Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Ian Anderson

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Ian Anderson · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to Bob west Said's podcasts. My
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: guest into two legendary one of the time, the one
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: and only and Anderson of Jeff Wild Tom Ian so
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: glad to have you on the podcast Big Fear. Well,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: it's just a pleasure to be here. And thank goodness,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: there is only one of me, the one and only.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Imagine imagine that there were two of me. I mean,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: people will be recoiling in horror at that screeching flute
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: permeating every fabric of their being. It would be even
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: worse than it already is. I frankly, have always discovered
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: that the audiences are seduced during a live performance into
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: thinking I quite like the flute, But in reality it's
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: a horrible, horrible noise, and it's okay for a few minutes,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: but for two hours, goodness me, I'm surprised they actually
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: remain in the in the venue. I have my cats
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: like the flute. My dogs run a mile, my wife
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: runs a mile, and and and she's an elderly lady.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: But you know James Galway, he says that he has
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: played with you. He's a big flutist. Well you know,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: he's um he's a big flattist, but he's a he's
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: a damned liar. We've we never played together. We were
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: supposed to play together in a concert somewhere in the USA,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: and he was he was performing at the same place
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: the night after we were on and so we met
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: up and I sent him some music. We're gonna was
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: gonna come up on stage and we're going to play together.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: And you know, I'd like to think I like to
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: think he would have done it if it wasn't for
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: the fact that he was a bit exhausted and jet
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: lagged and and probably a bit overwhelmed with the idea
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: of being on a stage with noisy people, and it
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: was out of his comfort zone. So I think, frankly
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: he chickened out. But we we've always talked about doing
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: something together, and on the one and only occasion when
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: we could have done um, he he checking out. He
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: just didn't show up for sound checks. So it was
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: a bit embarrassing. But anyway, I mean, I'm in touch
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: with James from time to time, elderly gentleman and in
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: the twilight years, just just a little bit ahead of me,
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: but not too much. But one of his proteges. Andrea Grimanelli,
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: who James was was a tutor to m he he
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: and I have played together many times, and in fact
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: we played played together in the Vatican Christmas concert just
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: before Christmas, played with with Andrea Grimanelli. And he's a
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: brilliant soloist, classical flute player and very nice and gentlemanly
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: guy who who's a huge as a huge relationship, great
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: fan of James Goldway, and we we we often chat
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: about it and our mutual experience. But that's classical music.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: That's not what I do. I am just the I
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: am just the class cloud who sits at the back
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: and makes rude noises. Well, without being too self deprecating,
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: how do you read your flute playing? Well, the thing
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: is that you know, I began as a guitar player,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: not as a flute player. So I was as a teenager,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: you know, struggling to try and learn to play a
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: few notes of essentially what we're blues improvisation. And then
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: when I was some nineteen maybe eighteen or nineteen, I
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: heard Eric Clapton. It just joined John Male's Blues Breakers,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: and that famous album cover where it Clapton is reading
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: a children's comic called The Beano. And when I heard
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: Eric Clapton, I thought, oh, this is um. This is
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: an object lesson in in um finding something else to
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: play as a musical instrument. So I said about finding
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: an alternative, and I traded in my trustee Fender strat
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: for a you know, it was probably worth today. I
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: mean the sixties strap that belonged to Lemmy, Lemmy of Motorhead.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: It was the previous owner when he was a rhythm
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: guitarist and Reverend Black and the Rocking Vicars rock band.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: How did you get the strap from Lemmy? Well, I
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: he was broke, so he had to sell it and
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: I took on the the debt, if you like. And
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: so I I got this this instrument, played it for
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: a year so and and then traded it in for
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: a thirty dollar flute. It was a basic student model
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: flute and seemed because that guitar today probably you know,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: being a real genuine vintage sixties strap to a Japanese
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: collector would probably worth a thirty grand, forty grand maybe
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: if you add in the fact that it used to
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: belong to me, and before that it belonged to Lemmy.
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  Speaker 1: So it doesn't seem like a very good deal, you know,
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  Speaker 1: to part with that and then take on a thirty
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: dollar flute by way of exchange. But I think it's
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: probably one of the best business investments I could possibly
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: have made as it turned down. But of all the instruments,
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: the keyboards, the sacks, the drums, why the flute, Well,
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: there was no sensible reason whatsoever. I went went to
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: trade in my guitar and I looked around on the
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: walls of the music store and the sun. It had
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: been raining. It was a dreary day, I remember, in
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: in a place called Litham in Lancashire in the north
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: of England, and suddenly the sun came out and shone
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: through the window of the music store and glistened on
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: the on something that was hanging on the wall, which
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: was a flute, and it just beckoned. It just said
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: by me. And I had no idea how to play
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: a flute. It just seemed like a nice, shiny, well engineered,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: rather attractive object. And I have a soft spot for
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: things that are a good engineering in a well designed,
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: well developed and I just thought this looked like it
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: was a sort of musical Swiss watch. Really, so I said,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: I'll have that with no idea how to play it,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: and I worked walked out with the flute, which for
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: the next few months I couldn't get a note out of.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: And somebody finally told me it's like blowing across the
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: top of a Coca cola bottle, you know, you blow
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: at the right angle, it makes a makes a musical note.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: And that finally dawned on me as I got the flute,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: I think in August of nine seven, and somewhere in
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: mid December I actually managed to get a note out
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: of this flute. It was a note of G, and
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: then I found a note of E, and then A
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: and B, and then I had the blue scale. So
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: by the beginning of January, when Jethro actually became Jethrotel,
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: I was able to play not only just to play
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: a little bit of flute, but to play improvised blue
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: solos because I just translated what I thought I knew
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: from guitar playing into into the flute well, even though
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: I didn't know the proper fingering, and I was just
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: you know, making loud noises to try and equal the
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: impact of the electric guitar in the band. But it worked.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: Out pretty well. I think I I think I probably
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: buy February March, people were beginning to talk about Jeth
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: Hotel not just as another blues band, but a blues
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: band with a guy who played the flute standing on
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: one leg, which seemed to catch on in a way
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: with the media and as a as a kind of
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: an image as a logo. From that day onwards. We
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: were a little different to Savoy Brown and Chicken Shack
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: and Fleetwood mac And and the other blues bands of
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: that era that also played at the famous Marquee Club
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: in London. Okay, all over the web it says that
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: your daughter picked up the flute and then you ultimately
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: learned you were using the long wrong fingering and how
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: to re learn it. Is that apocryphal or is that
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: a real story. That's a real story. She she asked
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: me when she was at school. I guess she was
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: about eight years old or something, and said, oh, we
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: we we've got to learn to play a musical instrument,
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: you know, kind of is just something that you've got
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: that I could borrow too to play. And I said, well,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: you know, I've got drum kids, I've got saxophones, I've
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: got a whole bunch of stuff, but you know, maybe
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: the flute is the easiest one. And so I gave
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: her a flute, one of my old stage flutes, and
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: I made sure that it kind of played okay, and
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: she took it to school, and she came back and
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: had some little book, you know, how to Play the Flute,
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  Speaker 1: Chapter one, and it was it was a musical notation,
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  Speaker 1: which means nothing to me. But she was playing through
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: a few notes and I ventured to say, look, actually,
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: when you're playing this note and you do it like this,
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: and she and she looked at where my fingers were
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: on the instrument, said was that that's not what it
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: says in the book, Daddy, That's not what you're supposed
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: to put your little finger on the right hand. So
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: I said, rubbish, But of course she was right. It
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: was I'd been all that time. That's just somewhere around
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: about nineteen eighty nine or something. I've been doing it
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  Speaker 1: wrongly for all that time. And it was a bit embarrassing.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: But I then actually went off to to Bombay Mumbai,
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: although it was still Bombay at that time, and it
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: was the day after the India bombings, and Mumbai and
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: I arrived to do a preordained press conference before we
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: knew about the terrorist attack. So I was about the
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: only foreigner in town. Everybody had fled and so I
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: had the entire press and media of of of Mumbai
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: came to my press conference because they had nothing else
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  Speaker 1: to do. There's nobody else to talk to, and as
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: a result, we we we chatted about various things, and
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: when I was back in my hotel room, oddly there
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: was a fax machine because my hotel was right next
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: to the one that got blown up, and there's a
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: fax machine in my room. And I thought, I'll I'll
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: phone one of the music stores in London and see
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: if they can fax over to me a flute fingering
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  Speaker 1: chart to show me all the fingering positions for the
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: different notes, which they did, and I looked with horror
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: at the end. Resultant thought, that is going to be,
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: you know, very very difficult for me to relearn at
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: this point in my life, in almost twenty years after
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: I first played the flute, and to begin with, I
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: was so daunted by it. I thought, oh no, I'll
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: just stick with what I've got, But it kept luring
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: me back in with the idea that I should try
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: and do it properly. And so it took me about
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: six months really to incorporate the correct fingering into my
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: performances on stage, because of course I got set in
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: my ways and took a while to make the adjustment.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: But it was worthwhile because they then gave me the
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: the scope to play at a more controllable different volume
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: levels and and and somewhat more in tune than I
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: had been, so it worked out pretty well. And then
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: I moved from playing closed whole flutes where all the
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: keys are covered, which is kind of easy for beginners,
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: playing open, open whole flutes, which allow you to kind
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: of slur notes and bend notes a little bit like
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: playing a blues guitar. And I made all that transition
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: really in nine nine, I guess, and and I never
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: looked back except to wonder why on earth I hadn't
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: learned to play it properly in the first place. Okay,
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: you mentioned you gave your daughter a road flute from
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: the stage. What would be the difference between a road
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: flute and a flute you keep at home and using
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: the studio monetary value? Basically, because you know, when you're
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: traveling around the world, and you're apart from the fact
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: that you're your flutes are going to be subject to
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: a certain amount of wear and tear, it's also that
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: you know you have to leave them in hotel rooms,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: and or if you decide you don't want to leave
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: in a hotel room, you've got to put it around
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: your neck and go up into the depths of some
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: darkened Eastern European town, taking your life and your flute
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: in your hands, in order to try and find a
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: good takeaway curry or you know, or an empty restaurant
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: to eat in and and and get mugged along the way.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: So it's it's a little nerve racking. So I've never
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: traveled with flutes of any huge value. I always tend
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: to I mean, they're kind of intermediate flutes, but frankly
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: not worth mugging me for. If you're gonna mug me,
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: take my watch, leave the flute. That's my advice. Now,
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: with most musical equipment and sports equipment, people who at
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: the elite level, there's a difference, like a pair of
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: skis or a guitar. This is my favorite. Do you
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: have a favorite flute where they all pretty much sound
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: the same? Well, going back to James Galway, it's an
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: interesting you know, he did a survey. I mean he
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: had lots and lots of flutes. I mean I know
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: because I've seen them. You've showed me the the cover
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: that contains all of his flutes, and I mean there
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: must have been twenty different flutes in there. And he
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: he did a sort of test to try and play
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: them all one after the other, playing exactly the same
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: piece of quite complex classical music. And I think he
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: amply demonstrated that there was so little difference in the
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: tonal quality of all of these flutes, you know, arranging
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: from basically an advanced student model flute to you know,
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: eighteen carrot gold flute that was probably costing, and there
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: was a little difference in it. And I actually replicated
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: exactly the same thing just a few weeks ago, when
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: I knowing that I was starting work on a new
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: album with a lot of flute involved in it, that
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: I did the same thing. I played a few flutes
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: one after the other on the same audio file and
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: listen to them back, and you know, you could detect
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: a tiny little difference, but it was much less than
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: it appeared to me when I play the flute, you
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: know you because you reson It resonates in your skull
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: as well as the sound of the instrument from the
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: ambushure whole and the sound that comes out of the
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: open tone hurls of the flute. It sounds more different
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: to you, but to a high quality microphone sitting you know,
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: thirty centimeters roughly one ft for you guys away from
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: your your flute. It's all my undetectable the difference. And
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: in fact, I was recording something for somebody else. It
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: was doing performing a guest thing for some other artists,
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: and I used I used two different flutes to to
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: to play so that the flute part that was my
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: contribution to his record. And when it came to it,
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: I realized there was absolutely no difference detectable between when
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: I've been playing one flute as opposed to you know,
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: thirty seconds later I switched to using the other flute.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: Do you really couldn't tell? So I don't think there's
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: any great difference when it comes to what you take
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: on the road to play and what you might play
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: because you just like the feel of it or that
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: very subtle nuance that makes one flute different to another.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: And I think the same thing obtains really for guitars,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: which is why I've been utterly amazed and and perhaps
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: a little irreverent in my response to people like my
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: pile Joe Bonna Messa, who I remember going backstage and
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: seeing it about twenty guitars backstage to play a concert
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: at Hammersmith Odeon in London, and I said, what the
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: hell are all these guitarist for Joe? I mean, what's
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: it about. I mean, you just need one, you know,
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: you sound great? Well, why do you need all these guitars? Well,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I might decided to play a different
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: one that night, or in the song I want to
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: play that one, or whatever. And and I found it.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: It was quite amusing, you know. But I had to
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: take the mickey out of him because he was like
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: many guitarists. You know, it's a mark of how how
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: great your statue is in the firmament of guitar players,
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: as to how many guitars you take on tour, and
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: how many guitar roads you have to employ to change
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: the strings and tune them up for you, which is
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: the antithesis of life in Jeth Hotel guitar players take
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: one guitar and they change their own strings, and they
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: tune them up by themselves, and nobody is allowed to
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: touch them because your precious instrument. The last thing you
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: want to do is give it to some roadie to
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: handle and smear his bodily juices over the strings when
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: he's probably not watched his hands when he's been to
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: the toilet. So nobody touches my flute, nobody touches my guitar,
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: And the rest of the guys in the band are
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: exactly the same, you know, we we are. Our instruments
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: are the tools of our trade. I say, you know,
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: if you if you were a cop and you had
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: a you know, nine millimeter glocks glock strapped to your
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: your your your your your, your waist, and you know,
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: would you allow somebody else to clean it, to load it,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: to check it and make sure it was ready to
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: roll when it's a matter of life and death potentially
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: that that thing is going to work for you if
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: you should need it. And I think it's the same
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: thing with musical instruments. You you should take on the
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: responsibility of looking after them yourself, because it is life
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: and death out there. If you pick it up and
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: it doesn't it's out a tune, or it string breaks
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: or something. It's um, you are going to die a
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: horrible death on stage in front of thousands of people
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: and looked like a complete turkey. Okay, So how does
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: Ian Ianerson know Joe Bonamassa. I mean, I know Joe
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: and he's very open, friendly guy. But you have a
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: reputation as being somewhat outside. But in reality, do you
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: know and connect with a lot of musicians or was
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: there a unique story with Bonna Massa? What's your relationship
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: with other musicians? Well, I I do connect in the
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: sense of there are a number of people that I've
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: met and I've known some of whom I played with,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: but it's probably less than twenty in fifty something years.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: I know Joe because our agent um said as a
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: suggestion for an opening act, and I was just young
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: kid who's um a bit of a whiz kid making
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: a name for himself, and you know, could he come
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: and do some shows with Jethro Hotel and an added apprehensively, uh,
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: and he actually plays one of your songs during his set.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: He's a bit of a Jet Hotel fan. So I said, yeah, well, okay,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: and I think I must have checked out some something
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: on long before YouTube, but it probably found something to
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: listen to. And he seemed he reminded me a little
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: bit of Rory Gallagher in the early days, because he
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: was that kind of a shouty singer rather than a
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: melodic singer, full of energy, full of youthful vigor. Great
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: description of Rory Gallagher, Yeah and well, and and of
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: the young Joe Bonamassa. But you know, he did some
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: shows with us, and he was such a nice, gentlemanly, quiet,
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: really easy going guy. And you know, a couple of
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: guys in this band they were they were okay, and
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: so it was an easy and easy, you know, a
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: good mix in terms of somebody to work with for
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: a few days on tour, and over the years, I
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: suppose we just kept in touch. But the mature um
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: Joe Bonna Massa is someone who I think has evolved
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: beyond the shouty blues. Now he's a much better singer
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: and a much better guitar player. He has the melodic
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: and the restraint that perhaps you would associate it with
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: with the Eric Clapton um. To begin with, he sounded
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: you know, it was just a little bit too How
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: many notes can you cram into a bar and sounds?
