by Andy Powell
In my mind, when I was auditioning, I was also auditioning them. I felt that I’d already paid my dues. I had the qualifications to go to university, I’d invested some serious time with John Lewis on the management course, and I’d played with bands for years. It was really a big deal to turn professional, and I wasn’t about to jump wildly into the unknown with any old bunch of dreamers or time-wasters. My parents were also very nervous about me taking this step. It had to feel right.
I remembered buying a book featuring The Hollies back in 1965 called How To Form A Beat Group (a bit of twenty-first-century Googling reveals that it was written by Anne Nightingale). I’d always had this fantasy in the back of my mind: I’d been in enough ‘beat groups’, I knew the routine—buy a van, get some gear on credit, play the local town hall—I’d already done all that. It was time to find a path to the next level.
After I found my way by tube to St John’s Wood, I arrived at some large wooden gates behind which stood a grand house. My arm was shaking from carrying the heavy guitar—the second one that I’d made for myself. I was greeted by the preposterously named Miles Axe Copeland III, an ebullient American wearing hopelessly out-of-date horn-rimmed glasses and dressed in a Brooks Brothers tweed jacket. We’ll come to him in due course. He took me down an outside staircase to the basement. Martin Turner and Steve Upton were the two musicians looking to complete a band they were trying to form. Steve, by his rather pompous accent, I could tell, was an ex-private-school boy, three or four years older than me—at a time of life when that mattered. He had already been in a band, The Empty Vessels, with Martin and Martin’s brother Glenn, and before that he had travelled to Germany and played in Hamburg with a band called The Devarks. It seemed to me that he was the one deferred to in terms of running a band. Apparently, he and Martin had met when both of them had worked for a lumberyard down in Torquay in the West Country—Steve in the offices and Martin in the yard, making deliveries.
It looked as if this relationship had carried through into their musical endeavours, with Steve being the de facto ‘producer’ or manager of Martin and Glenn. I learned that Miles had discovered the threesome playing in a club on Haverstock Hill in Hampstead. He was to supersede Steve, whose role then became that of road manager—by which I mean overseeing the logistics of hotels, mapping, and travel arrangements. An old friend of theirs, Mark Emery, was eventually enlisted to help with the actual roadie-ing side of things and was, in time, to gravitate toward mixing our front-of-house sound.
The dynamic of that first meeting was, well, a bit odd. During the spoken part of the audition, Martin was verbose—I couldn’t get past him. It struck me at the time that the name of their prior outfit might have been most apt. The irony of the band’s name seemed to be lost on them both. We were talking one-on-one and he was dressed in what I thought was a kind of caricature of what a rock person would dress like if they came from the provinces. In my mind, at that time, the London fashion scene was where it was at. I’d gone through the mod thing; I was into fashion and I wouldn’t have been seen dead wearing a chiffon scarf or a striped sailor shirt. This guy thought he was a ladies’ man—that was plain to see. In terms of a band’s visual appeal, he was clearly a good-looking guy, but curious outfit aside, I had my doubts about him at the audition, simply because he didn’t stop talking.
In complete contrast, over in the corner, Steve Upton was sitting on a desk with his knees drawn up to his chest. At one point I had to say, ‘Hey, Martin, it’s nice talking, but what does Steve think about all of this?’
I looked over to Steve and raised an eyebrow. These guys seemed to have some relationship where on the one hand Martin had all the front, all the ‘rock star’ thing, and then there was this other fellow who, I thought, probably pulled the strings. I was trying to figure it out. I wanted to stop any game-playing to see if there was anything worth moving forward with. The moment I threw the spotlight on Steve I could sense a kind of awkwardness. My arrival, obviously, was going to change the dynamic. Could it work?
The other component in this whole process was Miles Copeland. Alongside these two guys whose personas I could at least identify—one a voluble Lothario with a West Country accent, the other a taciturn fellow with somewhat of a private-school accent—was this loud and brash American.
