by Andy Powell
The highlight for me was the show at Orange, in the south of France. It’s gone down in local lore as ‘the French Woodstock’, and I can understand why: three days of peace and love, all taking place in the totally European glory of a vast Roman amphitheatre and the kind of sunshine and ambience that the denizens of Yasgur’s Farm could only dream about. The Festival D’Orange was an event with an almost totally English line-up of acts. Canvey R&B band Dr Feelgood effectively broke Europe—and simultaneously broke into the British press in a big way—through their one performance at Orange. The Star Truckin’ bill made up the bulk of the third day. My brother Len turned up on a motorbike, on his way back from Greece. People who were there at the time still come up and talk to me about it, and I’ve made some great lasting friendships with fans who first saw us there. For example, to this day, I go skiing with a French friend, Michel Sady, who was there, and he and his family have stayed with us in Connecticut just as we visit him and his family in Normandy.
People often marvel at how the original Woodstock came to be, with so many people in the one place—potential chaos with a fabulous entertainment spectacle just about holding it all together—and yet our little tour was like that on a peripatetic basis. It should probably have fallen apart after two or three days, but the wheels stayed on. Miles didn’t always worry himself too much about the details—and I think that’s the only way you can be. But he had made some great contacts, people who could handle the details, like Entec, a Surrey-based PA company. They were there at every show and were very much a bunch of mates, which helped.
Still, at Orange everything was running so late I can vividly remember sitting in our hotel drinking endless cups of espresso, waiting to be told, ‘You’re on next.’ Nobody seemed to know when it might be—midnight, 1:00am, 2:00am … finally, at five in the morning, we were on. And how fortuitous that was. It was truly magical to be able to play ‘Phoenix’ just as the sun was rising. Think about it: the sun’s rays shooting over the walls, glancing off 2,000-year-old statues, you’re in a Roman ruin, for God’s sake, and you’re playing your most epic number as the dawn was breaking. It was truly a beautiful moment.
Every night we were headlining, but we were ready for it—we’d paid our dues. But every night we were following John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra. It would transpire to be a last hurrah for John’s band, which had burned brightly since exploding into the consciousness of every musician with their first album, The Inner Mounting Flame, in 1971. This was a later version of the Orchestra—the last, in fact, as John disbanded the unit later that year—but, even so, it was intimidating coming on after any entity known as The Mahavishnu Orchestra. You really did feel, Wow! We’re not worthy. This was a period when John was revered for pushing rock music into another dimension—and that was not something we were doing, nor could do, at least not at that time. We did what we did very, very well, though, and we could always draw from that. We had a proggy element, we had our shtick where we could get the crowd going, we had a ‘sound’ that was uniquely ours. We knew how to project well on big stages—I knew how to be a performer and not just a muso. And while John McLaughlin could fire out notes like a machine gun, I could at least draw some comfort from feeling that my tone was better—fewer bullets, a better-oiled barrel!
Our stagecraft had also evolved somewhat by this time, honed by all the big stadium dates we’d already played through the years. Laurie Wisefield had brought a kind of ‘rock star’ element to the band. Ted always brought intensity to our shows, but he wasn’t so into the artifice of being a ‘rock star’ onstage in the same way as Laurie—the stage wear, the choreographed solos, pulling the moves, throwing shapes, and, yes, appealing to the ladies. We might have been following a musically fearsome quartet, but we were no amateurs at working a big crowd, whatever time of day it might have been. And while Mahavishnu John was channelling cosmic energy in his playing, at least at Orange we had the whole burning edifice at the centre of the solar system on our side: a one-all draw there, I think.
I got on well with John on the tour, though he had wisely opted out of the communal travelling experience after that wobbly first flight. He was never in competition with any other act—he seemed only to be in competition with himself—so there were never any issues about the billing. It was a happy band of travellers all ’round. But as musicians you always know what the hierarchy is—which, in a situation like Orange, added an extra level of adrenalin to one’s performance, aside from the several extra levels all those espressos had added already.
One unexpected aspect of the tour was that we seemed to be selling a huge amount of merchandise. At the end of the tour Miles said, ‘Guys, you’ve done really well on this merchandise.’
‘We have?’
‘Yeah, we sold a few T-shirts. My suggestion would be to take some of this money and buy a house in Spain where you guys can be creative and chill out there with your friends and families …’
It all sounded too good to be true. We’d spent so much time working during our career, we almost couldn’t imagine really chilling-out. Consequently, we flew down to Alicante on the Costa del Sol. I remember seeing this dilapidated property with great potential, as a real-estate maestro might say—a typical Spanish hacienda with all the arches and porticos, looking out over olive groves and onward to the Mediterranean. I remember thinking, OK, this is pretty cool. There was an estate agent there, there were deeds; I believe we put down a deposit on the property. A figure of £8,000 comes to mind. We dutifully signed our names on the legal document and flew back to London—and that was the very last we ever heard of it.
