Colin H on Andy Powell
On March 1, I interviewed Wishbone Ash bandleader, scholar and gentleman Andy Powell for an Afterword exclusive – me in snowy Belfast, Andy in sunny Connecticut. In a couple of weeks, the Madfish imprint of UK label Snapper releases the colossal 30 CD + book/posters/etc set ‘Wishbone Ash: The Vintage Years 1970-91’. Cherry Red have also just released expanded 2CD editions of the band’s two mid-80s albums ‘Raw To The Bone’ and ‘Twin Barrels Burning’.
In 2015 I had the great pleasure of helping Andy with his autobiography ‘Eyes Wide Open: True Tales of a Wishbone Ash Warrior’. I’d recommend it to anyone interested not only in the glory days of British rock but in the nuts and bolts of how a band from that era has been kept alive in the changing times and circumstances since then, to the point of becoming the central cog in a kind of giant fan family around the world – a robust cottage industry thriving outside of the mainstream of what remains of the music business.
It’s well-documented that five years ago Andy Powell and Martin Turner, co-founder of Wishbone Ash, met in court to address ownership of the band’s name. This interview isn’t about re-running that episode. Everything Andy has to say about it, and in some detail, can be found in the book.
Happily, for both fans and the musicians concerned, the new box set marks a positive step forward for all of the 1970s members of Wishbone Ash. Their common interest around celebrating and curating the band’s ‘vintage years’ legacy, along with the driving force of a third-party label/project manager, has meant that the otherwise estranged parties could come together in an amicable, professional way to create a terrific looking product that everyone can enjoy. With a fair wind in the marketplace, there is every chance that all concerned may deliver a future set collecting together the band’s substantial canon of BBC recordings – most previously unissued.
Wishbone Ash – Andy Powell (guitar/vocal), Mark Abrahams (guitar), Bob Skeat (bass), Joe Crabtree (drums) – are currently on tour in Europe, with a US tour to follow and a UK tour (as ever) in October-November. Martin Turner’s band (‘Martin Turner ex-Wishbone Ash’) are currently touring the UK into April, performing the WA album ‘There’s The Rub’ in full.
The interview follows below…
Colin H says
CH: So, Andy, what’s the weather like over there?
(laughs) Well it’s quite Spring-like here but I see from Facebook that in Britain everyone is freaking out – a little snow and the whole place is grinding to a halt. Here in the North-East [of the US] it’s a fact if life – you need four-wheel drive vehicles, you need snowploughs, you need gritting… We do have days where things grind to a halt but for the most part they keep things going. But, of course, we have high taxes here to keep all these road services going.
CH: Speaking of things not grinding to a halt, it strikes me that it’s now slightly longer since ‘Illuminations’ (1993) than ‘Illuminations’ was from the start of Wishbone Ash (1969). How about that?
Is that right? Wow! Well, you see, I’m of an age where I still think the 90s was recent history – I still think of that as ‘the modern world’ – but it’s actually decades ago now.
CH: ‘Illuminations’ was the start, in many ways, of the ‘modern’ Wishbone Ash – post- the late 80s reunion of the original band, the start of the website era (with Wishbone being pioneers in that world) the start of the crowdfunding era (ditto), a whole new line-up and a case of you building the band back up almost from scratch:
I think that’s true. All those things you’ve just mentioned, they were seismic, really – the implosion of the record labels, the start of the Internet and social media and how it became very important to music, the self-marketing of bands, the whole crowdfunding thing… I mean, we were one of the first bands to do that before it even existed – before Pledge Music and so on – and ‘Illuminations’, as you mention, was funded in that way, and it was a brave move. Who could have foreseen that this would be the way of the world? It was still pre-streaming, pre-Spotify…
CH: Yes. I can certainly recall when working on my Bert Jansch biography in 1998-99 deliberately ignoring the Internet because in those days the kind of information available on it was of poor quality, whereas nowadays online research is a useful part of the research process. So, for musicians communicating with their audience, 1993/94 was absolutely pioneering days to be establishing an active web presence:
It really was and I credit two people for bringing me to that table and keeping my nose firmly pointed at what was going on. Leon Tsilis, he basically started the first website for Wishbone Ash – this was a guy who used to run A&R projects for MCA/Universal back in the day and handle the account for the Who, Wishbone Ash and Elton John. He retired from the business and became an Internet buff – he was ahead of the game. And then the other person was my eldest son Richard who begged us to buy the first Apple computer, was a huge Nintendo freak – he was of the gamer generation, dance music, that was his world. I’d come into his room with all these kids having sleep-overs, frantically gaming all night and just being absolutely captivated by the Internet. I really knew nothing about it but those two people really focused me on it and it coincided with those other things you mentioned – crowdfunding and streaming.
