by Andy Powell
I remember reading that and thinking, My God—yes! That’s it! If you’re not someone like Sean Connery and your career’s just ticking along, there’s no mystery to this—you just need to work. I saw another interview with Bob Hoskins, another British actor, where he was asked the same question, and he replied, ‘Well, it’s really simple. If I know the catering company on the set and it’s one that I like, that’s the movie I go for.’ And again I thought, Bloody hell, it can be that simple, even though Bob was obviously being a tad flippant. I began to realise that one could take one’s foot off the pedal of this constant, intense thinking that, We’ve got to make it. This was a constant in the 70s: We’ve got to make it … we’ve got to crack America … we’ve got to do this, do that …
It gradually dawned on me that we haven’t got to do any of these things. It’s not about that; it’s about the long run. I started to formulate this concept of just ‘being in the music game’ as an actual career. Ironic really, since I’d been a serious professional for years, with many albums already under my belt.
Dealing with the rough and tumble of the ‘music game’, as I began to think of it, all became more like water off a duck’s back when I started to think less like a musician and more in business terms. I’m still always in my heart and soul a musician but I needed to realise that there was this other thing I could plug into—not taking negative press cuttings so personally and to really see the big picture and realise that making strategic business moves could also be creative and satisfying. Laurie still had this need to ‘make it’, and the way he did that was as a great sideman, leaving Wishbone Ash in December 1985 and joining Tina Turner and later Joe Cocker, or was it the other way round? I’ve always meant ‘great sideman’ as a huge compliment, although I know Laurie has taken umbrage when I’ve expressed that view in the past. He has this incredible ability to slot himself into a musical unit and improve it. That’s a tremendous quality to have as a musician.
The 80s was a time when Western rock bands started widening their horizons. Places like South America, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe began opening up for regular touring, and it didn’t matter if you had become unfashionable back home. In fact, it helped if you had a cachet of longevity, and even more so if your 70s records had been released in these essentially new touring territories. A lot of British ‘dinosaurs’ became conquering heroes in far-flung places during the 80s and 90s. Jethro Tull, who had been huge in the 70s, had a sabbatical during the mid 80s, but when they re-emerged, tours of unusual territories were a big part of their activity, aggressively opening new markets. Ian Anderson definitely became someone I looked up to in terms of the way he took care of business. And I realised it’s not rocket science. Much of the time it’s about trusting your instincts and, especially, not being afraid of hard work. I’d come to see that a lot of 70s acts had got things round the wrong way; being so used to being ‘handled’ by very powerful managers, they’d often see themselves as the employees doing their managers’ bidding, rather than hiring managers to do their bidding and handle their career moves.
Along with many of our peers, Wishbone Ash had played in Australia, New Zealand, and a few times in Japan back in the 70s and 80s. In fact, like many artists of that time, we had released a live album exclusive to Japan (Live In Tokyo, 1979). Yugoslavia was probably the most esoteric territory we played in those times—the most open of the Eastern Bloc nations to Western tourism and cultural visits. By the end of the 80s we could add tours of Russia and Lithuania to the list, and I would later visit Brazil with Night of the Guitar. But perhaps the most unusual territory was India, which we toured no less than three times between 1981 and 1985: twice with Trevor Bolder, once with Mervyn Spence.
The first booking there came about in a weird way. A promoter by the name of Vikram Singh had come into the agency we were represented by one day in 1981 and said, ‘I need a rock band for India. I want to put a Western rock band on tour in India.’ And the agent, John Sherry, said to him, ‘Well, who do you want? We have several on the books …’
The promoter didn’t really know but he looked at a poster of us on the wall and said, ‘Well, they seem pretty good.’ And so, based on that poster, we ended up going to India. I think the only pop or rock people who’d been there before were Boney M. and The Police. This all fed into my idea that it can all be about the journey travelled rather than this constant idea of getting to point B. Because we’d been signed to MCA, our music had already been released in all these places, so why not let these audiences enjoy the music first-hand, as European or American audiences had been able to? You could buy a Wishbone Ash album in India, or the Lebanon, or Iran. So exploring these new territories became a whole new facet to being in a band. It was a new experience for us, for me, as much as it was for the audiences.
* * *
We had been keeping busy promoting the new album with John Sherry back on board, but sometime in 1985 it became clear to us that the band’s finances were in bad shape. John decided to leave what appeared to be a sinking ship. His parting words to us were, ‘I’m leaving, and I advise that you declare bankruptcy.’ Steve and I were mortified.
Steve was the operations guy, used to keeping the books on the road. I wasn’t too hands-on with any of that. I did have a good handle on what fees we were getting, where money was going, but not the day-to-day details, and our fees had certainly plateaued. As a measure of things, we weren’t retaining road crews any more. My brother Len came on board from time to time, eventually staying for a six-year stint as guitar tech and driver. I can remember turning up to a rehearsal room carrying in this heavy amplifier, with Laurie already there, and saying to him, ‘This is a new experience …’
Laurie was sitting in that rehearsal room waiting for someone to carry his amp in—because that’s the way it had always been. Pretty soon it started to get back to the way it was in the old days: four guys scrabbling around, carrying gear, arranging gigs. We hadn’t quite got back down to the level of driving a van ourselves. We were doing bus tours in the USA in those days and would have a driver supplied with the tour bus. Driving the van ourselves would come a little later, in the 90s.
