PsychepediA

From: Kimberley, South Africa

Quentin E. Klopjaeger was the psychedelic alias of Billy Forrest, who was born William Charles Boardman on June 6, 1940 in the relatively small town of Kimberley, South Africa. He spent most of his life in the larger city of Johannesburg and began his music career at the young age of 15 in a band that included Manfred Sepse Lubowitz who would later go on to change his name to Manfred Mann and reap huge success with the band Manfred Mann. Forrest released his first record in 1959 with the band the Giants and, although he's seldom heard of outside of his homeland, he became on of the most famous local musicians, producers and music magazine owners within the country of South Africa. In 1966, he started the magazine Pop Gear SA and also joined forces with Billy Andrews to form the the pop duo the Dream Merchants, which issued several albums and singles in their own right.

In early 1968, Forrest decided to ride the cresting wave of psychedelic pop music by ginning up the far out pseudonym Quentin E. Klopjaeger and issuing a single ('Lazy Life' b/w an awesome cover of Neil Diamond's 'The Long Way Home') on the Troubadour label that features a local area band known as the Gonks. The record became a South African #1 smash and spent several weeks on the charts there, prompting a debut LP under the moniker titled Sad Simon Lives Again. The album is highly recommended for fans of the "toytown" style of pop-psych and includes the standout tracks 'Lovers Lane - Wednesday' and 'I Can Hear The Darkness'. A second LP was then issued in 1969 titled Fantasy, which is considerably better than the first record and contains several excellent songs including outstanding covers of Marty Wilde's 'Abergavenny' and 'Zobo (1871 - 1892)'.

A final "Klopjaeger" 45 ('Give Me That Pistol' b/w 'Lullaby') was released in 1971, but Forrest continued his success as a musician well into the 1980s when he also founded TOP 20 magazine and then a few years later the hugely successful Top 40 Music Magazine. Forrest has since become a local South African music legend and is alive and well, living there to this day.