Eyes Wide Open

by Andy Powell

  One of the other appeals for Martin in the reformation project was that he had a small recording studio in the basement of Miles’s offices in Portobello Road, and the idea was that we could start the project there in order to keep costs down. As far as I could see, not much had been produced from his studio for many years. Martin’s younger brother Kim Turner was co-manager of The Police along with Miles Copeland and had probably helped look out for his older brother in this way. So Martin had a strong connection with Miles—albeit an arms-length connection by now. But this would be an opportunity to really produce something worthwhile from the recording studio, keeping it all in the family, so to speak.

  I flew in to London and we got down to work in earnest on a new album, Nouveau Calls, and it was really, really great to work with Martin again. There was no real angst. He was living a particular life and was happy with it, and if there was any bitterness that his solo career hadn’t worked out he kept it pretty well hidden. Wishbone Ash had been a pretty special part of all of our lives and rekindling that was probably the real motivation. It just keeps pulling you back.

  I had lots of unused ideas and Martin also had lots of unused ideas and outtake ideas from his solo project. Steve was the man in the middle, but it was really Martin and me as a double act—and there was magic there. It was fantastic. He was in a studio that he was used to, and he got material he could really sink his teeth into, something he could ‘produce’—finally something that was tangible. There was even a song on the album called ‘Tangible Evidence’. As far as I could see, he’d been faffing around for the previous few years. But he’d probably have said the same about Steve and me, because he wouldn’t have had any awareness of what we’d been doing all over the world. The biggest thing he’d done, and which he kept going on about, was an album by Roy Hollingworth, his mate in East Sheen who used to write for the Melody Maker. That seemed to be the main thing he’d done in seven years, as far as I could see, though of course there may well have been numerous other projects that hadn’t come to fruition. Either way, this instrumental album was a project that was guaranteed to be released and that had a lot of communal energy behind it. It was a kind of rebirth for both Martin and for Steve and me, and hopefully it would be a rebirth for the entity known as Wishbone Ash—if only we could bring Ted to the party.

  Thus far we were recording an album as a trio. Where was Ted? It took us a while to find him. I’d found out he was living in a small apartment across the parking lot from the Roxy on Sunset Strip, Los Angeles. It fell to me—as it had years before with Laurie—to fly, this time not to New York but to Los Angeles, and root Ted out of his hidey-hole. He’d been out of the professional music scene for years, and he was unsure about whether he should get back into it or not. He had this vague project called the World Man Band with a chap called Michael espousing various new-age ideals but nothing actually being produced commercially. When I arrived there after the long flight, they both spoke of various concepts and philosophies and were especially fond of the writings of Buckminster Fuller, even showing me a Fuller-style geodesic dome dwelling that they had at their disposal, complete with a motley assortment of gear, located up in one of the canyons. Eventually, I convinced him to come to London and join up with the rest of us for the instrumental project. I left with the understanding that Ted would follow on, once he’d put his house in order. Weeks later, we were deep into the recording of Nouveau Calls—in fact we were almost finished—and there was still no sign of Ted. Finally he arrived, but right at the very end of production. We made time for him to add a few bits of guitar, enough to give credence to the concept that this truly was a reunion of the first Wishbone Ash: Andy Powell, Ted Turner, Martin Turner, and Steve Upton.

  We had William Orbit do additional production work on the album, much to Martin’s annoyance. Miles felt that the music needed a bit more finesse, a bit more groove and track sweetening, and William did do a great job, I thought. His main tools of the trade were several AMS samplers (the very same unit we’d taken out on the road with us years before), which he used to great effect, adding micro-beats and percussion elements—all very current and of the moment. True, the guitars could have been mixed louder by Martin or given more beef in the EQ department but it was, after all, an 80s record. Martin handled that side of the production, and there were certainly no issues in the volume department where the bass was concerned. It was front and centre again, and to be fair to Martin he did a good job of the complex task of handling the various keyboard elements, samples, and loops, all of which were fast becoming the new tools of the trade in the recording studio. Together, we managed to come up with some great melodies and some classic Wishbone Ash riffage, and once again, dare I say it, we had produced some cool new music, relevant to the times.

  Nouveau Calls (Steve’s pun for ‘no vocals’) was released in December 1987, at which point Wishbone Ash were on tour in Russia and Lithuania. ‘Which-bone Ash?’ you may ask. Well, it was me and Steve with Andy Pyle on bass and Jamie Crompton on second guitar, fulfilling the last of the dates we had committed to before the offer from Miles had come along.

  Our instrumental album was very warmly received but obviously did not set the charts alight, being seen by the old fans of the band as something of a side project. This was the era of new-age music, and instrumental music was faring very well at the time, with labels like Windham Hill making waves among more mature audiences. While we’d all approached the album as a one-off project, there was a natural moment in the New Year of 1988 where it felt right to continue. There were no more dates on the books with Andy Pyle and Jamie Crompton, and both generously bowed out to allow a full-scale reunion of Wishbone Ash Mk I. Jamie (after an unexpected swansong tour with his own band in Russia) would go into the musical instrument business, heading up artist relations for Gibson in New York and, later on, Fender in the UK; Andy joined Gary Moore and contributed to his phenomenal success around the 1990 album Still Got The Blues.

  Meanwhile, Steve Upton was having marital problems. This had all come very much to the surface when we were playing the dates in the Soviet Union. It was a very strange time, seeing Steve go into a state of almost complete shutdown and undergo a change in personality. He went into a deep, dark place, retreating into his shell. James would often put his arm around him and encourage him not to bottle it up. I just tried to give him his space. We could all see what he was putting himself through, and it was very distressing. He’d be at the soundchecks and playing the gigs, joining us for meals, but to all intents and purposes, Steve—‘the Colonel,’ as our tour manager, Phil Griggs had christened him—was not in the room.