‘What kind of music do you like, Miles?’
‘Well, pretty much my favourite band is Creedence Clearwater, but then when The Beatles came along, that was it, y’know.’
OK, I thought, he knows nothing.
I’d noticed a book called The Power of Positive Thinking on the desk. These then were the components: West Country rock star wannabe, minor private schoolboy, bizarre expatriate American … and a book about positive thought. And then on the periphery, as I remember it, was Ted Turner—the apprentice, so to speak. I liked Ted. He was easy to get on with, and we both liked Peter Green and Fleetwood Mac. Ted was not there on this first day of posturing and prevarication, though, but he was there the next time we got together.
So yes, whatever we all thought of each other, there was a next time. Underneath all the swagger, there really was positivity—the beginnings of a team and people who were committed to making something happen. In the end, both Ted and I got the gig, and there we were: a four-piece with two lead guitarists and a very unusual man with a plan—specifically, to be a millionaire before he reached the age of thirty. We had nothing; he had next to nothing. The only way was up.
In point of fact, to show how tentative and undecided things had been during the long audition process of 1969, I believe that two keyboard players had been slated for the gig with one or the other of us guitarists. One was Matthew Fisher, soon to join Procol Harum, who later played as a guest on our song ‘Blind Eye’, really contributing to the success of that composition. The other, I believe, was Hugh Banton, later to join the band Van der Graaf Generator. In this way, contrary to erroneous information that has been put out there, Wishbone Ash was formed in London.
* * *
If Brian Epstein had been the fifth Beatle, then Miles was certainly our fifth member. In fact, you could argue—and many people have—that it was Miles who formed Wishbone Ash. It was certainly all to come together under his aegis. Miles was drawn instinctively toward band management, although he had little experience of it, but he had done a business course at the American University in Beirut, where he had spent a good deal of time in his formative years. Also, he’d met with an English pop outfit called Rupert’s People, who had been visiting Beirut while he was finishing up college, I believe. Miles managed them for a time, once the family moved to London, after things became somewhat unstable in the Lebanon. This band, featuring John Tout, who went on to be the keyboard player in Renaissance, also had a front man by the name of Rod Lynton. In due course, Rod became our publicist, and, much later on, during the Wishbone Ash reunion of the late 80s, my partner in a pine-furniture-restoration business.
Miles Copeland II (Miles’s father) had been a founder member of the CIA. He was a classic loud American, from the South—Birmingham, Alabama, to be exact. His wife, Miles Jr’s mother Lorraine, an Oxbridge archaeologist from Scotland, had also been involved in espionage, working for Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) during World War II, though we didn’t know this at the time. Spies and former spies, after all, tend not to broadcast their activities. The whole family had been neighbours with Kim Philby, the defector to Russia, when they’d lived in Beirut.
It was, you might say, a very interesting family. The house in Marlborough Place was full of nonstop activity. Upstairs there would frequently be a Jesuit priest visiting, or a BBC mobile film crew conducting interviews with Miles senior, and downstairs there would be us, jamming away for all we were worth.
If it seems odd that a blistering right-wing spymaster would tolerate a rock band in his basement, well, it seemed pretty odd to us, too. That was the dichotomy. Miles senior was also a trumpet player—he once played with The Benny Go
odman Orchestra—and he’d sometimes come down to the basement with his instrument and jam with us. And then, later in the day, Stewart Copeland, his youngest son, would arrive home from school and jam with us on a spare drum kit …
* * *
Starting a band in London at the end of the swinging 60s probably sounds a lot more glamorous today than it was at the time. An adventure, yes; glamorous, no. It wasn’t even safe, if the truth be told. I think few musicians today can relate to the serendipity of the way things were in those days; the way you laid everything on the line—not just us but probably every other great British rock band of that era. It was such a gamble, and yet we did it all on a whim. Being in the music game really was going into a life one notch above criminal activity. It was anti-establishment, there was no financial safety net, and trying to get a bank loan or any kind of support from the social services was, well, remote. The advice from older family members and from society at large was, ‘Get a real job!’
