Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Barbed Left Podcast. My
Speaker 1: guest today is Reman with the Magic Mean Yes what
Speaker 1: origin himself? What are you doing? Pretty well, considering Bob,
Speaker 1: considering what we've been through and you know, and and
Speaker 1: the frustration of not being able to work as much
Speaker 1: as we want to. But there we are, okay. So
Speaker 1: have you coped with a lockdown? Well? I have to
Speaker 1: say that the first two months I was really enjoying because, um,
Speaker 1: I'm here with my wife. I've never spent a spring
Speaker 1: since we've been in this house, which is in the
Speaker 1: past six years, and it's in the most beautiful setting,
Speaker 1: and I've never had the chance to share with her,
Speaker 1: you know, everything coming out in wonderful bloom and walking
Speaker 1: and being able to spend time with her. I've always
Speaker 1: been on tour somewhere, which is fine in itself. But
Speaker 1: for those first two months, it was like a justified
Speaker 1: holiday and something that we really enjoyed together. But I'll
Speaker 1: tell you what, after about four or five months, I
Speaker 1: just had enough And now I'm screaming because we started
Speaker 1: a new album and um, I'd already ready written three
Speaker 1: songs for it, and we we got into a finished
Speaker 1: stage and we were really feeling like we were rocking UM,
Speaker 1: and then suddenly we couldn't do anymore. And and uh,
Speaker 1: we did another couple of tracks where I could actually
Speaker 1: use technology as it is and sending over what we
Speaker 1: used to call the tapes a long time ago to
Speaker 1: UM to a bass player who lives in Denmark and
Speaker 1: he would put his part on, you know, in the
Speaker 1: way that people do like that. But I love, actually
Speaker 1: on some of the songs the whole band to be together,
Speaker 1: because sometimes it can take you in a direction, even
Speaker 1: when you're on sound check and you think you've got
Speaker 1: something that really works, UM, but it tells you within
Speaker 1: a couple of minutes no, that that that's that's not
Speaker 1: how I thought it would be at all, and you
Speaker 1: take it into a different direction. And so we've got
Speaker 1: our first meeting and rehearsal together and recording with the
Speaker 1: whole band again together UM in two weeks time, and
Speaker 1: I'm so looking forward to that. I have to say, now,
Speaker 1: you say you're in this beautiful occasion for the last
Speaker 1: six years without giving the address, generally speaking, where is it.
Speaker 1: It's in It's in Hampshire, UM, and I'm about an
Speaker 1: hour south of London and it's in the beginnings of
Speaker 1: what is known as the South Downs National Park. So
Speaker 1: the countryside around here is absolutely glorious. Um And I
Speaker 1: had no idea it was as absolutely lovely as this,
Speaker 1: but it really really is. Everywhere you go in whatever
Speaker 1: direction you go, you go through gorgeous villages, gorgeous protected countryside.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's a very lucky place to be.
Speaker 1: I think we're very lucky. So if you've only been
Speaker 1: there for six years, where were you before and what
Speaker 1: motivated you to here? We were actually in a house
Speaker 1: that we've been in for thirty eight years in Beforshire,
Speaker 1: which is north of London. Um, in a little village
Speaker 1: called Silso and Stilso was a lovely little village when
Speaker 1: we first moved into it, but as is the way
Speaker 1: of the world, it got gradually built built up more
Speaker 1: and more, and bypasses and and main traffic roads went
Speaker 1: all around the place. Um and it's I think we've
Speaker 1: just got out in time. My wife said, UM, if
Speaker 1: we are going to move, we've got to do it
Speaker 1: now before we get too old. So so we made
Speaker 1: that decision. Okay, generally speaking, are you turned on creatively
Speaker 1: by the city or by the country's isolation help or
Speaker 1: does inspiration come from other actions going downtown people come in. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean anything can give you a little bit of inspiration.
Speaker 1: And when when you're in lockdown and you're not doing
Speaker 1: anything at all, um that that's not the greatest place
Speaker 1: to be. Um. I always remember Charlie Parker reading about
Speaker 1: Charlie Parker saying that UM to a young Miles Davis.
Speaker 1: I think it was so it might have been somebody
Speaker 1: else saying, listen, whatever you do, even if it's just
Speaker 1: a walk outside down the alleyway in between sets, do
Speaker 1: it so that you get some sort of outside input
Speaker 1: that can just I don't know, just broaden your perception
Speaker 1: a little bit, you know, in whatever way. And I
Speaker 1: think that's very true. Actually, I think you do need
Speaker 1: um other things going on. And I have to say
Speaker 1: the more I've been in lockdown that to some degree,
Speaker 1: the less I've wanted to go out, and I don't
Speaker 1: think that's a good thing. Um Well, I found the
Speaker 1: same thing in that I'm almost you know, the first
Speaker 1: month or two of lockdown, people called you haven't heard
Speaker 1: from in years. Then that stop. It's like I don't
Speaker 1: want an intermediate zone. I want to be hunkered down
Speaker 1: and then if everything's open, I'll go out in between.
Speaker 1: It is just too frustrating. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. So how
Speaker 1: have you filled the time you're reading, you're listening and
Speaker 1: s eating? Would even doing? Yeah, I mean I have
Speaker 1: to say so that much really current music, and um,
Speaker 1: I mean maybe that's just a factor of my age. Really, UM,
Speaker 1: I still do you know what. I still go back
Speaker 1: sometimes and play the early Ray Charles records or UM
Speaker 1: or the Miles Davis um albums Night when he first
Speaker 1: got together with John Coltry and Canniball Laderie, and I
Speaker 1: can still sing some of the solos on those very
Speaker 1: first records that I that I got to know in
Speaker 1: those days. And I've got a jukebox, and my jukebox
Speaker 1: is full of early Elvis and Little Richard and and
Speaker 1: you know all those all those things, um, And I
Speaker 1: do find from my limited perception, I do find quite
Speaker 1: a lot of modern music. Not everything, but quite a
Speaker 1: lot of modern music, a little bit mechanical in in
Speaker 1: just it's just the way it affects me. And I
Speaker 1: often think that where and when we started out to
Speaker 1: make anything work, you had to make You had to
Speaker 1: have a structure that worked. You have to you have
Speaker 1: to write something with a good chord sequence with um,
Speaker 1: with something that just works and builds and has a shape. Um.
Speaker 1: And these days it's to make something work. You can
Speaker 1: every everybody samples things, and you can just loop a
Speaker 1: drum loop and you can get a great sounding little
Speaker 1: bass loop and throw that on and and and it
Speaker 1: sounds like a groove immediately. And you can put two
Speaker 1: or three things together and it almost sounds like a record.
Speaker 1: And and then you auto shoot the vocals and you
Speaker 1: get that sort of metallic sound on the voice that
Speaker 1: everyone seems to have these days. Um. You know, I
Speaker 1: I know, I'm this is a huge generalization, and I
Speaker 1: quite understand that. No. I mean, the you know there
Speaker 1: thinking amongst older people is if you trash the younger music,
Speaker 1: you just don't get it. It's a nege. But we
Speaker 1: lived through the Renaissance. I mean, I always say, like
Speaker 1: in painting and sculpture, there was only one renaissance. They've
Speaker 1: been painting and sculpting since then and the era certainly
Speaker 1: you were a member of that in the sixties and
Speaker 1: the seventies. That's why they call it classic rock, but
Speaker 1: switching gears a little bit. You talk about your wife,
Speaker 1: You've only been married once, right, I've only been married once.
Speaker 1: I met my wife when she was eighteen and I
Speaker 1: was twenty two. Uh, and we we sort of lived
Speaker 1: together for a few years and then we got married
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy two. And I'll tell you what, Bob,
Speaker 1: and this is not just sentimentality. We're happier now than
Speaker 1: we've ever been. Okay, what was she doing when you
Speaker 1: were she was eighteen? And where were you at in
Speaker 1: your career when you were twenty two? Um, when I
Speaker 1: was twenty two, we'd already I was nineteen when she's
Speaker 1: not there, became a number one record in cash box. Um,
Speaker 1: and our first gig in America was at the Brooklyn
Speaker 1: Fox Mary the Case Show Christmas Day in nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: and we were we were scared shitless actually, because we
Speaker 1: we thought, here we are five skinny, young white Englishman
Speaker 1: and we're going to go and play with some of
Speaker 1: our heroes, like you know, Benny King, Patty LaBelle was
Speaker 1: on there, Um, Dion Warrick, and and we thought they're
Speaker 1: gonna hate us because they're gonna say these guys coming
Speaker 1: over and creaming, you know, creaming everything, and they're just
Speaker 1: bringing back American music. But it's a pale imitation. But
Speaker 1: that wasn't the way they they looked at it at all.
Speaker 1: And I remember we actually walked into the Brooklyn Fox
Speaker 1: and we had a sound check and the person sound
Speaker 1: checking before us was Patty LaBelle, and we thought, oh
Speaker 1: my god, you know, how how are we gonna you know,
Speaker 1: we were nineteen years old, how are we gonna follow that?
Speaker 1: But you know, we did, and she became a really
Speaker 1: good friend and she introduced us to remember her saying,
Speaker 1: there's this young kid on the block. You've really got
Speaker 1: to check out our names a wreatha. And this was
Speaker 1: the day. These were the days before Aretha was a
Speaker 1: soul singer. She was doing her cabaret thing with CBS
Speaker 1: UM and uh and she told us about Nina Simone
Speaker 1: and it was just wonderful, and she would she would
Speaker 1: just talk to us every night and tell us about
Speaker 1: the Black Church and how that affected how they sang,
Speaker 1: you know, and and how obviously Aretha came up and
Speaker 1: probably Nina as well, and how she came up and
Speaker 1: how that affected her um her style of singing, and
Speaker 1: obviously that's where Ray Charles came from in the first
Speaker 1: place as well. Um, and it was just it was
Speaker 1: just wonderful. But you're totally right, I I think I
Speaker 1: was so so fortunate to be born in the time
Speaker 1: of what was a great cultural explosion because we just
Speaker 1: had the war and in the UK ten years after
Speaker 1: the war there was real austerity, that really was and
Speaker 1: suddenly the younger generation started to get a little bit
Speaker 1: of money. Um, we heard Elvis, which actually lew our
Speaker 1: socks off. I mean, for me, it was like hearing
Speaker 1: black music by proxy, because I had never heard any
Speaker 1: rhythm and blues at that point. And I know I'm
Speaker 1: not the only one. I mean it was the same
Speaker 1: for the Beatles, for Van Morrison, Eric Burden, all these guys. Um.
Speaker 1: And it was just a wonderful time to be ensconced
Speaker 1: in all that. And and I mentioned the early Miles
Speaker 1: Davis group that was fantastic as well, huge energy, but
Speaker 1: really really inventive and and and the wonderful thing was
Speaker 1: that the older guy, once we were lucky enough to
Speaker 1: get a record deal, the older guys in the record
Speaker 1: business didn't understand what was going on. They hadn't got
Speaker 1: a clue, so they left it up to the bands.
Speaker 1: They left it up to them to follow whatever direction
Speaker 1: they wanted because they were from a previous generation. And
Speaker 1: it meant that there was none of this um product
Speaker 1: management all the time, and all the sort of DJ
Speaker 1: what do you call it, playlists and and and and
Speaker 1: very governed you know, playlists or anything like that. And
Speaker 1: you know what, the people the public absolutely adored that.
Speaker 1: They ended adored the real enthusiasm of the DJs who
Speaker 1: would get knocked out by a particular record and play
Speaker 1: it and play and that enthusiasm really infected the listening audience.
Speaker 1: It was just a fantastic time. Um, we'll get back
Speaker 1: to that time. Let's just kind of close the loop
Speaker 1: on this. So how did you How did you meet
Speaker 1: your wife? I met my wife because sorry, I was
Speaker 1: whispering on there and going around and around the houses.
Speaker 1: But when we did them marry the case show, Um,
Speaker 1: there was some choreography that was going on on the show,
Speaker 1: and there was the choreographer was a woman called or
Speaker 1: a girl called Molly Malloyer, and she got married to
Speaker 1: she started going out with Paul Atkinson and guitarres and
Speaker 1: eventually married him. And she came over to the UK
Speaker 1: and she formed a dance company and my wife was
Speaker 1: the lead dancer in that in that dance company at
Speaker 1: that time. And I went to Um, I went to
Speaker 1: a party one night. UM, and uh, she grew up.
