Guitarist and singer Jackie Lomax passed away on Monday following a brief illness which occurred while attending the wedding of one of his daughters. He was 69. 

Lomax was best known as a protege of George Harrison of The Beatles and was signed to their Apple label. Despite the fact that Harrison, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton and pianist Nicky Hopkins accompanied him on the Harrison penned “Sour Milk Sea”; stardom was not in Lomax’s horizon. His debut album Is This What You Want? went nowhere.

In the years that followed, Lomax split his time between Britain and the U.S. He joined The Badgers and unsuccessfully turned them from a prog rock to a R & B outfit, worked as a session player and back up vocalist, played guitar on the oldies circuit for groups like The Drifters, The Diamonds and The Coasters. When musical gigs weren’t available, he often took catering and restaurant jobs. At one point, Lomax worked as a maitre’d at the Cat & Fiddle Restaurant in Hollywood.

But Lomax accepted these jobs with good cheer stating, “You just have to accept, as I learned a long time ago, that you won’t be busy and hyper-successful all the time. There are cycles when things are up and cycles when things are down, just as in life.”

Here is a rare interview and performance by Lomax back in fall of 2002 recounting his adventures in music.