CH: You’ve said before, in the book for example (‘Eyes Wide Open: True Tales of a Wishbone Ash Warrior’, Jawbone, 2015) that these days WA is all about ‘total access’ and I imagine the mid-90s was when that ‘total access’ lightbulb must have appeared above your head:
It did, actually. There was a moment where I thought to myself, ‘I’ve either got to do this – like jumping into a swimming pool and swimming for your life – or just stay on the edge and observe’. And I made the decision that my life would be completely accessible, that I would be completely open – and once I made that move I actually found it could be fun. I was running a fanzine at the time, a print thing, so I was used to covering little events on the road and making it joyful and fun for fans, and I started to get the idea that the community was as important as the music. People who came to the shows also came for camaraderie, for communion with people of their age and their interests. Another thing that was hugely important was that branding suddenly became, by default, something that people paid attention to. The Wishbone Ash brand became something specific of an era, a generation, at the same time of all these other factors, and I became hugely aware of that.
CH: It strikes me that the whole community aspect of WA and its fan base is a massive part of what has made Wishbone Ash both viable and resurgent in the past 20-odd years:
I think in the early days we actually betrayed the trust of the fans here and there. I mean, we always were a band of the people – we got out there on the road, we played all the clubs up and down the country, in the UK, we ran fan clubs from the beginning, we were communicating with fans and certain fans became almost our street team. So, we were doing that right from the beginning but a couple of events shattered that little bubble and the first was when Ted Turner left [in 1974], and it was, ‘Oh, our boys – they’re not complete any more’. I mean, we’re not the only band this happened to – when you have a personnel change after 4 or 5 years and suddenly the magic is burst. And there was also that moment in time when we produced a bit of a turkey album, ‘Locked In’ [1976, the seventh WA studio album], and people went, ‘Aw, that’s not Wishbone Ash, they’ve gone off the boil…’ We lost a huge amount of cred and we lost a huge amount of fans with those two events.
CH: Well, stuff happens…
Yes, stuff happens but when you’re a fan of a band or an entity you put everything on a pedestal and that’s the nature of being a fan.
CH: But isn’t it just buying into a myth – this idea that a band is four people together, a ‘gang’…
It’s the whole superhero thing – you build things up to be superhuman and the truth of the matter is, we are all human. But those two events happened and they made things go a bit wobbly. But you can’t have a career of ups without some downs. I think with social media opening things up you’re able to explain why things change and bring people into the conversation – and that showed me that we had an interesting story, and it was an ongoing thing… like it was a TV show or something! (laughs) Not exactly a soap, though there were soap opera elements in it, but if you care to tune in you’re witnessing real life with real musicians.
CH: And you detail some of that in the book – some of the personality ups and downs within given incarnations of the band, even in recent times, with people aligning to the common goal for a period and then other things coming in or individuals realising it’s time to move on… Actually, on that score, there’s a feeling abroad that maybe Muddy Manninen’s [WA guitarist 2006-2017] departure last year wasn’t an entirely happy circumstance:
We have this song called ‘Keeper of the Light’ and one of my roles – and obviously I’ve got a vested interest – is to keep my eye on the bigger picture. I’m hugely sensitive to people going off the boil. If somebody’s feeling frustrated, maybe they feel the need for more artistic freedom, maybe things aren’t going in the direction they’d wish… I mean, we’ve all heard people say they’re leaving bands because of ‘musical differences’ or ‘I want to spend more time with my family’…
CH: And WA has indeed had one or two musicians who really have left for family reasons…
Absolutely. I think the thing with Muddy was that he put in 11 great years – a hell of a run for any band, or any business you care to mention – and put in a hell of a lot of creative input, for which I’m truly grateful. But towards the end of it… Sometimes people start to have a separate life, it’s no longer ‘one for all, all for one’, and I noticed that very definitely with Muddy. He started to have different relationships outside the band; there were some things going on where I could see he was starting to have different goal, and an incipient anger under the surface – which was probably borne out of frustration. When you feel unrequited, that things are perhaps not going in the direction you’d wish, then you start making some moves on your own, and I think Muddy was making some moves on his own. We were all aware of it, we’d talk about it a little bit and then other times we wouldn’t know anything about it. You know, I’ve had this several times in different bands with different people – communication is everything – where I’ve had to say (quietly), ‘Hey, what’s going on? I’m noticing you’re not communicating… how are things going?’ And we had one of those conversations on the phone and the next thing was, we’ll call it a day. There was a little bit of tension but it was quite gentlemanly, actually.
CH: So, it was Muddy who decided to move on?
Was it Muddy who decided to move on? Err… I think he’d already moved on!
CH: You simply helped him to the door?
Well, I said, ‘I’m not feeling, Muddy, that we – you and I – will ever write another album together. I’m just not feeling it in my water.’ And I think he had to agree.