When we got back to Connecticut, Miles paid us a visit and sheepishly said, ‘I’ve got some good news and some bad news. Good news: the tour was great. Bad news: I’ve lost all the money.’ His Dutch business associate, Cyril, who was responsible for counting the money every night, had apparently absconded with all the proceeds—and, like the place in Spain, he was never to be heard of again.
Miles had been ripped off royally. In fact, the financial impact brought down his first empire entirely. We didn’t commiserate when he brought us his news. We were outraged. What? You drag us out of our nice little cocoon over here, you talk us into doing this thing, and now there’s nothing to show for it?
We were quite ungrateful and unsympathetic—which I regret. This man had lost everything. There was also the issue of the villa in Spain, although I think everyone had forgotten about that. There was this explosion of outrage that he, as our manager, had allowed us to be ripped off in that way. We weren’t focused on all the positive elements he’d got right, just those that hadn’t worked out—specifically not being paid. He could probably have used a shoulder to cry on at that point. Miles is the only one who can really tell the full story of that tour and the subsequent financial meltdown in his management stable, but it can’t have been easy for him.
We were all quite devastated about this huge loss of income for the band, but Steve was the one, as our spokesman and road manager, who fired Miles. Some time later, we were doing a British tour, playing the Hammersmith Odeon, and we got word that Miles was downstairs and wanted to come up and wish us well. Steve wouldn’t have him in the dressing room. He took what he perceived as being let down really badly. But they would make up in due course.
The bigger picture, though—leaving aside the anger at doing a month of free work and interrupting our great adventure in trying to be American residents—was that Star Truckin’ ’75 broke Wishbone Ash across Europe like nothing else. It had been hugely successful in the sense that really mattered: thousands upon thousands of people had come to see it and would remember it. Headlining the Reading Festival, which formed part of the Star Truckin’ tour, and which we’d previously played in 1971, was our only show in England that year. It took me a long time, many years, to really appreciate how important that tour had been.
* * *
We had all moved—band, wives, crew—to New England, the ar
ea of outstanding natural beauty that includes New Hampshire, Maine, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Vermont. And it was a real coming of age. We were living in a new country, we had a relatively new recruit in Laurie Wisefield and a new record label, and we were soon to lose our long-term manager. It was a dynamic time but it was all rather daunting.
There’s a real dichotomy to being a member of Wishbone Ash, even in the name itself. The ‘Wishbone’ is a feel-good thing, a good luck charm; ‘Ash’ suggests death and destruction. That’s the way I feel about it—a yin and a yang thing, built right into the very name. The theme follows through to the band’s personnel, with this lack of leadership, this adolescent dream—and I still espouse it—that a band can be a democracy. It’s an ethos that always leaves room for shattered dreams. There’s always been an ecstatic, euphoric thing about the band, but then there’s this other side, where youthful euphoria can be laid low. I think that’s part of the mystique of Wishbone Ash: it’s all there in the name.
When we moved to America it was initially disconnecting but, using that old ‘positive energy’ analogy from the original ad in the Melody Maker, which I really did take to heart, I dived into making America my home. It’s still my home. It’s one of my greatest achievements, I think: to go to a foreign country, take the immigrant experience—which as anyone who’s ever moved to a foreign country will know is no small thing—and make it work for onself. I’m a living example of the American dream. The Hemel Hempstead dream was my dad’s equivalent—to get the hell out of the East End because much of it had been destroyed. Let’s make a fresh start somewhere else, he thought. And I was really just doing the same thing in a way.
For Pauline and me, at least, the relocation was nothing to be feared, just another transition. When Ted had left, that was when the initial trauma was felt: Oh my God, all this success then Ted decides to leave—we’re doomed! But that turned out to be something of an exaggeration. These things are huge when you’re in the eye of the storm, but to most people it wasn’t that big a deal: man leaves rock band; rock band replaces him. After that there were no real traumas, just transitions. If we were on a high, we were on a high; if we were on a low, it was, OK, let’s deal with it and move on …
We were growing up, getting more mature each year, getting into our mid-twenties and starting to see the bigger picture. Even now it amazes me that people bring along vinyl records for me to sign that were produced by MCA and released in places like Iran and India. I look at these things and think, Wow! We had income because they had such powerful distribution. So a career that we created in four years, up to the point where Ted left, wasn’t going to just subside overnight, or in a year. It was a slow, slow decline. What we did in those first four years of our career essentially kept us going for the subsequent six.
Moving to America enabled me to distance myself a little from this career in the band, which was all-consuming, and to look at it from a great height and then come back and help to resurrect it and really start to move it forward. It really did feel like ‘Phase Two’. Adapting to new situations: that’s what was going on with me internally at the time. Externally, in business and in organisational terms, we were thrashing around a bit without the guidance of Miles. He was, literally, miles away. It was time to build something new.
There were pros and cons to this novel state of being. On the one hand, yes, we were now hanging on to more of our earnings, but then on the other hand it was slipping through our fingers pretty easily. We had rented four or five houses around Westport, Connecticut, and we each bought a car. Admittedly, they were used cars. Even in our greatest rock-star excesses there was a thread of old-fashioned prudence and thrift. Nevertheless, we were blowing huge amounts of money while at the same time playing fewer tours and keeping our British road crew on a retainer. Crazy! However, in a way, you could say that the twenty percent management commission we’d been paying all those years was being saved and put to a different use.