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: You know? Um, But if you're an opening out, you've
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: got to do that. You've got, you know, thirty five
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: minutes to struct your stuff and make a name for yourself.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: You you've really got to turn on the turn on
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: the taps. But you know, once you've become a headline act,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: you can afford to demonstrate a little taste and restraint
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: and try and try and make every note count, and
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: make the gap between the notes count, because that's the
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: thing that Eric Clapton always had, you know, he knew
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: the value of the space between the notes. It's like
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: dramatic clouds in the sky, but you see between the
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: clouds a little touch of infinite blue, and it's the
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: space between the clouds, just as the space between the
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: notes and the guitar. So that give it its shape,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: its form. It's drama, it's dynamic range. And I think
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: that's something Joe's and and and once he grew up
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: a little bit, that's what he learned to do. Me,
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: on the other hand, I'm still stuck in the old days.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: I just crammed as many notes as I can in Okay.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: You happen to drop curries in there earlier of all
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: the big Jethro Tolfi and I was catching up on
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: you make sure I didn't forget anything, and it said
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: you're a big Indian food expert. Now in America, I
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: remember the Ramones talking about vindaloo. I didn't even know
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: what it was. There are a lot of Indian restaurants
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: in America today, but nothing like the curry shops in
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: the UK. So give us a primer on Indian food.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: People who are un knowledgeable, what should they know about
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: Indian food? Well, what they shouldn't know about it is
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: that I mean apart from the connection obviously the primary
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: connection between Britain as a as a as a nation
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: who strutted its stuff across the globe and swept people
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: into its um, it's orbit and made such a huge difference,
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: some of it bad, some of it good. We inherited
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: Indian food going back into the eight hundreds when the
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: very first Indian restaurant opened up in London and it
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: really made its mark. After partition in India seven the
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: year of my birth, when the Hindus and Muslims were
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: split up when Pakistan was split up into Pakistan as
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: we know it today and Bangladesh which was which was
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: was East Pakistan back then, and so many Indians and
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: bangladesh he's and Pakistani's fled the country during the very
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: unpleasant times after the partition and they came, many of
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: them to the UK and set up Pakistani restaurants, Bangladeshi
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: restaurants and Indian restaurants. And this was really throughout the
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: fifties and sixties. So when I grew up at the
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: age when I was beginning to play music and travel
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: outside my hometown, then Indian food became. It became what
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: you you you you aspired to as a good night
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: out if you were whether it was on your way
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: back from some some gigs somewhere in the north of
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: England and there was some late night Indian restaurant open.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: I mean that that you made a bee line for it,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: because we all had a taste for spicy food Chinese.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: I suppose it was the first thing that we knew
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: about in terms of more exotic cuisine, but Indian that
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: nailed it for most of us. So I guess it
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: would be very hard to find many British music then
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: and now who A didn't like Indian food and b
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: hadn't been to art school, So that those two things
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: somehow seemed to define what is about British musicians that
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: maybe marks us out from the rest of Europe and
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: most of the USA. You know, we're all nuts about
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: a good king prawne Vinderloo and we all we all
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: went to art college to study the creative side of
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: of life that then translated into music. So if someone
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: is going to an Indian restaurant, tell them hot at order,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Well that that happens to me from time to time
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: that somebody says, well I'm not sure what I should
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: what I should eat, So it's just you just asked
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: them a few simple questions. Well do you like do
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: you like food that has a wet source or do
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: you like something that is dry and not not not
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: not wet. Do you like something that is kind of
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: spicy like that a lot of spicy flavor is not
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: necessarily hot, but just the spices. Or do you like
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: something that is relatively bland? And do you like something
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: that is spicy as in hot or do you want
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: something that's really mild? And and you eat meat, do
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: you eat chicken, Do you eat fish, do you eat shellfish,
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: do you eat beef? To eat lamb? Or do you
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: are you vegetarian? And with a benefit of that, you
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: can perhaps direct somebody to something that hopefully is going
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: to be along the lines that that that might satisfy them.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: And for people who are perhaps not really sure that
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: I would recommend something, I mean, assuming you eat chicken,
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: I would say, go for a chicken corner. It's a mild, creamy,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: yogurt based sauce with the chicken boned pieces of chickens.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: There's no bone in there. You know that that might satisfy.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: But if you want something that's you know, if you
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: want to just jump in at the deep end and
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: you go for the King Prawn Vindaloo, and if you're
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: completely nuts, go for the King Prawn foul which is
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: the legendary hottest of curries. And these days, of course
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: they're made with the benefit of chili peppers that have
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: been refined and hybridized in Arizona and New Mexico. So
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: these days it could be but jell Okia or the
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: or the or the the or the or the Reaper
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: that you know, the hottest chili peppers on planet Earth.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: I know because I've grown those and you know, one
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: goes an awfully long way in terms of spicing up
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: your your supper. Okay, you mentioned Indy, you mentioned Britain.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: I have to ask what is your take unclapped in
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: It is the anti vax the answer? And what is
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: your stance on Brexit? Well, I'm afraid to say that
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: people like Van Morrison and Eric Clapton just a name two,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: in the attitude towards COVID, its effects and the vaccine. Um, well,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: I am ashamed of what they what they say, it really, really,
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: frankly makes me very angry because it's a you would
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: think you would think that they would be bright enough
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: to know better. And there are people who genuinely have
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: a reason not to have the vaccine. But if you're
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: a responsible citizen of planet Earth, and I think you
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: should take the chance and have your double vaccine or
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: your triple vaccine. And I mean I've actually had five
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: holes in my arm in the last twelve months, three
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: to do with COVID, one for pneumonia and one for
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: an annual flu vaccine. And I hate needles, I mean
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: I absolutely hate needles. Drives me nuts. And but at
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: the end of the day, three of those five are
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: about are about protecting, helping to protect people around me,
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: my family, my friends, or complete strangers. I think it
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: is a bit of a civic duty, frankly, to bite
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: the bullet, be vaccinated, and much less chance that you
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: could be the person who inadvertently infects somebody else, who
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: may be vulnerable, who may end up in hospital sadly
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: may die even with O macron, which is not the
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: pussycat quite that we were hoping for, but it's better
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: than nothing, and we have to accept that. Even though
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: infection rates in my country have now seemingly in the
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: last week turned the corner and started to go down,
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, they're almost half of what they were two
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: weeks ago, but our death rates, which lag behind the hospitalizations,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: which lag behind infection rates, you know, are still going up,
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: and at the at a rate quite as high as
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: the worst of two thousand and twenty one, but still worrying.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: And in your country, you know, you're you are as
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: of yesterday, pretty close to the highest daily infection rate
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: that's been recorded, and O macron is still going up
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: and death rates are still going up. It's um you
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: know we're not out of this yet. And I'm afraid
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: Eric Clapton and others send an irresponsible message in my
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: view to two people. They just simply fall into that
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: that kind of fake news and and conspiracy theory stuff
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: that that does seem to appeal to so many people,
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: but it's it isn't really without foundation. And when I've read,
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: because I go online and I look at what some
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: of these people say, and I looked to see where
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: they got it from, and it is it's neither science,
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: common sense or common decency in my view to take
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: an anti vax state a status in your in the
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: way that you influence others. But that's just me. I'm
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: a low abiding citizen. I'm a nice guy, and I
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: definitely don't want to catch COVID about possibly avoid it
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: because I'm in that vulnerable category with underlying health conditions.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: So you know, I'm taking a little bit of extra
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: care and I'd like to think other people would do
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: the same thing on my you know, for for my sake.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: And what about Brexit. Brexit is well, I remember when
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: I I woke up to Brexit. I was in Poland
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: to do a concert and I woke up in the morning,
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: around six seven in the morning and to hear the
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: the early results of the Brexit Pole and was pretty
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: horrified to find out that it was in favor of Brexit.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, I I think that the EU needed a
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: sharp shock to wake it up to the fact that
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: as an institution, the EU was I mean, it was
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: a post war thing, you know, it was about bringing
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: the European countries together so they wouldn't murder each other
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: in battle. And then it developed into an economic union,
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: which is fair enough. And then it became the EU,
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: which was okay, but then it became increasingly caught up
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: with trying to homogenize the whole, the whole fabric of
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: Europe into accepting the same set of laws, same set
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: of taxation standards, and a whole lot of things that
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: I felt were removing the national culture and pride and
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: individual nation's sense of who they were, including in the UK.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: So I think the EU needed a bit of a
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: sharp shop to wake it up. But at the end
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: of the day, I was I was disappointed that we
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: had not been able to find and accommodate some kind
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: of a rational way to remain broadly within Europe while
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: having more of our own laws, in our immigration policies,
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: in our own hands, rather than as part of a
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: European directive. Unfortunately, it resulted in us leaving the EU,
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: and I'm rather sad about that. I've been paying my
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: my German reunification tax since whatever it was nineteen eighty nine, when,
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: of Germany as a as a performer going there to work,
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: part of the withholding taxes that we would pay were
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: that small part that went towards the cost of reunifying Germany,
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: which is basically building roads and infrastructure and housing and
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: the whole shooting match of what had been the Eastern
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: Germany ground into the into the dirt by the communist
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: regime as an offshoot of of the USSR. But you know,
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm I am sorry that we've left the EU.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: I'm a European, I'm I'm a I'm a Britain first,
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: but I feel very strongly a European. It's where I've
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: spent much of my life and I hope, in what
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: remains of it I get to spend some more time
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: in Europe. So yeah, I'm sorry to have left but
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: I didn't want to. In a way, I'm kind of
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: glad we didn't stay on the terms that we were on.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: I just felt there was prospects to tough it out
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: a little more and get more of what we wanted
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: while still remaining part of Europe. Not a problem that
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: you guys have. It's you, But you do have the
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: problem of NATO, and you do have the problem of
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: an angry Mr Putin who's hell bent on trying to rebuild,
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: you know, from the ashes of the USSR, trying to
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: rebuild a broader empire than the one that he lords
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: over at the moment. I have a photograph, we can
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: find this online, a photograph of of when I went
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: to play in St. Petersburg, I think in or ninety
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: one and met the mayor of St. Petersburg at the
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: time and his assistant kind of rather odd, weird looking
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: little man who was looking daggers at me. In this photograph.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: It turned out to be the KGB Major Putin. Although
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: he was the chief economic advisor to the Mayor of St. Petersburg,
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: he was actually a major in the KGB at the
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: same time. And Putin is just the look on his
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: face as I'm you know, smooching with his boss is priceless.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: And when I was well, it was brought to my
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: attention many many years later that there was a photograph
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: of us in the same frame. But you can see
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: something about putin that and look in his eyes. It's
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: he's a frightening guy. I actually have a huge admiration
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: for him as a international statesman and politician. But he's
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: a very scary man, and I can you know, like
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: everybody else, we know what he's trying to do. But
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: as someone who's supposed to be in Ukraine in um
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: in the middle in the one at the end of
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: the first week of April UM, it's one of those
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: slightly nerve wracking prospects that will Ukraine still be Ukraine
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: by the time I get there, Will I which would
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: be another gig in Russia? Well, I'm gonna be in
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: Russia for that matter, and whenever it is sometime not
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: too far off to do some concerts there that have
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: been rescheduled three times already, like most of our concerts
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: since early two and twenty, we're on our third or
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: fourth rescheduling of dates that people bought tickets for in
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: the middle of two thousand and nineteen and we've not
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: showed up for work yet. I mean's so embarrassing. Just
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: staying on the politics one more time. A couple of
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: days ago, the lead piece in the New York Times
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: our ed page was about the UK sliding into authoritarianism
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: Boris Johnson passing all these laws about being arrested if
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: you protest, etcetera. Do you think there's a possibility we
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: certainly have this issue in the US and needles sat
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: Putin is an authoritarian or is that overblown? But I
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: think it's a bit overblown. We are pretty much a
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: liberal society and media. You know, we have a couple
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: of right wing newspapers, but they're not anything like as
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: far to the writers say fox Um. And at the
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: same time, you know, whilst our liberal side of things
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: maybe a little more, a little bit more to the
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: left than than CNN, we're still generally speaking, I think
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: we're relatively tolerant country. And you know, once in a
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: while you've got to try and get to grips with
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: what is increasingly what is referred to here as wokeasm.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: You know, it's a those who have adopted really an
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: ultra liberal position because they are partly following trends and
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: not wanting to appear hostile or out of touch and
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: so on. But you know, there's got to be some
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: common sense in all of it. And you know, some
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: of it I go along with, and some of it
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: i've you know, I feel a little awkward about. But
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: generally speaking, you know, we are pretty much a liberal country,
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: and the most extreme of our right wing media and
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: those within the Conservative Party are still puttycats compared to
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: the Republicans of the USA, not all of them, but
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: most of them. And you know, one of my great
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: chums was and absolutely died in the whole idealistic Republican
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: and and he was someone you could have a spirited
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: to argument or discussion with. But he was a true
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: Southern gentleman and loved by all Democrats and Republicans alike,
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: particularly during his stint not only with with Fox, but
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: as the as the press secretary for for President Bush,
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: actually two President Bushes. He was he was the scriptwriter
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: for Dad and then it was the press secretary for
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: for Junior, and and I was in his office one
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: day in the White House and he um, he said,
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: dropping names, but we were we were there just as
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: you know, unexceptional guests to watch a press conference, and
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: went back to Tony Snow's office. Tony Snow's the name
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: of the man. And and we got back to his
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: office after the press briefing and the phone rang, and
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: it was Barbara Starr from CNN, and I could read
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: his body language and the tone of his voice. He
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: was being so polite and nice to her. And she
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: was trying to get the scoop, trying to pin him
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: down on all that you know rubbish, you just said,
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: you know, covering up for Bush. But you know, what's
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: the real story here, what's the real And and he
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: was so nice and poline. He said, Barbara, you know,
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: if I if I could give you anything more, you'd
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: be the first person I would call. It's it's really
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: nice to hear from you. And but you've got the
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: you've got the impression he was somebody that was it
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: was really appreciated as a as a person of honor
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: and discretion and a gentlemanly way of doing things. And
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: he had a very easy relationship with the media left
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: and right alike. And I remember before Tony died finally
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: tragically after repeated illness, with with colon cancer. He I
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: did say to him, Toney, would you ever, you know,
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: would you consider a political career, you know, shift away
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: from being a backroom boy to actually, you know, running
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: for serious office. Um? And he was sort of bashful
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: about it. No, No, my wife wouldn't really want me
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: to do that, and blah blah blah blah blah. But
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: I've always thought that Tony, Tony would have been the
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: Republican president for the USA that the USA really needed. Um.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: Sadly he was never around to do that. That his
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: last gig wasn't for Fox. His last gig he was appointed.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: He took on the job with CNN to be their
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: Republican reporting the upcoming election where Obama won. And that
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: was Tony's that the last appointment he had at that point.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: I guess he knew he wasn't going to make it.
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: And sadly he was never able to take on that
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: appointment because he became very seriously and died before before
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: that happened. But it was an interesting, an interesting twist
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: that you know, Tony was so appreciated and revered that
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: he would be taken on by CNN to be the
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: the voice of the Republican Party within CNN whenever they
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: were talking out and analyzing the the events leading up
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: to the election. So I, you know, I missed Tony.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: He was a good guy and he would have been
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: a good precedent. And he was a flute player. And
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: that's how I got to know because his his whole
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: passion was playing the flute. He and I argued. I
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: said that he was the model for the the anchorman
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: flute playing sequence, the jazz flute bit, and he claimed
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: that no, he couldn't. Possibly it must be me. In reality,
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: it was probably both of us. But I would never
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: classify myself as a jazz flutist and an anchor man.
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, he was a media person, he was a
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: you know, he was a and so was Tony. So
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: I always had my bet that it was modeled on Tony,
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: But who knows. We'd have to ask the writers and
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: the and the the actor. You know, where did he
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: get that idea for him? Okay, let's go back and
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: set the scene in the sixties in US, there's certainly
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: always been music, but generally speaking, the early sixties were
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: very vapid, and then at the beginning of the sixty
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: four the Beatles arrived. What was going on in the UK?
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: You know, we hear about the blues records being imported
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: by soldiers. We hear the scene in Liverpool, the Beatles
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: play at the Cavern Club. You know, as I say,
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: in the US, people saw the Beatles on it solivan,
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: They picked up electric guitars. What was your experience of
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: the scene. Well, I had already picked up an electric guitar,
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: I think at the time, possibly when the Beatles came along.
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: That's another one of my questions. What motivated you? Yeah,
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: But it wasn't really that I was a Beatles fan.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: I mean I remember when they first appeared with a
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: song called Loved Me Do, and I think what appealed
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: to me about it was the harmonica that kind of
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: set me off in the track of playing harmonica. But
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: you know, they were okay, but they were a pop
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: group and I had already at that point discovered as
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: and blues, and I was not really enamored too much
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: of of the early Beatles. Although they were catchy songs,
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: you could see the expertise and the energy and the
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: the ghost youthful the thing that they put across that
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: that allowed a generation of people to to feel passionate
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: about being young and expressing themselves. But for me, that that,
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: you know, in the UK at that time, you know,
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: was a curious mixture of different sorts of music, and
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: the pop music of the day was still for the
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: most part it had been emulating Elvis Presley and other
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: derivative imitations of other US acts, So it hadn't really
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: we hadn't really home grown very much. That was anything
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: to feel good about until until the Beatles came along,
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: and and and and In America you had to endure
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: Herman's Hermits and the Dave Clark five um as, the
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: imports from the UK, which people loved sure enough. But
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: when the Beatles arrived in town, it was a whole,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: a whole new ball game. And then it seemed a
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: quite quick movement towards something where the Beatles we saw
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: them mature and developers musicians. And then the big landmark
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: thing that made a difference to me and I'm sure
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: many of my peers in the UK, was the advent
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: of what became not progressive rock but progressive pop. It
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: was Sergeant Pepper in the summer of sixty seven, and
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: within a couple of months of that there was the
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: Pink Floyd was Piper at the Gates of Dawn, and
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: these two albums they were like a signpost. It was.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: It was like walking down a walking down a path
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: in the middle of the woods and suddenly coming across
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: a fork in the road and a signpost they're saying,
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: you know this way, And it was a huge motivator,
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: you know, to hear what you could do with pop
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: music on the one hand and what you could do
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: with psychedelic rock on the other. So it was quite
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: important to me, not as the actual musical style or
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: the or the elements of the of the music, or
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: the personalities of people playing. It was just that motivation
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: that you could actually take it into your own hands
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: and write and record and put music out. There wasn't
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: mainstream pop music. Of course, the Beatles had George Martin,
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: without whom I'm sure they couldn't have made that record,
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: and Pink Floyd had Said Barrett, without whom the lyrics
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: and the essence of those songs wouldn't really mentor busting amount,
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: but they were. They were real signposts and landmarks in
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: my early days as a teenager. So yeah, it was
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: definitely a step forward from the the imitative rock and
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: roll of Britain's music scene in the from the late
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: fifties through to the mid sixties, which was frankly a
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: little embarrassing. You were just copying people singing with American
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: accents and wearing the clothes and pretending to be um,
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: you know, the American artists that they revered and whose
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: careers they aspired to. Okay, so you're an art school.
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: Is that a holding place? Where do you envision being
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: an artist or a designer? And how do you pick
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: up the guitar and how does that become your direction
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: in life? Well, I had a guitar at the age
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: of I think eleven. I persuaded my first of all
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: I had had I think when I was eight or
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: nine years old, I got an Elvis Presley ukulele. That
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: was my birthday present or Christmas present. Boats not online,
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: but you know, a mail order thing. And and I
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: remember the black and white add for this ukulele, and
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: it was a picture of Elvis playing what looked like
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: a full sized guitar, and it was. It cost twenty
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: two and sixpence, which you know, in those days was
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: probably a couple of dollars, and naively, I thought, wow,
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: you know, that's the real deal. And what what arrived
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: in the post was this thing that was, you know,
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: fifteen inches long and fragile piece of plastic with nylon strings.
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: It wouldn't stay in tune, and I mean it was
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: really quite horrible, but you could actually play a few
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: chords and and and some simple tunes. And I went
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: on from there to get a beating up old Spanish
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: guitar to which I attached steel strings, which of course
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: meant that the action lifted up off the fret board
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: to the point where you had bleeding fingers and the
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: attempt to play C major and and it was. It
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: was pretty out of tune, but I managed to begin with,
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: along with a couple of school chumps, to make some
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: vaguely musical noises in the style of what was called skiffle.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: Skiffle in the UK and the in the fifties was
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: kind of homegrown music form. It was a precursor to punk.
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: You know, you didn't have to be able to play
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: a musical instrument, you just kind of did it. And
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: you don't have drum kits. You had a washboard, you know,
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: the sort of corrugated metal thing that used for scrubbing
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: clothes on. And a t chest bass which was literally
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: a wooden t chest that he was packed in. And
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: you had a pole, you know, like a like a
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: broom pole, and a piece of string that was stretched
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: between the two and you have bum bum boom by
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: pulling the pole tighter or loosening it off. And so
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: that was skiffle, and it was homemade, very simple music
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: that was essentially derived from bluegrass and blue grass in
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: his turn, of course, derived from folk music from the UK,
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: from Scotland, Ireland, England, and from from Northwest Europe. So
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: it had turned around and come back to the UK
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: is as a music form that we could all pick
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: up on. You know. There was some energetic and fun
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: songs from the few artists who were able to record
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: and perform, but blue bluegrass in the form of skiffle
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: was something that I think probably was the starting point
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: for many of the musicians of my my era. I mean,
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: I've not really talked to any of them, so I
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: don't know most of them, but I would be surprised
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: if they hadn't also followed the same the same tracks
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: as I did. As a teenager, you know, through through
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: those early music forms, and I think what we didn't
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: like was the cheesy, show busy, imitative British pop music,
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: which was based on the American stuff that you know,
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: we we all preferred the real dealing. We're going to
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: do American music, then let's let's let's do Muddy Water,
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: Let's do Harling Wolf, Let's do even Chuck Berry or
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: or Bo Diddley, you know, which was obviously that the
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: pop side of the blues. But those of us who
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: grew up with us and jazz as teenagers, you know,
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: I think we we set our sights on something a
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: little more esoteric until it dawned on us that we
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: were middle class white boys. We weren't black. We didn't
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: have the experience, the background, the culture. We were just
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: still copying something that really wasn't ours. Which is why I,
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: after a few months of being in a blues band,
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: you know, I was anxious to try and write my
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: own songs and step away from the accusation potentially of
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: just ripping off black American folk music, which I revered
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: and to this day still do. I would hate to
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: be thought of as just a copyist. So you make
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: this transition, how do you end up going down south
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: to London and becoming professional? What is your goal? And
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: you were really starving, so what was that like and
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: how did you keep yourself on track with the dreams
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: supposed to giving up? When I grew up, I mean
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: I was born in Scotland, but I moved to the
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: age of twelve, I think, to the north of England,
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: to a town called Blackpool, a seaside town I've often
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: likened to either the worst of New Jersey. You know,
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: it's a it's a it's you know, it's a it's
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: a town where people go to have a good time,
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: but it's pretty desolate in winter. And um, the boardwalk
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: in in a in Atlantic city or in New Jersey,
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: it's it's reminiscent of the promenade in Blackpool. People strut
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: up and down and ever. In the summer it's nice,
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: you know, eating ice cream and eating burghers or doing
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: what you do, same sort of thing. But you couldn't
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: really think about being a full time musician in Blackpool
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: because the only opportunities really were to be essentially a
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: cover band, or or to be something really very show
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: busy and do you know some sort of very conspicuously
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: pop music, but everybody knew that if you wanted to
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: if you wanting to make it, you know, sure you
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: could go to Manchester or the or Liverpool and playing
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: some clubs that were perhaps more the the the up
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: and coming places. But long term, everybody the gout feeling
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: was you've gotta go. You gotta go to London. That's
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: where you make it. That's where the music industry has
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: really centered, the record companies, the biggest clubs and venues
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: and so on. So around sixty seven I decided that,
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: you know, I should bite the bullet and leave home
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: and try for the London opportunity should it, should it exist,
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: But you know I had a plan B and a
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: plan to see you know, it wasn't like I was,
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: you know, burning my boats and so it was. It
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: was a dangerous move, but it worked out in the
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: sense of having a couple of months of abject poverty
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: and literally going hungry and going very very cold, because
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: sixty seven and in the UK was one of the
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: coldest winters on record. But you know, it picked up
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: again January February. Got to get at the Marquee Club
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: and things moved on. From there and my days of
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: eating recycled off cuts of meat and bits of past
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: their cell by date vegetables and cooking them up. And
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: then you didn't want to waste anything, so you would
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: cook it up and then and then you'd add something
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: else to it next day, and something else. That the
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: part just stayed on the stove and you just kept
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: sort of adding to it, and so everything stewed in
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: its own juices. But it kept me, kept me going
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: for a couple of weeks of the bad period of time.