Speaker 1: My my wife grew up with someone called Arlene Phillips,
Speaker 1: who who who has made a name as a choreographer
Speaker 1: over here, and she's been on the you know, the
Speaker 1: dance programs and everything. Um. And I thought she had
Speaker 1: the most beautiful face I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker 1: And uh, Colin the bastard actually got in there before
Speaker 1: me and said and invited her out and actually took
Speaker 1: her out. And I had phoned Colin up because Colin
Speaker 1: and I we've always been really good friends and and
Speaker 1: Colin and I I had this thing where we wouldn't
Speaker 1: try and step on each other's toes if when it
Speaker 1: came to girls, you know. So I phoned him up
Speaker 1: and said, look, I know this is really unusual, Colin,
Speaker 1: but would you mind if I I said, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: pretty besotted with Kathy. Would you mind if I gave
Speaker 1: a call And he said, listen, mate, He said, you
Speaker 1: might you might even marry her. Ha ha. So so
Speaker 1: so go ahead if you feel that strongly. So I did,
Speaker 1: and then went out with her and we we never
Speaker 1: looked back, really, I mean we It was a pretty
Speaker 1: loose relationship for maybe two two or three years. Then
Speaker 1: we moved in together, and then we got married. So
Speaker 1: how do you keep it together? The itinerant life of
Speaker 1: a musician? I know, Well, the thing was because maybe
Speaker 1: because her life started as a dancer. She became an
Speaker 1: analystic psychotherapist in the second half of her life, but
Speaker 1: in that first half of the life, she was a dancer,
Speaker 1: so she understood, um, what creativity was and how you
Speaker 1: had to follow it, etcetera, etcetera. And she was always,
Speaker 1: you know, wonderful about that. I still feel very guilty
Speaker 1: now when we go on tour, because you know, we often, Bob,
Speaker 1: we often do three tours a year in America. Um,
Speaker 1: and that means a long time away. Um. And I
Speaker 1: wouldn't say we're isolated here, but it's, um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a pretty secluded spot and uh. And
Speaker 1: I often feel that I'm being very unfair to her,
Speaker 1: but in actual fact, um, it's it's worked beautifully. I
Speaker 1: mean maybe that helps in a way because it always
Speaker 1: feels great when we get back together again. And how
Speaker 1: many kids do you have and what are they up to? Now?
Speaker 1: We've got two kids. A daughter is actually an academic
Speaker 1: but she um is living with her husband in Austria.
Speaker 1: And we've got one grandson, which is the only one
Speaker 1: we're going to get which is which is her son.
Speaker 1: And and my son unfortunately has some mental health problems.
Speaker 1: But he met a lovely girl who was actually a
Speaker 1: great university um uh when she had a mental breakdown
Speaker 1: and they got together and they've been together now for
Speaker 1: twenty years. Um. And that's fantastic. And my wife and
Speaker 1: my daughter is very very happy in Austria uh and
Speaker 1: having a great life. So you know, we have to
Speaker 1: count a blessings really, I think. And are they off
Speaker 1: the pay roll they make it independently or you help
Speaker 1: them out. I don't have to help my daughter out
Speaker 1: at all. Her and her family are doing brilliantly well. Um.
Speaker 1: But and she writes academic books and one thing and another,
Speaker 1: and she's the most beautiful girl as well. She looks fantastic,
Speaker 1: which she's not a girl anymore now she's you know,
Speaker 1: for they thought it, um, but my son I help
Speaker 1: out and I account myself in the most privileged position
Speaker 1: to be able to be in a position where I
Speaker 1: can continue to support them so that they don't have
Speaker 1: to live off the government or whatever. So they have
Speaker 1: a good life. It's fairly sheltered life, but you know,
Speaker 1: they're very happy. So I'm I'm very happy with that. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go back to the beginning. Where in the UK
Speaker 1: are you originally from St Alban's which is a little
Speaker 1: It's not a little, it's a city twenty miles outside London,
Speaker 1: north of London, and lived there for when we went
Speaker 1: to Bedfordshire that that's only up the road as well,
Speaker 1: because I always wanted to be in touch with my
Speaker 1: mom and dad as well. My dad was a a
Speaker 1: a dance band musician from the age of seventeen to
Speaker 1: the age of eighty three. There was a there was
Speaker 1: a wonderful moment when we had a guy doing our
Speaker 1: boiler in sils and he came up and said, what's
Speaker 1: your dad? Then? Is he is he a musician at all?
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, he's he's got his own dance band,
Speaker 1: he's and is he how old is he? I said,
Speaker 1: what is as one now? And he went, oh, my god,
Speaker 1: and I said um. And just the other day he
Speaker 1: was complaining he wasn't getting enough work. Okay, so you're
Speaker 1: growing up at St. Alban's. How many kids in the family, Um,
Speaker 1: just two. In our family, my mom was was one
Speaker 1: of eight children, UM, and and all the brothers and sisters.
Speaker 1: Her brothers and sisters had kids, and some of them
Speaker 1: had three four kids. I think one of them had
Speaker 1: five actually, So I had a huge number of cousins
Speaker 1: and they all stayed around the Stormers area, so there
Speaker 1: was always a very good family social scene around St. Orban's.
Speaker 1: We all lived very close and we all used to
Speaker 1: visit each other. My my closest cousin was Jim Rodford,
Speaker 1: the guy who was later in the Kinks but formed
Speaker 1: Argent with me um and later in the Incarnation of
Speaker 1: the Zombies. UM. And he became a mentor of mine
Speaker 1: because he was four years older than me, and he
Speaker 1: was the guy that introduced me to the music at Elvis. UM.
Speaker 1: I remember one day I went down to his house,
Speaker 1: only four dred yards away. His mom was my mom's
Speaker 1: best friend, and um, he was playing me some Bill Haley,
Speaker 1: and I said, well, it's all right, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't mind it, okay, okay, And he said, well, let's
Speaker 1: listen to this, and he played me handled and it
Speaker 1: just blew me away, blew my world away, spun my
Speaker 1: world around, and then to my parents horror. For six months,
Speaker 1: I didn't want to hear anything but the royalst rock
Speaker 1: and roll. I could get my hands on Little Richard
Speaker 1: as it was at the time, you know, Jerry Lee
Speaker 1: Lewis of course, um and then that quickly introduced me
Speaker 1: to Ray Charls and all that sort of thing. But
Speaker 1: it was a very very musical family. My mom got
Speaker 1: me involved in a great choir from the Asia of
Speaker 1: about ten years old, and that gave me a real,
Speaker 1: really broad sort of panoply of a sort of umbrella
Speaker 1: of music. And and by almost by the condition of
Speaker 1: os Moses, I sort of you know, drew that in
Speaker 1: and and and it exposed me to stuff that I
Speaker 1: would never have heard otherwise, wonderful music by Bark and
Speaker 1: you know all the other things. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: that's when we started the zombies, and and I couldn't
Speaker 1: bear to tell the master of the music that I
Speaker 1: was going off early on a Sunday evening to do
Speaker 1: a gig with the zombies of rock and roll, gimee
Speaker 1: with the zombies, you know, and at one for a second, sorry,
Speaker 1: did your mother work outside the home? She didn't know
Speaker 1: what she did much later in her life she did.
Speaker 1: When you were growing up, she didn't. And that was
Speaker 1: your was your father's main source of income. The group
Speaker 1: know that his main source of income was as an
Speaker 1: aeronautical engineer. He worked in a in a the hat
Speaker 1: Field Aeronautical Works, which was about five miles away from St. Orban's.
Speaker 1: And Colin came from Hatfield, and you know that that
Speaker 1: provided a link as well. But I don't think and
Speaker 1: his father worked there too. Um, Jim's father worked there,
Speaker 1: but I don't think they. I mean, obviously Jim's father
Speaker 1: and my father knew each other, but I don't think
Speaker 1: Colin's father ever did. But there we are, okay, and
Speaker 1: your sibling older, younger male female. It's it's my sister
Speaker 1: and she's ten years tipped between ten eleven years younger
Speaker 1: than me. Okay, so you're the golden child and you're
Speaker 1: growing up in St Alban. Sounds like your father made
Speaker 1: a good living, so it wasn't like you were economically struggling. Well,
Speaker 1: we weren't economically struggling struggling, but we lived in a
Speaker 1: council house. We lived in a council house, UM, and
Speaker 1: my father UM was making out the time twenty pounds
Speaker 1: a week. UM. This was in which was much more
Speaker 1: of an average wage, but a lowish average wage at
Speaker 1: the time. And you're growing up, you're going to school.
Speaker 1: What kind of student were you? Were you popular? Do
Speaker 1: you fit in? And we're more of a loner. I
Speaker 1: was fairly much of a loner. I mean not completely loner. Um.
Speaker 1: It was a school that my mother really wanted me
Speaker 1: to get into. It's it's what we call a public
Speaker 1: school over here, which is it's like a private school
Speaker 1: to either. It's only called public because I think King
Speaker 1: King Henry the eighth um designated a few schools for
Speaker 1: the children of the clergy or something like that, so
Speaker 1: it became more of a public school anyway. I had
Speaker 1: to take an exam. I got a scholarship to go there,
Speaker 1: which was a very good start. But after being in
Speaker 1: the sort of B form, I quickly was pushed down
Speaker 1: to the C form and it wasn't until the streams
Speaker 1: divided and I could concentrate on the arts rather than
Speaker 1: the arts and the sciences that that I started to
Speaker 1: make more of a mark academically. Um. And there was
Speaker 1: only one thing I was ever any good at, bob,
Speaker 1: and that was English. And and I would have certainly
Speaker 1: gone to university at the time if it hadn't been
Speaker 1: for the band starting to take off. But so so
Speaker 1: that route was then closed to me. Um. But you know,
Speaker 1: but it was a very it was. It was a
Speaker 1: pretty highly rated school. Okay, so you're growing up, when
Speaker 1: do you start taking the piano or whatever you take lessons? Well,
Speaker 1: I only ever had two years piano lessons in my life,
Speaker 1: and that was between the ages of nine, nine and eleven,
Speaker 1: Between the ages of nine years old and eleven years old. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: And you know what, in that time, I played the
Speaker 1: piano less than, uh, than I ever did before or afterwards.
Speaker 1: I always I could always pick out a tune on
Speaker 1: the piano, and in fact, strangely enough, I remember my
Speaker 1: parents buying me a harmonica when I was about seven
Speaker 1: or eight years old, And somehow I always had this
Speaker 1: um facility to look at music visually and and I
Speaker 1: could always work out where the tune had to go
Speaker 1: when I was playing the harmonica, because I could I
Speaker 1: could work out that this was a whole whole tone,
Speaker 1: that was a whole tone, that was a half tone.
Speaker 1: It just seemed natural to me somehow, so I could
Speaker 1: always play a tune on anything that people gave me.
Speaker 1: When I first picked up a guitar, I I saw
Speaker 1: immediately that, you know, two threats was a tone and
Speaker 1: then just one threats half a tone, So I could
Speaker 1: always do that. UM and I played by air really
Speaker 1: and when I when I had the piano lessons, it
Speaker 1: gave me the very basic grounding of what mew of
Speaker 1: what notes were and how they associated with notes on
Speaker 1: the piano. And then when I was in the choir
Speaker 1: it showed when I when we were singing, we obviously
Speaker 1: sang by music all the time, so that gave me
Speaker 1: a good grounding there. But that was it, really, And
Speaker 1: and then I started playing by here. I remember there
Speaker 1: was a song called Swinging Shepherd Blues. That was the
Speaker 1: first thing I ever worked out the piano. It was
Speaker 1: a hit hit song before rock and roll. UM, and
Speaker 1: I thought I discovered the whole secret of Western harmony
Speaker 1: because I just I played everything in the key of
Speaker 1: C at the time, and I worked out that if
Speaker 1: you played you know what I know now know as
Speaker 1: a triad, you know, a basic call of C, C, E,
Speaker 1: N G, and then move my hands up there, right
Speaker 1: up all the way up to an octave, that I
Speaker 1: could harmonize. I thought almost any melody with one of
Speaker 1: those three or four chords that were there. And it
Speaker 1: was much later that I got more sophisticated and started
Speaker 1: to experiment from there. But that was the first thing.
Speaker 1: And that The amazing thing is I only read about
Speaker 1: a year ago that that Paul McCartney said something very
Speaker 1: very similar. He said, I always tell people that start
Speaker 1: to try and play the piano, play everything in the
Speaker 1: key of C, and if you just move those three
Speaker 1: notes all the way up, you can you can harmonize.
