frontman – which has now lasted at least 20 times longer than his days with Traffic – as a default for his true love, which is getting lost in the dynamics of a classic band. "As someone once wrote years ago, 'Differences combine to form beauty,'" Mason said of an ideal band's interplay. "Unfortunately, they also combine to drive people apart.
" Mason's tussles with Traffic, which continued fitfully for decades, are hardly the only dramatic bullet points in his book, which he titled after one of his biggest solo hits, Only You Know and I Know. In his 78 years, the singing/songwriting guitarist has been married four times (divorced three), gone bankrupt twice, suffered the loss of his son to drugs and been sued by several powerful record companies, including one that threatened to kill his career once and for all. Naturally, the book also chronicles his many historic accomplishments, including performing with Jimi Hendrix on the Electric Ladyland album, as well as with Eric Clapton in a nascent version of Derek and the Dominos; George Harrison on his best set, All Things Must Pass; the Rolling Stones on Beggars Banquet; Delaney & Bonnie on their historic 1969 tour; Cass Elliott.
.. Jim Farber.