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: And then you know, we've got a few gigs. I
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: had enough money to go and buy you know, take
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: away Chinese or something that was unbelievably I mean, absolutely
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: lutally just the most amazing experience was to go in
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: a Chinese takeaway and order some egg fried rice and
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: and some sweet and style pork and you know, some
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: noodles and whatever, and take it back to your lonely
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: little bedsit room, and and it would still be warm enough,
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: and and you know, you put your hands on it
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: to try and warm your hands up first of all
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: before you ate it. It was that that was just
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: the most amazing, wonderful experience of being independent, being on
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: your own, away from your parents, and I spent most
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: of my time alone because I didn't really have any friends,
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: know anybody down there, apart from the guys in the band.
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: But there they lived in actually in nearby town, so
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: we didn't see each other unless we had a gig
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: to go to. So I spent a lot of time alone.
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: It was quite useful because I learned to play a
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: little bit of flute and I started to write some music,
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: and I read several of Jack carro Act's works, which
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: were an interesting, um parallel to my own rather desolate life.
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: I remember reading Desolate Angels as a time when I
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: was particularly cold and miserable and alone, and in a
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: way it was somebody sharing that experience of a stark,
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: rather bleak situation that that gave me a little bit
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: feeling that I wasn't alone in the world. Um so
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: I yes, I I you know, it all worked out
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: and I can't complain. I only went hungry for two weeks,
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: you know, Okay, So ultimately band puts out the album
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: this was Was it always you were band? Or was
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: it more of equal voice, equal membership? Well, I guess
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: right at the beginning, Um, you might have thought it
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: was for guys who had an equal stake in things,
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: and you know, we're equal voices. But in reality, Mick
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: Abraham's the guitar player and I were you know, more
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: dynamic musical forces. And we needed Mick because he was
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: a you know, virtue as a guitar player and a
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: and a shouter, a blue shouter. You know, he'd like
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: to give it a lot of energy, and you know,
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: he had a lot going for him as a blues
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: and rock performer, and he was vital to the band
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: um But I was the odd bawl who brought something
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: else to the party that was not mainstream in terms
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: of blues or an approach, and he and I always
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: had an uneasy relationship. I think he was uncomfortable with
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: me because of my musical aspirations didn't stop with you know,
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: imitative blues, and the other guys tended after a while
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: to come more towards me than Mike. It was very
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: set in his ways and a bit of a mercurial
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: character from time to time. But when we really fell
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: out with Mick towards the end of of we were
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: already getting a little bit established in the UK, and
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: it was at a time when it was make or break,
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: you know, would either build upon that early small success
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: and find a new guitar player or you know, go
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: back home to mummy, as were the options. Okay, so
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: how did it end with Mick? And is fat Man
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: on stand up about Mick? Well, it's not really about Mick.
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: It was just the only time we have a traveled
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: abroad because Mick wouldn't get on an airplane, but we
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: could get a ferry to Denmark and we went to
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: play in two clubs on the ferry from the east
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: coast of England. And on the way back to the
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: ferry to get the ferry home, we went past we
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: had a little bit of time in how we went
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: past a porn shop m in es Buerg, and I know,
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: just in the porn shop there was a mandolin hanging
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: there and I went in and you know, with my
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: whatever I learned for doing the club dates, I bought
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: a mandolin. Had no idea how to play or tune
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: up or anything. And on the way back, because it's
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: quite a long ferry journey, so we were it was
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: an overnight thing and Mick and I were sharing a
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: cabin and I really annoyed him by tuning up and
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: trying to play this mandolin, and he was just getting
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: really really testy about the fact I was keeping him awake.
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: And but you know, a little bit of a tune
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: coming on other what this is good? I like this.
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: And and we used to tease Mick, who was pink cherubic,
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: sort of slightly chubby. He wasn't fat, you know, he
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: wasn't a beast. He was just a little just a
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: little chubby in a healthy chubby kind of a way,
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: whereas the rest of us were sort of rake thin,
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: basically because his mom cooked for him. And when we
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: were start think, but I used to tease me about being,
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: you know, not fat, but you know, being a little chubby.
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: And so I wrote this song I Don't want to
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: be a fat man. And it wasn't really about him.
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: It was just, yeah, just a little notion really, And
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: but he was convinced I was. It was a sort
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: of bitter attack on his corporeal presence, and and and
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: he wasn't too happy about it. But it wasn't really
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: about me. I mean, I never write songs that are
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: about real people because I would never betray a relationship
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: by by making it so, you know, so intrusive into
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: somebody's life. But there is an amalgam of personalities and
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: people that's an as an observer. Since I'm that kind
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: of a writer, I might draw together a few different
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: people and that becomes a character in a song. But
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: it's never about a particular individual. I was certainly never
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: name name hims or you know, take an individual as
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: a model for a song. I would just hate to
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: embarrass somebody or betray something that is private between us
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: as a relationship, whether it's a couple of guys or
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: men and a woman, or you know, it's for me,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: it's it's all, you know, pretty private stuff. So have
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: you ever listened to a blood Wind Pig record? And
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: I know he's had his health issues, but what's your
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: relationship of any with Mick today? Well, Mick went on
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: to do blood Wind Pig and got a lot of
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: help from us and our managers and record company, and
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: Bloodwind Pig were on tour with Gester Hotel a couple
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: of points along the way and and after Blood Wind Pig,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: I mean just sort of mixed band. But they threw
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: him out of his own band in the end because
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: I think they just he was a tricky chap, you know,
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: to to work with. I mean, very nice man, you know,
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: he's had absolutely bighearted, nice guy, but just so insecure
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: and bundle of nerves and twitchy and it always um
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: and it's just kind of awkward to be around, so
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: desperate to be liked. It was, it was overbearing. But
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: after Blood Wind Pig, Mick went on, you know, through
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: a various musical and unmusical activities, and when he started
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: working again, you know, I played with him a few
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: times and we did some songs for one of his
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: solo albums and so on, and once in a while
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: we've spoken. Mike unfortunately these days having stuff with very
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: serious little health, it's not really you know, he's not
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: really able to have conversations on the phone or whatever.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: And you know, I think changed emails a few times.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: But but Mick's you know, you know, he's not well.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: And I always been a little sad that he's not
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: able to do anything anymore at all musically. But my
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: son was actively engaged in doing a sort of tribute
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: charity concert in London for make and which I was
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: I couldn't I couldn't go to I wasn't. I was
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: away somewhere else, but it was nice to think that
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: my son James was one of the organizers of a
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: fundraiser for Mick to recognize his his role in those
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: years of being part of the British music scene. And
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: Mick has a lot of parles, a lot of friends
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: who were stand by him, and you know he was
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: in his day, he was one of those guitar players.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: Maybe not so obviously on the level of the Eric
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: Clapton or Peter Green or Jimmy Page or any of
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: those guys, but he was, you know, he was a
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: revered blues and rock guitarist and until his little health
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: took over, you know, he was still doing pretty well. Okay,
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: let's go to stand Up. This is obviously a different
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: era and Needles say, it's not streaming, it's vinyl. The
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: white album would come out, which was actually a response
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: to overdone packages. But in sixty nine you put out
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: stand Up and it literally stands up when you open
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: the cover. Whose idea was that, well, I have to that.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: Then all the credit goes to Terry Ellis, our manager,
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: because the the first album cover this was that was
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: that was my idea and Terry, bless him, went along
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: with it. I mean, Warner Brothers and Ireland I think
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: hated it because he can't possibly do this is a
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: picture of a bunch of old guys with a lot
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: of dogs around them, and then the name of the
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: band isn't even on the front cover. You know, you
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: can't do that. But but Terry kind of, you know,
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: he stood by us, and that was what I wanted
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: it to be like, and so he went along with it,
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: and I think it got people's attention because who who
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: would bring out an album cover and the name of
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: the band isn't even on the on the front of
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: the cover. It was on the back. But nonetheless it
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: was it was my my, my one. And then stand up.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: Terry had come up with a with an artist in
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: the USA who did specialized in in wood cuts, and
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: I don't know what Terry saw this, but it was,
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: you know, very graphic. And as having been to our school,
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: I did some would cut some things at school, so
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: I was quite quite um, you know, quite happy to
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: go along with that. And and Terry came up with
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: the idea of a gate fall cover that you would
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: open up and there would be this sort of pop
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: up thing of the band, and you know what, was it? Okay, fine,
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: well if you can make that work, let's let's let's
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: do it. And that indeed was the was the was
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: the album cover, which you know was quite in its way,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: quite iconic, and the fact that the album then did
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: go on to do very well in the UK. In fact,
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: we were on our second US tour. Um. I remember
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: being in Loose Midtown in Manhattan in the breakfast room,
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: having breakfast with the guys, and in walked Joe Cocker
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: and came over to our tables. That our congratulations. So
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: why what's happened? He said? Your album just went to
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: number one in the UK charts? So can I can
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: I have kind of you're gonna eat all of that bacon?
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: Can I have a bit? So the the you know,
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: the the good news was we were away from the
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: UK and could do nothing about it, but we had
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: a number one album in England and that was when
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: Terry said, Wow, you know we've got to We've got
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: to capitalize on this. We need something to keep the sea,
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: put it to keep the pot boiling while we were
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: out of the UK on a long tour. So can
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: you can you write a hit single that we can
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: release in the UK while we're away, and to humor him,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: I say, yeah, sure, no problem, just give me a
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: couple of hours. And by then I think we we've
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: gone to Boston, and so we checked into a holiday
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: in the hotel alongside a band called Pentangle who were
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: also checking it at the same time, and and I said, Okay, Terry,
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: give me a couple of hours. I'll meet you in
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: the lobby and I'll write a hit single while I'm upstairs.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: I was just I was just fooling around, you know,
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: I was just just just winding him up. But I
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: went back down to the lobby and he said, have
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: you written it? If you got it? And I said, well,
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: sort of, maybe, I don't know. He said, right, well,
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: i'll book you into a studio in New York next
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: week and we'll go and record it. So I had
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: to come up with, you know, something slightly more refined
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: from that basic idea, and we went in and recorded
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: the backing track to Living in the Past and in
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: a studio in m I think it was actually in
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: New Jersey, which across the river, and and then we
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: went then to the West Coast. I remember then I
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: did the flute and vocal over dubs in the studio
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: and in uh I think it was in San Francisco,
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: and we did the mix and sent it back to
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: the UK and it was it was released and amazingly
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: got to number three in the UK Singles charts. So
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: in fact I had written its single, but it was
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: one of those silly things. I was just bluffing, just
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: fooling around. But the fact that it was in five
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: four time signature it really wasn't a mainstream pop song
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: was quite gratifying because until that point there's only ever
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: been one other top ten hit in five four times signature,
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: which was was Dave brew Becks Take five. And so
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: it was kind of a nice, nice feeling that you'd
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: you brought something relatively new to the world of you know,
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: the pop music charts and music TV because it was
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: on top of the pop sore famous um uh weekly
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: television show that did the latest pop music stuff. So
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: that's how that worked out, and the stand up did
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: did pretty well and and in its own right, it
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: paved the way for what came next. Okay, but staying
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: with the second album for a minute, my favorite song
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: you have such an incredible memory. I look into the
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: Sun come about. I'd rather think it was something I'm
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: not sure where it was on a guitar or where
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: the fiddling around with the Hammond organ. It was in
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: the studio that I've got this really simple little line
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: and it was just meant to be a song about optimism,
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: um optimism and perhaps in the face of some adversity.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: It was a very simple, you know, cheerful, quietly upbeat
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: song that didn't strike me as it was, you know,
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: so important to the album as a whole, compared to
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: songs like a New Day Yesterday for example, which I
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: knew it was a power, a full song, and the
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: worlds like for a Thousand Mothers and things that were
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: a bit more animated, and we're look into the sums
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: that you know, gentle placid piece. There are two or
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: three like that on it that were gentle um reasons
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: for waiting I think was another one that was a
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: similar sort of a feel. So yeah, it was just
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: just trying to bring something in the way of dynamic
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: range into the broad context of rock music, so it
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: didn't all have to be crash, bang wallop with drums
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: and bass pounding away on everything you could, you could,
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: you could do things that are a little bit more
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: varied and musically a little den less dense, and you know,
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: had different dynamics. And perhaps in the case of a
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: song like that, it was giving me the opportunity to
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: not have to pretend to be a rock singer, which
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: I've never felt terribly able to do. Um, So I
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: could just sing it in a relatively quiet, easy voice,
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: and it was nice to do something relaxed. Okay, so
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: the next album, let's talk about it from an outside perspective.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: Many critics felt that the first album was best, needless
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: to say, that was a sound, a different sound. Second
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: album great reviews. Now for people who are younger today,
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: they will need not even understand the power of the
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: rock press. But that meant something back then. Third album
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: commercial breakthrough. But from the perspective of those paying attention,
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: it seemed a little bit more obvious, less cerebral, less internal,
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: and more on the surface. And of course you had
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: to cry you a song, which was a legendary riff song.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: So just to what degree was this premeditated or those
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: on the outside are making this all up and you
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: just cut a record? Well, it was very much a
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: reflection of being on tour in America in sixty nine
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: when we'd you know, we we we were just just
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: making our presence felt. You know. We played in few
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: clubs and we've been an opening act on a few
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: theater shows. Um. But with the benefit album, it was written,
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: most of it was written when I got back to
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: the UK, but it did reflect on that what was
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: a sometimes a rather dark experience of being in the USA.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: Suddenly we were either headlining and modest venues on our own,
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: but we were traveling a lot and spending a lot
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: of time away from home, and and I I think
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: it's it's much of it is. It's rather darker in
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: musical terms, not in a negative way, but it just
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: it just reflects the perhaps some of the ice elations,
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: some of the cultural confusion that comes out of visiting
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: another country and then finding that after the first initial
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: getting to know it, suddenly you begin to realize that
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: we don't really necessarily fit in and just feel a
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: little I felt out of place increasingly in in in
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: in American culture. Glenn are bass player. You know, he
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: loved America. He love he just loved everything about it.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: He was a party guy. You know, he just had
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: made lots of friends and went out at night and
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: you know he had a great time. But Martin Barr
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: and Clive and myself, you know, we were kind of loaners.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: You know, we just go back to the hotel room,
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: read a book, watchum. Dick Cavert was here around there.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: But it was that it was that sort of era,
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: you know, where you just you picked up on American culture,
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: but you you did it in a slightly more vicarious way.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: You know, you saw it from as an observer and
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: picked up things from television and media and the newspapers
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: and Smiley's a New York delicate testament that did the biggest,
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: the biggest Um, chicken liver sandwich is known to mankind
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: and child strawberry malted milkshakes. A guy with Martin Barren,
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: who are starving Hungary, we managed to scrap between us
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: a few dollars together, and we we bought. We bought
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: these enormous wedges of chicken liver sandwich and salad dressing
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: and lettuce and tomato and all the trimmings, and and
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: then these huge pots of strawberry malted milkshake. Went back
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: to our horrible hotel and ate ourselves into a stupor
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: having gorged on entirely unhealthy food. But those are the
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: sort of the amusing moments and what was otherwise quite
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: often a other a bit depressing in a way for
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: those of us who were missing being at home. You know,
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: we don't suddenly we were getting noticed and we were
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: not famous, but you know, people knew who we were,
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: but we made us he feel even more sort of displaced,
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: and I think some of that came out in the album.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: But you know, an important part of it was I
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: remember being in in the USA at the time when
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: when Buzz and Neil walked on the Moon and and
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: Michael Collins, who didn't and was in charge of the
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: the command module. You know, I decided that was worthy
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: of a song was to write about Michael Collins being
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: the guy who didn't get to go to the moon
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: or step onto the moon, and the awful position that
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: he would have been in. And I'm sure it was
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: well planned for, and the eventuality that Neil and Buzz
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: either landing didn't made it back or crashed in the
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: first place, and Michael Collins had to return home to
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: Earth alone. He would have been the most vilified and
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: hated person on the planet. And but that was his gig,
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: that was the job, that's what he signed up for,
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: and I always felt it was rather a touching experience. Oddly,
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: my son in law played Michael Collins in a in
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: a movie about the moon landing many years later. Not
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: a fame, not not a highly successful movie, but he
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: did play Michael Collins. Was a curious um. We had
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: to do all of his research about Michael Collins and
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: everything to do with that. That that that journey, but
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: that that was one of the moments I do remember
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: being an America and feeling really sort of enraptured with
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: the whole the whole thing about America and Space Race.
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: It was. It was a you got really caught up in.
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: It was very exciting being there at that time and
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: at the same at the same time turning down the
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: opportunity to go and play at Woodstock, which was pretty
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: much around the same time of the year, along with
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: Led Zeppelin, who also decided not to take up the
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: invitation to go to Woodstock. And what was the thinking there,
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: I don't know what they're thinking was, but I would
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: imagine Peter Grant might have had the same view as
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: I do, which was we didn't want to get tarnished
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: with the brush of the dying embers of the hippie
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: era and you know, sort of a naked drug taking
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: massid throng of people who were you know, falling over
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: themselves to um love the music of ten years after,
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: who were forever stuck with that Woodstock appearance for the
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: rest of their lives to this day. Um, it's what
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: people remember ten years after four. Leo Lyons, the bass player,
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: when I met him a few years ago on some
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: festival that we were playing at, and and he just
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: come off stage and I said, oh, what, what what? What?
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: What did you play tonight? Lee? Or what's the set
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: list taped to the side of his guitar And I
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: leaned over to look at it, and he said, oh,
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: it's just the usual set list. And I said that
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: that wasn't the set list just for tonight. He said, no,
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: that's been taped to my guitar since nine nine we
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: played at Woodstock, So you have no regrets for not
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: playing No, No, I think we're way too early for us.