Speaker 1: You know, most things are after a fashion. So that
Speaker 1: was how I taught myself. But you know, I wasn't
Speaker 1: alone in that many most people in the world of
Speaker 1: rock and roll ourself took I have to say, so
Speaker 1: you don't read music at this point. At that point
Speaker 1: I read music very simply. But I could read music
Speaker 1: because I spent so long in this quiet, which was
Speaker 1: great choir. Um I could I could then site read
Speaker 1: single lines um almost at any level. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that I could translate that to the piano, you know,
Speaker 1: which is much more um um polytonal obviously UM. So
Speaker 1: there were two different things. But when I came off that,
Speaker 1: sorry i'm jumping all over the place here. But when
Speaker 1: I came off the road, um actually with our after Argent,
Speaker 1: because I was between the zombies and Argent. I was
Speaker 1: on the road for twelve years, I think something like that.
Speaker 1: And then I've just wanted to rest from that for
Speaker 1: a while, and I thought, I'm going to come off
Speaker 1: the road and I'm going to do two things. First
Speaker 1: of all, I'm not going to write anything myself, and
Speaker 1: then secondly, if anything interesting is offered to me, I'll
Speaker 1: do it if I if I think it's interesting. And thirdly,
Speaker 1: I'm going to learn to sight read. So I took
Speaker 1: any piece of music, no matter how difficult or how easy,
Speaker 1: put it on the piano in front of me, and
Speaker 1: for a couple of hours every day I would play it.
Speaker 1: I try and play in tempo, but no matter how
Speaker 1: funear really slow it was, I just try and play it,
Speaker 1: and it's only like learning a language, you know. After
Speaker 1: a year, I was in a completely different place and
Speaker 1: I could site read pretty much most things. Um So
Speaker 1: that was when I taught myself that really, and that
Speaker 1: was when I was oh god, that wasn't about seventy
Speaker 1: six at that point. Okay, let's go back to what
Speaker 1: it was like. Tell us more about the austerity and
Speaker 1: when it goes from black and white to color. Well,
Speaker 1: an example is that things were incredibly austere for I
Speaker 1: would say ten years, but in the UK and certainly
Speaker 1: in England where I was between nineteen, it was incredibly austere.
Speaker 1: And they were the first years of my life really.
Speaker 1: Um I remember everything was rationed. I remember once going
Speaker 1: into a grocery store with my mother, and I remember
Speaker 1: her putting her ration thing down and buying some potatoes.
Speaker 1: And I thought, she's not getting enough potatoes for the
Speaker 1: money she's spending on them. And I picked out another
Speaker 1: one and put it in her basket, and then we
Speaker 1: took it home and she and then she said to me,
Speaker 1: you put a potato in the basket, You've got to
Speaker 1: take it back. And I was completely mortified, you know,
Speaker 1: and I sort of went back until this potato paper.
Speaker 1: But that was the sort of rationing that was going
Speaker 1: on at the time. Um. But then suddenly there was
Speaker 1: a little bit more money. Suddenly things started to change.
Speaker 1: But I remember when I first heard Elvis when I
Speaker 1: was eleven. Very soon after that, there was a broadcast
Speaker 1: from America which showed Elvis at one of the very
Speaker 1: very early live shows, this very grainy, black and white thing.
Speaker 1: It was probably the ground old opry or something. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but it was just like magic to me.
Speaker 1: And I looked at this thing and it was like
Speaker 1: a being from another universe. You know. This didn't seem
Speaker 1: to have any relation to anything that was going on
Speaker 1: in the UK. All the clothes looked totally different. Um.
Speaker 1: The way he was seeing was like nothing I'd ever heard.
Speaker 1: It was the most exciting thing I've ever seen. And
Speaker 1: I remember thinking, oh God, I've got to have a
Speaker 1: bit of that in some way or other. And I'm
Speaker 1: sure the whole of the youth of England was thinking
Speaker 1: thinking the same thing. Um. You know. It was just
Speaker 1: like a huge wave crashing on the on the shore. Um.
Speaker 1: And and that lasted really for for for some time. UM.
Speaker 1: And incidentally, the most extraordinary thing was when we finally
Speaker 1: went over to the Marry the K show. We learned
Speaker 1: much later in the nineties when I was having an
Speaker 1: interview with the DJ, that Elvis had three of my
Speaker 1: songs on his jukebox and this was what what was this, Bob?
Speaker 1: Eight years well, the beginning of it was eight years
Speaker 1: after I had first seen this being from another planet.
Speaker 1: And it's like when I first went to As a contrast,
Speaker 1: when I first went to New York, I hated it
Speaker 1: because it was so full of energy and aggression that
Speaker 1: that that was my first impression of it. But in
Speaker 1: fact it became one of my favorite cities because it
Speaker 1: seemed to have an honesty about it at the same time,
Speaker 1: and musically it was just brilliant and you could go
Speaker 1: and see anything. I mean, I know, Chris White and
Speaker 1: I um walked into um a jazz club after the
Speaker 1: show one night, and we saw Roland Kirk and we
Speaker 1: were the only two people in in in the jazz
Speaker 1: club apart from a completely dead drunk I and his
Speaker 1: slightly less drunk um woman and and and he was
Speaker 1: making loads of noise and everything, and I thought, I
Speaker 1: can't believe this, you know, even then we were starting
Speaker 1: to venerate these guys, you know, And and that was
Speaker 1: the situation. And it seemed and the cars all seemed
Speaker 1: like mobile jukeboxes to me, you know, whereas all the
Speaker 1: English cars look very it's safe, and you know, not
Speaker 1: all of them was the e type jag which was wonderful.
Speaker 1: But apart from that, and they were so big, and
Speaker 1: it was such a such a different world, and and
Speaker 1: and that caused and together with a little bit more
Speaker 1: money coming through, young people started to be taken more seriously.
Speaker 1: And then with the music what I said before about
Speaker 1: the older guys in the record companies not understanding what
Speaker 1: was going on, it gave a great feeling of power
Speaker 1: to the young people. And then of course the Beatles
Speaker 1: hit the scene in nineteen sixty two in the u
Speaker 1: kay a little bit before the US and um, and
Speaker 1: they were a complete breath of fresh air because their
Speaker 1: music had uh grittiness and vitality but huge invention. Um
Speaker 1: it was it was like England winning the World Cup
Speaker 1: every week because particularly when they first went to America,
Speaker 1: suddenly this completely unbelievable thing was happening, whereby they were
Speaker 1: becoming the most important young rock and roll Act. And
Speaker 1: they were English, and this was in America where they
Speaker 1: had all their influences from and where all their idols
Speaker 1: were as well. You know, there's absolutely no no difference
Speaker 1: between them and us in that way. Um and uh.
Speaker 1: And and it was that explosion out of austerity, and
Speaker 1: it really was austere. Every everything was. It felt like
Speaker 1: the world was pretty much in black and white when
Speaker 1: I when I was ten years old, eleven years old,
Speaker 1: and then it gradually opened up. And then suddenly the
Speaker 1: young people, um started to be able to um cause
Speaker 1: an explosion in in all the arts, in fashion, um,
Speaker 1: you know, in in everything really um. And it just
Speaker 1: felt the most exciting time to be young, and the
Speaker 1: young people seemed to have some sort of real power
Speaker 1: for the first time. And I always think that that
Speaker 1: that was to do also with news starting to come
Speaker 1: from you know, Vietnam. That was a little bit later
Speaker 1: of course as well, um, but but where you could
Speaker 1: actually see really what was happening in the world for
Speaker 1: the first time, and the young people were making up
Speaker 1: their own minds and they were refusing to do some
Speaker 1: things that the older people wanted them to do. And
Speaker 1: you know, in in so many ways it was such
Speaker 1: an exciting time. Okay, so you're in the choir at
Speaker 1: what point and then you say, ultimately Sunday night, you're
Speaker 1: playing rock and raw. Tell me about the decision a
Speaker 1: former band and what the early adventures in forming bands
Speaker 1: were like. Well, okay, in those days, um, the amplification
Speaker 1: and all the equipment was extremely primitive. And at that meeting,
Speaker 1: I've already told you about with Jim Rodford when he
Speaker 1: played me Elvis, he had already formed a skiffle group
Speaker 1: and he played teaches space with a string um and
Speaker 1: and and a tea chest, and he up to his
Speaker 1: death he could still get some great notes out of
Speaker 1: a teacher space with with string and he would do
Speaker 1: occasional nights doing that, which was absolutely fantastic. UM. And
Speaker 1: of course Lonnie Donegan was the first person to bring
Speaker 1: um his version of blues over which was um, you know,
Speaker 1: not not quite the blues of Muddy Waters and Johnny Hooker,
Speaker 1: but it was it was blues and and and people
Speaker 1: were becoming enamored with that. Jim had got his band,
Speaker 1: got who were called the Bluetones, and he got and
Speaker 1: they got some of the earliest electrical equipment in the
Speaker 1: whole of the south of England and um he was fifteen.
Speaker 1: I was eleven at that time when he was in
Speaker 1: the skiffle group. UM. I went to see him, maybe
Speaker 1: when I was twelve or third seen and I was
Speaker 1: so blown away by this, and I thought, well, I
Speaker 1: have to in some way or other former band whenever
Speaker 1: I can. UM. And there was one day, UM, a
Speaker 1: couple of years later from that, I think I was
Speaker 1: fifteen when I walked into a form room to see
Speaker 1: a friend another form to my own, and Paul Atkinson
Speaker 1: was in the corner. There was a little folk club
Speaker 1: going on and he was playing an acoustic guitar and
Speaker 1: I thought, that guy has got a really good sense
Speaker 1: of rhythm. Um, I wonder if you'd like to be
Speaker 1: in a band And I said, Um, I'm thinking of
Speaker 1: forming a band. Do you want to join? He said yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't mind. I felt fantastic, right and I thought, okay,
Speaker 1: where can I go from here? And I thought my
Speaker 1: friend who lived close to me was building a bass guitar.
Speaker 1: He never played a note of anything in his life,
Speaker 1: but I went round to his house that night and um,
Speaker 1: and I said to him, how's your basically start coming
Speaker 1: on and he said, well it's nearly finished. I said, fantastic.
Speaker 1: I said when will it be finished? He said will
Speaker 1: it be finished this week? Really? I'm I'm there, really
Speaker 1: with it. I said, fantastic. Do you want to be
Speaker 1: in a band and he said, well, yeah, I don't mind.
Speaker 1: And he said, I've got this mate who sits behind
Speaker 1: me at school. His name was Arnold A. And Colin
Speaker 1: Blanstone was b who sat behind him. And he said
Speaker 1: he plays, he plays guitar and he sings a bit.
Speaker 1: I said, bring him along, bring him along, And then
Speaker 1: I thought, okay, we just need a drummer now. And
Speaker 1: uh as school had an army cadet force. So on
Speaker 1: that Friday I went along to their march past and
Speaker 1: I picked out the guy who on military side drum
Speaker 1: seemed to have the best sense of real And I
Speaker 1: called him afterwards and said, oh hi, I'm My name
Speaker 1: is rod And who you? He said, I'm Hu and
Speaker 1: and I said do you want to be in the band?
Speaker 1: He said yeah, that would be good. So within two
Speaker 1: weeks we had our first rehearsal. Jim Rodford as always
Speaker 1: a wonderful, wonderfully helpful guy, fantastic enabler, and as I say,
Speaker 1: it was always a mental to me. And he drove me.
Speaker 1: I couldn't drive, and he drove me to our first rehearsal. Um.
Speaker 1: I remember that in the in the the playground, if
Speaker 1: you like, um up break, I was going up to
Speaker 1: Paul Atkinson and said, we should play an instrumental first.
Speaker 1: We should do this song called Malaguena. He goes down,
Speaker 1: la la la la la la la la, you know,
Speaker 1: and and he went, okay, hang on and he kept
Speaker 1: forget sing it, and I kept saying it to him
Speaker 1: at every every break, and he sort of learned that
Speaker 1: we and we all drove up, and we drove up
Speaker 1: and we met outside a pub. On this pub, I
Speaker 1: mean we were we were too young to go into it,
Speaker 1: but we met outside and as we pulled out, I
Speaker 1: said to Jim, oh god, I hope that you know.
Speaker 1: The one guy I didn't know was was Colin Bloodstone.