CH: It’s very easy for people on the outside, with rose-tinted ideas about bands, to think in terms of ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ in situations like that, but many people probably don’t appreciate that you’re running a business – taking care of a legacy, a brand, getting involved in lots of fan interactions and the logistics that make a working band viable. So, it’s not simply you escorting a member of the team off the premises, as it were, it’s a case of looking after the bigger picture and keeping the whole thing happy and coherent and moving along the same path…
The thing that I’m hugely good at, because I’ve seen all the changes, I can smell change – I can sense it with people… I mean, I don’t expect people to give up their personal lives. I’m the one who gives up their personal life! It’s impossible for anyone to beat the amount of commitment I’ve put into the band – and I don’t expect it of people, I really don’t – that’s why we have certain business relationships within the band where I will take the risk. And as you’ve just mentioned, it is a business.
CH: People who don’t understand that by now are living in a fantasy world…
Well, part of being a musician is living in a fantasy world, because you have to be a romantic…
CH: Indeed, and as you say in the book a big part of being a working musician is the fun – so it must be tricky to balance the fun aspect with the business aspect…
It’s almost an impossibility! I’m the guy who puts my money where my mouth is. I mean, people think I have millions and all this – and I don’t! A big impetus on being on the road is that we all have to support ourselves. But the other thing is that you need romance, you need whimsy, you need creativity, and you need all these things to be nurtured – and money often flies in the face of that. My job is to reconcile all those disparate elements and to produce an album or to produce a tour, so when I sense that things are going a bit wobbly in one particular area of somebody’s life or they’re feeling they’d rather spend time on other things with other people then it’s my duty to bring it out, and that’s the way it went down with Muddy. Very often, it’s hard for people to recognise it themselves, that they’re changing and that that might actually make things uncomfortable for those around them! Actually, I’ve had people in the band tell me things about myself, saying, ‘Hey, you’re not acting for the greater good here, you’re thinking about yourself. We need to mention this to you – you’re being a bit of an asshole right now…’!
CH: And have you always reacted benignly to those observations?
Sometimes I’ve been hugely shocked, because I’ll be so much in my own world I’ve not always been thinking about the feelings of others – and that’s my failing. The difference with me is you can’t fire me!
(laughs all round)
I may not be the most prolific guy in the band but, as I’ve talked about in the book, I’m really good at ‘producing’ people [getting the best out of them] and good at ‘producing’ and managing a team. It’s one of the things I’m most proud of but it’s one of the things you can least brag about – the idea is so nebulous to people outside the band that it’s very difficult for them to get a grip on it.
CH: And yet the end result of that ‘team producing’ is on the stage any night at a Wishbone Ash concert. It’s an organic, ensemble performance – four people really playing together, not Andy Powell playing over the top of three anonymous backing musicians. There’s a lot of personality in the playing and that must be quite tricky to manage as well – to let people bring their own thing to a creative unit while the band, overall, has to stay true to its classic ‘sound’, under the benign dictatorship of yourself:
Benign dictatorship? (momentarily ponders whether this is an insult or a compliment) Er, yeah, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there…
CH: A benign dictatorship in that ultimately the buck stops with you. I mean, if Mark Abrahams came to you and said, ‘Andy, for the next album I think we need to do a load of Barry Manilow covers’, obviously you’re going to say, ‘No, Mark, that’s not going to happen’ – or, at least, I’d imagine that would be the case…
Yeah! (laughs) You put it very well, you’ve got the idea. For example, when I’m putting a live set list together I’m thinking about dipping into the catalogue and putting together a series of well-arranged, balanced music for a two-hour show. Somebody else in the band might be going, ‘Hey, I don’t have a drum solo…’
CH: It would be quite strange if it was the bass player thinking that, wouldn’t it?
(laughs) Yes. But everybody’s looking probably subjectively. I’m trying to look at myself in it as little as possible. I’m trying to think, ‘What would be really good for the show? Is it going to display a nice balance of material for the audience? Can I take into account the memories of people, the nostalgia factor, without becoming a covers band? Can I bring in some new material to show people that we are still creative, still vibrant?’ That’s the sort of thing I’m thinking about. I’m pragmatic. Other people in the band might not be thinking like that.
CH: Knowing Bob, presumably he’s thinking, ‘Hang on a minute, there *IS* a bass solo!’
Ha! Funnily enough, Bob is probably the most in tandem with where I am because the intrinsic thing about the bass is its always anchoring the music so it’s never about ‘you’. But, you know, guitar players are different – they’re fickle people, they love to be riding over the top of the music, they love to solo, they like the freedom of it. We’ve all heard jokes like drummers are people who hang around with musicians and so on, and I like that humorous aspect of it – I like to think I’ve been a teacher in a kindergarten sometimes! But I can also be a kindergarten student myself. That’s what makes it so much fun, and something that people who come and see bands don’t always see.