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: We were we were we were not yet fully formed,
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: and we were just you know, we needed time, We
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: needed time to develop and become a little more mature musically,
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: and it would have been awful if we If we'd
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: gone on, we probably would have done really well. You know,
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: people were like, wow, is that band even better than
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: ten years after? But it was too early for us.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: I mean I came for the who they were on,
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: but they were already established. They knew what they were doing,
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: that who were the who they were, They had a repertoire,
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: they had an identity. But Jethro Tell was just an
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: embryonic finding our way sort of a bunch of young
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: guys who weren't sure what they were going to do. Um.
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: So it would have been way too early to achieve
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: any kind of mass exposure and any sudden success. It
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: was much better just to step step back into the
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: shadows and meet up with the Zepps and be their
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: opening act for a few more shows. That was better
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: learning process for me than confronting a bunch of naked
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: um hippies. So you talk about being somewhat of a
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: loner being in the hotel room, reading this is an
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: error when backstage in rock life was really exotic. So
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: when it comes to drugs and groupies. That was not
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: your experience personally. You just were who you were, and
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: you took it on the road. Well. As I was
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: a little bit terrified about drugs. I mean, it's not
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: it's not a sort of moral position. It's just that
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: I saw so many people, you know, clearly not doing
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: themselves any favors as a result of taking drugs, and
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: you know, it's, um, it scared me. You know, Frank
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: Laddis didn't really want to take that risk. I was.
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: I smoked a lot of cigarettes back in those days,
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: so I assumed that my tendency to have an addictive
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: personality was such that if I ended up, you know,
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: smoking marijuana, I'd probably be doing it most of the
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: hours of the day. Wouldn't be something I would just
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: you know, do once or twice a week, it would
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: be I would I was terrified it would it would
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: take hold of me as a cigarette smoking did. And
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: so I never did any of that, and which got
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: me the reputation being a party pooper, because you know,
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: if you didn't go to you know, let Zeppelin's rhoadies
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: decided to put on a party and we got invited
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: and I didn't show up, you know, everybody thought, oh,
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: he's you know, he's he's a snob, he's you know,
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: he's some arrogant doesn't want to join in and be
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: one of the boys. But I was afraid to be
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: one of the boys. And I I was uncomfortable with
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: the you know, with the sex, drugs and rock and
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: roll bit. I mean, the rock and roll bit was
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: sort of okay, you know, it was it was a living,
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: but the sex and the drug it's were a bit terrifying,
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: you know, because even then we knew that. But you know,
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: there were some pretty nasty strains of gonorrhea going around,
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: and girls were quite frightening to me, you know, because
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: they were they were very um forward in their behavior
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: into quiet withdrawn um English boys who perhaps were you know,
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: not not used to these sort of things. You know,
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: they're very forward and confident nature of a lot of
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: American young females. They you know, they were quite frightening really.
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: So I didn't really go in that direction. It wasn't
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: something that's um yeah, you know, I'm sure I had
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: a a few relationships, short term and otherwise with with
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: with girls when I was in my twenties, but it
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: just wasn't the big thing for me. I was never
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: lured into that kind of party behavior and the the
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: one night stands and the you know, the whole rock
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: and roll excess things. It seemed everybody else was doing it,
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: So I suppose that was a good reason for me
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: not to do it. I just I prefer to try
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: and you know, be different, do my own thing. So
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: I read a lot of books, and I watched a
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: lot of late night talk shows, and I read the newspapers,
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: and I tried to use the time in a constructive
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: way rather than not be able to remember the next
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: morning what I'd done the night before, which is something
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: that's just befallen many bass players in just Hotel, they
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: all seemed to be the party guys. The bass players,
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: they they all seem to be the ones who wanted
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: to go and have a good time. And I know,
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: and at least one case, his idea of a really, really,
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: really good time was when he couldn't remember anything that
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: happened from the end of the show until coming to
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: sound check the next day. It was just just a
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: complete blank in his mind. Um so he could he
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: measured having a good time by the fact that he
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: couldn't remember it, which to me seems utterly ridiculous that
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: why have a good time and then you can't remember it?
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, I want to save them my good times
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: and recall them for years to come, not have them
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: fade into some deep abyss of of what did I
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: do last night? And you know why have I now?
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: You know these nasty scars or cuts on my face
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: or my heir or my arms because I got in
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: the fight off, you fell down a fire escape, or
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: on one occasion, somebody who should be nameless trying to
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: flush himself down a toilet. True story, I personally rescued him.
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: I mean he was going to going nowhere, obviously, but
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: he was in the toilet bowl, yanking on the chain,
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: try and determined to end it all. So I drank
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: him out. And is it an airport? And I got
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: him on the plane soaking wet. But no, we weren't.
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: We weren't no names to be mentioned. In fact, forget
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: that I even said any of that. I just made
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: it up. It's not a true story. Who came up
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: with and how did you create the riff for to
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: cry of a song? Well, I have to credit the
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: people who worked in that kind of Vein. I mean,
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: Eric Clapton and Cream had already come and gone by
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: then in the sense of Cream being a not a
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: direct influence, but they were the the obvious precursors to
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: Led Zeppelin and Jeth Retell arriving on American shores. Cream
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: did you know, after the after Homer's Home Is Dave
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: Clark five, the Beatles, then the Cream were the next
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: big thing. They just stampeded across the country being this amazing,
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: doing it on their own terms, not not not not
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: in any way fitting into any mold. And that's why
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: America loved Cream because they quite clearly really did care
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: whether you like them or not. They were going to
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: do what they did when they got on the stage,
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: and if you didn't like it fair enough, if you
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: did like it, then you know, thanks will take the
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: money and run. So Cream were the first example of
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: that kind of hit and run band who really didn't
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: care whether you like them or not. And when Zeppelin
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: came in, it was just the same. They gave that
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: impression they were there doing this for them. It was
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: very hedonistic, very self serving, and they really didn't care
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: whether you like them or not. And I probably picked
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: up on a bit of that. I think in the
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: early days of jethro Tell and you know, it seemed
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: to be what Americans generally speaking, seemed to seem to
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: really be drawn towards people who didn't try to appeal,
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: they didn't try too hard to be liked. They sort
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: of recognized the genuine and the honest nature of bands
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: who just came and did their thing, whereas there there
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: were others who desperately wanted to be successful in the
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: USA because that was the big prize, was to be
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: a hit in the USA, and they conspicuously tried too hard,
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: and the American audiences seemed to see through that and
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: reject them as some as wanting it too badly. Um,
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: so I guess they came across across maybe as being
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: you know, not genuine again mentioning no names, but we
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: you know, we we had a few bands who period
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: with us, who tried too hard and didn't do well
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: at all. Um, but we didn't really care that much.
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: So the next step is actually, sorry, I'm mentioning. Yeah,
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: you asked me about to cry, And so it was
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: really it was a kind of a post cream. Eric Clapton,
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: who in a band called Blind Faith and then and
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: they Eat had a couple of good riffs in that,
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: and I guess I took that as a not hopefully
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: not to copy it, but just just to take as
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: an example something that was a repetitive riff. And and
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: to cry your song was was very much in the
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: style of Eric Clapton at the time of Blind Faith.
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: There's a song I can't remember what it's called, Dad
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: da da da da da da da da duh. Yeah, well,
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: it's it's that kind of a thing, you know, it's
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: the monophonic guitar riff on the lowest strings. And Martin
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: would sometimes lend me his electric guitar so I could
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: write songs and and you know, come up with that
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: sort of thing. So the next step is aqualon you
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: create it. Do you have any idea how big it
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: will be? Sometimes, you know, people say I was totally
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: close to other people say, as soon as it sits,
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: the market's gonna go Guard Gangewin suddenly Jeff Road tall
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: as big as they were before Everywhere headline arenas did
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: you anticipate that well. On the last day of mixing
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: the album, um, which had been a bit of a
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: tortious experience because it was a brand new studio that
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: Island Records had just built conversion from an old church
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: and in London, and there are a lot of technical problems,
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: teething problems with the studio that Zeppelin were in. The
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: in the same studio where they were in the crypt
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: of the of the church, which was a much more
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: compact and nicer sounding room to work in. We were
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: in the main body of the church. It was just
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: echoing and horrible and cold and strange atmosphere and technically
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: a lot of problems. So it wasn't you know, I
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: wasn't really sure what we had. I mean songs, you know,
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: I felt fairly confident about most of the songs, but
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: sonically in terms of the end result, I was, you know,
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: a little worried about it. And John Evans, the keyboard player,
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: and I we went we've been working all night and
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: we went out to in the early hours of the
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: morning to some little cafe that served taxi drivers and
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: off duty policeman and things with a hot breakfast at
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: four o'clock in the morning or something. So we sat
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: in this place and I remember sitting there, we were
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: eating some breakfast and dead tired, just you know, we're
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: going to go straight to bed, home to bed after that.
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: And I said to John, what do you think, you know, what,
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: what do you think we've got here? Is it? Is
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: it going to work? And he looked at me as
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I said, no, I don't know either.
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: And you know, I remember that definite feeling of being
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: a little nervous that it was either going to be
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: the beginning of the end or it could be the
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: beginning of the next sort of step up the ladder.
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: And I really had no idea. And we delivered the
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: record of the record company, and you know, it was
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: Julie pressed and put out and some media response, but
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: it wasn't huge. You know, I have to say, there
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: wasn't a out of the box. It didn't set everybody
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: on fire, you know, it was it was okay, it
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: is so pretty well. And some of the music on
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: the album, I suppose Aqualung song My God for example,
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: that they were and Locomotive Breath. In Europe particularly, they
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: made an impact acts um, partly because the subject matter
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: and partly because of the music. But it was doing okay,
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: but nowhere near what it became over the next two
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: or three years when it gradually with us performing more
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: shows and different parts of the world and bringing out
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: new albums aqual and continued to sell at at a
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: very steady and generous pace. And um, and I suppose
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: more than anything else, became the the archetypal jethro Tyle record,
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: not only of the seventies but of all time, and
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: in many ways because it was a mixture of rock music,
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: of gentle acoustic music, of quirky, you know, fun music,
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: and strange, really very insular and gentle moments that were
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: sort of singer songwriters stuff. It was a mixture of
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: music in terms of dynamic range and musical style, and
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: I think that, um, you know, that was part of
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: what gave it an identity. That's people probably didn't like
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: every song on the album, but the doubtless there were
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: people who really loved the acoustic songs and weren't that
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: struck with the loud rock ones and vice versa. But
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: there was something in there perhaps for a broad spectrum
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: of listeners. And it's certainly kind of broke open all
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: of the European territories for us because we hadn't we
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: spent too much time playing in the USA and the UK,
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: and it was really with Aqua Lung that we were
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: then playing frequently, giving equal time to all the European
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: countries where we could perform, and that it really took
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: off broadly in Europe as well, in Spain and Italy
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: and France and Germany, and so we were we were
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: becoming quite international really at that point in terms of
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: not being the biggest band on planet Earth, but being
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: you know, one of the you know, one of the
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: the lesser but sort of well known and appreciated groups
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: that were not mainstream in terms of the rock music
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: that was the most successful and popular. So we were
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: doing doing okay. So the next albums thick as a brick.
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: To what degree was that premeditated I'm talking about music
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: one long piece? And to what degree was it just
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: kind of a lark, let's just do something different. Well,
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: it was both of those things. It was predicated really
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: on the fact that Aqualung had a few songs that
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: maybe kind of tied together a little bit um and
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: and then the packaging and the album cover and the
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: way that the album was sequenced on side one and
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: side two along with the liner notes. I tried to
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: bring a bunch of rather disparate songs and music styles,
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: try and bring them together a bit with the with
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: them with artwork and packaging, which would sort of draw
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: things together a bit, even if they didn't deserve it.
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: And I think that gave people the impression this was
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: a concept album, which it really wasn't. And ill from
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: the word go, I said, this is not a concept album.
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: There's a bunch of songs, you know, but music critics
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: and writers were determined to perpetuate this idea that it
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: was a concept album. So naturally I came to start
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: work on another album and thought, right, well, they thought
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: that was a concept album, Let's give them the mother
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: of all concept albums and go completely over the top
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: in a you know, in a very exaggerated way. And
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: I just thought of this kind of parody really of
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: concept albums, prog rock, you know, pretending it being written
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: by an eight year old boy, and and and writing
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: an album through the through the eyes of childhood, but
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: a childhood distorted by the post war years of growing
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: up with a lot of prejudices and views that came
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: down to a young generation of people from that postwar
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: derision of our of our opponents, and you know, we
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: we talked about Jerry as the un We talked about
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: the Japs. You know, we we were we were taught
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: to be really rather unpleasant and rather right wing, nasty
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: little children, and we didn't turn out that way. But
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: you know that that was what came down, that that
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: was the sort of general tenor of children's comics and literature.
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: You know, we it was reinforcing a lot of stereotypes
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: that I think we could have done with that. But
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: on the other hand, it was mostly a bit of fun.
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: And I think most of us just recognized that, well, okay,
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: you know, our parents went to war and did all this,
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: that that's the way it's that's the way we're being
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: handed down that message. But I couldn't help but feel
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: that as a child growing up, that you know, you've
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: got to try to make sense of a difficult world.
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: You've got to try and make sense of the things
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: that are stereotypical, that are prejudice, that are um perhaps
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: adult ideas that are increasingly becoming irrelevant as as time
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: goes on. And so I wanted to try and see
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: through the eyes of a child making sense of a
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: difficult adult world and that's really what the album was about.
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's it may seem like, well, it is
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: on the one hand, a spoof for parody, a lighthearted
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: bit of fun, but it also has a quite a
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: serious message lying underlying the whole thing. And I would write,
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: um the album in you know that I'd do the
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: next three minutes in the morning when I woke up,
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: you know, quite early. Usually I start working around eight
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: or nine in the morning and write the next three
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: or four minutes of music. And then after lunch I
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: would go and meet the guys rehearsal room in the
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: south of London, in the Rolling Stones rehearsal Room, and
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: and then we would add we'd learned what I wrote
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: that morning and added to what I've done the day before.
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: And so we built up the album over a period
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: about ten days of rehearsal so that we could play
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: it all the way through. And then we went into
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: the recording studio and we played it all the way
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: through and took another ten days to record the album,
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: and then actually a bit longer to do the album
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: cover because it was quite involved and you know, it
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: took quite a bit of time putting it all together
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: and shooting all the photographs and doing everything. Actually took
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: longer to do the album cover than it did to
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: record the record, but it was worth it again because
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: it was one of those zany ideas. I mean, Terry
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: our manager, he really didn't like the album covered. Nobody did.
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: They thought this was just insane, you know, sixteen page
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: newspaper is an album cover and even but he, you know,
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: he kind of went along with it, as he did
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: with them the first album, and it um, it was
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: part and parcel of what made that album, you know,
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: kind of stand out from the crowd, And poor old
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: John Lennon had embarked upon an album which was released
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: shortly afterwards and was already in the works at the
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: time when Things as the Brick was released and actually
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: went to number one in the American charts, and and
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: John Lennon's album, which featured the front cover front page
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: of the New York Times, was released shortly afterwards, and
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: of course he and his record company must have seen,
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: you know, this idea has already been done and out
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: there and is bigger and better in the sixteen phays newspaper.
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: But you can't pull it, you know, he did that
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: they had already printed, however, million copies of John Lennon's
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: album and the artwork and everything, So it must have
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: been quite galling in a way. You know, when you
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: you've got an idea, you think, wow, this is good,
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: and then somebody's actually beaten you to it and and
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: quietly sneaked something out there, and now you're you're the
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: you're the imitators and the late most to an idea
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: that I think it was very important to the album.
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: It was one of the worst John Lennon albums anyway,
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: sometime in New York City, So don't worry about it.
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: But let's talk about that album cover. I asked about
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: the standing up on stand up we have because of
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: brick rock history is littered with acts bitching about their
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: label saying they wouldn't let me do it, or they
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: let me do it, and I had to eat the price.
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: You had a very unique situation and that your managers
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: were the record company. Now in America, they were distributed
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: by other labels, Warner Brothers Center. By the end of
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: the by time you at the eighties, they have their
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: own freestanding company. So a number of questions, what did
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: Terry Ella's do, What did Chris Wright do? And I
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: always felt that Chrysalis was built on the back of
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: jeth Row Tall, So I wonder did they acknowledge that
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: financially they give you a piece of the company because
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: for a long time, Jethro Top was the only successful act.
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: So how did it work with you and your managers?
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: And the money Molley began when nobody wanted to record
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: Jet Hotel back in and Terry's I believe his father's
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: bank manager loaned some money and so Terry and Chris
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: took the chance and we made the records with borrowed money.
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: We had no record company, no deal, and then they
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: hawked around the tapes to try and find a deal,
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: and eventually Chris BLACKWELLO Island Records took it on and
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: um and it was released through Ireland, the first album.
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: And and then Terry and Chris had a you know,
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: they're a little older than I was, but they were
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: learning on their feet, you know, they were learning the job,
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: learning about the music industry, and so they ankered after
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: not just being agents or managers, but the idea of
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: having a record company. And and so crystalis Records was
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: born as a label. They were able to renegotiate their
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: deal with Island Records in the UK and with Warder
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: Warners in the USA, actually with the Reprise label who
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: then they got their label copy, but it was still
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: marketed and distributed by a major record company in the
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: in most most parts of the world, but it was
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: it looked like a Crystalist record, and Jethro Tell was
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: the first act to be signed to Crystalists. But it
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: would be a little bit too generous to say, um, Crystalists,
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: it was founded on the back of Jets Hotel or
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: you know, there's a bunch of other acts at that point.
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: You know, we were all important to Crystalist records and
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: who else who else in the sixties early seventies on
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: Chrystmas had anywhere near the level of success of Jeff
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: roll Well ten years after did pretty well to begin with,
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: and then procol Harum for example, came along that they
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: were quite meaningful, and then a whole bunch of other
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: acts um that that passed through the Crystalist ranks over
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: the next few years. But you know, sure Jester Hotel
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: was important, but i'm you know, I would Christened and
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: Terry are both generously said that Obviously Jesstel was very
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: important to them at the time, but you know, we
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: weren't the only We weren't the only thing. I think
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: they would have made it without Jethro Hotel. It's just
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: that we that the process was speeded up a little
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: by the fact that we were successful enough that Terry
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: and Chris could renegotiate the deals. And when they renegotiated
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: the deals for higher royalties and different deal structures, they
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: passed the benefits of that on to us. You know,
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: we we they they volunteered to say, hey, you know,
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: you guys, you should get a bigger royalty now, because
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: we're getting a bigger royalty, and so they were generously
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: took that initiative. And I mean Terry and I were
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: always I didn't have so much to do with with
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: Chris because he was really more looking after ten years
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: after in procol. But Terry was, you know, the one
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: focused on our careers, and he and I were always
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: butting heads and disagreeing on a whole lot of stuff.