Speaker 1: And there was this guy standing there looking really mean,
Speaker 1: with a plaster across his nose, two black eyes, um,
Speaker 1: and he was a rugby player and he broken his nose.
Speaker 1: I said to Jim, oh, my god, I hope that's
Speaker 1: not him. And it was, of course and we went
Speaker 1: and had our first rehearsal. We thought we were great.
Speaker 1: I mean we Jim showed Hugh the very first kick
Speaker 1: drum and backbeat that he had ever played, and something
Speaker 1: simple on the symbols, which, to be fair, Hugh picked
Speaker 1: up in absolutely no time at all. And then and
Speaker 1: then uh uh we had all the blue tones gear.
Speaker 1: So Paul's bass went through this wonderful fox and um,
Speaker 1: and there was another Vox thirty white amp as well.
Speaker 1: I think that we the rest of us went through,
Speaker 1: including the vocals. Um. And I was supposed to be
Speaker 1: the singer, so we we we We tried out an
Speaker 1: instrumental and Colin kept getting the line wrong, so so um.
Speaker 1: I then wandered over in a break to an old
Speaker 1: beaten up old piano and I played. I started playing Nutrocker,
Speaker 1: the old b Bumbler and the stingers um hit at
Speaker 1: the time, um um dumb da dad, you know, And
Speaker 1: he came running over to me and said you sound fantastic.
Speaker 1: He said you've got to play piano in the group,
Speaker 1: and I said, well, not really, no, It's it's not
Speaker 1: as sort of group as the guitar group, isn't it.
Speaker 1: I mean, no, i'm i'm, I'm, I'm I'm going to
Speaker 1: be the singer, you know, so he said okay, And
Speaker 1: then a few minutes later we had another coffee break.
Speaker 1: He picked up his guitar, started playing an old Rick
Speaker 1: Nelson's song and started singing. I thought, my God, is
Speaker 1: so fantastic. And I went over and said, I had
Speaker 1: no idea you could sing like that. You've got to
Speaker 1: be the singer. And okay, I'll play piano. And then
Speaker 1: for the next two years I suffered the worst beaten up.
Speaker 1: Old acoustic piano is usually at least to SENDI tone
Speaker 1: down from concert pitch, so everyone had to tune down,
Speaker 1: um and and and my life changed the day when
Speaker 1: I found a hone a pianet, the electric pianet that
Speaker 1: we actually used for years, and I did, she's not
Speaker 1: there on that as well. But that's that's that's how
Speaker 1: the fact. And Jim Rodford, I mean, we thought we
Speaker 1: sounded pretty good at that first rehearsal. Then second rehearsal
Speaker 1: when we didn't have the bluetoone s gear, we thought
Speaker 1: we sounded terrible. But on that first rehearsal we thought
Speaker 1: we sounded pretty good. And Jim many many years later
Speaker 1: said to us, do you know what at that first rehearsal?
Speaker 1: And I thought, no chance. Okay, so you have that
Speaker 1: first rehearsal, how what year is that? And how long
Speaker 1: after that do you start playing gigs? That was the
Speaker 1: nine We started playing gigs after about nine months. And
Speaker 1: when I say started playing, they were few and far between.
Speaker 1: The first gig we had was a corner's rugby club
Speaker 1: and they had a dance band evening and an interval.
Speaker 1: There were about fifteen people there, um you know, probably
Speaker 1: about seven couples and one extra bloke. And in the
Speaker 1: interval we got up and did a half an hour
Speaker 1: set and the half an hour set went down a
Speaker 1: complete storm, even with those few people, and what was
Speaker 1: going on on the terrible amplification and do you know what?
Speaker 1: We we then started to build up completely a local scene.
Speaker 1: We never played outside St Orbans. It was always in
Speaker 1: St Organs. We played about three church halls always um
Speaker 1: and um. This rugby club and this rugby club became
Speaker 1: After fifteen people on that first gig, we then by
Speaker 1: the end, but that was in nineteen sixty two. I
Speaker 1: think when we when we had our first gig, or
Speaker 1: maybe late sixty one, but sixty sixty two and then
Speaker 1: um by nineties sixty three. UM, they had to have
Speaker 1: a marquee that took four or five hundred people, and
Speaker 1: we used to get four or five hundred people in,
Speaker 1: you know, to play our and they only they didn't
Speaker 1: have any proper electrical outlet, so they had a generator,
Speaker 1: and we knew that the generator would be brilliant for
Speaker 1: the first hour. After that it would slowly wind down.
Speaker 1: Eventually there wasn't enough to power my electric piano by
Speaker 1: the time I got an electric piano, and I would
Speaker 1: have to just bang a tam Marine and standard. So
Speaker 1: how do you start writing songs? I UM. I always
Speaker 1: thought that the first song I ever wrote was something
Speaker 1: called It's all Right with Me, which was on our
Speaker 1: first album UM. But I later found out that I
Speaker 1: had written a song for the Bluetones, unbelievably um uh,
Speaker 1: just about the same time that Please Please Me came out.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't sound like it's derivative of Please Please Me,
Speaker 1: but it was really um and it does sound a
Speaker 1: bit beatly. But they actually their manager really liked the
Speaker 1: song and he'd gotten to record it in Olympic Studios,
Speaker 1: which was you know, a major major studio that's where
Speaker 1: the Stones used to record, etcetera. UM, and so that
Speaker 1: was the first song I ever wrote. It was called UM,
Speaker 1: the Lonely One I think it was called the Lonely
Speaker 1: One UM and UM. So that was the very first song.
Speaker 1: The second song we used to do in our Zombies
Speaker 1: set UM it was called It's all Right with Me
Speaker 1: and it was like an early rock and roll song,
Speaker 1: UM with a bit of rhythm and blues thrown in.
Speaker 1: Then we won a heart Speat competition and the heart
Speaker 1: Speat competition was it's because it's Heartfordshire, so it was
Speaker 1: heart speat play on words UM. And we actually played
Speaker 1: against Jim's band in in the in the final of
Speaker 1: this competition UM, along with three other fans as well,
Speaker 1: and we actually won the competition. And after the competition,
Speaker 1: after the after we won the final, UM, there was
Speaker 1: a knock on our dressing room door and it was
Speaker 1: Dick Roe, who was the head of Decca Records, and
Speaker 1: he said, we'd like to make a single with you, uh,
Speaker 1: and we said fantastic, okay, So UM, we we thought
Speaker 1: we would record the Gershroing song that we did in
Speaker 1: an as set summertime. Um. And we were doing it
Speaker 1: at this very small studio and we got involved then
Speaker 1: through a friend of one of Chris's relatives was a musician.
Speaker 1: I think he was. I can't remember in what way,
Speaker 1: but he was. He was, it's quite a well known
Speaker 1: a musician in the business. He said, I've got this
Speaker 1: great friend who's a really good producer. He said, I
Speaker 1: think you should have a professional producer produce your records.
Speaker 1: And we said, well, okay, great, um. And he said also,
Speaker 1: he said, taking the dip Row Decker contract and get
Speaker 1: him to look at it and see if there are
Speaker 1: things in there that shouldn't be in there. And um.
Speaker 1: This guy was called Ken Jones. We met with Ken,
Speaker 1: really liked him. He said, Dick Rose contract is pretty good. Actually,
Speaker 1: he said, but there are one of two things that
Speaker 1: I would change in that. And he said, these are
Speaker 1: my suggestions. So we did. Role was fine with that,
Speaker 1: and he changed them and we did our first session.
Speaker 1: And the first session was in two weeks time and
Speaker 1: he said, Ken said, you know, if you like, he said,
Speaker 1: I know, we're recording sometimes, he said, but if you like,
Speaker 1: you could try and write something yourselves. So I went away,
Speaker 1: and Chris White went away, and Colin just didn't think
Speaker 1: any more about it, neither neither did the other two guys. Um.
Speaker 1: And then Colin couldn't believe it when when I called
Speaker 1: him and said, I've got this song, can we rehearse it?
Speaker 1: And that was She's Not There? Um, and and that
Speaker 1: you know, and that that really was the third song.
Speaker 1: But really I've always felt that was the second song
Speaker 1: I ever wrote, and we recorded that in nineties sixty four,
Speaker 1: in the summer of nineties four. Tell me what the
Speaker 1: inspiration was and how you wrote She's Not There? Well,
Speaker 1: the inspiration was the session coming up, and and the
Speaker 1: fact that I was just hugely, hugely enthusiastic about music,
Speaker 1: I mean about any kind of music, but particularly rock
Speaker 1: and roll at the time, and particularly the Beatles that
Speaker 1: had just exploded onto the scene and loved, loved everything
Speaker 1: that they brought to rock and roll music at that time. UM.
Speaker 1: So I desperately wanted to be part of that, and
Speaker 1: I desperately wanted to write. And with that naivety and
Speaker 1: arrogance that you always have, maybe only once when you're
Speaker 1: you know, seventeen or eighteen years old, I thought yeah,
Speaker 1: I can write something that's as good as the Beatles,
Speaker 1: and and Colin is going to sound fantastic singing it,
Speaker 1: and the record is going to sound great. I couldn't
Speaker 1: imagine anything else. I you know, years later, my god,
Speaker 1: the pitfalls you have when you're recording and you know
Speaker 1: the fact that you get a great sound in a
Speaker 1: record studio and that everything works is you know, that's
Speaker 1: that's not a higher chance. But at the time, that's
Speaker 1: what I thought happened. Um and and really and so
Speaker 1: I thought, okay, I've got I've got a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks to write this. So I went back and I thought, right,
Speaker 1: I'll play I'll play a couple of records, try and
Speaker 1: get in the mood, see if anything triggers an idea.
Speaker 1: And I put an old john Ley Hooker song on
Speaker 1: on to Johnny Hooker album and the first track on
Speaker 1: the album was no One Told Me. Now. I rushed
Speaker 1: to add that the that was the only lyric that
Speaker 1: had anything to do with anything in the song, just
Speaker 1: that those opening three words no one. No One told me?
Speaker 1: Um And I thought, you know that that sort of
Speaker 1: trips off the tongue. I like the way that trips
Speaker 1: all the time, I thought I'm gonna I thought to myself,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna we've a story around that. And the one
Speaker 1: the one thing in my mind immediately I have to say,
Speaker 1: was the structure of the song. And I thought, I
Speaker 1: want to start it with a um, something that has
Speaker 1: a really blues melody, a blues scale for the melodic
Speaker 1: part of it, you know, for the verse um, and
Speaker 1: that's based around like a minor blues scale UM. And
Speaker 1: then the second part of the song, I want to
Speaker 1: go into three part harmony because we always used to
Speaker 1: do a lot of harmony right from the beginning actually,
Speaker 1: and I thought that would be great, you know, to
Speaker 1: include lots of harmony. And then the third part of
Speaker 1: this song, which turned out to be We'll let me
Speaker 1: tell you about the way she looked and all that
Speaker 1: I wanted to really build and I wanted to change
Speaker 1: the meter of the words to help that as well.
Speaker 1: You know, We'll let me tell you about the way
Speaker 1: she looked, the way she acted, you know, put the
Speaker 1: stress in the different things. So it just sort of
Speaker 1: grew and then ended on a major chord, because the
Speaker 1: whole thing was in the minor ended on a major chord.
Speaker 1: And then fell right back down again to a moody
Speaker 1: verse again with a minor blue scar and minor chords,
Speaker 1: and that was the inspiration really UM. And so there
Speaker 1: were all sorts of indirect things coming through UM. The
Speaker 1: Beatles were an influence in the sense of wanting to
Speaker 1: have the harmonies, wanting to include all that UM. And
Speaker 1: actually Ringo was an influence as well from the Beatles,
Speaker 1: because not not that we copied a riff of his,
Speaker 1: but the way he used to break up the verse
Speaker 1: rhythms quite often, like on Ticket to Ride or UM.
Speaker 1: You know, he would break up the verse rhythm and
Speaker 1: then go into a more of a steady group and
Speaker 1: bit and build things from there. I loved that, and
Speaker 1: I thought, oh, it would be great to have a
Speaker 1: little bit of that involved, which is how the bomb
Speaker 1: but but Blood you know how that came about at
Speaker 1: the very beginning UM and uh. Years and years later,
Speaker 1: I met Pat Matheney when he was just starting out,
Speaker 1: and I thought it was a fantastic the thing that
Speaker 1: I've seen that Joe papsts in New York, UM, and
Speaker 1: he was only just starting to get known and it
Speaker 1: there was a jazz musician that introduced us, and this
Speaker 1: jazz musician didn't know who I was, no reason why
Speaker 1: he should. And he said, old Pat Metheny, this is that.