I arrived in London with my homemade guitar and a Laney amplifier and moved into a flat with Ted. Or, to be more precise, I moved into one rat-infested, depressing room above a convenience store that should have been condemned. The first visitor we had to this establishment was a wizened little man with a cage in his hand: ‘Rat Catcher,’ he announced himself. The room was rented to us for the sum of five quid a week by an Irish landlady who was later to become immortalised in the song ‘Lady Whiskey’. Neither of us had a clue how we were going to pay for the place. We had no money, and there were days when we just didn’t eat. We became very adept at pilfering the odd Vesta readymade curry from the store shelf as we passed through to the back stairs. I weighed 120lbs; I was, in effect, a starving person.
In April 1970 we had a few gigs in France, and by then I was so malnourished I got pleurisy and was sick for about six weeks. Upon returning to London, an attic room was found for me at Marlborough Place until my father could get up to London and collect me. Being under medical care at home, back in my old childhood room, worked wonders, and after a month’s recuperation I was back in business. At one point, Steve Upton came to visit me, for which I was grateful. In my feeble and depressed state I told him that I was having second thoughts about returning to the lifestyle we had created for ourselves. We talked it over, though, and I soon found myself back living above the shop.
So there we were, quite literally all starving to death—not taking care of ourselves, without adequate clothing, trying to build a career out of nothing. Our parents just let us go. I have fond memories of stopping at Ted’s parents’ house when we’d get gigs in the Birmingham area—and at Martin’s folks’ place, too, down in Devon—and them trying to fill us up with goodies. I think they could see what we were going through. In our minds we were men by now; we were on our own. There wasn’t this transitional period where you leave home with the condition that you can go back to mum and dad if it doesn’t work out, except in the case of near-death for myself. It literally felt like do or die. I think that perhaps this is the clearest difference between then and the present day. It was a pioneering time in popular music, and the opportunities were there if you fought for them.
During these very early days of the band, Miles was living at his parents’ place while we were all living, poor as church mice, in Gloucester Avenue, Chalk Farm, behind the Roundhouse in Camden Town. We’d walk to St John’s Wood every day to rehearse. Occasionally we’d see Paul McCartney out walking his sheep dog. We met Kevin Harrington, through Steve Brendell, who had been the drummer with Rupert’s People. Both these guys were working at NEMS Enterprises, who handled The Beatles. Kevin later worked directly with ‘the boys’ (as they were known) as assistant to Mal Evans, The Beatles’ famous roadie. Later, Kevin and Rod were instrumental in securing Ted and I some session work. Ted played on John Lennon’s Imagine, on the song ‘Crippled Inside’, while I worked with George Harrison and Ringo on a couple of sessions for people like Cilla Black and an Australian songwriter that Ringo was handling for the Apple label. Even though they’d ceased operating as a live band, The Beatles owned London, and to get the opportunity to play on one of their individual projects was a great honour. Through Kevin we met Terry Doran, George’s assistant, and sometimes we’d get ferried around by Kevin in one of the band’s cars, a Humber Super Snipe.
The session I did at Apple, with George producing Cilla, was great. He was a pleasure to work with, very accommodating and easy-going, making us players feel at ease immediately. There were a couple of George’s large-bodied Harptone acoustic guitars in the studio, and I played a six-string model on the Cilla session alongside Rod. Ringo was on drums and Klaus Voorman was on bass. It was surreal standing in the control room listening to playbacks with George and Ringo being so complimentary—deferential, even. Ringo was quite self-effacing actually. I had to pinch myself. One thing immediately struck me: I was a skinny guy but these chaps were even tinier than me. People often say it’s like that when you meet your idols in the flesh. They seem much smaller than you imagine.