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: And sometimes, you know, he won the argument, sometimes I
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: won the argument. And I think think as a brick
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: album cover as an example of you know, me winning
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: the argument. I really think this is what we should do. Terry,
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: I think it's going to work. Other times. You know, Terry,
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: you know he was he was the one who was
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: responsible for the benefit album cover and I wasn't really
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: keen on it at all. But you know, okay, Terry,
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: if you think this is right, let's do this. And
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: I think that was part of the relationship is that
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: both of us had our very strong opinions, but we
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: were not not averse to having a discussion, however spirited
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: and sometimes loud it might be. But you know, we
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: we both knew we could picturelate and say okay, let's
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: do it your way. And I think that was the
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: strength of that relationship that we were both learning as
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: we went along. I was learning about the technical issues
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: of production and making records. He was learning about the
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: business side of not just managing the band, but you know,
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: developing a record company. So you know, we got we
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: we got absolute can't blanche to do whatever we wanted
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: in musical terms, and that those who were involved in
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: the marketing and distribution, like Warners or or Ireland or
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: then BMG in the US, in in Europe, you know,
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: they were just they were there to do a job,
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: and they didn't really have any creative saying what we
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: were doing. I think Warners might have tried to do
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: that in the early days, but they soon accepted that,
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: you know, we were selling records and even if they
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: didn't quite get it in terms of why they were selling,
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: they they went along with it. And and we we
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: we never had any any kind of um real uh,
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: contentious input from record companies. You know, you quite often
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: they had no idea what they were getting to Let
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: deliver the master tapes. That was it. And you know,
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: Crystal has trusted me to do that, and I trusted
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: them to once they've got the master tapes, and I
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: trusted them to get on with it and do the
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: best job they could in terms of the the commercial
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: application of that. That that's the bit they were supposed
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: to be good at. Its exactly the same to this day.
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: You know, I hand over the master tapes, and when
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: it comes to marketing and promotion, I'm a pussycat. I'm
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: paying somebody else, you know, effectively to to use their expertise,
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: their knowledge and there and the weight of their the
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: their authority. In the case of inside out of boutique
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: label and owned by Sony Records that we have distributed
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: and marketing by Sony effectively, which is an ideal, an
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: ideal blend of being with a major, But at the
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: same time, at the front end we're with a sort
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: of boutique label, which is very much like how Chrysalis
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: were in the first two or three years. So um,
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: you know, things come perhaps full circle in that regard.
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: But let's talk about the money needles. Say Chrysalis was
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: sold to E M I early nineties, h E M
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: I was ultimately sold again broken up at this late date.
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: Do you still get royalties for those jeth World Toll
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: records in two Did you own the publishing or was
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: the publishing split with Chrysalis, And what's the status of
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: that today. Well, the royalty rate that we were on
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 1: right at the beginning was a very small one. Is
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: better than the Beatles got when they started, but it
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: was a pretty small piece of the action. Um, and
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: then it was redressed considerably around the time of Thick
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 1: as a Brick where we started, and quite quite a
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: meaningful royalty rate at that point. And I was also
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: getting paid as a producer because I was the guy
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: writing the music and producing the records. I was a
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: man in the studio taking on the mantle of all
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: of that. By seventy four, I was running the business
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: of jet Rotele financially, so I was paying all the
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: bills and running it is you know, from a commercial stand.
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: But what my company was UM. So we were getting
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: a pretty good royalty rate at that point, UM, and
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: by I don't know, by the end of the seventies,
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: we were on what was probably the you know, the
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: kind of highest level of royalty artist royalty rate that
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: anybody was getting paid. And Chris and Terry were always
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: you know, making sure that we were being rewarded in
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: the same way as the highest paid artists of the day.
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: So our contracts were being renewed and renegotiated and we
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: were getting better deals. But you know, it was never
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: a subject of no one was being held hostage or anything.
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: You know, It was just that I think it was
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: recognized that you you were all there to share the
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: benefits together, and so you try and be fair about it. UM.
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 1: But the publishing side of it, you know, originally was
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 1: published you know, it's Chrystalis Publishing. And then along the way,
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: Crystalis UM went into the publishing side with BMG, So
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: it was Christmas BMG and then um, and then it
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: became just BMG, which is just to day. And I'm
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: I'm still published by BMG at the same rate as
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: it was when I was published by in the latter
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: days of crystalis so um, you know, without without without
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: going into the percentage terms, it's about as high as
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: you can get. That comes to me, and they get
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 1: the sort of you know what I suppose is for
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: probably fairly standard in the business for people of our statue. Um.
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: So yes, I mean I owned the publishing and I
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: that was in the days of Terry and Chris. You know,
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: they said, well you should own your own publishing. It's
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 1: that you're writing all these songs. And you know, if
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: we if we make our cutters as the licensed publishers,
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: then that's good. So that's the way that it worked.
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: And so I continue to license our products and renew
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 1: those licenses with BMGH. I've got a long standing relationship
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: with it goes back forty years or something. So it's
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: the way that that one works. And in this day
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: and age, you know, I know, I mean long gone
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: of the days when I used to employ lawyers to
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: negotiate record contracts. You know, we've figured that one out
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: a long time ago. So quite happy to feel confident
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: in negotiating a record contract these days and for some
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: years in the past. And and so I I know
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: how all that works. I know what the deal points
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: and the structures and all the small print are all about.
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: And you know, at the royalty rate that we get
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: today is um. You know, it's the it's it's it's
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: that's sort of top rate you would get. Um. I
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: don't think. I don't. I don't believe anybody gets more
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: than we get. What they might get is bigger. Advanced
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: is But I'm not an advanced guy. I just say, look,
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: keep your money. You know, when we sold the record,
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: then you can pay me. But record companies and their
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: cash flows and all the rest of it, they sometimes
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: insist us to promoters or we want to pay you
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 1: some in advance. And so yeah, you know, I don't
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: mind having an advance, but I'm more comfortable and getting
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 1: a high royalty and a notional advance just as an
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: act of good faith to make sure that having laid
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: out some money, a record company going to make the
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: effort to try and sell product in order to recoup
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: their advance. But I'm always, always much prefer to have
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: a big royalty small advance. And if record companies want
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: to pay me a bigger advance, well that that's fine,
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 1: but it's not what I'm shooting for at all. I
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: just want to I just want a good royalty rate.
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: We're all we're all in the business of risk together.
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 1: It seems to me that you know, the back end
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 1: is the important thing. If you've done well, then that's
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: when you can afford to be generous. If you're a
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: you know, if you're a record company, you can afford
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 1: to pay your ours generously once we've sold the records.
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 1: If you don't sell them, everybody's a loser. And that
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: doesn't seem to be the business I want to be
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: in for sure. Would you ever sell your publishing, which
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 1: is something that's happening with a lot of acts of
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 1: your vintage at this point, Well that that that process
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: came back. I came up many, many, many years ago
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: as the idea of cashing in on your publishing and
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: taking a lump sum or taking a lump sum, you know,
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 1: selling it for a period of time and then getting
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: it back. I mean, all of that's been going off
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 1: years and years and years, and frankly it's not something
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think I looked at it, you know,
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 1: I've had a couple of offers to do that, but
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 1: it's not something that it's very hard to value because
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 1: especially with a swing towards digital UM technology and digital
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: UM ways of getting music, you know, when it when
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 1: it's you're dealing in the world of streaming and hardly
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 1: any paid downloads these days. It's mostly streaming and of
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 1: course physical products. That it's quite difficult really to put
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 1: a value on the on the residual life of of
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 1: copyright UM in publishing terms as fairly generous, you know,
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: seventy five years after the death of the composer, but
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: in up until a few years ago UM in the UK,
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: the life of copyright was was really rather minimal. It
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 1: was it was fifty years UM and then it went.
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: And so we were facing the time when many acts
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 1: of the sixties were going to fall out of copyright,
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: some of them famous people like the Beatles, but hundreds
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: and hundreds and hundreds of artists who maybe only ever
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: had one hit or some marginal record sales suddenly that
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: that that little royalty that they were depending on every
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 1: year to pay for the heating bill or to you know,
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 1: put food on the table was going to disappear. And
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: I was one of those people, you know, making a
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: strong play with the UK government for extending life of
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: copyright for um in recorded product and the Prime Minister
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: of the day who I went to meet with and
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: tried to persuade him and did some back of an
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: envelope calculations to point out the value to the exchequer
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 1: of keeping copyright going and what this meant in terms
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: of gathering tax um. Just it was taking a political
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 1: view that copyright was something old fashioned and should be
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 1: free for everybody, blah blah blah. But luckily through the EU,
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: in fact it was reversed and we did in fact
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 1: get an extension to the life of copyright more or
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 1: less in parallel with how it already was in the USA.
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 1: So it's it's become a little more generous. And it
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: doesn't mean that's a little more value in copyright than
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: there was perhaps twenty years ago in the UK. I
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: mean it would be valued a little higher, you know,
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: the residual rights of of copyright, and I don't think,
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 1: personally speaking, I would ever be seduced into selling copyright,
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: and I think I would rather I would rather be
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 1: passing it on to my family, um initially and continuing
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 1: to you know, pay tax on that revenue, which is
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 1: um is to me, I'd rather be at the focus,
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 1: the center of it, rather than is somebody else's asset
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: to fool around with and offset against other corporate losses
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 1: or do whatever they might do with it. I mean,
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: I just really would rather I and my successors entitled
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: or hands on about it. I mean, Luckily, I have
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 1: a son who's grown up with me in the music industry,
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 1: and so he's you know, he's he understands all this stuff,
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 1: and Will is already taking a an increasingly leading role
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 1: in managing the assets of of both my personal musical
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: income and the corporate musical income, and he one day,
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: not too far from now, will be it will all
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: be on his shoulders. He may decide, hey, I've had enough,
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 1: I want to sell it. When that's that's his decision,
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 1: not mine. Ultimately, release Crest of the nave In becomes
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 1: mega successful. But also the inside story is the album
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: was focused group in terms of what singles. So did
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 1: you know that would be a commercial comeback into what
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 1: degree was the focused story true and did it affect
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: anything on the record. Well, I I may be wrong
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 1: in this, but I do think it was my idea
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 1: that we did that because I wasn't really sure that
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 1: there has been a huge change in not so much
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: in Europe, but certainly in the USA. That's big swing
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: away from what used to be called a O R
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 1: radio too very tightly regimented and researched playlists UM, and
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: the swing away from that a our album product to
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 1: alternative rock and contemporary pop and rock, and stations like UM,
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: like KLOS or double any W suddenly that they were
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 1: trying to get hip and do the new thing, and
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 1: and they changed their format, their playlists and everything, and
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: jet rteal just wasn't getting radio but sorry, playtime anymore
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: in the in the way that we had during the seventies.
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 1: But I think what happened was that the audiences that
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 1: the demographic that the American radio was increasingly playing to
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 1: prove to be fickle. They didn't actually spend the money
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 1: on the products that were being advertised on American radio
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: in the way that's been before, and so gradually it
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: swung back again to to not a complete reversion, but
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 1: to something that then became known as classic rock. And
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 1: many of those stations then went back to playing the
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: kind of music that they played before. And I assume
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 1: they replenished their coffers because the slightly older demographic was
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: was supporting the advertising that brought them their revenue. And
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 1: it we we began just to sort of get a
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: sniff of that, I suppose in the latter part of
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 1: the eighties, and I suggested that we should play the
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 1: record initially, not to the media, not to the press,
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 1: because chances are we've got a rough ride and people
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 1: would not be approving. I said, why don't we play
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 1: it to the fans, you know, and get a body
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 1: of thought and opinion, and we can, you know, maybe
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 1: choose the lead tracks we put to radio as a
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 1: result of what we think jeth rot Health fans want.
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 1: And and we did that to a degree, I mean,
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: not not in a hugely detailed, massive survey, but you know,
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 1: to a small focus group kind of thing. And it
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: got the record company interested. That was the most important thing.
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 1: Is it energized the record company a little bit because
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: they were getting direct feedback from the fans who were
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 1: going to buy this record or not. And I think
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 1: that's what what got them to sit up and take
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 1: notice of Crest of Benave and and the New York
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: office of Crystalists were suddenly making a lot more effort
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: than they perhaps had been to sell products and and
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: to and to promote it in a way that was
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 1: much more hands on and active. And the promo guy
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: in New York was was, you know, really um you know,
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 1: you really took it on as a personal crusade to
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: try and get your hotel noticed. And we got some
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: MTV play, and generally speaking, we um, we were. We
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: were not exactly back in favor, but we were getting
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 1: noticed again. And and the record company then nominated us
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: for a Grammy and a new Grammy category and the
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 1: rest of all that story, of course you know or
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 1: too well, but it was just the beginning of um
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 1: of It wasn't exactly a comeback. It was just sort
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 1: of in a way, well you said, refocusing jet hotel
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 1: with a with a with a demographic that that kind
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 1: of knew us already, and it was just remind people
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: we were still around, and you know very much that
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 1: that is not that is not just due to me
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 1: or the record, but it was the efforts of crystalists,
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 1: particularly in the USA, and particularly of Kevin Sutter, the
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 1: promo guy in New York. He was, you know, he
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 1: should take the credit for a lot of the success
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 1: of that album. Well, he's always told me the story.
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: Good to have it confirmed by you. Now somewhere around
• 1:57:23
  Speaker 1: thick as a bricks, certainly passion play, the media turns
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: against Jeff row Tall. Did you sense this? And I
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: would say, generally speaking, jeth Row Toll doesn't get any respect,
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 1: although I believe it deserves so much. And then some people,
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 1: you know, put it in the progressive camp. It's not
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 1: in the progressive camp in my particular world. How do
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 1: you view all that? And I think that any band,
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 1: any artists, will there will be a love affair with
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 1: the critics and and the public alike for a mile,
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 1: and maybe that last year three or four records, and
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 1: then something used coming along, and maybe, and understandably, particularly
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 1: you know music journalists who have been perhaps flattered by
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: record companies and managers and invited to concerts and given
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 1: free tickets and all the rest of it. Suddenly they
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 1: begin to feel, you know, they're in the pocket potentially
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 1: that people will see them as being a soft touch.
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 1: They're always going to write good reviews and and necessarily
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 1: they're going to say, no, well, this time we're going
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 1: to buck against the system. We we we don't think
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: this does deserve a good review. We're going to give
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 1: it a stinker, you know, and and show that we're
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 1: independent minds and independent writers. And I think to a
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 1: degree that's what happens, and certainly happened with Jester Tell
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 1: around the time of a Passion play, most notably in
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 1: the UK press, but also in the USA too and
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 1: in Australia. I remember, we've got some really really bad reviews,
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 1: and I can understand why, and to some extent I
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 1: having known some of those journalists. I mean, I I
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 1: you know, I had to say, look, hey, I think
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 1: you got this about right. You know, it wasn't it
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 1: wasn't that great. Had a lot of criticism could be
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 1: leveled at a Passion play, and some of it quite justifiably,
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: but of course it hurt at the time, but it
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 1: was greatly exaggerated, you know, especially with the ridiculous press story.
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 1: Jethro Hotel quit because of a horrible front page, bad
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 1: review and Melody Maker. We didn't quit. The first thing
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 1: I heard of it was when I walked down Oxford
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 1: Street in London and saw the copies of Melody Maker
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 1: on the news stand with this headline thing, and I what.
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 1: I bought one to read it, and I was absolutely insensed.
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: How what where did they get this from? So I
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 1: went to the nearest phone box and called my manager,
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 1: called Terry Ellis that Crystalists, said what the hell is this?
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 1: Who who put this out? He said, ah, well, sorry,
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 1: I forgot to mention it to you, But I thought
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 1: this was a good idea. We've got another front page
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 1: headline and Melody Maker. I mean one of the times
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 1: when Terry and I definitely butted heads and did not
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 1: agree on on the way forward. But it made us.
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 1: I thought it just looked really rather petulant and stupid,
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 1: and it took a while to come back from that.
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 1: But I actually took Ray Coleman, the editor of Melody Maker,
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 1: to tars. Ray, you knew this wasn't right, you knew
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 1: you were being fed a line. You just you just
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 1: went along with it because you were prepared to take
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 1: it at face value because it was a big story
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 1: you could use on the front page. You know, you
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 1: could have just picked up the phone to me and said,
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 1: is this right. I was a bit bit upset with
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 1: Ray and I mean, of course we did things together
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 1: in the future, and he was a lovely chat but
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 1: you know, he was convenient for him to believe what
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 1: he was being told, and it was. It was definitely
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 1: not not It was a total piece of manufactured front
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 1: page grabbing hysteria and I think actually rather silly thing
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 1: to do. And what about the Prague Moniker. Well, I
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 1: was always very pleased to be in the realms of
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 1: progressive rock in people's estimation, because that that term first
• 2:01:12
  Speaker 1: came about as far as I'm aware, in the UK
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 1: music press in nine and I first saw the term
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 1: progressive rock applied to a few bands, including Jeff Hotel,
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 1: and I thought, wow, that's interesting. I quite like that.
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 1: I quite like the idea being progressive rock. That's that
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 1: seems to me what I do, and and so that
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 1: was fine. But then of course they got shortened to
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 1: Prague rock and then just Prague and by the time
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 1: the early punks came along, Prague was a derisory term.
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: Meant to meant to describe people who were um basically
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 1: obsessed with showing off the instrumental prowess, and who were
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 1: arrogant and old fashioned and and generally speaking, you know,
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 1: up their own artists, to put it mildly, and and
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 1: I think probably bands like Yes and Genesis and Emerson
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 1: Lake and Palm we do have to bear some responsibility
• 2:02:13
  Speaker 1: for that. Great musicians and great artists as they were,
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 1: but Jethro Tell was a bit more rough and ready,
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 1: I think, a bit more, you know, but there was
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 1: a rougher edge to what we did, partly because we
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 1: weren't as good as they were in terms of musical ability,
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 1: but also there was an edge to some of the music,
• 2:02:30
  Speaker 1: particularly in the lyrics. So um, I guess, um, I
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 1: guess that's why some of the bands from the punk
• 2:02:38
  Speaker 1: era secretly were actually Jethro Hotel fans, like Johnny Rotten
• 2:02:42
  Speaker 1: from the Sex Pistols, huge huge fan of Aqualung and
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 1: then you know some of the other folks. Remember being
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 1: approached by Joey Ramone at a Swiss festival. It was
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 1: just all over and we wanted autographs because his mom
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 1: was a huge fan and and and the guitar player
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 1: from the Had Hot Chili Peppers, or or the Guys
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 1: and the Stranglers or Sting, and a whole bunch of
• 2:03:06
  Speaker 1: people who were part of that early punk thing. Who
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 1: was secret jethro Hotel fans um. I mean, I know
• 2:03:13
  Speaker 1: this because this firsthand experience. You know, they've actually said so,
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 1: and I'm sure they weren't just being nice to me.
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 1: Well perhaps they were, but it's it's just kind of
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 1: nice to know that that you did actually make an
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 1: impact on that next generation of musicians, even though they
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 1: couldn't possibly admit publicly to liking Genesis or jeth Hotel
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 1: or whatever it might be, but secretly they did. We
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 1: were part of their learning process, part of their background,
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 1: their points of reference musically, and even though what they
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 1: do was musically very different, it was still informed in
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 1: some way by the music that had gone before. And
• 2:03:46
  Speaker 1: I think Johnny Rotten saw in the song Aqualung and
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 1: saw in the album cover of that he saw a
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 1: persona a character that was angry and yet sensitive and fearful,
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 1: you know, the way was depicted on the Aqualong album cover.