Speaker 1: What's your name? And said Rod rod Argent and patmtheny
Speaker 1: said Rod Argent. He said you're the guy. He said,
Speaker 1: with all that modal stuff you played and she's not there.
Speaker 1: That made me think I had a way ahead doing
Speaker 1: what I wanted to do with fuse, you know, fusing
Speaker 1: different elements, etcetera. And I thanked him very much, and
Speaker 1: I thought to myself, there's nothing modal about she's not there.
Speaker 1: And I went back and what I had originally thought
Speaker 1: was just as simple. I am honored to d chord
Speaker 1: that the melody worked around. I'd actually put a really
Speaker 1: little modal scale without even realizing, because I'd listened to
Speaker 1: a lot of Miles and Milestones, which was the very
Speaker 1: first modal thing that Mars ever did. Was one of
Speaker 1: my first jazz purchases. I could only afford the EP,
Speaker 1: so I bought the EP, and and and so all
Speaker 1: those sort of indirect influences were coming through, and I
Speaker 1: think later on um things from classical music were sort
Speaker 1: of influencing me, but never in a conscious way. Bob.
Speaker 1: It was always I thought we were just doing you know,
Speaker 1: the equivalent of songs, beatless songs or any other hit
Speaker 1: that was going on at the time, and yet those
Speaker 1: other things sort of found their way through, and I
Speaker 1: think it was I think that was totemic of of
Speaker 1: a lot of English stuff, actually, because I remember talking
Speaker 1: to John Steele from The Animals and he said that
Speaker 1: when he played Lethouse the Rising Sun when they recorded it,
Speaker 1: he was imagining he was playing the Jimmy Smith record
Speaker 1: of Walk on the wild Side. So you know, those
Speaker 1: very indirect things, um, we we're all around. I think
Speaker 1: so that. I think they were the inspirations of of
Speaker 1: of starting to write and if She's not there, okay,
Speaker 1: the Zombies records had a dark quality and that made
Speaker 1: them magical. Was that in the song? Or was that Ken?
Speaker 1: Johns Oh, well, I don't I don't want to sound
Speaker 1: like I'm boasting, but I think it has to be
Speaker 1: in the song. Really, Um, I don't think it was
Speaker 1: it was Ken. I mean, although you know, I must
Speaker 1: say the you know, the echoes used on Colin's voice,
Speaker 1: particularly She's not there, We're really really good, um, but
Speaker 1: he just really used to master my recordings were done
Speaker 1: very very quickly. We rehearsed. We rehearsed at home. Uh,
Speaker 1: in my mom's front room actually with the piano. And
Speaker 1: the poor guy next door was on night work, so
Speaker 1: that that was that was pretty hard for him. Um,
Speaker 1: but he never complained. But um. We used to rehearse
Speaker 1: everything and then we would record, I think in a
Speaker 1: three hour session in those very early days, we might
Speaker 1: do three songs in it or yeah in three hours. Okay,
Speaker 1: so she's not there, it's cut. Do you think you
Speaker 1: have a hit? How does it become a hit and
Speaker 1: what does that feel like? One of the things we
Speaker 1: did was she's not there was Um. We we recorded
Speaker 1: it and we thought it sounded pretty good. I thought
Speaker 1: it sounded lovely. We're very excited about it. Um, but
Speaker 1: we thought it needed just something else a little bit.
Speaker 1: And so in those days, you recorded on four tracks
Speaker 1: and then you mix the four down to one tomorrow
Speaker 1: because there was nothing else. There was just mornow and
Speaker 1: as you if you wanted an extra track, as you
Speaker 1: mixed to monow, you would add that extra track. And
Speaker 1: we added a drum track, which put a flame on
Speaker 1: the beginning because originally it was a bomb but but
Speaker 1: but but this became bomb but but plut and and
Speaker 1: and then just a little bit extra on the on
Speaker 1: the bridge into the chorus. UM, and that for me,
Speaker 1: that was an important part of the record later on,
Speaker 1: because we thought records only had a life of two
Speaker 1: or three months, and then then you never hear it again, so,
Speaker 1: you know, we we go away, and then two or
Speaker 1: three years later some student engineer at Decca remixed it
Speaker 1: in stereo, but of course he didn't have that extra
Speaker 1: drum track. So very often now even the mix that
Speaker 1: you hear on quite successful commercials UM is the stereo
Speaker 1: version without that extra groove, which makes it sound much
Speaker 1: more cool to me. But with all that in mind,
Speaker 1: I thought what we ended up with when Ken, when
Speaker 1: it had all been mixed, because also the you may
Speaker 1: have heard this story, Bob, but the engineer UM at
Speaker 1: the time got very very drunk because he had been
Speaker 1: at a wedding in the afternoon and we were recording
Speaker 1: through the night, UM and UM. He passed out, UM.
Speaker 1: And when he passed out, we we we all carried
Speaker 1: him upstairs, put him in the cab, and he went home.
Speaker 1: And Ken Jones said to the Taypop the assistant engineer,
Speaker 1: you're going to have to carry on with the session.
Speaker 1: And that tape hop was Gus Dudgeon and that was
Speaker 1: his first ever That was his first ever um uh
Speaker 1: experience as a first engineer, you know. Um. So anyway
Speaker 1: to two of the sides that we can't were brought
Speaker 1: round who um uh one of the one of our
Speaker 1: houses and Kem played it to us and said, we've
Speaker 1: got to choose which is the single, And it was
Speaker 1: between She's Not There and You Made Me Feel Good,
Speaker 1: which was the Chris White b side, um, and we
Speaker 1: found it hard to make up my mind. We thought
Speaker 1: they both sounded really good. Um and I was I
Speaker 1: secretly preferred She's Not There, But then I would wouldn't
Speaker 1: I because I wrote it? But um, Luckily for me,
Speaker 1: the decision came down to um, She's not there, uh
Speaker 1: and and I and again with that naivety and arrogance,
Speaker 1: we just, you know, we just expected it to be
Speaker 1: a hit. We had a huge break because there was
Speaker 1: almost no place right at the beginning when the record
Speaker 1: first came out where you could hear records on the radio.
Speaker 1: The BBC was the only major station that played records,
Speaker 1: and they had half an hour a week of records,
Speaker 1: I think that was it, and and they'd only play
Speaker 1: half of them, you know. It was that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But there was this TV program called Jukebox Jury, and
Speaker 1: they would play a minute and a half or something
Speaker 1: like that of a record or two minutes maximum, and
Speaker 1: the panel would would either vos a hit or a miss.
Speaker 1: Um and George Harrison happened to be on the week
Speaker 1: that we were lucky enough to get this. She's not
Speaker 1: there but put on Jukebox Jury, and I was watching
Speaker 1: it like this because you know, the beech the beetles,
Speaker 1: to us, like to every other young musician at that time,
Speaker 1: were God's and I thought, please don't let him say
Speaker 1: anything bad about the record, Oh please, you know. But
Speaker 1: Um and I. As each record came on, he was
Speaker 1: never nasty, but he was sort of saying, well, no,
Speaker 1: I don't think so, you know, and that sounds pretty
Speaker 1: ordinary actually to me, you know, and all that, and
Speaker 1: then we played ours, and I was looking from behind
Speaker 1: the sofa, you know, and he said, well done, zombies,
Speaker 1: and then he actually says something about our cart remember
Speaker 1: what it was now, something about the piano, so is
Speaker 1: it said, you know, if that's the if that's their
Speaker 1: real Paris, that's great. I thought, what what was that?
Speaker 1: Did I hear that correctly? You know? And and I'm
Speaker 1: sure that gave it its first leg up. And then
Speaker 1: very soon after that, all the Pirates started to broadcast
Speaker 1: with these young DJs who were full of passion and
Speaker 1: enthusiasm about the music that they were playing, and they
Speaker 1: played She's Not There a lot, uh, and you know,
Speaker 1: it was just such a lucky time. I mean, we
Speaker 1: were so lucky with that timing. Okay, so that's a
Speaker 1: huge hit. How does Torno come about? Well, the net
Speaker 1: The follow up in in the UK was leave Me Be.
Speaker 1: And it's not that I don't have the utmost respective
Speaker 1: Chris for longwriter, but we thought it was a terrible record,
Speaker 1: a terrible single, and we thought it was very really
Speaker 1: limp and weak. And that came out and it was
Speaker 1: a huge flop in the UK, and in the end
Speaker 1: we only ever had one hit in in the UK um,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure that was the reason. Um. And then
Speaker 1: because of that in the States they decided to miss
Speaker 1: out Leave Me Be and put tell Her No out
Speaker 1: Now Tell Her Now as a song came about because
Speaker 1: we've been on a package tour in the UK with
Speaker 1: Dion Warwick and the Isley brothers. The Isley brothers were
Speaker 1: they were just fantastic and they were absolutely they became
Speaker 1: really good friends. And Ronnie Eilis got the most beautiful voice,
Speaker 1: you know, and and they were giving us all sorts
Speaker 1: of tips and they were really really lovely. Um And
Speaker 1: but Dion Warwick was having hits in the US and
Speaker 1: in the UK, although most of her hits in the
Speaker 1: UK were covered by people like Sylla Black UM and
Speaker 1: Dion Morritt was getting really annoyed about this, you know,
Speaker 1: because she said, can't you find some of your own songwriters?
Speaker 1: And I thought, well, do you know what? I love
Speaker 1: some of the back right stuff I've been hearing. And
Speaker 1: I absolutely loved the way that he was taking things
Speaker 1: away from just playing chords into more jazz informed cards
Speaker 1: like um without wanting to get too technical, like major
Speaker 1: seventh major, ninth major e levenths and and and and
Speaker 1: things like that. And I thought, I would love to,
Speaker 1: you know, put some of that into what we're doing.
Speaker 1: And I wrote this song again fairly quickly called tell
Speaker 1: Her No, which was using these major chords, but with
Speaker 1: some jazz colorations in them as well. Now, you know,
Speaker 1: tell her no. It sounds like a very simple song,
Speaker 1: and it is. And I always think that when things
Speaker 1: really work, they always sound simple. But it me that necessarily, um,
Speaker 1: there's not something nice going on underneath, or something that's
Speaker 1: a little bit more inventive going on underneath, you just
Speaker 1: shouldn't be aware of it. I guess really, um and
Speaker 1: um anyway that that that was how how Teleno was written,
Speaker 1: um and um to you know, she used pleasure to
Speaker 1: us because when we were recording it, as we were
Speaker 1: recording it, uh um not al Cope al Gallico, publisher
Speaker 1: in the States, phoned us up, which was a big
Speaker 1: deal in those days, phone from the U S to
Speaker 1: UK while we were recording, and so I just wanted
Speaker 1: you to know that she's not there is number one
Speaker 1: so over here now. Um. So we were knocked out. Um.
Speaker 1: And and then the next thing we sent him was
Speaker 1: tell her No, And luckily it became a top five
Speaker 1: record as well. Okay, how does the being ultimately peter
Speaker 1: out and break up? And then it is the story
Speaker 1: t about our Cooper pushing the button and time of
Speaker 1: the season. True, Um, what happened was that although we
Speaker 1: love Ken and he was a great musician, really good
Speaker 1: pianist himself. Um, he was an old school guy. And
Speaker 1: whereas we felt that on the very first session that
Speaker 1: he did with us he was a great producer because
Speaker 1: he just got the best out of the songs, after
Speaker 1: that he seemed very intent on trying to analyze wasn't
Speaker 1: made the first record successful? Excuse me? And in his
Speaker 1: mind he thought, well, you know, there's a really breathy
Speaker 1: quality to Colin, so we've got to emphasize that. And uh.
Speaker 1: And rather than taking whatever song was Chris or I
Speaker 1: had written and then getting the best out of them,
Speaker 1: he was trying to fashion them in a certain sort
Speaker 1: of way. We did. We did a a song, I
Speaker 1: think our third single in the States was called She's
Speaker 1: Coming Home, and he tried to fashion it just like
Speaker 1: the Righteous Brothers of You. You lost that loving feeling.