CH: Then again, they probably see more of that fun side of things with Wishbone Ash than would be the case generally – through that total access ethic, the band members being readily available to people after shows, having a drink, having a laugh, chatting, signing things. People are welcome to that with WA:
Yes, they are welcome to it. You know, I remember reading a Walter Trout quote, talking about musicians, the gist of which was, ‘Stop whinging and get back on the bus’, and he’s right – it’s an amazing life. It’s a privilege to be doing it. And if it stops being fun you need to stop and do something else. I’m a decision-maker – I don’t always like it, but I have to do it – I’m a problem-solver, I prioritise things, I’m a list-maker. I do things that a businessman would but I’m also able to have that musician’s hat on as well.
CH: It’s a heck of a juggling act…
Well, I’m looking at 50 years of it. It’s what I do! Timing is everything is life and knowing when to sit back and cruise a bit, when to push the envelope, when to address changes… there’s a time and a season to everything.
CH: You’ve said before that having Mark Abrahams coming in has been a bit of a shot in the arm, a bit of new energy. Has he helped you refresh the stage repertoire through his own enthusiasms for the band’s catalogue, or is it still you picking the material?
No, I’m never the one who solely picks the material. Mark told me a story about travelling in his dad’s car when he was nine or ten and the song ‘Standing in the Rain’ just grabbed him and he played it over and over again. So, Mark said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we played that song onstage?’ And I’m thinking, ‘Oooh, I don’t know! Let me think about that…’ But I looked at it and thought, ‘Yeah, we could do that – and that would be a great feature for him to solo in’. If somebody’s got passion for something, give ‘em their head and let them do it. So that would be just one small example. We’re playing that onstage now and it’s going down great.
CH: Is it a blessing or a curse that WA are still defined in the minds of many people as the original four guys and the first few albums – that people still want to hear 30-40% of your live set coming from that period?
Well, I think it’s a blessing. That was a very key period of music [1969-74] for a lot of bands and that period of time defines the brand. But, believe me, it doesn’t hog-tie us. Instead of fighting it you go with the flow. Some musicians get out on the road and they’re constantly talking about going home, writing songs about going home…
CH: Alvin Lee didn’t do too badly out of that sort of thing…
(laughs) True! But I buy into the idea that you are right were you are at that moment in time and that’s where you need to be and that’s where you are. It’s a kind of a zen thing. So I think I might have baulked at some of the early history [of the band] about 25 years ago but these days I’m just hugely grateful – it’s such a privilege. I’m not being phony when I say it, but really, it doesn’t impinge on my work in the slightest – it acts as springboard to enable us to be the band that we are right now. It defines us and it brings us a core audience in every night, and if we can lead them gently by the nose into new material, a new album like ‘Elegant Stealth’ or ‘Blue Horizon’ so they’re thinking, ‘Hey, there’s more of this stuff…’ then they might dig it, they might like it.
CH: Aside from the songs of those early years it seems to be that the ‘sound’ of Wishbone Ash was forged in that period…
Yeah, I totally agree. I call it the blueprint. I’m eternally grateful for those weeks, months, years that we spent slogging away in basements where we were (a) learning to play our instruments better, (b) laying down this blueprint, this ‘sound’. A lot of bands from the early, it’s why they stand up so well [today] – they all had their own distinctive sound: Yes, Jethro Tull, Wishbone Ash, Genesis… You just need to hear maybe a second or two of the sound. With us, okay, there’s the twin lead guitars but there’s also this vocal thing that we got into in the 70s – I can feed off that, I love it. I can go back to the records and, yes, they’re definitely from another century; I listen to them almost in the way an audience member would. It still mystifies me how organically we produced the sound.
CH: One could say the band’s first misstep was not continuing that vocal harmony aspect from ‘Argus’ into ‘Wishbone Four’:
It was.
CH: Did you realise that mistake at the time or was it only in retrospect?
I think it was [at the time]. This happens with a lot of bands from that era. With the first three albums we credited everything to everybody. It was very specifically Martin [Turner] who saw himself as the true creative genius in the band, and he made specific moves to further his songwriting work – he wanted to use the band more and more to further his own songwriting skills. And that coincided with the end of this ‘all for one, one for all thing’, and then Ted Turner left. So we’re talking about the first three or four years until the spell was broken and I think it was Ted leaving that broke that spell. We still had a pretty concerted band culture with Laurie [Ted’s replacement] in the band; it still was four guys on the road, living together, laughing, joking, eating together, all those other things. But I think the dissipation of that definitive vocal style, which was like a West Coast vocal style… It was dispensed with, and I think I was aware of that at the time. And I ceased to be as close with Martin as a co-writer and as a ‘producer’ – in the sense that we all ‘produce’ music from each other – and I think I went off the boil a bit. In many respects, Laurie became Martin’s muse and at that point there was a style shift. To my mind, we went up a lot of blind alleys and I think there were certain songs that Martin could pull off as a front man and a solo vocalist but there were an awful lot that he couldn’t, and I think we sacrificed the harmony vocal sound, which had been as intrinsic as the twin lead guitar sound.