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 1: And then that's Johnny Rotten. That's that's how he appeared
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 1: when he first appeared on TV. That's going a hunched
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 1: guy with sort of the same kind of pose and
• 2:04:09
  Speaker 1: and and he's a mixture of aggression and anger and
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 1: yet fear and vulnerability. I think he captured that in
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 1: in his stage persona. Um, maybe I'm being a little
• 2:04:20
  Speaker 1: fanciful in that, but he certainly told me he was
• 2:04:22
  Speaker 1: a huge fan of that track. He also hit Wore
• 2:04:25
  Speaker 1: the Long Coat. Okay. Many Jethroad Toll albums have been
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 1: remixed by Stephen Wilson, generally speaking on against remixing, but
• 2:04:35
  Speaker 1: he has a unique way of doing it without putting
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 1: down the other people who have attempted the same thing
• 2:04:40
  Speaker 1: with the Beatles and other acts. He seems just a
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 1: scrape away that his Tritus the Steel Wool, and it
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 1: sounds exactly like the original but better. So how did
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 1: you get involved with him remixing your records? How do
• 2:04:54
  Speaker 1: you feel about all that? He told me that you
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 1: wanted to fix some mistake from the past, and he said, no,
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 1: this is for fans, and this is how the fans
• 2:05:04
  Speaker 1: remember it, so you can he tell me the experience there? Yeah,
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 1: that that that is. That is how Stephen feels about it,
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 1: and I, you know, I told him to remix that
• 2:05:13
  Speaker 1: coolong and five point once around sound and put the
• 2:05:16
  Speaker 1: saxophone in another room. I said, just leave out the saxophone,
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 1: which he said, now we can't do that. We've gotta
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 1: we've got to keep everything there and the way it was,
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 1: but we'll just make it a little more transparent because
• 2:05:28
  Speaker 1: it was too dense that album. It's just too much
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 1: going on all the time. But you know, the whole
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 1: point about when I was asked by the record company,
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 1: you know, about doing remixes, and I somewhere, I think
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 1: I'd heard that Steven Wilson had remixed that classic first
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 1: King Crimson album. So and having believe that that Robert
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 1: Fripp was quite a kind of a control freak, hands
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 1: on guy, I thought, well, if he lets Stephen Wilson
• 2:05:55
  Speaker 1: remixes the big album, then you know he must be
• 2:05:59
  Speaker 1: all right it. So I've suggested Steven Wilson to the
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 1: record company I think at that point still Warners, and
• 2:06:07
  Speaker 1: I think that Coolong they wanted to do. And so
• 2:06:09
  Speaker 1: I said, we'll send him a couple of tracks and
• 2:06:11
  Speaker 1: see how he gets on. And he and I communicated,
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 1: and and so Stephen sent me a couple of you know,
• 2:06:19
  Speaker 1: rough mixes having got the digital masters, you know, because
• 2:06:22
  Speaker 1: obviously was transferred from the track analog tape to twenty
• 2:06:28
  Speaker 1: four bit audio, and then in that process you can
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 1: then tackle it in a different way. You can clean
• 2:06:34
  Speaker 1: up all the tracks. You can get rid of those
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 1: little clicks and hisses and hums, you can you can
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 1: delete the extraneous noise between lines of vocal or verse
• 2:06:46
  Speaker 1: and choruses. You can have absolute digital silence, and so
• 2:06:51
  Speaker 1: suddenly the music is much more transparent, you know, you
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 1: don't have all that sort of general kind of analog
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 1: mulchi kind of back grounds. Suddenly it's it's you can
• 2:07:01
  Speaker 1: see through the clouds, you know, it's it's it's daylight.
• 2:07:04
  Speaker 1: And I think that's what Stephen has always done well,
• 2:07:09
  Speaker 1: that he cleans everything up and then he he analyzes
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 1: the way the original mixes were done and sets out
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 1: not to replicate it, but to generally speaking, have the
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 1: same stereo field in terms of positioning instruments and gives
• 2:07:27
  Speaker 1: them the same dynamic um kind of place. But you know,
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 1: he fine tunes everything to a degree that I think
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 1: makes the music ultimately it is clearer punchier, more transparent,
• 2:07:41
  Speaker 1: and in some ways, you know, here's a bit of
• 2:07:45
  Speaker 1: a trade off because you're dealing with analog tapes that
• 2:07:48
  Speaker 1: are fifty years old and they can only probably they
• 2:07:53
  Speaker 1: get baked in an oven, so that glues the oxide
• 2:07:55
  Speaker 1: onto the backing for one more pass, which is your
• 2:07:59
  Speaker 1: one and only chance really to to lift off that
• 2:08:03
  Speaker 1: audience transfer it to the digital domain. But you know,
• 2:08:08
  Speaker 1: sometimes the tape has lost a little bit of quality
• 2:08:10
  Speaker 1: it's at very often the high end seems to suffer,
• 2:08:13
  Speaker 1: certainly with certain tape batches that came. I think the
• 2:08:17
  Speaker 1: A album suffered very badly from loss of oxide, and
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 1: it was quite a tough one to try and recapture
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 1: the high end on that album. But to an extent,
• 2:08:27
  Speaker 1: you know, you it's a bit of a trade off there.
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 1: But by and large the balance lies in favor of
• 2:08:32
  Speaker 1: being able to clean things up, tidy things up, give
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 1: it a bit more punch, a bit more transparency, and
• 2:08:37
  Speaker 1: and not radically change the balance of instruments or the
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 1: or the stereo fields positioning of instruments. But then, of course,
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 1: part of the remixing process isn't just recreating a stereo mix.
• 2:08:49
  Speaker 1: It's a it's five point one surround, and and in
• 2:08:54
  Speaker 1: that regard I'm more than happy to hand over the
• 2:08:56
  Speaker 1: reins because I do not have a five point one
• 2:08:58
  Speaker 1: surround system. I'd actual you don't own a record player.
• 2:09:01
  Speaker 1: I used to have a CD player, but Apple stopped
• 2:09:03
  Speaker 1: putting CD players in the desktop computer, so I don't
• 2:09:06
  Speaker 1: even have one of those anymore. So I'm being used
• 2:09:09
  Speaker 1: to listening for twenty odd years now. I mean, I
• 2:09:13
  Speaker 1: only listen to music as digital audio files. But then
• 2:09:16
  Speaker 1: for the most part, I'm listening to twenty four bit
• 2:09:18
  Speaker 1: digital audio files, which are great quality. Um that's the
• 2:09:23
  Speaker 1: medium in which I work as a writer, as a producer,
• 2:09:27
  Speaker 1: as a recording engineer, and when I'm recording for other
• 2:09:31
  Speaker 1: people as a guest. You know, I'm always used to
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 1: hearing and hearing good quality music, but I don't. I
• 2:09:37
  Speaker 1: don't as a music listener. I'm not really a music
• 2:09:41
  Speaker 1: fan or a geek. You know, the idea of the
• 2:09:45
  Speaker 1: Japanese tea ceremony of music listening by you know, gently
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 1: blowing the dust off your vinyl record and setting it
• 2:09:51
  Speaker 1: all up and putting it on the turntable and gently
• 2:09:54
  Speaker 1: dropping the needle on in the right place. So you
• 2:09:56
  Speaker 1: don't damage anything or make horrible noises, and then sitting
• 2:09:59
  Speaker 1: back and listening to an entire album. It's a great
• 2:10:02
  Speaker 1: thing to do, but it's it is, it's slowing everything down.
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 1: It's just stepping back. And that's why I say the
• 2:10:08
  Speaker 1: Japanese tea ceremonies are very formal and and stayed way
• 2:10:13
  Speaker 1: of listening to music. And perhaps that's the way people
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 1: did it in the sixties and seventies and they're doing
• 2:10:18
  Speaker 1: it again today, and good luck to them. But frankly speaking,
• 2:10:22
  Speaker 1: I if I have a record player, I don't know
• 2:10:25
  Speaker 1: where it is. I know I did have one or
• 2:10:27
  Speaker 1: two because I don't remember selling them, but um, you know,
• 2:10:31
  Speaker 1: it's the sort of thing I just don't really feel
• 2:10:33
  Speaker 1: inclined to to acquire, um technical stuff, you know, gadgets
• 2:10:41
  Speaker 1: and things. I've surrounded by these for all of my
• 2:10:45
  Speaker 1: life and I still am today surrounded by gadgets. But
• 2:10:49
  Speaker 1: I'm an acoustic guy. I like to pick up and
• 2:10:51
  Speaker 1: play acoustic instruments and you know, and have a good microphone,
• 2:10:56
  Speaker 1: and yes, I use all the technology when it comes
• 2:10:59
  Speaker 1: to recording and mixt thing, but it's not stuff that
• 2:11:01
  Speaker 1: I enjoy. It's just tools of the trade. You know,
• 2:11:05
  Speaker 1: it's just a means to an end, whereas I can
• 2:11:07
  Speaker 1: get quite attached to a good microphone or get attached
• 2:11:10
  Speaker 1: to a nice musical instrument, but the rest of the
• 2:11:13
  Speaker 1: ganger tree means little to me. It's um here today,
• 2:11:16
  Speaker 1: gone tomorrow. It's it's it's all. It's all as good
• 2:11:21
  Speaker 1: as the next update you know to your software. Okay,
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 1: stay with software. That's a very modern viewpoint which a
• 2:11:29
  Speaker 1: lot of older artists do not embrace, and they bitch
• 2:11:32
  Speaker 1: about today's system. What do we know? No matter who
• 2:11:35
  Speaker 1: you are, it's different from the pre internet era. Very
• 2:11:39
  Speaker 1: hard to reach people. Okay, maybe the usual suspects will
• 2:11:44
  Speaker 1: come to see you live, but to get your new
• 2:11:47
  Speaker 1: music into the hands of the public, to have radio
• 2:11:51
  Speaker 1: and other exposure outlets play it, it's difficult for absolutely
• 2:11:56
  Speaker 1: everybody new and classic acts. So you have a new
• 2:12:01
  Speaker 1: album coming out imminently, what was the motivation to do it?
• 2:12:07
  Speaker 1: Also knowing that it's harder than ever for people to
• 2:12:10
  Speaker 1: hear it. Many people don't record at all. Who are
• 2:12:12
  Speaker 1: your vintage and how did it suddenly become Jethro Toll
• 2:12:16
  Speaker 1: again as opposed to Ianni Anderson, Well, i've I mean,
• 2:12:20
  Speaker 1: people have found up saying, oh, it's the first new
• 2:12:22
  Speaker 1: jethro Tel album in twenty years, but it's not. It's
• 2:12:24
  Speaker 1: actually nineteen. And secondly, there's been quite a few record
• 2:12:28
  Speaker 1: releases in that period of time, you know. In two
• 2:12:30
  Speaker 1: thousand and eleven, I started work on a new project
• 2:12:32
  Speaker 1: which turned out to be as thick as a Break too,
• 2:12:35
  Speaker 1: although I released it under my own name at that point.
• 2:12:37
  Speaker 1: And and then two years later there was Homoerraticus, again
• 2:12:41
  Speaker 1: released under my own name, but in retrospect probably that
• 2:12:45
  Speaker 1: should have been released as a jet Hotel album because
• 2:12:47
  Speaker 1: it was the same bunch of guys who are on
• 2:12:49
  Speaker 1: the Zelo Gene and have been playing with me for
• 2:12:53
  Speaker 1: an average of about fifteen years, the longest lineup of
• 2:12:56
  Speaker 1: jeth Hotel ever. And and then of course the String
• 2:13:01
  Speaker 1: Quartets album, which once again got to number one in
• 2:13:06
  Speaker 1: the Billboard charts of some obscure category classical crossover or
• 2:13:09
  Speaker 1: whatever it's called. And it you know, I've not been
• 2:13:13
  Speaker 1: I've not been asleep on my feet, you know. I've
• 2:13:15
  Speaker 1: been busy working at things and obviously doing a huge
• 2:13:19
  Speaker 1: amount of tours. But the time came in during two
• 2:13:25
  Speaker 1: sixteen I decide I should I should make a new
• 2:13:27
  Speaker 1: record again of two years after the previous one, And
• 2:13:30
  Speaker 1: at the beginning of two thousand seventeen, I cracked on
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 1: with the job of a new album, which I decided
• 2:13:36
  Speaker 1: would be a Jet Hotel album. And decided I would
• 2:13:40
  Speaker 1: write a bunch of of songs that each one would
• 2:13:44
  Speaker 1: be about a different strong human emotion. That was the
• 2:13:47
  Speaker 1: simple underlying theme. So I wrote down a list of
• 2:13:51
  Speaker 1: words to describe human emotions, extreme human emotions, just one
• 2:13:57
  Speaker 1: word for each each one, and I wrote and words
• 2:14:00
  Speaker 1: like hate, vengeance, retribution, jealousy, anger, greed, and then some
• 2:14:05
  Speaker 1: nice stuff like fraternal love, spiritual love, erotic love, compassion, companionship, loyalty.
• 2:14:14
  Speaker 1: And I looked at my list of words which would
• 2:14:17
  Speaker 1: hopefully become songs, and I thought, Wow, these are all
• 2:14:20
  Speaker 1: words I remember reading in the Holy Bible. And so
• 2:14:23
  Speaker 1: in a whimsical moment of fancy, I did an Internet
• 2:14:27
  Speaker 1: search for examples of those words coming up in the Bible,
• 2:14:31
  Speaker 1: and and perused that with you know, a mixture of
• 2:14:36
  Speaker 1: amusement and some intellectual curiosity. Because I'm not a Bible
• 2:14:40
  Speaker 1: scholar and I am. I copied and pasted some examples
• 2:14:44
  Speaker 1: of those just as references when it came to write songs,
• 2:14:47
  Speaker 1: and the songs for the most part of songs about
• 2:14:49
  Speaker 1: the real world and the present day. But I allude
• 2:14:52
  Speaker 1: two elements of the biblical stories here and there, and
• 2:14:56
  Speaker 1: a couple of songs more obviously than others. But that's
• 2:14:59
  Speaker 1: the that's the that's the background to the record. And
• 2:15:03
  Speaker 1: it began in early two thousand and seventeen and I
• 2:15:06
  Speaker 1: we recorded seven tracks, four of which were complete by
• 2:15:10
  Speaker 1: the end of that that that year, and the rest
• 2:15:12
  Speaker 1: I kept telling myself, well, get on to finish the
• 2:15:15
  Speaker 1: rest of it, but we were on tour so much
• 2:15:17
  Speaker 1: in two thousand and eighteen and two thousand and nineteen,
• 2:15:19
  Speaker 1: and I kept putting it off, and then suddenly the
• 2:15:22
  Speaker 1: pandemic was honest, and another another period of more than
• 2:15:27
  Speaker 1: a year went by when we couldn't get together and work.
• 2:15:30
  Speaker 1: We were in lockdown, not allowed to be in each
• 2:15:32
  Speaker 1: other's company, and I understided I would do the last
• 2:15:36
  Speaker 1: five songs which I had written back in two thousand
• 2:15:38
  Speaker 1: and seventeen. They were all complete lyrically and musically, and
• 2:15:42
  Speaker 1: I just went back and relearned them and recorded them
• 2:15:46
  Speaker 1: at home as acoustic tracks, and which in a way
• 2:15:50
  Speaker 1: it was probably a good thing because it gave the
• 2:15:53
  Speaker 1: album rather like aqualung. It gave it a little bit
• 2:15:55
  Speaker 1: more variety in terms of dynamics and musical style. So
• 2:16:00
  Speaker 1: it was finally completed in and mixed and mastered in
• 2:16:05
  Speaker 1: June of this year, and the album art was stunned,
• 2:16:08
  Speaker 1: and I went in search of a record company who
• 2:16:11
  Speaker 1: might be brave enough to take it on. And you know,
• 2:16:14
  Speaker 1: we listened to the overtures of about six different record
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 1: companies and two in particular who we went into much
• 2:16:21
  Speaker 1: more depth with in terms of looking at the detail
• 2:16:25
  Speaker 1: of potential deals. And I made my decision. But unfortunately,
• 2:16:32
  Speaker 1: the the reality of today's world as we meant, meant
• 2:16:36
  Speaker 1: we would have to wait for some time in order
• 2:16:38
  Speaker 1: to get vinyl pressed, because it's the waiting time to
• 2:16:42
  Speaker 1: get with vinyl pressed from scratches somewhere. Some people will
• 2:16:45
  Speaker 1: say eight nine months, other people saying more than a year.
• 2:16:49
  Speaker 1: That's the queue to be in if you want to
• 2:16:51
  Speaker 1: get your new record pressed as a vinyl product. But
• 2:16:55
  Speaker 1: I've already um jumped the gun a bit by by
• 2:17:01
  Speaker 1: scheduling a release in the end of March two twenty
• 2:17:04
  Speaker 1: three for the next album, So we're already in the
• 2:17:07
  Speaker 1: queue for having that one pressed in time. But it's
• 2:17:12
  Speaker 1: been frustrating, to say the least, having to wait from
• 2:17:15
  Speaker 1: May June when I've sort of done the work, and
• 2:17:17
  Speaker 1: then thinking it's not going to be out until January.
• 2:17:20
  Speaker 1: It seems like another another long period of sitting on
• 2:17:25
  Speaker 1: my hands and then having to be re energized to
• 2:17:28
  Speaker 1: do all the press and promo, to try and um
• 2:17:32
  Speaker 1: make its presence felt amongst that small but argent body
• 2:17:36
  Speaker 1: of fans and perhaps introduced it to who people who
• 2:17:39
  Speaker 1: have perhaps not too aware of Jeter Hotel, but might
• 2:17:41
  Speaker 1: hear about it in what remains of the music media.
• 2:17:46
  Speaker 1: You're heavily active. If you talk about being on the
• 2:17:49
  Speaker 1: road so much that you can't finish the record, you
• 2:17:51
  Speaker 1: talk about scheduling a record in what is the motivation? Now?
• 2:17:56
  Speaker 1: There are a lot of acts they literally have to
• 2:17:58
  Speaker 1: work to pay the bills. You've had much more success
• 2:18:02
  Speaker 1: than many of those people. You're a smart guy. You
• 2:18:05
  Speaker 1: own your own publishing. To what degree is money motivation?
• 2:18:09
  Speaker 1: Some people they do the live gig because they just
• 2:18:12
  Speaker 1: cannot get that response anywhere else in life. That feedback
• 2:18:15
  Speaker 1: from the audience. So what keeps you still working on
• 2:18:19
  Speaker 1: the road and still making new records. Well, part of
• 2:18:23
  Speaker 1: it is just that that kind of creative urge that
• 2:18:27
  Speaker 1: you seem to have been born with and as a child,
• 2:18:30
  Speaker 1: you know, I can remember doing things. I was always
• 2:18:32
  Speaker 1: happy in my own company, playing alone, writing, reading, drawing,
• 2:18:36
  Speaker 1: and I mean that thing. I've always felt that creative urge.
• 2:18:40
  Speaker 1: And I don't feel the need to be with other
• 2:18:42
  Speaker 1: people necessarily to you know, for socializing, as I have
• 2:18:47
  Speaker 1: too much had too much older brothers, but I grew
• 2:18:51
  Speaker 1: up because they had left home. I was grew up
• 2:18:53
  Speaker 1: more or less as an only child, and I wasn't
• 2:18:56
  Speaker 1: particularly sociable at school, so I had plenty times to
• 2:19:00
  Speaker 1: try and develop that sort of creative side of my personality.
• 2:19:04
  Speaker 1: And I think that that never goes away. It's always
• 2:19:08
  Speaker 1: becomes a little quietly burning thing in the back of
• 2:19:12
  Speaker 1: your mind whatever else you're doing. And when it comes
• 2:19:14
  Speaker 1: to making a new record, you're also I could say
• 2:19:17
  Speaker 1: you we I am driven by another consideration, which is
• 2:19:21
  Speaker 1: that time is running out. You know, the the sands
• 2:19:26
  Speaker 1: of time are trickling through there in a very evident
• 2:19:29
  Speaker 1: and seemingly ever increasing way. And I was bigger. If
• 2:19:32
  Speaker 1: I don't do this now, it just could be too late.
• 2:19:34
  Speaker 1: That applies to touring as well as making records. So
• 2:19:38
  Speaker 1: I just want to crack on and do things that
• 2:19:40
  Speaker 1: I haven't done yet. And as long as I feel
• 2:19:42
  Speaker 1: that the that the creative juicies are flowing and the
• 2:19:46
  Speaker 1: end result isn't too embarrassing, that I'm going to carry
• 2:19:49
  Speaker 1: on doing it. And that's very evident in live touring
• 2:19:52
  Speaker 1: because of course the pandemic, the eighteen months that we
• 2:19:55
  Speaker 1: went through with not a single concert um that was
• 2:19:59
  Speaker 1: a of a heavy toll, particularly for the band. Guys.