I was spending an awful lot of time riding my bike, messing about on boats with our tour manager, Russell Sidelsky, learning to do things in America that I would never have had the chance to do in England. Steve and Laurie hung out together a fair bit but I never found it relaxing to hang out in my free time with my workmates. Space from one another was very much needed. We did need a bit of a rest, it’s true, after several years of pretty relentless work, but in retrospect, one really good thing about our leafy New World retreat from Blighty was that we completely got out of town while the punk thing came in. If you dealt in melody and harmony and had the wrong sort of trousers it was a really good time not to be in London.
Just before we left Britain, I would go walking along the Kings Road in Chelsea and I’d have people coming up to me asking for autographs. I thought, Well, this is nice—for five minutes. I was in every magazine, every other week—I was reasonably recognisable—I wasn’t strolling around town with a Flying V strapped on but I didn’t want to be that ‘rock’ person on an everyday basis.
Moving to America meant we became somewhat more anonymous, and we could actually start living a more regular life—trying different hobbies, having a bit of money in our pockets and the breathing space to just grow a little. Speaking for myself, I was beginning to feel really at home there.
* * *
Toward the end of the 70s, a lot of bands of our ilk started to feel that they were drifting into irrelevance—or, worse, finding themselves castigated as bloated old dinosaurs. We never really experienced that, except perhaps in a detached way. In general, there was so much money floating around in the music business at that time that bands were inclined to get an unrealistic sense of their worth. It was only right that punk came along. Aside from the politics and fashion aspect, it was simply resetting the dial back to the way rock had been in the beginning: simple, direct, exciting, rebellious. Much as I might have a soft spot for the likes of Gentle Giant, Mahavishnu, or even Pink Floyd, not even their greatest fan could make a case for street-level accessibility.
Aside from the personnel changes and the portent of punk, we had also opted not to renew our deal with MCA, signing with Atlantic instead. It looked great on paper. Ahmet Ertegun came to one of our East Coast shows and personally signed us—a huge honour. But, as it turned out, we were really up the creek without a paddle—or, to coin a new phrase, in the middle of the Atlantic without a navigator.
There’s The Rub, released in 1974, had been Laurie’s first album and our last with MCA. Locked In, in 1976, would be our first—and last—with Atlantic. Having barely set up camp in Connecticut, we went down to New York and recorded with Tom Dowd. Tom was already a legend, having had years of producing classic artists like Ray Charles, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, Cream, and others. We were overwhelmed and we were intimidated when we finally got to meet him, and once we started recording it was all business. There was none of the easy-going camaraderie that Bill Szymczyk had created in the studio, and definitely none of the alcohol and other chemical additives. Tom was like a college professor. He even wore a stopwatch round his neck to record and compare musical measures or bar times. What we didn’t realise while we were recording with Tom, however, was that he was going through a period of personal angst—his marriage was breaking up, his good friend Al Jackson from Booker T. & The M.G.’s had just died, and in the midst of all this he was landed with some scruffy guys from England who had little in common with the R&B and deep soul genre around which he’d built his reputation. It wasn’t a particularly pleasant experience.
Tom didn’t have any huge feeling for Wishbone Ash, twin lead guitars, stadium rock, or anything like that. Great as he was, for us, he was just the wrong man at the wrong time. I suspect Ahmet Ertegun, Atlantic supremo, had just thrown the dog a bone. Tom was house producer and needed employment. We came along as a new signing and needed to make a record. Atlantic had given us a good deal, but at that exact point in time we had just fired our manager and we no longer had someone saying to
us, ‘Hey guys, this isn’t working out. Here’s the plan.’ Even our songwriting had gone a bit off the rails. We did have some new songs but they were all a bit twee. ‘Moonshine’ is a not a number likely to be resurrected in a twenty-first-century set list, and I don’t hear too many fans complaining about that. The whole disco thing was coming along, and we were actually trying to funk things up on pseudo-disco grooves—which we weren’t really competent in doing. The name Wishbone Ash is not written large in the annals of disco. And rightly so, I fear.
By the end of the sessions for what became Locked In—the title of which was no accident—Tom had effectively turned us into a New York combo. Our vocals were found to be sorely lacking, so he sent us to a singing coach—a story in itself—and he was in no mood to pander to us. We lost our big British sound. In fact, we lost the plot: there it was, drifting off on the New York breeze as four lost souls from England looked on hopelessly out of a window, in a room where they were making the most appallingly inconsequential music. I remember listening with dread to the playbacks and at one point, playing the cassette in the car as we were being driven home from the studio, I think I went into a foetal position on the back seat. I was listening in horror to what we had just recorded and thinking, Oh my God, there goes our career. I really, truly thought that. Even the album design was cheesy: poorly drawn graphic renditions of us looking out at New York through some kind of porthole or something.