CH: Of course, that multiple vocal sound is back in the band now, and has been for many years, in the sense of backing vocals from the two musicians either side of you onstage:
Yeah, and in fact on this last German tour [Jan-Feb 2018] we had a couple of backing vocalists in the band [support artiste Doris Brendel and an associate] which was huge fun, because a lot of that sound you mention was achieved with double tracking back in the day, like the Beatles had done. So suddenly on this last German tour we had this huge vocal sound onstage, which was great fun for me – it took a lot of pressure off me and balanced the guitar attack with a similar vocal attack. I’m not saying we could do that on every show but certainly we did it on the entire German tour and it worked beautifully.
CH: Tell me how the process of the forthcoming box set, ‘Wishbone Ash: The Vintage Years 1970-92’, began:
Well, Snapper Music in Britain have a couple of subsidiary labels, like Madfish, which this box set will be released on, and they’ve been hugely successful at producing these mammoth deluxe box sets. Number one, you need a band that’s had longevity and a band that’s been undisturbed by re-releasing its back catalogue and we fit that criteria exactly. Because we’ve been hugely underserved by former labels in terms of re-releasing and marketing the back catalogue. There were a lot of things that the fans wanted to hear that they couldn’t hear, re-releases they couldn’t get hold of…
CH: Yes, you’ve had things re-released very sporadically, items here and there in Japan or Germany, various best-ofs but not a full-scale reissue programme…
Exactly right. I don’t think this project is something that MCA or Atlantic or any individual member or collective of members of the band could have achieved. I did achieve it back in the day [in the 90s] with the 4CD set ‘Distillation’ and I got a lot of flak from various members of the band during that process.
CH: Yes, you became ‘The Man’ whereas now an outside entity, Snapper/Madfish, is wearing that hat:
Exactly. The thing is, the skills that they bring to bear in doing this sort of thing… they are able to talk to the [original] labels and educate them into what they have in the vaults and then, most importantly, talk to the original members – because some of the original members may not be talking to each other! (laughs) And that’s a political skill that they most specifically have and they really go the course – this is a three-year project for them. And then they’ve got to license all that material. Sometimes, the [original] labels are like, ‘Hmm, we don’t know if we want to license that stuff because we might be able to do something with it ourselves…’ and then they Snapper will say, ‘Yeah, but you haven’t and you probably won’t…’ And in 10 years’ time there are going to be kids working at that label who have no idea what classic rock is let alone Wishbone Ash, let alone a specific track. ‘If you don’t release it not, a lot of this generation won’t be around – so work with us, here.’ And that’s the big skill set of this company. They’ve won awards for doing it – they’ve done box sets with bands like the Family, like the Pretty Things… So when they came to me and said what they wanted to do, I was like, ‘Have at it – go for it!’
CH: I believe when they approached you they already had the other 70s members of Wishbone Ash on board:
Yes, I think they’d tackled the other guys before they tackled me. I think the other guys had told them that I would be the fly in the ointment but, the thing is, I actually wasn’t. Because more than many folks in the band I’ve kept everything. I was literally on the verge of throwing everything out, because I’ve got storage units in the States, in the UK – so much stuff, 24-track stuff, pictorial stuff, contracts… It was consuming me, actually. I was downsizing and I thought, ‘I’ve got to get rid of this stuff’. And blow me, at that very moment in time they came along and I was just hugely grateful to be able to go through all this stuff, catalogue it, collate it…
CH: And presumably have somebody else – Snapper/Madfish – pay for digitising the stuff…
Yeah, that’s part of their production, they work that out in the deal.
CH: It must be great to have someone else do the heavy lifting in a project like this…
Well, yeah. We also brought on board two fantastic fans of the band – Guy Roberts and Gary Carter. Gary Carter operating more for ‘the other side’ – I call them that – the guys who have thrown their lot in with a management company called QEDG. So all the guys who were formerly in the band [in the 70s], they seem to have thrown their lot in with this outfit and they were happy to have Gary represent their interests and then Guy Roberts, who has been a fan of the band from day one…
CH: And also the wizard behind your annual fan convention AshCon…
Well, actually, funnily enough, the very first AshCon was put together by Gary Carter. We felt he was a little unseasoned at that point and Guy ended up for one reason or another taking it over, after the second or third AshCon. Guy’s also a massive archivist himself. So I had that representation [from Guy] in London and these guys, between them – though they don’t always see eye to eye – worked really well as a team.