Speaker 1: He was putting the same sort of echo on it
Speaker 1: and throwing it that way, you know, And we thought
Speaker 1: this was so wrong. We thought it should just be
Speaker 1: good production is just getting the very best out of
Speaker 1: what what you were doing. Anyway, To cut the long
Speaker 1: story short, we had lots of singles, and none of
Speaker 1: them were hits in the UK. Um and although we
Speaker 1: later found out that around the world many of these
Speaker 1: have been hits actually. Um. But but in those days
Speaker 1: you didn't get news all that quickly. You know, you
Speaker 1: you can have a hit now in our to Mongolia
Speaker 1: and no within an hour or two, but but in
Speaker 1: those days, you know, it probably took you might never
Speaker 1: find out. Um. So it had the result that Chris
Speaker 1: and I, because we had very honest publishers, um, we
Speaker 1: got all the money that we would do from writing,
Speaker 1: so we were doing pretty well and we didn't have
Speaker 1: money problems. The rest of the band were completely broke.
Speaker 1: And because we were based very much in the UK,
Speaker 1: and I have to say, there was a little little
Speaker 1: bit of exportation going on, and we'd be on tour
Speaker 1: in America and we'd be on tour with big hit
Speaker 1: records and and and and playing with on massive shows
Speaker 1: to twenty people and just breaking even by the time
Speaker 1: we got back, and somebody else was making a huge
Speaker 1: amount of money and it wasn't us. So that was
Speaker 1: their situation. And one day, um, well, there were two things. Okay.
Speaker 1: So first of all, we were looking back on the
Speaker 1: singles that we recorded, and Chris and I were thinking
Speaker 1: what happened to that song? We did a demo on
Speaker 1: the demos a lot better than the final record you
Speaker 1: know where Where's we recorded? Um? One of my sons
Speaker 1: called is this a Dream? And it was really rocking
Speaker 1: in the studio and we were never allowed into the mixes. Um.
Speaker 1: Ken Jones would always insist on mixing it by himself.
Speaker 1: And we came back from the pub after he had
Speaker 1: mixed it, and Colin said, is that the song we recorded?
Speaker 1: I mean he thought it was almost a different song. Um.
Speaker 1: And we've had enough of this, you know. And I
Speaker 1: said to Chris, look if we're going to break up
Speaker 1: because some of the guys have got no money and
Speaker 1: Paul Atkinson was getting married to Molly Molly malloy and
Speaker 1: he said, I've got no money and I want to
Speaker 1: get married. I've got to get another job. I'm sorry, guys,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to leave. And we were all still friends.
Speaker 1: There was no antipathy in the band. We were just
Speaker 1: we were all friends. Um. But things were breaking down
Speaker 1: and I said to Chris, look, we've got we've got
Speaker 1: to do at least one album where we can write
Speaker 1: some material and have it realized in the way at
Speaker 1: least that we hear it, and if nobody likes it,
Speaker 1: there's nothing we can do. But at least, you know,
Speaker 1: we feel satisfied that we've actually got it down on record.
Speaker 1: And so and I had to say that Ken was
Speaker 1: great about this, and he said, okay, if you want
Speaker 1: to produce something yourself, he said, I'll support you. I'll
Speaker 1: go to UM. I'll go to E M I and
Speaker 1: see if I can get you a deal. And I asked,
Speaker 1: you said you should try and record an abbey Road
Speaker 1: And we said, well, surely you have to be signed
Speaker 1: to E M I to record Abbey Road. And I said,
Speaker 1: you know, the Beetles are uh the biggest act there.
Speaker 1: So anyway, he got it somehow he used his influence.
Speaker 1: We've got a thousand pounds, which even then wasn't a
Speaker 1: huge amount of money to do an album. And we
Speaker 1: walked into Abbey Road just as the Beatles a week
Speaker 1: before had walked out having recorded Sergeant Pepper and they
Speaker 1: had left quite a lot of stuff around the studio.
Speaker 1: Thank god that John Lennon left his meloton there and
Speaker 1: without asking him, Sorry, John, UM, I just used it
Speaker 1: and and used it all over. Obviously an oracle, but
Speaker 1: it was great because we because we had no money,
Speaker 1: we really rehearsed and rehearsed, and we rehearsed, and we
Speaker 1: put the back into acts down and and and the
Speaker 1: lead vocal as we heard it and the harmon is
Speaker 1: actually But then because the Beatles have worked out technically
Speaker 1: how to get slightly more than four tracks, they managed
Speaker 1: to get seven tracks. Um. They didn't have an eight
Speaker 1: track machine in the country like Brian Wilson had had,
Speaker 1: but they managed to get the boffins at Abbey Road
Speaker 1: to work out a way of having seven tracks. And
Speaker 1: so what we would do is we would record exactly
Speaker 1: as we heard things, and it would be recorded in
Speaker 1: a way that we'd heard it. And we were over
Speaker 1: the moon about this. And then even though it was
Speaker 1: really prepared, we had a bit of spontaneous chance of
Speaker 1: improvisation or just a last minute thought. And even on
Speaker 1: on the time of the season. I remember we recorded
Speaker 1: that and another track, the backing track of it, in
Speaker 1: three hours time the season as something else. At the
Speaker 1: same time. Um, and as we were playing through we
Speaker 1: all thought it sounded pretty good. Um and um, But
Speaker 1: I said to Hugh where it had been doom doom doom, sorry,
Speaker 1: doom doom doom check, doom doom doom chap like that.
Speaker 1: I said, sounds great, But I said, you know what,
Speaker 1: I can hear a bit of percussion either side of
Speaker 1: the backbeat. I can hear doo doo doo ah like that.
Speaker 1: And honestly, he said, well, if you hear that, he said,
Speaker 1: you know, we've still got a few minutes going there
Speaker 1: and bang it through. And we had Jeff Emrick as
Speaker 1: um engineer on that particular track, and I had to say,
Speaker 1: right from the beginning, the sound was brilliant, and there
Speaker 1: was something about even when we recorded before those those
Speaker 1: bits um, there was something magical about the way he'd
Speaker 1: recorded the tom tom's with the bass. It just sounded.
Speaker 1: It sounded so right, and we were really excited. But
Speaker 1: we put this improvisation thing um and that that's the
Speaker 1: one I really remember on that that particular track. It
Speaker 1: was done so quickly, but when it finished, we thought,
Speaker 1: that's the best we can do for an album. We
Speaker 1: were all all really happy with all the tracks. We
Speaker 1: thought it was great, but we thought, if no one
Speaker 1: likes it, what can we do? You know. So anyway,
Speaker 1: it came out in the UK because everything was very
Speaker 1: based locally at that time. It was it was much
Speaker 1: more hard. It was even hard from a business point
Speaker 1: of view to go to the States because I mean
Speaker 1: we at one point we had to um swap on
Speaker 1: the Musicians Union with a Duke Ellington orchestra, you know,
Speaker 1: so all these things were going on. Um. But it
Speaker 1: finished and then we thought, we put one single out.
Speaker 1: If the single was a hit, fantastic. If it's not,
Speaker 1: then okay, at least we've got something that we really
Speaker 1: like and it's there. So we have one DJ in
Speaker 1: the hole of the country who liked it, Kenny Everett.
Speaker 1: This guy called Kenny Everett who was a really cool DJ,
Speaker 1: and we had one meeting with him and he said,
Speaker 1: I hear you're broken up, and we said, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but well we've had you know, we've put the first
Speaker 1: single out. Nobody's playing it, he said, I play it,
Speaker 1: he said, And he played it once a week on
Speaker 1: his program or something like that. But it just died
Speaker 1: of death and we broke up and that was the reason.
Speaker 1: But we were really happy from how it sounded um,
Speaker 1: but we were unhappy from the fact that it wasn't
Speaker 1: a hit, of course, and then if anyone has said
Speaker 1: to us that in fifty five years time it would
Speaker 1: be selling far more every year, and it ever did
Speaker 1: when it first came out, we we did. We have
Speaker 1: thought he was absolutely crazy. But you know, that's the
Speaker 1: weird thing about life. So after me the record is
Speaker 1: a gigantic smash. The band has already broken up. What
Speaker 1: is that experience? Like, how do you decide to form Argent? Well,
Speaker 1: as soon as the Zombies broke up, I stayed together
Speaker 1: professionally with Chris White, and we decided to form a
Speaker 1: production company and then we start. Then we thought, okay,
Speaker 1: we're going to have to try and get someone to
Speaker 1: finance this production partnership. And I didn't think how we
Speaker 1: were going to do that. But then suddenly we'd already
Speaker 1: well formed by by Argent at the time that that
Speaker 1: UM the Time of the Season started to be a
Speaker 1: hit in the States, because it came it was a
Speaker 1: hit eighteen months after UM. Obviously an Oracle came out,
Speaker 1: and I mean that was in sixty seven where we
Speaker 1: actually finished it, and it was sixty nine before it
Speaker 1: finally like like crawling up the up the top hundred
Speaker 1: until it finally ended up right at the top, which
Speaker 1: was just wonderful. UM. And we only found that out
Speaker 1: actually two or three months before it reached number one,
Speaker 1: because we've got a call from our Gallico, the publisher
Speaker 1: in America, saying, this is starting to be a hit.
Speaker 1: He said, One guy in Idaho in Boise, Idaho are
Speaker 1: starting to play this, just one guy, he said, and
Speaker 1: unbelievably in a very very slow pattern, like a like
Speaker 1: a stone in the pond. The ripples are starting to
Speaker 1: cause UM success and and those ripples are causing people
Speaker 1: UM to start spreading the news. And then of course
Speaker 1: it absolutely caught fire at a certain point, and then
Speaker 1: it and then then with complete wonder we were looking
Speaker 1: at the you know, the top twenties, seeing some of
Speaker 1: their heroes, uh beneath us, you know, and there there
Speaker 1: we were, and it was wonderful and actually it felt
Speaker 1: it felt glorious because already Chris and I were able
Speaker 1: to go over to UM Clive Davis and we're able
Speaker 1: to say we've got a number one single that Chris
Speaker 1: and I have produced UM and we've already planned a
Speaker 1: solo album for Colin Bloodstone, which was one year, um,
Speaker 1: which I still think is a great album. UM and UM.
Speaker 1: And we formed another band called Argent and we played
Speaker 1: two or three tracks that we've already got and he
Speaker 1: loved it and he and and he said, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: we'll we'll, we'll, we'll released that. UM. I mean Clive
Speaker 1: was was one of the guys that I'm sorry, I'm
Speaker 1: going back to your previous question now. Uh. He was.
Speaker 1: He was the guy that said, um, when our Cooper
Speaker 1: came over in sixty seven, UM, he just signed with
Speaker 1: Clive Davis as the top A n R man in CBS. UM,
Speaker 1: and he came over to the UK and he wrote
Speaker 1: this thing which said, um, I bring back two hundred albums.
Speaker 1: And you know the the rows amongst Thorns were were
Speaker 1: obviously an oracle. And he went back at a meeting
Speaker 1: with Clive Davis and said, there's only one album that
Speaker 1: I think that wherever that is, whoever is, he's got it.
Speaker 1: UM in the whole world. You've got to buy it is.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter how much it costs, You've got to
Speaker 1: buy that album and release it. And Clive said, well,
Speaker 1: we've we've we've bought it, but we decided to to
Speaker 1: to to not not not release it, you know, we
Speaker 1: passed and and Alan said, well, you you've got you've
Speaker 1: got to you've got to release it, and he was
Speaker 1: on um. It was it was completely to al that
Speaker 1: that it was down to him that it was released.
Speaker 1: It would not have released otherwise. And then Clive, who
Speaker 1: didn't really see it at that time, released um Bush's Tail,
Speaker 1: which is one of my favorite albums on the album
Speaker 1: but never a single in a million years. I loved
Speaker 1: his song. I thought it was great, an anti war
Speaker 1: song um and of course it was a it was
Speaker 1: a stiff and then he released Caraself forty four which
Speaker 1: also did nothing. And then finally, as a last gasp,
Speaker 1: you put Time in the Season out and of course
Speaker 1: it was then that it was a hit, and so
Speaker 1: he was then really really up for doing a production
Speaker 1: contract and and and releasing Oja. So for Chris and
Speaker 1: I it was like a dream. We were going over
Speaker 1: with the number one record and it felt really easy
Speaker 1: to to form a form an album and we were off. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you have a production company, how do you hook
Speaker 1: up with Russ Ballard and decide you're going to be
Speaker 1: back in a group. And then the first two records
Speaker 1: have great tracks, but there's not really any financial success
Speaker 1: commercial success. We went into a uh Russ and Bob Henrick.