Just after our third trip to India, in December 1985, Laurie decided enough was enough. The following month, after a tour of Germany and Scandinavia with Jamie Crompton stepping in on guitar, Mervyn had moved on too. I’d come to know him as a good friend, and this was certainly proven on one occasion when he and his wife Julie visited Pauline, me, and our boys at the farm. It was winter and very cold but we all decided to go for a walk down to the local wildlife area, where there was a pond that was completely frozen over. I had our youngest son, Lawrence, attached to me in a baby sling. Three-year-old Aynsley, who was dressed in a red down jacket with a hood and also, amusingly, a red cape over the top, began running around playing the part of Super Ted, one of his favourite TV characters. We adults were talking and enjoying the winter scene when suddenly Aynsley charged right out onto the ice shouting ‘Super Ted’ at the top of his lungs. No sooner had he made it out there than the ice broke under his weight and he plunged into the icy water. With six-month-old Lawrence strapped to me, I couldn’t move very quickly, but Mervyn was the man of the moment, and with great reflexes plunged into the pond and grabbed our fast-sinking child by the hood of his jacket, thereby saving him. We’ll always be grateful to Mervyn for that. It was a scary moment. We wrapped young AJ in a coat and headed back home where we thawed him out in front of the big old range cooker.
Laurie’s departure was at the beginning of the year, and we had a tour booked. We needed to be ready to leave in a week. The legal ramifications of cancelling at that late stage were obviously a secondary issue for dear old Lol. That was a week when, yet again, it all got extremely real for me. I was very grateful to Jamie for jumping in at the last moment on the recommendation of our tour manager, Phil Griggs. Jamie had a real can-do mentality: he was currently holding down an unlikely touring gig with Suzi Quatro, wh
ich he was prepared to put on hold, and we worked like crazy that week to get prepared. Steve was happy to hand over the reins for this. It was guitar business anyway. He was just grateful, no doubt, not to be held legally liable for a cancelled tour. We had no tour insurance.
It was quite a while before I heard from Laurie again, and I realised that, as with Ted in the 70s, there was little love lost. He wasn’t looking out for our welfare, he was looking out for his, so we just had to get on with it. There was a period around that time that I connected with another wonderful guitar player by the name of Phil Palmer. Jamie had a prior commitment with the Suzi Quatro Band but we needed to fulfil a few pre-booked shows. Phil, a real pro, came in and woodshedded the material in a way that I could not quite believe.
Thankfully, Steve and I were able to complete our commitments. We were becoming much more proficient at surviving and much less precious about it all. Phil, the nephew of Ray and Dave Davies, went on to be a sideman in Dire Straits and Pink Floyd, also playing stints in Eric Clapton’s band. Of all the many guitarists I’ve worked with, I’d have loved to work more with him since he was such a musical player. He had an effortless ability, whereas I’d been conditioned by my 70s experience to believe that recording and writing had to be this constipated, hard thing to do. It all made me a looser and more adaptable player and set the stage for me to become more of a bandleader and a more prolific writer, as well as becoming more relaxed about my chosen profession. I’d tended to downplay myself in the past, I came to realise. Meeting players like Jamie and Phil, I could see that this was all changing. These guys were grateful to be working, they respected my abilities and the band itself, being real fans, and they knew what it meant to hustle for gigs. For myself, I saw that I liked being in the cut and thrust of all that instead of being in some pampered cocoon.
We had a one-month line-up of Wishbone Ash. And yes, if you want to point a finger and say ‘wilderness years’, this is where they start. For the next seventeen months we had, at least on paper, several versions of the band with Andy Pyle (formerly of Blodwyn Pig) stepping in on bass and both Jamie Crompton and Phil Palmer, separately, coming in and out on second guitar. It was a bit of a revolving-door thing. But we were still filling the diary. We had a three-month tour of America in 1986—our first sustained visit for some time.
That US tour, by bus, was pretty intense. People think bus touring is glamorous; it’s not. We arrived in New York and met everyone else we’d be touring with. The bus itself had been used by heavy metal bands and was most certainly not some pampered cocoon—the bunks were designed like coffins, the lights were like braziers, the decor was dungeon chic. It was horrendous! The bus driver was a Vietnam vet, and I’m sure he was a psychopath. One night we were cruising along the freeway, driving through the night after a show, as was the usual custom, the miles being so many that it was the only way one could fulfil the bookings. We were all partying in a lounge at the back of the bus, which was flying along at 70mph, and then the bus driver walked in. We all thought, What the hell? Who’s driving the bus?! It turned out that Steve Upton was now driving the bus. They’d done some kind of manoeuvre where one guy slides off the pedals and the seat and the other guy slides on. Steve, at that point, had never driven a bus in his life before.