CH: It strikes me that Guy, who’s in the business world outside of music – and whom I’ve met a couple of times – is very professional and measured and able to deal with people and situations in an unflustered, can-do sort of fashion. He’s going to get things done and leave emotions to one side:
Absolutely. That’s actually his primary skill. He’s a brand manager, he’s also a financial controller for several companies and he’s also a pragmatist.
CH: I imagine, aside from the logistics of you not being based in the UK, that given the acrimony of recent years it’s been helpful for you *not* to have been at meetings around the project, but to have someone else representing you:
Yes, it was. I was able to convey my feelings through Guy as my representative. The gentleman who was really the lynchpin for the whole thing was Ian Crockett – he was able to talk the talk and walk the walk with every one of us and he’d be even-handed. He’s done this, obviously, with lots of other bands. It’s a fact of life that bands of that era – it was such a sort of, how can I put it… It was an unusual period of time for bands…
CH: A period of intense relationships – that have had a long time in which to dissolve!
Yes! It not only formed the basis of individual lives but it formed the basis of a whole entire baby-boomer generation. I mean, we produced the soundtrack to people’s lives.
CH: It’s curious, isn’t it, that to the minds of many people Wishbone Ash is and always will be the first four members – yourself, Martin Turner, Ted Turner and Steve Upton. And maybe Laurie Wisefield gets an honorary inclusion there too. But lots of people can’t accept that bands, like any other business, change. There are people who might say of today’s Wishbone Ash, ‘There’s only Andy Powell in it’, which misses the point. You must struggle with that…
Well, I totally understand it, let me put it that way. However, by virtue of the fact that I never left it – I never left the dream, I never left thinking about it as a band through all the changes – I look at it differently. I always talk about ‘we’ and ‘us’ and I’m very much bonded to the concept of the Wishbone Ash band. However, I totally understand if someone was a fan back in the day that they can only… It’s like, for many people in America, Fleetwood Mac is Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks whereas for me and many of my contemporaries in Britain – I mean, I saw Fleetwood Mac’s first gig. It will only ever be ‘Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac’ [to me], but I love the current band, I love the hits, I love what they do. But for me, the glory days were as Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac. So, I understand it. But don’t forget, I’m actually *living* this.
CH: Of course. But it seems specific to bands. Cadbury’s chocolate doesn’t have this problem. Nobody’s stopped buying Cadbury’s chocolate bars because the managing director from the 60s is no longer involved.
This is the nature of brands. Some brands do it better than others. Some brands mutate along the way – mutate and cease to become what they were. We did a little in the 80s…
CH: But a lot of classic rock bands of your era struggled in the 80s to adapt to the new sounds and technology that was around, and a lot of people went down blind alleys trying to sound like something they weren’t…
I think you’re absolutely right. I mean, there’s two great examples of that that have recently been repackaged outside of the box set, they give credence to that – the albums ‘Raw To The Bone’ and ‘Twin Barrels Burning’. Even the titles, they’re very in your face. It was the New Wave of British Heavy Metal at the time and we were struggling to find our place, no doubt about it. Those were the kind of doldrums, though having said that there was actually some interesting stuff [within it]. Cherry Red has re-released those two albums and you can see right there a band trying to adapt to the changing times. Now, subsequent to that, we came back to the blueprint and refined it, but we actually had to go off the rails to actually get to where we are right now.
CH: To continue the analogy, there was a period in the 80s where the rails themselves had terminated in terms of 70s rock bands continuing to sound like 70s rock bands. You had to do *something* different to stay in the game…
I shouldn’t beat myself up for that because there were seismic changes going on in everything, in the world in general, then, but that’s how I view it. But like I said about half an hour ago (!), a band’s career can’t be a succession of ups and ups and ups – there’s got to be some downs or some detours to be able to measure the value of what you do that is good.
CH: But having said that, Andy, you’re not likely to get up tomorrow and think, ‘It’s about time we made a bad album, so there’s a good one next time…’
(laughs) You know, even the bad ones – you’re always trying your best!
CH: Getting back to the box set, were there any pleasant surprises in it for you? It must have been a bit like Christmas, having somebody else do the running in getting this stuff mixed and mastered and you simply receiving it and listening to it.
Well, there’s a bunch of outtakes on the two Cherry Red reissues I was mentioning which I’d completely forgotten about. There was a song called ‘Nkomo’, another called ‘She’s Still Alive’, some ballads, some live recordings – you know, it’s so interesting to me, the criteria we used [back then] about whether a live track made the cut or not. Looking at it through the prism of today’s lens, through realism in music, which is coming back into vogue – people really like to hear ‘warts and all’. Back in the day, when we were producing our double album ‘Live Dates’, it was, ‘Oh no, we can’t have a little glitch there… Oh, he forgot a word there…’ But then you realise people actually like all that!
CH: And, of course, these days the technology is such that significant technical issues with live recordings can often be mitigated or fixed – or did you not need to do that with the various ‘new’ vintage live recordings in the box set?
