The Magpie Mason is an obscure journalist in the Craft who writes, with occasional flashes of superficial cleverness, about Freemasonry’s current events and history; literature and art; philosophy and pipe smoking. He is a Past Master who tiles Publicity Lodge 1000 and pays the Craft their wages (IF any be due!) at The American Lodge of Research, both in New York City. He is a past president of the Masonic Society, which you should join now.
Tuesday, April 24, 2018
‘Giorgio Gomelsky was a Freemason?!’
I first encountered the name Giorgio Gomelsky more than 35 years ago when, as a teenager, I was busy tracking down Yardbirds records, and spotted his name in the liner notes. It wasn’t easy finding those LPs in the early ’80s. You needed a sympathetic merchant willing to keep an eye out for used out-of-print vinyl, and imports, and reissues, and bootlegs, and whatever else, but I gradually accumulated them. I don’t know why Giorgio Gomelsky remained in the trivia section of my brain all this time, except that I once thought it a highly unlikely name for a purveyor of early 1960s London blues-rock bands, and such quirky things tend to stick.
So I was bowled over today to learn that Gomelsky, who died in 2016, was a Freemason. And a New York Mason at that.
Bro. Francis Dumaurier announced the progress of his new book. From the publicity:
The French editor Camion Blanc has recently published my book, Mon Ami Giorgio Gomelsky—Rolling Stones, Beatles, Yardbirds, Magma, Gong which is available in paper and Epub versions on Amazon. It features 40 original photographs and illustrations that are published for the first time. I am finishing the English translation, and will try to find an American publisher when the final version is cleared by my editor.
This book celebrates the love of life and phenomenal vision of a giant of a man with whom I shared a close friendship of 30 years. He was the first manager of the Rolling Stones, and introduced the Stones to the Beatles. He managed and produced the Yardbirds, launching the careers of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page. And he managed and produced Gong and Magma in France, and was a keystone of the New York underground rock music scene for more than 30 years.
Brother Giorgio Gomelsky was also a member of l’Union Française Lodge 17 from 1986 to 1996, where he served as Senior Warden.
Francis Dumaurier, in addition to being an author, is an actor you might know from The Post and a slew of television programs.
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