That was a wake-up call. I’m thinking, I’ve got three young kids and a wife at home, I’m stoned at the back of a bus, partying at 70mph and the bus driver’s just walked in—a stoned Steve Upton is now the bus driver of this $150,000 vehicle, and this is total madness. I think it was around about this time that Randy Rhoads had died in a crazy event involving a light aircraft he was in, with the pilot dive-bombing the band’s tour bus. It was time to grow up. Rock’n’roll was getting way out of control.
The psychopath idea really took hold later on the tour. I remember sitting in a café with this same bus driver, talking about music and what he’d been doing with his life, and he casually mentioned how he’d torched his neighbour’s house because of some drug deal that had gone wrong. And this was the man to whom we were entrusting our well-being every night. There’d be no hotels on that tour, but there’d be a party every night on the bus, and there were some really dodgy characters mixing with us there—drug dealers, Hell’s Angels, skanky women. This really was the armpit of rock’n’roll, the arse end of it. In my mid-thirties, with a wife and three young children at home, I was in danger of becoming a dead rock’n’roll cliché. It was time to change, get real, face up to my responsibilities, and not run off to join the circus.
Our primary concern for those couple of years in the ‘wilderness’ was simply getting out of debt. When John Sherry quit we had a £20,000 obligation to Barclays bank. It might not sound like much now, but it was a bigger deal then—it’s a big deal any time when you don’t have it—and the bank was looking for it back. We didn’t realise it at first but it turned out that we could actually negotiate the debt. Thankfully someone—our accountant I think—advised us, ‘Why don’t you make them an offer?’ And so we went in there and offered them £12,000, as an alternative to bankruptcy—Wishbone cash instead of a Wishbone crash. We just rolled up our sleeves, went out, got gigs, and started to repay it. Another reality check in the art of debt management. I was learning that the business world was not an entirely scary place, and that it could actually be managed and be fun—something Miles Copeland knew years before. Have fun at all costs but take care of business as you go.
When that word ‘bankruptcy’ had been uttered, it brought us up sharp. It had the effect of focusing the mind. The fact that we opted to fight it really was like the turning of a corner. It was empowering, realising that you could actually control your own destiny. Previously we’d relied on managers and labels for that. I think it took a couple of years of managing the finances but we did it. Steve and I were very much a partnership in this process, making decisions together on how we would spend money, who we would repay in what order, and so on. I was regularly commuting into Europe, playing shows in order to stave off bankruptcy. It’s bizarre, isn’t it? But it was a manning-up process. There’s nothing worse than being confronted with your own demise. My feeling was, a rolling stone gathers no moss. If you keep moving—or, in our case, play shows and work at all costs—bad luck has less chance of catching up with you.
I look back on the early-to-mid 80s as a great period of growth. The only way you can learn any lessons in life is first of all to see them as lessons, as opportunities. Someone from the outside might say, ‘Oh my God, they were failing massively there’ or ‘They were making some wrong moves there’ or suchlike. But with a different hat on, I was trying to get some positivity out of it all. These days, despite being around for decades, I’m still all about learning lessons in life. As soon as I began to look at music as being a journey, not a frenzy to get somewhere, I accepted that we were a band somewhat out of time—but my life started to have more meaning and a greater sense of responsibility started to unfold.
There was still a music business then, which there is less of now, so I would have been remiss if I didn’t take on board some lessons, not only in business but also in life. When we arrived in the 80s it was clear that the band was no longer going in a linear direction: our career wasn’t lifting off, it was moving in a lateral direction, consolidating, in a way. So the question was, ‘How can we glean some lessons from this that will prepare us for the 90s?’ And in fact we did learn some lessons, and the band would make it through the 90s with a renewed sense of purpose, but with different players, as it turned out.
By 1987 we were turning the corner (metaphorically, and without a nutcase at the wheel), but it was a shaky period. It’s certainly possible that Wishbone Ash might have run out of road if we hadn’t received a shot in the arm from an unexpected source, but the question is academic because that’s what happened next: a phone call from Miles Copeland. And he had a plan.
INTERLUDE
INDIA
I’m always being interviewed—large
ly by rock websites these days—but one of the questions consistently asked is this: ‘Name for us some of the highlights or standout events of your career in music.’ This is really a futile attempt to encapsulate a forty-five-year career into a one-page interview. It can’t be done easily.
There are the obvious awards and the globally acknowledged album successes but, in my memory, it’s often the new countries that we’ve visited that stand out in my mind—places that impact you with their different cultures, climate, and customs. The first time we visited America was one such time. Actually, it was returning to dear old England after that first tour, and the culture shock of seeing your familiar country in a completely different way, that was truly shocking—much like an astronaut who leaves the earth and comes back to see it as a very small and vulnerable place. That’s how it used to seem to me. Certainly, coming from the UK and diving into big continents has this effect. Such was the case with India, which was a country, or sub-continent, that we visited three times in all, over a four-year period.
I’ve already mentioned the serendipity as to how that all came about but nothing could prepare us for the first impression when we landed in Bombay on Friday December 4 1981. It was overwhelming. My immediate feeling was that the light seemed brighter, different there from the diffused, northern English light, much as it does in the States, except that this Indian light seemed flatter, yet no less bright. There was the sensation of there being a very fine dust in the air, possibly pollution, and then the visual mayhem of it all.