Well, I think the technology we had with us at the time still stands up today. We were using the Rolling Stones Mobile…
CH: No, I was referring to things like amplifier hum or mic crackles, where these days it’s just a matter of isolating the waveform and deleting it…
Well, we had an issue on one track where for some reason the microphone fell off the stand that was recording the bass drum. I think the biggest issue is where you have the license to repair something like that – I mean, a missing bass drum for half of a song, that’s a good candidate where you say, ‘We need to sample that from another part of the song and insert that, because the song’s ruined otherwise’. But if somebody makes a mistake on a lyric or sings off-key or the guitar player fumbles a note – those are the things that are fun to leave in.
CH: So, has this box set pretty much cleared out the vault from that period (1970-91)?
Em, I think from that period but, mind, you’re only talking about the first 30 (sic) years! Though, as you know, the one road we didn’t go down for one reason or another was the BBC live recordings.
CH: Is a multi-disc BBC set the next project?
Yeah, I think so. I’ve talked about it, through my representative, with the original band members and we’ve also talked about it with Snapper a bit. So there’s a bunch of people talking about it. Nothing’s laid on the table yet but, trust me, at some point [those recordings] will see the light of day.
CH: Your use of ‘we’ there is interesting. People may not be aware that, in tandem with the legal entity of Wishbone Ash – being the ongoing performing unit led by yourself – a kind of temporary, project-specific contractual entity also known as ‘Wishbone Ash’ exists for the purpose of licensing and accounting arrangements around this box set, which is yourself, the three other founder members (Martin, Steve and Ted) and Laurie Wisefield:
Yes.
A win-win situation there – you and Martin setting aside your differences and coming together for a project that makes good business sense for all involvement and which will delight fans:
That’s absolutely right.
Quite an achievement, given that your legal history with Martin… Well, you’re not going to be friends again…
(laughs) Well, yes, you’ve come to the realisation that you’re not in this person’s life anymore, he’s not in my life anymore but we have common interests based on a body of work, so we need to be adults in the room, we need to get it together. But my spat with Martin was to do with legal issues [not personality issues]… and people can read about it in the book. But perhaps you’re right, to overcome all that… it’s a way of redressing the balance, a way of saying to the guys in the early band, ‘Look, you had all these great years, you left it, you imagine that when you left the band that the band would cease… well, *hello* – it didn’t cease. But if you come to the table and you understand that this is an ongoing entity, that the band, in the 40 years since you quit, has still been on the road generating royalties…’ I mean, half the time people don’t realise that they can only still talk about Wishbone Ash because there’s an income and there’s a…
CH: …pot that’s been kept boiling?
Exactly! I mean, I’m not claiming to be the only guy to have been doing so, but I’ve been flying the flag constantly and I’ve kept the pot boiling. I’m one component, but I’m a big component [in why Wishbone Ash is still a viable brand for reissues].
CH: Do the other guys in what we can term the ‘box set Wishbone Ash’ now appreciate that you are, with Wishbone Ash on the road, effectively the marketing department for the project?
You put it very succinctly there. If they’re smart they’ll see that. We’re like a diplomatic delegation that goes around the world. These tours and so forth are showcasing the brand, the name, the sound – all the things we’ve talked about – and, yeah, that’s really the main wing of the operation that does that.
CH: I take it you’ve heard the set?
Well, no. I’m waiting this week to get delivery of the whole thing. I did go down to visit the mastering engineer in Colchester, Pete Reynolds…
CH: Mastering used to be very much a backroom activity. It’s only in recent years that it’s become a kind of personality cult…
And all credit to Steven Wilson, a fellow Hemel Hempstead lad, for doing that. Yes, it has become a cult and these guys, they have such incredible material to work with because recordings were so well done in the 70s. You put it in the hands of a master like that and it’s going to be great. I think the mastering on our box set is going to be great – as I say, I haven’t heard the final masters but I’m hoping and praying! One of the areas where I’ve had to make a leap of faith is that this thing is being produced in Britain and Martin Turner is the go-to guy [for signing off on the mastering] – he always was the gentleman who’d most be in the mastering room in the early days. So, it’s been made clear to me that [with the box set mastering] the buck stops with him. Now, we’re not remixing anything…
CH: Although there was talk, early in the project, of remixing the low-point album 70s album ‘Locked In’, produced by Tom Dowd and resulting in a sound that nobody now feels was right for the band…
Yes, there was… And I think the quote from Martin that came back after he had addressed the problem was, ‘You can’t polish a turd’. (laughs) Martin always assumed that role [in the early band] so I’m trusting him on it. I’m at arm’s length from this thing because I’m in the US. I’ve seen PDFs of the coffee-table book and it’s looking really well. It basically consists of a 150-page interview with all the five members involved, quotes on every track and lots of rare visual stuff.