Speaker 1: Russ ball and Bob Henrick, we're playing in Unit four
Speaker 1: plus two at the time, and Jim Rodford again. I
Speaker 1: formed argent with Jim and he said, you know, he said,
Speaker 1: there's a great drama that's playing in Unit four plus
Speaker 1: two at the moment. He wasn't the Roulettes with Russ Ballard.
Speaker 1: They were in the Roulettes together, and they're they're two
Speaker 1: really really good people. I've never seen him play, and
Speaker 1: he said, you should really try and catch them, see
Speaker 1: what you think. And Chris and I found out they
Speaker 1: were playing a little church hall, and I said, I'll
Speaker 1: tell you what, Chris. We'll pretend that we were just
Speaker 1: passing and we saw the sign outside that it was
Speaker 1: Unit four plus two and we're wandering and and and
Speaker 1: just to say hello and um, just as an accident.
Speaker 1: We'll be passing and we're walking and we we sought
Speaker 1: out this little church hall in the back of beyond
Speaker 1: and we went past this um this church hall, and
Speaker 1: we went in until our horror, we couldn't lose ourselves
Speaker 1: at the back of the hall because there are only
Speaker 1: about ten people in the hall. So so we we
Speaker 1: sat at the back of the hall or were still
Speaker 1: at the back of the hall feeling and they looked
Speaker 1: and saw us and sort of went, you know, because
Speaker 1: they fainally knew it. They sort of had messas I think,
Speaker 1: or at least they knew Chris or something I can't remember. Um,
Speaker 1: but anyway, or we knew Lem Lubin. I think we
Speaker 1: knew Lem Lubin who was in the in the in
Speaker 1: the band. Anyway, we went back we we thought they
Speaker 1: were great. I thought I thought Russ was fantastic when
Speaker 1: he when he was singing bits and pieces, because I
Speaker 1: think it was Tommy Moyler that was mainly the lead singer. Um.
Speaker 1: And we went backstage afterwards and they had a new
Speaker 1: manager and we felt really embarrassed because we were sitting
Speaker 1: at the back of the hall, back of the changing room. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the the manager went crashing in his new manager
Speaker 1: and said, um, I can tell you in three words
Speaker 1: what's wrong with this band. And we sort of looked
Speaker 1: at him and thought, of God, we shouldn't be there really,
Speaker 1: and he said stop drinking, and were completely apart because
Speaker 1: those three songs were stopped drinking those three words so
Speaker 1: well stopped drinking anyway. We thought they were great and
Speaker 1: we asked them. We we we met up with him
Speaker 1: in London and said, look, we're starting this this thing.
Speaker 1: I've got a couple of songs I've written, like honey
Speaker 1: at the time, um, and I can't remember a couple
Speaker 1: of things. And they said, yeah, I think we play
Speaker 1: some demos that we had and they really liked it
Speaker 1: and said yeah, yeah, we should, we should, we should.
Speaker 1: And we said and I said, well, we've got to
Speaker 1: have a name. Um. And but we were going to
Speaker 1: call them because of Argent meaning silver, we were going
Speaker 1: to call them something like silver, Surfa or something. We said, well, no,
Speaker 1: we can't call it that that that's that's not right, um.
Speaker 1: And in the end Bob Henry said we should call
Speaker 1: it Argent. I said no, no, no, because it was
Speaker 1: one of those things like when you're in the back
Speaker 1: of the classroom. I was always really embarrassed when when
Speaker 1: my name came out Argent, you know, I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: reminded me of school sort of thing. But in the end,
Speaker 1: against my against what I wanted to do, he made
Speaker 1: it UM. He decided to that that we'd had the
Speaker 1: name as Argent, and so that became the name of
Speaker 1: the of the record of the group and then the
Speaker 1: first record UM and we and we formed the band
Speaker 1: and we did the first album in a very small
Speaker 1: studio that had just started and it was a great
Speaker 1: little studio called Sound Techniques. And we loved the album.
Speaker 1: We really were very very proud of our first album, Argent.
Speaker 1: In some ways, it's still my favorite album, but it
Speaker 1: was it sounded like very much UM, a natural UM,
Speaker 1: a natural follow on from what what we've been doing
Speaker 1: with the zombies UM. And they loved it as well.
Speaker 1: They loved obviously Oracle and everything UM and we recorded
Speaker 1: this thing. Now. The one thing that was bad about
Speaker 1: that and and Ring of Hands, which was the second band,
Speaker 1: was that we felt the actual sound quality in Sound Techniques.
Speaker 1: We thought it was great, but we thought it was
Speaker 1: a bit small as a sound. And then if you
Speaker 1: heard it against UM another hit record that will come out.
Speaker 1: Their records always sounded a bit more powerful and strangely enough,
Speaker 1: not that long ago, a few years ago, maybe ten
Speaker 1: years ago, they had they made Sony made a five
Speaker 1: a five CD box set, UM of CDs that they
Speaker 1: they remastered it, and they remastered with the sort of
Speaker 1: marvelous things that you can do these days with remastering
Speaker 1: with multi band compression. So suddenly it felt that the
Speaker 1: part that the parts that we put on the album
Speaker 1: was suddenly able to um compete with the sort of
Speaker 1: albums from whatever was around. It would be the right level,
Speaker 1: it would have the right impact of everything that was
Speaker 1: going on. Unfortunately they deleted from the five CD box
Speaker 1: set and I can't get it anymore now, but that
Speaker 1: that really it was a great thing for me to
Speaker 1: get to get that and and I really think that
Speaker 1: if we'd have managed to get a bigger our sound
Speaker 1: from the album, we just stood a much more chance
Speaker 1: of having a hit record with the with the with
Speaker 1: the first album, and and that was the main reason
Speaker 1: why we went to abbey Road again for for the
Speaker 1: album which became hold your Head Up in It. Um.
Speaker 1: It was because of that, because we wanted a bigger
Speaker 1: sound out of what we were doing. But I still
Speaker 1: think that we were most at one with those first
Speaker 1: two albums, and I still absolutely love those first two albums,
Speaker 1: and I think that Russ's voice was really really special.
Speaker 1: Um In the way that he could be really powerful
Speaker 1: at the same time when he was singing um more
Speaker 1: tenderly if you like, he had this wonderful high lyrical
Speaker 1: quality as well when he was singing Listen. Liar is
Speaker 1: one of my favorite tracks of all time. Literally, I
Speaker 1: will say I didn't buy the album when Napster Hit
Speaker 1: was one of the first songs I downloaded. To this day,
Speaker 1: I played incessantly the sound of the record. Mean three
Speaker 1: Dark Knight cover is good, but it's nowhere close to
Speaker 1: the original. Oh bless you mate, Yeah, well, thank you. Well.
Speaker 1: We loved it, and our idea was that the actual
Speaker 1: chorus of b that I should have really smashed out.
Speaker 1: But of course it had the effect because the actual
Speaker 1: sound as it was at the time was that a
Speaker 1: little bit quieter, So it made a lot of the
Speaker 1: verses sounded very quiet, and then the liar sort of
Speaker 1: came out at the sort of normal level in a sense,
Speaker 1: it wasn't. It didn't end out when it was on
Speaker 1: the radio sounding us as dramatic, dramatic as it should
Speaker 1: have been. Um, But I I thought it was beautifully
Speaker 1: put together, and I loved how we were all playing.
Speaker 1: I thought Jim Rodford as well. I thought the best
Speaker 1: bass playing at that time was really fantastic UM and
Speaker 1: Bob's drumming was really solid, you know, and exciting. It was.
Speaker 1: It was those first two or three years were really
Speaker 1: really great fun and we had some very bad experiences.
Speaker 1: We did. We did a one of the first venues
Speaker 1: that we did was in the It was either the
Speaker 1: Whiskey of Go Go or The troubad Or, I can't remember.
Speaker 1: And to our amazement when everybody turned out, Frank's Apple
Speaker 1: was there, Jimi Hendrix, Um, Eric Burden, just just everybody
Speaker 1: was there and we zoomed into the first record. I
Speaker 1: had two Leslie's and they were amplified from UM UH
Speaker 1: a changing room that the UM support band had on
Speaker 1: the support band, and I can quite understand this. We're
Speaker 1: drowned out by this Leslie speaker in their changing room
Speaker 1: UM and that was so that we could amplify the
Speaker 1: Leslie speakers without it being having feedback. So the actual
Speaker 1: effect was that after the first two minutes of the
Speaker 1: first song, you suddenly couldn't hear the organ for the
Speaker 1: rest of the whole the whole set and the organ
Speaker 1: was a really big part of what we were doing,
Speaker 1: and I was. It just sounded like disaster to me,
Speaker 1: and people were very sort of kind about it. But
Speaker 1: you know, it was a really it was the opposite
Speaker 1: of Elton John doing the was it the whiskey Truber
Speaker 1: or I can't remember, you know when he came from nowhere?
Speaker 1: But I had this suddenly, this shuge, huge explosion of success,
Speaker 1: you know, But we had the complete opposite because what
Speaker 1: had been great gigs for us just turned out to be,
Speaker 1: you know, no real impact. So that that was really
Speaker 1: a great sense. You know a lot of things went
Speaker 1: wrong in a in a okay, So ultimately you cut
Speaker 1: all together, now hold your head up as a gigantic kit.
Speaker 1: You followed up with God gave rock and roll to
Speaker 1: you on the In Deep album, which really was as
Speaker 1: stiff at the era and has become classic because of
Speaker 1: covers thereafter, even though I think your version is the best. Um,
Speaker 1: so walk us through the creation of that, the disappointment
Speaker 1: and the ultimate leaving of Russ from margin. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean there were there were several reasons. Really, Um, I
Speaker 1: think that um, God gave rock and roll to you
Speaker 1: when it started, Um, it was actually it was a
Speaker 1: rock and roll tempo. It was. God gave rock and
Speaker 1: roll to you know. It was like a double time
Speaker 1: almost rock and roll thing. Um but as we always did.
Speaker 1: I mean, Russ was a great songwriter, but um, as
Speaker 1: always we were, all four of us, would would would
Speaker 1: take an original idea and we would mess around with
Speaker 1: the arrangement hugely. And and I have to say, I
Speaker 1: don't know if Russia remembers at this, but I said,
Speaker 1: do you know what we could do? We could make
Speaker 1: it halftime. God gave rock and roll to, you know.
Speaker 1: I said, we could have quite heavy, almost like an
Speaker 1: industrial field to it. And I changed one of the chords. Um,
Speaker 1: DoD DoD DoD do that bit there, um and uh.
Speaker 1: And we worked on it, and then we worked on
Speaker 1: really having cascading vocals and everything at the end. And
Speaker 1: we weren't thinking of it. We weren't thinking of it
Speaker 1: as a single at the time. We were thinking it
Speaker 1: purely as an album track and starting and having many
Speaker 1: layers and then really building at the very end to
Speaker 1: a this cascading harmonies, you know, which which we really
Speaker 1: loved when it When it came out, um and uh,
Speaker 1: it was it was used um as as a single
Speaker 1: after it came out and people, I love the song basically,
Speaker 1: and you know, first of all, we weren't thinking of
Speaker 1: it as a as a single, and in fact, we
Speaker 1: weren't thinking of Hold Your Head Up as a single either. Um.
Speaker 1: In fact, no one was having singles at that particular time.
Speaker 1: But it became a hit when they when they cut
Speaker 1: out three and a half minutes of organ solo, which
Speaker 1: is fair enough, you know, um, But you know, it
Speaker 1: was all it was all really good at the time,
Speaker 1: but then it's like everything else. It's like with the Beatles.
Speaker 1: I mean, I always sort of the Beatles as the
Speaker 1: first progressive UM group ever, right from the beginning. I mean,
Speaker 1: whether it was Revolution number nine, or whether it was
Speaker 1: trying their ideas on helter skelter or whatever it was,
Speaker 1: or using music concrete or or whatever. There was so
Speaker 1: much of that going on, and we were always trying
Speaker 1: to go to the edge of boundaries, and we were
Speaker 1: always trying to push things and they didn't always work
Speaker 1: in in in a way that they should have done,
Speaker 1: but we were trying all the time to do it.
Speaker 1: And in the end Russ wanted to do much more
Speaker 1: straightforward songs, and I quite understand that and we remained
Speaker 1: really good friends. But in the end, it's that I'm gonna,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm going to leave and just go for
Speaker 1: a solo career and just do some more straightforward songs,
Speaker 1: and that that seemed fair enough to me at the time.