The other session was at Tittenhurst Park, the famous country house owned at that time by Ringo but previously owned by Lennon. It was where the iconic photos for the Imagine album were shot, where John is with Yoko, sitting at that white Steinway grand piano. This was a bigger live session with more players. Again, Ringo was the epitome of a welcoming host. No big rock-star attitude—extremely down to earth.
* * *
Unsurprisingly, given his rarefied family background, everything Miles did was larger than life. He created a culture around him and you wanted to be on board, for fear of missing out. He had boundless energy. With the end of the Vietnam War and the bourgeoning youth movement, and the popularity of the long-playing vinyl record, the way forward was ‘progressive’ music. That was deemed to be the future for the next decade, and we were going to part of it, with Miles leading our charge. He was chief among the proselytizers of positivity with his outrageous sense of fun about the business. He didn’t care about making mistakes, which was a remarkably useful quality. He was all about making waves, and we got swept up in the idea.
Miles was a unique figure in the music business in London in those days, and later on, when we went to the States, he would occupy a similarly singular position. People did not forget an encounter with him easily. He could outrage and polarise on a regular basis but he would still be taken very seriously. He was a very effective businessman—and, luckily for us, he was on our side.
Of course, none of Miles’s moves would have had any traction if he were peddling rubbish. He was a magician, not a miracle worker. Although it was clear to us that there was no great visionary songwriter or front man among us, it was very clear that we had a unique and exciting sound. Miles would come to every show with us, keeping a very sharp eye on our development and how audiences were responding to us. He went headlong into a world where there were some very big sharks and I don’t think we realised at the time what he had to contend with in order to have his voice heard. We ribbed him mercilessly about being the ‘straight’ guy in the outfit—the one wearing the suit. But he stood by us, and I have to say that none of the plans we had in those early years could have been manifested without Miles behind us.
We weren’t prolific writers to start with. I think Martin had parts of the songs ‘Queen Of Torture’, ‘Doctor’, and ‘Handy’ from the days of The Empty Vessels, and these would all end up on our first album. I’d started writing and came up with the song ‘Errors Of My Way’. Ted had most of the idea for ‘Blind Eye,’ the lyric and so forth, while I contributed to the guitar lick that became the hook of the song: a huge dynamic sound, with Steve’s jazzy drum fills, with which to open our set and later our first album, Wishbone Ash.
What I brought, from my soul-band days, was not so much songs but a sense of how to groove. I didn’t think Steve or Martin had a really solid ‘groove’ that was commercial enough to become successful. They could rock with great gusto but we needed to move people�
�make them want to dance to our music. I remember having to teach Martin what a shuffle was, and the fact that you could alter the picking and hence the movement within a piece of music. He played bass with a pick and didn’t get that it was not necessary to play every note on the downstroke, or that a smoother sound could be achieved by picking on the upstroke as well. In addition, apart from complete songs of mine like ‘Valediction’, I was also more interested in creating arrangements, guitar parts, openings, melodies; finding colour in the music with which to pull in the listener. Our long rehearsal sessions were so much fun in those days. We were intensely driven, unlike anything I’ve known since.
The aforementioned gigs in France during March and April of 1970 turned out to be a rite of passage for both us and Miles. We arrived in Calais having no idea that a carnet—a kind of equipment manifest—was needed in order to bring musical instruments into the country. Europe was different then: a place of borders and bureaucracy. The only thing to do was for Miles to return to England on the next ferry to get the necessary paperwork while we waited in a café for something like twelve hours until he returned. All credit to him: he did it. He got back on that ferry, went to the carnet office in London, probably lined up for hours, achieved a result, and then turned around and came right back on another ferry.
* * *
In retrospect, the fourteen or fifteen months between starting the band and releasing our first album seems like remarkably swift progress. Time gets compacted in hindsight, and you tend to dismiss those miserable bed-sits, the lack of food and the hard graft, and look instead, with some awe, at the date sheet and the billings with acts like Deep Purple, Free, The Who, ELP. I was part of something special, and sometimes it takes a bit of distance to be able to recognise that.