CH: Of the various unreleased concert recordings included, has anything stood out for you?
I think the Colston Hall recording is a really good one – people have been leaping up and down about it. There were guitar solos that were trimmed on some of the songs on the original albums that are now going to see the light of day, like ‘Persephone’. There was only so much you could put on vinyl.
CH: There’s been a lot of controversy recently on superdeluxeedition.com – on the back of a very expensive Roxy Music first-album box set that doesn’t include many relevant bits of audio content, but seems to be more focused on a high-end book – about value for money with box sets and whether they are in themselves a ‘luxury item’, like an expensive watch, or simply a collection of stuff that can only be judged on the actual audio content:
Well, ours is a limited edition: there will only ever be 2,500 made. I totally think it’s a value for money item. All of the printed material and memorabilia – it’s very tactile, beautifully presented, the printing quality, everything… For 30 CDs, let’s say a tenner apiece [if you were selling individually], this thing’s going to sell for £250 but you’re getting a lot of other material in there as well. I’ve seen box sets by people like Dylan and the Grateful Dead that sell for $500. So, no, I don’t think there’ll be any quibbles about value with this. It will hopefully cause Universal to re-release individual albums. There will definitely be a new best-of. [And] we’ve just talked about the BBC thing…
CH: But, to be clear, you don’t know specifically if Snapper/Madfish plan – as Universal often do with their colossal box sets of Island artists – plan to put out a 4CD ‘best of the box set rarities’ a few months after the full set, for those who can’t afford the full set?
No, I don’t know yet. But I think it may have been a part of the deal that Universal let Madfish do this set on the understanding that later they [Universal] could do a best-of. It could work both ways.
CH: So, in summary, it’s good that you’ve been able to establish a business relationship with your former colleagues that looks likely to undertake further projects…
Well, you know, it’s not like we’re the Pink Floyd; it’s going to generate some income but I think the priorities have been in the correct order. As with the book that you and I did, it’s a commentary on a generation and what it was like to be in a band, to show something in greater detail for people who are real students of the culture and the times and the way records were made. That was a big impetus for me, and also the consolidation of the career – it’s a tangible thing. You can sit there and think, ‘Wow – that’s 30 (sic) years right there’ – you see it, touch it, feel it, have a glass of wine, put that record on…
CH: So, never mind 30 years – 50 years next year…
Ha! Yeah, we’re branding the next year, the 49th, beginning with our British tour in October/November this year, with Roman numerals: XLIX.
CH: So people will think you’re as old as the Roman Empire?
Yes, we’re etched in stone! So we’re going to get through that year first, then we’re looking at 50 years and, yeah, it’s quite incredible, really. At the moment it’s the lull before the storm. I’m not doing too much…
CH: I imagine one of the handy things about this box set, with a third party doing the heavy lifting, is that it takes the pressure off the current Wishbone Ash in terms of creating new product:
Definitely. It’s enabled us to regroup. I think we need to take a deep breath – and the fans need to take a deep breath – just to ‘assess’. Assessing is a big part of moving forward. I do a lot of assessing when I’m in the shower. (laughs) Before you get into the day you need to think, ‘Now, what do I really need to do today?’ And I think the box set has afforded us as a band, collectively and individually, breathing space. I’ve noticed that everyone in the band seems to be individually going through huge growth in their personal lives at the moment. Joe [Crabtree, drums] has moved to LA; Bob [Skeat, bass] has got a little place in Spain and he’s engaged, possibly getting married this year; and then Muddy leaving was a big deal… But we’re still out on the road and we’re touring all over, so come and get the live experience – and in due course there’ll be a new album.
CH: And that new album will be in the 50th year?
I’m thinking it will.
CH: And will it be just another album or…
I can see where you’re going with this!
CH: You can?
You’re going with the covers album that we keep talking about!
CH: How did you guess? Here’s an idea: you make the album you want to make, in the here and now, and for the first thousand you make it a 2CD edition with a disc of Wishbone Ash performing some of the 50s and 60s songs that influenced you right at the start…
That’s a nice idea… Yeah… Not a bad idea, Colin!
Vulpes Vulpes says
Great read Colin, thanks! Hope that a 4CD ‘best of the rarities’ option does materialise; I’d set aside £25 for that for sure, but much as I love Wishbone Ash, I’m afraid I can’t/won’t stretch to the full set! I’ll be keeping my eyes open for the remastered first four if they show up, anyway, that’s for sure.
Colin H says
Yes, I’d hope there would be some kind of ‘best of the box set’ collection too. We shall see…
Freddy Steady says
@colin-h
Bit light in detail that interview but otherwise not bad…
Colin H says
Very good! 😀
Neil Jung says
I read the book and found it very interesting and enjoyable, likewise the interview, thanks for posting it.
Colin H says
Thanks Neil… 🙂