Speaker 1: And and and then and then we broke up. You know,
Speaker 1: that was it really tell me. The story of the
Speaker 1: creation recording of Hold Your Head Up. Hold Your Head
Speaker 1: Up was done Chris White and I shared UM an
Speaker 1: apartment we had We had a bedroom each, and there
Speaker 1: was a third guy who did the um the artwork
Speaker 1: for obviously an oracle as well, so that that was
Speaker 1: the three of us and we had a room each
Speaker 1: at the time we were just doing that. At the beginning, UM,
Speaker 1: Hold your Head Up was a song that Chris came
Speaker 1: into me and said, I've got this song. And I
Speaker 1: had to say that if you're talking about a song
Speaker 1: that comes from lyrically and UM from the guitar motif,
Speaker 1: then that was absolutely Chris White. UM. But then again,
Speaker 1: like with everything, Chris and I used to work on
Speaker 1: things together, change some of the chords and and do
Speaker 1: one thing and another. And I did as I always did.
Speaker 1: I did lots of the arranging side of what was
Speaker 1: going on and how we were going to structure the
Speaker 1: whole thing together. Um, but that original motif, you know,
Speaker 1: and and that lovely guitar motif was was Chris White's. Um.
Speaker 1: So he did the song. We went into Abbey Road
Speaker 1: to to record it. We didn't even record, we didn't
Speaker 1: even rehearse it. We went in to record it and
Speaker 1: we played it through to Bob Henry and we we
Speaker 1: did the unbelievably. I mean, we did thirty two takes
Speaker 1: on it, but we took tape one and um, it
Speaker 1: was six and a half minutes, and we just went
Speaker 1: on and built, you know, just improvised the middle part
Speaker 1: and just built, built it and built it until at
Speaker 1: the end we were happy with what we got. And
Speaker 1: my god, we stayed there for another four or five hours,
Speaker 1: doing about thirty two takes, but we went back to
Speaker 1: one because the great thing was that everyone was really
Speaker 1: really listening, and Barbara Henry was listening so acutely to
Speaker 1: too where the song was going. And unbelievably we got
Speaker 1: through the whole thing without making mistakes. But it felt
Speaker 1: fresh and fresh and improvised, and we thought immediately we
Speaker 1: could do much better. But we never never achieved anything better.
Speaker 1: It was just that fresh, early um, early response to
Speaker 1: the original idea, um and and and and that's how
Speaker 1: it turned out. And unbelievably, um we all sang on
Speaker 1: the chorus um and it was actually which nobody got
Speaker 1: until absolutely recently. It was the words will holding it
Speaker 1: Chris why it wrote it? And he had his wife
Speaker 1: in mind, and it was because she was going to
Speaker 1: a difficult time and it was hold your head up
Speaker 1: woman basically not not whole as everyone thought it was you,
Speaker 1: but I would go ah at the top and that
Speaker 1: sort of covered the woman really. Um. So, so that
Speaker 1: that was the story of the of the single. Really,
Speaker 1: But what was it like when it all of a
Speaker 1: sudden became it was everywhere in the summer of seventy two,
Speaker 1: I mean it became absolutely gigantic, bigger than anything you'd
Speaker 1: experienced previously. What was that experience from your viewpoint? Well,
Speaker 1: it was fantastic again. But um, when we when we toured,
Speaker 1: we never had this sort of we never had the
Speaker 1: sort of manager the I mean it wasn't that the
Speaker 1: managers were We're bad or cheating or anything like that.
Speaker 1: They just weren't really quite the right quality UM. And
Speaker 1: it really strange enough, it's only in the you know,
Speaker 1: to delete Mars forward, and I only do that for
Speaker 1: a set. UM. In the last six or seven years,
Speaker 1: we've suddenly had um management that I've got everything right
Speaker 1: and I've understood everything they should be doing, which means
Speaker 1: that that it's enabled us to grow in this incarnation
Speaker 1: of the Zombies Pristance. But the but at that time
Speaker 1: there were always things wrong from the management side of
Speaker 1: a point of view, UM and and I'm sure that's
Speaker 1: what actually went wrong with it. But we had some
Speaker 1: great shows. You know, we had some really great shows UM,
Speaker 1: but we we had some disastrous, very very important gigs.
Speaker 1: There was one gig in New York that we did
Speaker 1: and we've just done the previous day. In Canada, We've
Speaker 1: done a gig with Richie Blackmore for Rainbow, UH and
Speaker 1: I have to you know, I don't know if if
Speaker 1: Rischie would agree, but we we really went down very
Speaker 1: much better than than the Rainbow went down. And then
Speaker 1: our next gig was in New York and we have
Speaker 1: this big gig there and by halfway through our show,
Speaker 1: everyone's response are completely tailed off because someone had really
Speaker 1: UM it was a real tragedy. They'd really, uh, what's
Speaker 1: what's the what's the word they I can't think the word.
Speaker 1: But they become a disaster because someone had We had
Speaker 1: a disaster with the organ. They they they pulled some
Speaker 1: plugs out or something, and it was like playing a
Speaker 1: very small light sound on the organ instead of the
Speaker 1: roaring sound that we should have had. And so for instance,
Speaker 1: in in in hold your head up when it should
Speaker 1: have been um completely blowing things away. It was it
Speaker 1: was really disaster and we were absolutely yeah, it was
Speaker 1: disasters for us. And I remember going um to Maxis
Speaker 1: Karasas City afterwards and I just I just wanted to
Speaker 1: commit suicide. I happened to meet Brian May there and said,
Speaker 1: we just had the most awful gig in the world,
Speaker 1: you know. He said, oh, I'm sure it wasn't that bad,
Speaker 1: but it but it was. We had some uh, some people,
Speaker 1: you know, um making a mess of things. Okay, So
Speaker 1: Argent breaks up, You become a producer. You have a
Speaker 1: gigantic hit with Tanita ticker hum, twisting my sobriety, and
Speaker 1: then she completely disappears. How did you find her? How
Speaker 1: did you create? The hit? Was the video was all
Speaker 1: over MTV and why did she disappear? My My, my colleague,
Speaker 1: my co production colleague was Pete Peter van Hook, who
Speaker 1: for years was Van Morrison's drummer UM and his tour
Speaker 1: manager at the time with someone called Paul Charles who
Speaker 1: became the head of a really big agency UM. And
Speaker 1: he found Tanita tick around at the age of seventeen,
Speaker 1: just playing with a single guitar in a small club
Speaker 1: and that's the only thing that she's done. And and
Speaker 1: Paul asked us to produce an album for her. So
Speaker 1: he said, I want I want to get a deal
Speaker 1: with UM. I can't remember who the deal was now,
Speaker 1: but anyway, he wanted just he wanted to get a deal, uh,
Speaker 1: and I think the Universal I can't remember, but UM
Speaker 1: he said, will you do three demos? So we did
Speaker 1: three demos and one of those demos was Twist Twisting
Speaker 1: my Sobriety. But Pete had the inspired idea that that
Speaker 1: she should sound really comfortable, she should feel really at
Speaker 1: home when she recorded. So he said, I'm going to
Speaker 1: put down a little drum machine that gives a very
Speaker 1: simple um metronomes sort of effect. UM, and then she's
Speaker 1: going to play an acoustic guitar and on the acoustic guitar,
Speaker 1: UM is, this is going to be something that she's
Speaker 1: totally at home with, and it's just gonna be voice
Speaker 1: and guitar. And so she she did this. It was
Speaker 1: just a very simple UM demos sort of drum track
Speaker 1: on a drum machine. She laid down the guitar and
Speaker 1: then she did what became the master vocal and then
Speaker 1: Pete and I started building up on much more UM
Speaker 1: uh complicated UM surround for her musically, UM and I
Speaker 1: put people a drum, a proper drum track on, I
Speaker 1: put a keyboard based on it, I put some uh
Speaker 1: an oboe line, and I put one or two other
Speaker 1: things on as well. UM and it sounded absolutely beautiful.
Speaker 1: And we did we did the whole album like that,
Speaker 1: and on one or two of the tracks we we
Speaker 1: which exactly the same thing, and on one or two
Speaker 1: things we changed the the chords completely and and and
Speaker 1: put some very um, very sophisticated chords around what she
Speaker 1: was doing. But it worked beautifully because she felt totally
Speaker 1: at home doing it. UM and I think that could
Speaker 1: only ever happen once when she was seventeen, because it
Speaker 1: was a huge hit. It sold something like four million
Speaker 1: albums worldwide, uh, in particularly in Europe. UM. And after that,
Speaker 1: quite understandably, she wanted to use her own touring band
Speaker 1: instead of US, just UM building up a surround for
Speaker 1: her UM. And she did that and and it was
Speaker 1: I think it was a more ordinary result. And then
Speaker 1: after that she wanted to co produce it, and for
Speaker 1: me it became again even more ordinary, even though some
Speaker 1: of the stuff was nice on it, and and and
Speaker 1: the sales just went from four million I think the
Speaker 1: second second album did a million and a half, which
Speaker 1: was still yeah, good. But then after that it was
Speaker 1: almost nothing until it just faded away. And it's a
Speaker 1: great shame. But um, I thought it was very special.
Speaker 1: The first album absolutely most of the world agreed. Okay,
Speaker 1: at this late date, who owns your songs? And do
Speaker 1: you get appropriately paid? The earlier stuff? Is that reverted
Speaker 1: in the UK? You talked about our Galago Calico. In
Speaker 1: the US, copyright seems to be forever we have reversion rates.
Speaker 1: What's the status of all you're publishing? Um it it
Speaker 1: was owned. The deal was done in the sixties, so
Speaker 1: it was a fifty fifty deal as everything was then
Speaker 1: UM and it remained a fifty fifties deal. UM. Uh
Speaker 1: So all the early stuff UM, including the ours A
Speaker 1: stuff as as well, was with a company called Marquis
Speaker 1: Music and Verily Music, which was owned by Carol Broughton,
Speaker 1: and it was totally UM. That has now transferred but
Speaker 1: still on a similar basis to UM wise music who
Speaker 1: seem really good. I mean that's only happened recently, but
Speaker 1: all that early stuff is I'm afraid. But then most
Speaker 1: things in the sixties were and in the early seventies
Speaker 1: were that UM and UM. And that's just how things
Speaker 1: are at the moment. Okay. It's so at this point,
Speaker 1: if you didn't want to have any other forms of income,
Speaker 1: does enough come in from your songs that you could
Speaker 1: live a comfortable life. Yes, And that's what's been wonderful,
Speaker 1: because the thing is it it means that we can
Speaker 1: we can do what we want through enthusiasm and energy UM.
Speaker 1: And we can still do the absolutely rejuvenating thing of
Speaker 1: continuing to make music in the way that we've always
Speaker 1: aid music and and and get excited about how we're recording,
Speaker 1: and and and and through making a musical idea of
Speaker 1: work and and seeing that start to come together. Um
Speaker 1: and and and the thing is those early things from
Speaker 1: she's not there time of the season and tell her no,
Speaker 1: hold your head up, and one or two other things. Um,
Speaker 1: they that they've really provided a fantastic income which has
Speaker 1: given the freedom to be able to do what we
Speaker 1: want to do. Um. You know, because this is a
Speaker 1: very short life really that everybody has. As you get older,
Speaker 1: it feels shorter and shorter, and it just means that
Speaker 1: that you know, you can actually you can actually um
Speaker 1: continue to do what you want to do and to
Speaker 1: build things, and to continue to write and and then
Speaker 1: have that wonderful, rejuvenating feeling of being able to go
Speaker 1: on the road um and and see people who a
Speaker 1: completely different generation often respond to what we're doing, um
Speaker 1: and getting that energy back from from people sometimes. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously we've got people of our our own age who
Speaker 1: listened to us, but also we have some very young
Speaker 1: people as well. We always have a young component in
Speaker 1: the audience. UM. And and the thought of still being
Speaker 1: able to still be able to connect with people of
Speaker 1: a present generation is it's really unlooked for and quite
Speaker 1: extraordinary and and and that's something that I would never
Speaker 1: have dreamed of. Actually, so I think we feel very
Speaker 1: lucky to be at that point. Well, right, this has
Speaker 1: been brilliant. You're a great storyteller. Thanks so much for
Speaker 1: taking the time to talk to me. Oh, thanks so much.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Till next time. This is Barberth Sex