• 2:20:02
  Speaker 1: I don't need to work, you know, I've got investments
• 2:20:05
  Speaker 1: and money stashed. I'm you know, I'm fine. I don't
• 2:20:08
  Speaker 1: need to work again. But they do. And so my
• 2:20:11
  Speaker 1: band and crew, you know, they had a real tough
• 2:20:14
  Speaker 1: eighteen months, was still having a tough time now because
• 2:20:17
  Speaker 1: although we did twenty shows in the latter part of
• 2:20:20
  Speaker 1: last year, and no we're near enough to recoup their
• 2:20:25
  Speaker 1: lots of earnings in the in the previous year and
• 2:20:27
  Speaker 1: a half. So you know, we we are. We're all
• 2:20:30
  Speaker 1: I think a little obsessed by having to crack on
• 2:20:32
  Speaker 1: with it and make up for lost time, and particularly
• 2:20:34
  Speaker 1: older people like me, older artists. Um, if some some
• 2:20:40
  Speaker 1: of us may have made the time may have come
• 2:20:42
  Speaker 1: and gone, it's too late, you know, the narrow window
• 2:20:44
  Speaker 1: opportunity unfortunately closed before some artists could re energize themselves
• 2:20:51
  Speaker 1: and get back on the road. Is the time has
• 2:20:53
  Speaker 1: gone by for some people. But for those of us
• 2:20:55
  Speaker 1: who are in reasonable health and mentally um equipped to
• 2:21:01
  Speaker 1: take on the you know, the stress and the mental
• 2:21:06
  Speaker 1: reality of what touring and performing us about. Then, you know,
• 2:21:10
  Speaker 1: I think we're all struck by the the inevitability. If
• 2:21:14
  Speaker 1: we don't do it now, there might not be another chance.
• 2:21:18
  Speaker 1: A year or two or five years from now, it
• 2:21:21
  Speaker 1: could be over. So I think that's a profound driving force.
• 2:21:26
  Speaker 1: However desperate it sounds. There is a degree of desperation
• 2:21:29
  Speaker 1: about it, but there's nothing wrong with that. You know.
• 2:21:32
  Speaker 1: Some people are just desperate to have a good time
• 2:21:34
  Speaker 1: and go and party with their friends down at the nightclub.
• 2:21:36
  Speaker 1: And I'm desperate to get on the road and do
• 2:21:38
  Speaker 1: some concerts and and carry on with the record that
• 2:21:41
  Speaker 1: I began twelve days ago. It's twelve diggers, yeah, thirteen
• 2:21:47
  Speaker 1: days ago. On the January, the Onet as I've done
• 2:21:51
  Speaker 1: with the last three or four records. January the first
• 2:21:53
  Speaker 1: nine AM, I told everybody that's when I'm starting the
• 2:21:56
  Speaker 1: new project, and I did, and so I'm I'm now
• 2:22:02
  Speaker 1: thirteen days into that, almost two weeks, slightly hampered by
• 2:22:07
  Speaker 1: the fact that I've been spending many hours a day
• 2:22:09
  Speaker 1: doing press and promo, but even today I managed to
• 2:22:12
  Speaker 1: slip a couple of hours in working up some refinements
• 2:22:17
  Speaker 1: on a couple of song ideas, and I am you know,
• 2:22:20
  Speaker 1: I'm now in a position where I can be pretty
• 2:22:23
  Speaker 1: confident by the end of this month, I'm going to
• 2:22:25
  Speaker 1: be making some demos to send to the guys, to
• 2:22:28
  Speaker 1: the band, in the band, and hopefully in the the
• 2:22:31
  Speaker 1: periods that we have ahead of us, when although I
• 2:22:36
  Speaker 1: hope we're on the road doing concert tours, we may
• 2:22:38
  Speaker 1: end up still ending up rescheduling yet again, and so
• 2:22:41
  Speaker 1: we may have time to start recording earlier than I
• 2:22:45
  Speaker 1: might have otherwise. But you know where, there's another record
• 2:22:48
  Speaker 1: in there for sure, and I know what it's called.
• 2:22:52
  Speaker 1: I have twelve pieces of music. I've written the first
• 2:22:55
  Speaker 1: draft of all the lyrics, and no, I'm not going
• 2:22:58
  Speaker 1: to tell anybody you or even my family or anybody.
• 2:23:01
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to breathe a word about what what
• 2:23:04
  Speaker 1: the record is and what it's about. And it's it's
• 2:23:07
  Speaker 1: too precarious, you know, because I always reserve the right
• 2:23:09
  Speaker 1: to change my mind, you know, scrap it if necessary,
• 2:23:12
  Speaker 1: and start again. But you know, it's to me, it's
• 2:23:15
  Speaker 1: like bad luck to tell people too much about what
• 2:23:17
  Speaker 1: you're doing. I couldn't agree more soon as I tell people,
• 2:23:20
  Speaker 1: then suddenly I can't do it now. You've also had
• 2:23:23
  Speaker 1: adventures in salmon farming. How did that come about and
• 2:23:27
  Speaker 1: how extensive was that? Well, I've been a musician for
• 2:23:30
  Speaker 1: quite a bit of my life and I thought I
• 2:23:33
  Speaker 1: did okay but doing that. But a little part of me,
• 2:23:37
  Speaker 1: I suppose it's um, you know, there's it's just that
• 2:23:41
  Speaker 1: it's just that feeling maybe that you you can turn
• 2:23:44
  Speaker 1: your hand to something else, and you don't want to
• 2:23:46
  Speaker 1: be too one dimensional in your in your life. So
• 2:23:49
  Speaker 1: I thought, there's probably a couple of other things that
• 2:23:51
  Speaker 1: I'm interested in doing, and maybe I should give them
• 2:23:54
  Speaker 1: a go. And I we we we got involved in
• 2:23:56
  Speaker 1: farming back in the late seventies, but that was you know,
• 2:24:02
  Speaker 1: sheep and cattle and wheat and barley and oilseed, rape
• 2:24:06
  Speaker 1: and stuff a bit bit bit bit ordinary, but I
• 2:24:11
  Speaker 1: was bitten by the bug of aquaculture. I read about
• 2:24:14
  Speaker 1: it actually in an airline magazine. I read an article
• 2:24:17
  Speaker 1: about fish farm in this growing new industry, and I
• 2:24:21
  Speaker 1: got quite interested in that idea. And I spent about
• 2:24:23
  Speaker 1: a year trying to find um some potential um sites
• 2:24:31
  Speaker 1: for marine aquo culture, which I was able to do
• 2:24:33
  Speaker 1: and got it. Literally put notched a toe, but the
• 2:24:37
  Speaker 1: whole of a both feet into the into the water
• 2:24:41
  Speaker 1: to get going on that, and it was an interesting
• 2:24:43
  Speaker 1: parallel career for twenty years to come, and during which
• 2:24:47
  Speaker 1: period of time we my companies. You know, we're one
• 2:24:52
  Speaker 1: of the major producers of smoked salmon, but unlike all
• 2:24:55
  Speaker 1: the other companies, I was producing the broodstock, the egg,
• 2:25:00
  Speaker 1: the hatchery, the fresh water part of salmon growth, the
• 2:25:03
  Speaker 1: marine on growing of the fish, harvesting, processing, primary processing,
• 2:25:09
  Speaker 1: and then and then finally the secondary processing and for
• 2:25:13
  Speaker 1: the most part smoked salmon which was going to some
• 2:25:16
  Speaker 1: of the premier outlets in the UK and elsewhere in Europe.
• 2:25:19
  Speaker 1: And so we weren't the biggest company, but we were
• 2:25:22
  Speaker 1: the only company doing the whole thing you know, from
• 2:25:25
  Speaker 1: brood stock and eggs right the way through to the
• 2:25:27
  Speaker 1: finished product on the supermarket shells. And so there was
• 2:25:32
  Speaker 1: quite a quite a an interesting time learning about a
• 2:25:36
  Speaker 1: whole new kind of form of business and a mixture
• 2:25:41
  Speaker 1: of business and science and biology. But of course it
• 2:25:47
  Speaker 1: had a an unfortunate consequence in terms of its impact
• 2:25:53
  Speaker 1: upon the marine environment, the sourcing of feed for salmon
• 2:25:57
  Speaker 1: and and inevitably the use of of chemicals to to
• 2:26:03
  Speaker 1: protect the fish from an antibiotics to present the fish
• 2:26:06
  Speaker 1: from disease. And and we were very much in the
• 2:26:10
  Speaker 1: spearhead spearheading of of trying to find the way to
• 2:26:13
  Speaker 1: do that and not be impactful on the environment and
• 2:26:17
  Speaker 1: not be overly reliant on on the artificial side of
• 2:26:21
  Speaker 1: intensive farming. So we were, you know, we we were
• 2:26:24
  Speaker 1: quite active. I mean, I was quite engaged with people
• 2:26:26
  Speaker 1: like green Peace and Friends of the Earth, trying to
• 2:26:29
  Speaker 1: you know, show them what it was we were doing,
• 2:26:30
  Speaker 1: and trying and explain that this wasn't you know, it
• 2:26:33
  Speaker 1: wasn't a perfect industry. But we weren't as bad as
• 2:26:35
  Speaker 1: we were being made out to be in some quarters.
• 2:26:38
  Speaker 1: But in the end, the inevitability caught up with me
• 2:26:41
  Speaker 1: in the in the new millennium, I decided that I
• 2:26:45
  Speaker 1: really there were a couple of things that I was
• 2:26:47
  Speaker 1: finding uncomfortable about intensive aquaculture, and I decided it was
• 2:26:53
  Speaker 1: time to call it a day. So I sold off
• 2:26:55
  Speaker 1: various arms of the business to different companies and turned
• 2:27:00
  Speaker 1: my back on aquaculture forever. But you know, twenty years
• 2:27:04
  Speaker 1: of I wouldn't say enjoyment, And somebody was a bit
• 2:27:08
  Speaker 1: scary because it was you know, I was I was
• 2:27:10
  Speaker 1: the investor, the sole shareholder. I was taking all the
• 2:27:14
  Speaker 1: risks and something was very, very risky to do UM.
• 2:27:17
  Speaker 1: And you know, we nearly came a cropper a couple
• 2:27:20
  Speaker 1: of times, but I managed to keep my shirt on
• 2:27:24
  Speaker 1: and and I was able to get out of it
• 2:27:27
  Speaker 1: without any losses, which is all I ever really wanted
• 2:27:30
  Speaker 1: to do. I mean, all that any profits we ever made,
• 2:27:32
  Speaker 1: I just turned it back into the company, and we've
• 2:27:34
  Speaker 1: tried to use that for growth in the company rather
• 2:27:37
  Speaker 1: than rather than I didn't need the income personally, so
• 2:27:40
  Speaker 1: it was just something to UM to do for the
• 2:27:43
  Speaker 1: sake of doing it and for the four hundred people
• 2:27:46
  Speaker 1: that were employed on our fish farms and and processing plants.
• 2:27:51
  Speaker 1: But anyway, been there, done that, won't be going there
• 2:27:53
  Speaker 1: again anytime soon. I went back to being a full
• 2:27:55
  Speaker 1: time musician because I part from anything else, you know,
• 2:27:58
  Speaker 1: I felt I was being torn into two different directions
• 2:28:02
  Speaker 1: all the time. With my available number of hours of
• 2:28:06
  Speaker 1: waking energy, I thought I just should get on being
• 2:28:10
  Speaker 1: a musician again. That's where I started and where I
• 2:28:12
  Speaker 1: should finish. So I will look back on my years
• 2:28:17
  Speaker 1: in aquaculture with a degree of fondness and some achievement.
• 2:28:21
  Speaker 1: But it's not, you know, it's not something I think
• 2:28:24
  Speaker 1: I miss if I if I ever, if I ever
• 2:28:27
  Speaker 1: thought about carrying on with it, it would have been
• 2:28:29
  Speaker 1: in shellfish farming, which is really very very almost zero impact.
• 2:28:33
  Speaker 1: Um I'm you know, I would have been a muscle farmer,
• 2:28:36
  Speaker 1: perhaps an oyster farmer, scallop farmer, but um, anything that
• 2:28:42
  Speaker 1: involves intensive feeding and intensive husbandry where you're putting a
• 2:28:48
  Speaker 1: lot of live animals into a small space and then
• 2:28:50
  Speaker 1: having to bash them over the head or put toxic
• 2:28:53
  Speaker 1: carbon monoxide into a bath to kill them. And yeah,
• 2:28:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not I'm not a veg I am
• 2:29:00
  Speaker 1: mostly vegetarian, and I am one of those people who
• 2:29:05
  Speaker 1: find it more increasingly difficult to justify eating something that
• 2:29:09
  Speaker 1: had a face on it, which is why I can
• 2:29:12
  Speaker 1: carry on. I think I could have carried on being
• 2:29:14
  Speaker 1: a muscle farmer, because hard as you, hard as you
• 2:29:17
  Speaker 1: may try, you don't see a pair of eyes or
• 2:29:20
  Speaker 1: any anguish facing you. A lobster, on the other hand,
• 2:29:24
  Speaker 1: you do, and a squid or an octopus you certainly do.
• 2:29:28
  Speaker 1: And so some stuff I just wouldn't want to do anymore.
• 2:29:32
  Speaker 1: I personally killed thousands of fish, and at the time,
• 2:29:38
  Speaker 1: you know, you got on and did it because I
• 2:29:40
  Speaker 1: was working on the farm, you know, here and there
• 2:29:43
  Speaker 1: in a part time capacity. And I I look back
• 2:29:48
  Speaker 1: on the what would be seen as a rather callous
• 2:29:52
  Speaker 1: attitude in in in just and just dispatching all these
• 2:29:58
  Speaker 1: these beautiful creatures and turning them into what was then
• 2:30:03
  Speaker 1: still a relatively luxury food. I couldn't have carried on
• 2:30:09
  Speaker 1: doing that. Sound a bit of a softie. I'm I'm
• 2:30:12
  Speaker 1: a pussycat, partly because I like pussycats, and partly because
• 2:30:15
  Speaker 1: I I actually really don't like being involved in harming
• 2:30:21
  Speaker 1: living creatures. That goes against my principles and my my
• 2:30:26
  Speaker 1: spiritual beliefs. But it's not to say that I never
• 2:30:29
  Speaker 1: eat meat or never eat fish, but I do it
• 2:30:34
  Speaker 1: very sparingly and try to um. You know, I mean
• 2:30:39
  Speaker 1: eating meat is you know, I would have a difficulty
• 2:30:43
  Speaker 1: arguing for it. But it if it's if it's been
• 2:30:49
  Speaker 1: extensively reared, not intensively, and it's been organically reared, um,
• 2:30:56
  Speaker 1: and it's had a good a good bit of time
• 2:30:59
  Speaker 1: just sitting out there in the fields and chewing on
• 2:31:03
  Speaker 1: grass and filling the sun on its back and and
• 2:31:07
  Speaker 1: the wind and it's hair or its fleece or whatever
• 2:31:11
  Speaker 1: it might be. Then I'm it's marginally easier to argue
• 2:31:16
  Speaker 1: for it than something that's grown up on concrete and
• 2:31:20
  Speaker 1: and never actually never actually stepped out into the open air. UM.
• 2:31:25
  Speaker 1: So you know, I have a problem with eating chicken
• 2:31:28
  Speaker 1: because so often, of course it's battery real chicken. And
• 2:31:31
  Speaker 1: I know from from experience as to what that looks like.
• 2:31:35
  Speaker 1: Because we've occasionally taken in some some chickens that have
• 2:31:39
  Speaker 1: been unwanted by intensive chicken farms, and we've brought them
• 2:31:45
  Speaker 1: home to to rear and have another life at home
• 2:31:48
  Speaker 1: with us and miractus. They all started laying again and
• 2:31:52
  Speaker 1: and and living on for another couple of years of
• 2:31:56
  Speaker 1: a happy life being being able to go out and
• 2:31:59
  Speaker 1: in when it eastern and wander around a big space
• 2:32:02
  Speaker 1: suitably fenced against the the invading foxes and dogs and
• 2:32:09
  Speaker 1: cats that might otherwise do them hard. But you know
• 2:32:11
  Speaker 1: that I'm I'm a bit of a softy when it
• 2:32:13
  Speaker 1: comes to animals, and um, I don't feel embarrassed to
• 2:32:18
  Speaker 1: say that. Not the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
• 2:32:21
  Speaker 1: You have your opinion. For those who were fans of
• 2:32:24
  Speaker 1: rock of Jeff Row Tall, they can't understand it. There
• 2:32:28
  Speaker 1: are dozens of acts that should not be in the
• 2:32:32
  Speaker 1: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. If Jeff row Toll
• 2:32:34
  Speaker 1: is not in it, what is your viewpoint of that? Well,
• 2:32:37
  Speaker 1: I you know, I appreciate that people who are the
• 2:32:39
  Speaker 1: best will in the world, you know, would be campaigning
• 2:32:41
  Speaker 1: or arguing for Jeter Hotel being inducted into the Rock
• 2:32:45
  Speaker 1: and Roll Hall of Fame. But first of all, when
• 2:32:51
  Speaker 1: the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame opened in Cleveland,
• 2:32:53
  Speaker 1: I was one of the first people to, having been asked,
• 2:32:56
  Speaker 1: I donated some memorabilia to the Rock and Roll Hall
• 2:33:00
  Speaker 1: of Fame. So we were in there right from the right.
• 2:33:02
  Speaker 1: From the get go. Jet Hotel was present in the
• 2:33:04
  Speaker 1: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But if we mean
• 2:33:07
  Speaker 1: being inducted into the rock and Roll Hall of Fame,
• 2:33:09
  Speaker 1: that's a different matter. And I've always felt that the
• 2:33:12
  Speaker 1: American Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is that peculiarly
• 2:33:14
  Speaker 1: American institution to celebrate American music and its influence perhaps
• 2:33:20
  Speaker 1: elsewhere in some cases, but it's about musical Americana past, present,
• 2:33:26
  Speaker 1: and hopefully in the future. And I don't believe that
• 2:33:29
  Speaker 1: Jester Hotel really qualifies in regard to that, compared to
• 2:33:33
  Speaker 1: many other artists. So I think it would be a
• 2:33:35
  Speaker 1: bit of an anomaly for Jester Hotel to be in
• 2:33:38
  Speaker 1: inducted into the American Rock and Hall rock and Roll
• 2:33:41
  Speaker 1: Hall of Fame. Equally, there are some other bands who
• 2:33:43
  Speaker 1: have been I also don't think really belonging there for
• 2:33:46
  Speaker 1: similar reasons. But you know, there are there are many, many,
• 2:33:50
  Speaker 1: many American acts who do deserve because they may not
• 2:33:52
  Speaker 1: be very famous or necessarily have left so much behind them,
• 2:33:58
  Speaker 1: but they are still influential, unimportant, and I don't think
• 2:34:01
  Speaker 1: I've been given the recognition that perhaps they they deserve
• 2:34:07
  Speaker 1: as part of that big, an evolving story of American music.
• 2:34:13
  Speaker 1: So you know, That's how I feel about it. But
• 2:34:15
  Speaker 1: we could go into the sort of mechanics of it,
• 2:34:17
  Speaker 1: which is that I think the board that make these decisions.
• 2:34:23
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure if it still does, but it certainly
• 2:34:24
  Speaker 1: did have a guy Jan Whenner, who was the editor
• 2:34:30
  Speaker 1: of Rolling Stone, who had a particular dislike of jeth Hotel.
• 2:34:33
  Speaker 1: And I've heard from a number of sources that you know,
• 2:34:35
  Speaker 1: he absolutely would you hate jeth Hotel and wouldn't dream
• 2:34:39
  Speaker 1: of of of us being in there. And that's fine,
• 2:34:45
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm for different reasons, I kind of agree
• 2:34:48
  Speaker 1: with him. You know, I don't know the man at all,
• 2:34:50
  Speaker 1: never met him, but you know, he's entitled to his opinion,
• 2:34:52
  Speaker 1: and that may be one of the reasons that that
• 2:34:57
  Speaker 1: it's never been broke. But it would be difficult for
• 2:35:01
  Speaker 1: me right now if somebody said, oh, guess what them,
• 2:35:04
  Speaker 1: you know, we want to induct you into the Rock
• 2:35:06
  Speaker 1: and Roll Hall of Fame? Are you were you available
• 2:35:09
  Speaker 1: two months next Tuesday to come to l A and
• 2:35:11
  Speaker 1: be to be there? And I'm afraid I would have
• 2:35:13
  Speaker 1: to say I'm sorry, I'm not. I'm supposed to be
• 2:35:16
  Speaker 1: supposed to be uh supposed to be playing in Santiago
• 2:35:20
  Speaker 1: de Compostella in Spain that day, or I actually got
• 2:35:23
  Speaker 1: to be in Moscow to do a show, um, or
• 2:35:27
  Speaker 1: maybe I'm just washing my hair, but the chances are
• 2:35:31
  Speaker 1: I would not be inclined, just as I didn't want to,
• 2:35:33
  Speaker 1: even as the record company wanted to pay for the
• 2:35:35
  Speaker 1: tickets for to fly us over to l A for
• 2:35:38
  Speaker 1: the Grammy ceremony, which they would convincedly wouldn't win, so
• 2:35:41
  Speaker 1: there's no point in wasting their money. But even if
• 2:35:43
  Speaker 1: they had, I wouldn't really have wanted to go. I
• 2:35:46
  Speaker 1: just don't really like long hold travel for the sake
• 2:35:48
  Speaker 1: of it. I can I can be pressed, pushed, nudged
• 2:35:53
  Speaker 1: onto an airplane if if I'm actually going to work
• 2:35:56
  Speaker 1: and it's the band and the crew and we're all
• 2:35:58
  Speaker 1: trying to earn a living. They are, But so just
• 2:36:02
  Speaker 1: for the fun and games of some awards ceremony or something,
• 2:36:05
  Speaker 1: my heart's not in it. I don't think I would
• 2:36:07
  Speaker 1: want to go, and it would then be seen as
• 2:36:08
  Speaker 1: very rude. If I had to turn around and say,
• 2:36:10
  Speaker 1: you know what, I don't want to come. I don't
• 2:36:11
  Speaker 1: want to do that. People were just thinking I was.
• 2:36:14
  Speaker 1: It was sour grapes. I was just saying it because
• 2:36:16
  Speaker 1: I was miffed. I was peeved that we've not been
• 2:36:21
  Speaker 1: previously asked. So I'm in a bit of a no
• 2:36:23
  Speaker 1: win situation there. But in telling you this, since you
• 2:36:28
  Speaker 1: were listened to by a lot of people in the
• 2:36:31
  Speaker 1: in the media and in the music business, it will
• 2:36:34
  Speaker 1: hopefully serve as a warning to anybody in the both
• 2:36:37
  Speaker 1: in the Grammy system and in the the Rock and
• 2:36:41
  Speaker 1: Roll Hall of Fame. There's no point in asking him
• 2:36:43
  Speaker 1: because he's made it pretty clear he's not going to come. Well,
• 2:36:46
  Speaker 1: there are a number of acts who have finally been
• 2:36:48
  Speaker 1: inducted who didn't come, and uh, most notably Todd Rongwan
• 2:36:53
  Speaker 1: in this last year. But without going down that path,
• 2:36:56
  Speaker 1: I must admit that I was anxious about doing this.
• 2:36:59
  Speaker 1: I only met you once, not that you would ever remember.
• 2:37:02
  Speaker 1: I think the show was at the Kodak and it
• 2:37:04
  Speaker 1: was after the show. I'm sophisticated enough to know it's
• 2:37:07
  Speaker 1: very hard to come down, but you have a reputation
• 2:37:10
  Speaker 1: as being somewhat difficult. So I am stunned that you're
• 2:37:16
  Speaker 1: such a rack and tour and you're so loquacious. Now
• 2:37:20
  Speaker 1: to me, I could talk to you till the end
• 2:37:22
  Speaker 1: of time. I've given you more time than I've given
• 2:37:24
  Speaker 1: anybody else. But you also say you're a loner. So
• 2:37:30
  Speaker 1: is it that you don't suffer fools and there are
• 2:37:32
  Speaker 1: certain people you'll talk to, or is it really you're
• 2:37:36
  Speaker 1: talking to me but you'd rather be alone. Well, you know,
• 2:37:41
  Speaker 1: part of it, you know, brutally it is. It's part
• 2:37:44
  Speaker 1: of the job. You know, you've you've got to overcome
• 2:37:47
  Speaker 1: that desire for a seclusion. You get on with it.
• 2:37:52
  Speaker 1: You know, you just have to get on with doing it.
• 2:37:53
  Speaker 1: And if you're gonna do it, do it graciously, do
• 2:37:55
  Speaker 1: it nicely, smile on the face, cracking joe and trying
• 2:37:59
  Speaker 1: to try to make in it, trying to be genuine,
• 2:38:01
  Speaker 1: you know. So that's what I do. If I have
• 2:38:02
  Speaker 1: to do meet and greets after a show, I grown,
• 2:38:05
  Speaker 1: oh my god, it's one of checking my schedule. I'm
• 2:38:08
  Speaker 1: meeting greet and I've got to do these things. It's
• 2:38:11
  Speaker 1: Bob left Set guy. I've heard of him, yeah, And
• 2:38:14
  Speaker 1: by fact that I mean I do remember meeting And
• 2:38:16
  Speaker 1: my wife actually said to me today, said I remember
• 2:38:18
  Speaker 1: meeting him backstage after a show. But you know, I'm
• 2:38:22
  Speaker 1: I'm usually you won't find that many people who said
• 2:38:26
  Speaker 1: I was shirlish or unfriendly or whatever. If if I
• 2:38:30
  Speaker 1: say I'm going to say hello to somebody and meet somebody,
• 2:38:32
  Speaker 1: I I do my best, you know, but but of course, privately,
• 2:38:37
  Speaker 1: I'd probably just rather be, you know, I'd rather be
• 2:38:40
  Speaker 1: heading back to the hotel and watching David Letterman, or
• 2:38:43
  Speaker 1: or you know, getting to bed and going to sleep.
• 2:38:46
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm just not naturally a gregarious and chumby guy.
• 2:38:50
  Speaker 1: But if I'm going to do it, I'm going to
• 2:38:52
  Speaker 1: try and do it properly. Because I've met a couple
• 2:38:55
  Speaker 1: of people who've been churlish and unfriendly and and it's
• 2:38:59
  Speaker 1: a huge just appointment when you when you actually do
• 2:39:02
  Speaker 1: get the impression that someone just is prepared to be
• 2:39:07
  Speaker 1: really rude to you and cut you off just because
• 2:39:10
  Speaker 1: they're not in the mood. And and so I I
• 2:39:14
  Speaker 1: am aware of how that comes across, because I feel
• 2:39:16
  Speaker 1: pretty badly towards off top of my head, two or
• 2:39:19
  Speaker 1: three famous people that I actually said, oh, hi, really
• 2:39:23
  Speaker 1: nice to meet you, Ian Anderson from jether Hotel, and
• 2:39:25
  Speaker 1: they just turned their back on me and walked away.
• 2:39:27
  Speaker 1: And what what did I do? What did that what
• 2:39:31
  Speaker 1: did I do to upset you? Van mentioned mentioning their names,
• 2:39:35
  Speaker 1: and so it's a it's you know, I'm I'm aware
• 2:39:38
  Speaker 1: of how much it kind of hurts if you if
• 2:39:40
  Speaker 1: you're a fan of somebody and then they and they
• 2:39:44
  Speaker 1: treat you in a off hand or a dismissive way,
• 2:39:49
  Speaker 1: is quite hurtful. So I would hope there aren't too
• 2:39:52
  Speaker 1: many people who would have that tale to tell about me,
• 2:39:55
  Speaker 1: But a lot of people who will say, I know,
• 2:39:57
  Speaker 1: he just doesn't like to meet people and like to
• 2:39:58
  Speaker 1: say hello. He looks say they're probably right, but I wouldn't.
• 2:40:02
  Speaker 1: I would hope they wouldn't. They won't be talking about
• 2:40:04
  Speaker 1: personal experience as much as anecdotal stuff that goes around.
• 2:40:08
  Speaker 1: But you know, I'm a pretty friendly guy to most
• 2:40:10
  Speaker 1: people when i'm you know, when I when I have
• 2:40:14
  Speaker 1: to do it, when I'm confronted it was somebody stops
• 2:40:16
  Speaker 1: me in the street. It's a fan, you know. And
• 2:40:19
  Speaker 1: most of the time I'm gonna say, hi, really nice
• 2:40:22
  Speaker 1: to meet you, thank you, thanks for you know, buying
• 2:40:26
  Speaker 1: a record or do whatever. But if they then produce,
• 2:40:29
  Speaker 1: you know, twenty albums from a from a bag that
• 2:40:32
  Speaker 1: I know, we're going to end up on eBay that
• 2:40:33
  Speaker 1: I'm probably going to lose my tolerance fairly quickly. And
• 2:40:37
  Speaker 1: in these COVID times, and I've had the experience of
• 2:40:39
  Speaker 1: this during the last few months. Is it's really not
• 2:40:42
  Speaker 1: a great time to be grabbing hold of me and
• 2:40:45
  Speaker 1: trying to get me to sign things or hug me
• 2:40:48
  Speaker 1: while you're doing a selfie. You know, we're in the
• 2:40:51
  Speaker 1: middle of a pandemic right now, and I do not
• 2:40:54
  Speaker 1: want to be the one who puts my band and
• 2:40:56
  Speaker 1: crew out of work by getting COVID when I could
• 2:40:58
  Speaker 1: avoid it. So, um, you know, I'm probably a little
• 2:41:02
  Speaker 1: more inclined to be avoiding people right at the moment,
• 2:41:07
  Speaker 1: and that may go on for some months to come.
• 2:41:09
  Speaker 1: So I've tried to say two people, please, you know,
• 2:41:12
  Speaker 1: from a distance, I will thank you and give you
• 2:41:16
  Speaker 1: a smile and you won't see it because I'm wearing
• 2:41:17
  Speaker 1: a mask, but I'm smiling at you. Trust me. But
• 2:41:20
  Speaker 1: let's just leave it at there. That's just not trying
• 2:41:23
  Speaker 1: to be too pressing about it. But what about your
• 2:41:26
  Speaker 1: personal life? How social are you and your personal life?
• 2:41:30
  Speaker 1: Is there anybody you email with every day or talk
• 2:41:32
  Speaker 1: to every day? Do you go to dinner parties or
• 2:41:35
  Speaker 1: you really more of a home body loaner. Well, I
• 2:41:38
  Speaker 1: have a family and my my my daughter's family, and
• 2:41:41
  Speaker 1: my son's family live you know, pretty close by, you know,
• 2:41:44
  Speaker 1: quarter of an hour, half an hour, so we see
• 2:41:47
  Speaker 1: them probably two or three times a week. My son
• 2:41:50
  Speaker 1: in law comes almost every day to take the dogs
• 2:41:52
  Speaker 1: for a walk. Since he's he's out of work even
• 2:41:55
  Speaker 1: more than I am. Being a thespian and pandemic and
• 2:42:00
  Speaker 1: other things have meant it's been very difficult for him
• 2:42:02
  Speaker 1: to do the things that he's should have been during
• 2:42:05
  Speaker 1: the last couple of years. But um, yeah, you know,
• 2:42:08
  Speaker 1: we we were pretty close as a family and I
• 2:42:12
  Speaker 1: we have a few friends, most of them long standing friends,
• 2:42:18
  Speaker 1: not not in the music industry, but um but you know,
• 2:42:22
  Speaker 1: I mean I exchanged emails recently with who who was it?
• 2:42:26
  Speaker 1: Um Uh. Mark Armond from Soft Cell is a big buddy.
• 2:42:31
  Speaker 1: Unlikely because of the age difference in the musical style difference,
• 2:42:37
  Speaker 1: but but he's become a big friend in the last
• 2:42:40
  Speaker 1: few years and we do consciers together. He's a guest
• 2:42:42
  Speaker 1: of mine on our cathedral shows every year when we
• 2:42:45
  Speaker 1: do fundraises for churches and cathedrals and Tony Iomi, who
• 2:42:49
  Speaker 1: sent me an email at Christmas and I must get
• 2:42:52
  Speaker 1: together and have lunch. And you say these things, but
• 2:42:55
  Speaker 1: you know, in reality, another year goes by, another two
• 2:42:59
  Speaker 1: years go by, and you've sort of forgotten to do it.
• 2:43:01
  Speaker 1: But I guess again, you know, if you're getting older,
• 2:43:04
  Speaker 1: you're thinking, well, if I don't have lunch with Tony,
• 2:43:07
  Speaker 1: one of us is going to pop off sometime soon.
• 2:43:09
  Speaker 1: And you know, it's not like we're lifelong friends, but
• 2:43:13
  Speaker 1: we've known each other since nine a little bit, you know,
• 2:43:17
  Speaker 1: and he's one of those people that you know, he's
• 2:43:19
  Speaker 1: a good guy. And you know other people I suppose,
• 2:43:24
  Speaker 1: um um that I don't really communicate with that that much,
• 2:43:30
  Speaker 1: but there are a few people who are not necessarily musicians,
• 2:43:34
  Speaker 1: but you know, politicians or sports people or journalists and
• 2:43:37
  Speaker 1: people that I particularly at Christmas. You know, emails and
• 2:43:41
  Speaker 1: best wishes fly back and forth for a few days
• 2:43:45
  Speaker 1: of Christmas and New Year. Um. But it's um, you know,
• 2:43:50
  Speaker 1: it's it's just in balance. Really, I suppose probably true
• 2:43:53
  Speaker 1: to say I have less less less of a a
• 2:43:56
  Speaker 1: gregarious social life on a personal level than your average person.
• 2:44:00
  Speaker 1: But it's not entirely absent um. It does, it does,
• 2:44:06
  Speaker 1: it does get tempered, however, by the fact that at
• 2:44:08
  Speaker 1: this particular point in time, getting together for a boozy
• 2:44:12
  Speaker 1: lunch is probably not a good idea, since we and
• 2:44:16
  Speaker 1: in your country were in the throes of the O
• 2:44:19
  Speaker 1: macron dynamic surge. And although there are some signs at
• 2:44:23
  Speaker 1: least where I live that things are tapering off. I mean,
• 2:44:27
  Speaker 1: our infection rate would appear to have gone down to
• 2:44:31
  Speaker 1: just over half during the last two weeks, which from
• 2:44:34
  Speaker 1: very high levels, but it does appear to be seriously
• 2:44:38
  Speaker 1: on the turn, and hopefully hospitalizations and deaths will soon follow,
• 2:44:42
  Speaker 1: and maybe in you know, a week or two, you'll
• 2:44:44
  Speaker 1: see the same thing at least in some US states
• 2:44:47
  Speaker 1: that it is beginning to drop, and there are signs
• 2:44:50
  Speaker 1: of that already in Europe. Europe in the US seemed
• 2:44:53
  Speaker 1: to have been about three or four weeks behind the
• 2:44:55
  Speaker 1: UK all the way through this um and apart from Italy,
• 2:45:01
  Speaker 1: which started off very badly, but we all caught up
• 2:45:04
  Speaker 1: with that pretty quickly. But since then Britain has tended
• 2:45:07
  Speaker 1: to be one of the most infected countries with the
• 2:45:10
  Speaker 1: highest impact on on our lives, and the rest have
• 2:45:15
  Speaker 1: been you know, three four or five six weeks behind
• 2:45:18
  Speaker 1: and so and then some European countries are even further
• 2:45:22
  Speaker 1: behind and O Macron has not even really got there yet.
• 2:45:25
  Speaker 1: So and their countries with you know, maybe twenty thcent
• 2:45:29
  Speaker 1: vaccination rates, Boy, are they going to be in big trouble.
• 2:45:33
  Speaker 1: But you know, I think in America, I've spoke to
• 2:45:36
  Speaker 1: sending email from my American agents a few days ago
• 2:45:39
  Speaker 1: suggesting some periods of times have come back, and there
• 2:45:42
  Speaker 1: are a few shows in the USA in two thousand
• 2:45:44
  Speaker 1: and twenty three, and I'd be reasonably confident that that
• 2:45:47
  Speaker 1: can happen. As I'm hopeful, if not entirely confident, that
• 2:45:52
  Speaker 1: most of the shows in two thousand and twenty two
• 2:45:55
  Speaker 1: we'll go ahead, albeit some of them will have been rescheduled. Um.
• 2:46:01
  Speaker 1: But you know, I'm trying to be optimistic about all
• 2:46:04
  Speaker 1: of this, But at the same time, I've got to
• 2:46:05
  Speaker 1: be realistic and be prepared to to go um begging
• 2:46:13
  Speaker 1: the airlines for a refund on the tickets you bought
• 2:46:15
  Speaker 1: that you know can't use. Actually managed just two days
• 2:46:20
  Speaker 1: ago I finally got a refund from the very last
• 2:46:22
  Speaker 1: flights that I had not been refund if I finally
• 2:46:25
  Speaker 1: came through and they were from May two thousand and twenty.
• 2:46:30
  Speaker 1: I finally got the refunds two days ago. They actually
• 2:46:34
  Speaker 1: paid up brilliant, you know, so there is some honor
• 2:46:36
  Speaker 1: even amongst thieves. I wouldn't go that far. Yeah, I
• 2:46:40
  Speaker 1: had a flight like just after COVID began. I was
• 2:46:43
  Speaker 1: stunned when they gave me my money back, which was
• 2:46:45
  Speaker 1: over a year. In any event, Ian, this has been wonderful.
• 2:46:49
  Speaker 1: Listen to the tracks that were already outside city Sisters.
• 2:46:53
  Speaker 1: I really like I look forward to seeing you live again.
• 2:46:56
  Speaker 1: I'm sure even more you look forward to being on
• 2:46:59
  Speaker 1: the road. Thanks so much for taking the time. A
• 2:47:01
  Speaker 1: great pleasure. Nice too, Nice to see you and talk
• 2:47:03
  Speaker 1: to you, and great to see you're still as active
• 2:47:07
  Speaker 1: and there's much a voice to be listened to amongst
• 2:47:12
  Speaker 1: fans and the industry alike. So you keep at it
• 2:47:15
  Speaker 1: and become filled with the same desperation as I am
• 2:47:19
  Speaker 1: that it's not time to quit. Yes, and there's more
• 2:47:21
  Speaker 1: to do. No, no, no, no. I'm not quite as
• 2:47:23
  Speaker 1: old as you, but I'm feeling it and I'm not retired.
• 2:47:26
  Speaker 1: You know. This is my one and only so in
• 2:47:28
  Speaker 1: any event, thanks so much until next time. This is
• 2:47:32
  Speaker 1: bad WEPST