  We played numerous dates in St Petersburg in one venue alone, a large ice rink, and later moved on to Moscow for one date. It was cold, brutally cold even by Russian standards. This was all in the days of Perestroika or Glasnost, the end of the Soviet Union. The Neva River was frozen solid, with blocks of ice piling up against the shore by the Hermitage museum. We got as much out of being there as we could, sightseeing and such, but the food in the hotel was really awful. It sounds ridiculous but the only palatable thing that was in plentiful supply was caviar—and, of course, the vodka was excellent. That place was a vast tourist-style hotel with an elderly babushka on each floor, sitting on a dais, recording when you entered your room and when you left it. Phone calls were definitely monitored and our interpreters were, we later found out, junior members of the KGB. They were very bright people and spoke excellent English.

  On one coach trip, I sat next to a young lady who saw me reading a Rolling Stone magazine that I’d brought with me. Looking sideways at an advert for Winston cigarettes depicting Americans with vacuous Colgate smiles grinning into the camera, she asked, ‘Is it real, that people in America’—she spat the word—‘are always so happy, or is it all an act?’

  ‘Well, it is a bit phony in this advert,’ I said, ‘but for the most part, life in America can be fun.’ She looked away, obviously perceiving it to be a
government plot, not in the slightest bit convinced.

  On another occasion, I got into a deep and truly fascinating conversation about politics with another of our ‘interpreters’. I invited him up to my room so that we could continue talking while partaking of shots of vodka. He was OK about that, but once we got to my hotel floor, under the watchful gaze of our designated babushka, he became extremely nervous. Inside the room, he was glancing up to the ceiling, trying, no doubt, to make out a microphone or camera. He clammed right up. I found these kinds of glimpses into the paranoid Russian experience fascinating.

  We had also committed to a few shows in South Africa during May 1987, along with the band Nazareth, at the Sun City casino complex. This was controversial at the time because of the imminent end of apartheid, but we made it a condition of our contract that the shows were to be open to all ethnic groups. In the UK, however, both bands walked into a firestorm of protest—we were even being blacklisted by the Musicians’ Union and the UN, along with the main focus of the press’s attention, Elton John, who had also gone to South Africa. In reality, the MU had never done anything for me—they were a joke in many respects—and my view was that, of course, music knows no boundaries. This was to be proved so when during the soundcheck we found ourselves being serenaded by the black stagehands who were all smiles as they sang their a cappella songs. Later, after the main concert, we partied like there was no tomorrow in the mixed-race staff bar of the casino, with all the workers rocking up a storm with the Naz. There had been a few black faces among the mostly moneyed and white crowd at the actual concert but that was mostly due to the location and prohibitive economics of actually getting to the place.

  As a side note, we did the obligatory dawn photo safari out into the bush with the Nazareth boys, and that was pretty spectacular in terms of wildlife watching, though we weren’t prepared for just how cold it gets out there before the sun comes up.

  * * *

  On February 27 1988, the first Wishbone Ash became the current Wishbone Ash at a concert in Folkestone—the first date in a long UK tour, swiftly followed by a long European tour. Ted, who had gone back to America, had his return delayed and missed our rehearsals, so the first half of the shows on the British tour featured myself, Martin, Steve, and Jamie, with Ted coming on, dressed in all white and waving peace signs, for the second half, which featured the older numbers he was intrinsically familiar with. The sixth date, in London, was recorded for broadcast by BBC Radio 1. We were, it seemed, in danger of being popular again.

  We started working on what was to be our second reunion recording, Here To Hear, in the middle of the year. This time, vocals were allowed, and all four of us contributed from the start. We’d have the album completed in October, but it would have to wait until June 1989 for release. I’m a bit hazy about why this was but it was probably because in between, in November 1988 and then again in May 1989, Ted and I were taking part onstage (and Martin offstage) in Miles’s latest wheeze: another traveling circus, this time called Night of the Guitar.

  Miles had rounded up nine veteran guitar players, most of whom had by now recorded something for his No Speak label—either a full album or an exclusive track for his themed compilation Guitar Speak. The line-up for the British tour, in November, would be Ted and me (performing together), Leslie West from Mountain, Alvin Lee from Ten Years After, Robbie Kreiger from The Doors, and our old friend Pete Haycock from Climax Blues Band, along with Derek Holt on keys and bass, Steve Hunter from Alice Cooper, Randy California from Spirit, and Steve Howe from Yes. We’d all come on and each do a three-song set with a great shared rhythm section, Livingstone Brown on bass with Clive Mayuyu on drums, and then we’d all jam at the end. Miles had boiled the whole Star Truckin’ experience down to a lean, manageable, three-hour show with a fraction of the logistics and none of the dodgy Dutch accountants. It was, in a way, a guitar-centric reinvention of the British package tours of the early 60s, where vocal stars of the day would come on for three or four numbers backed by a house band. Since then, the Night of the Guitar concept has been reused and recycled by others, including G3; once again, Miles was ahead of the game. My brother Len had the unenviable job on being a roadie for the tour, looking after and tuning all those guitars.

  The shows were really something. Randy California seemed to become the musical director and the main ‘voice’—whenever singing was required. Alvin Lee did the odd vocal, too, and we had one: ‘The King Will Come’, our nod to the past, slotted into our set alongside two of the recent instrumental pieces, ‘Real Guitars Have Wings’ and ‘In The Skin’.

  Martin was OK about the whole thing because he was recording the shows—there’d be vinyl and CD releases from it, as well as a two-hour home video—so he was able to put his producer hat on again. Steve, unfortunately, wasn’t involved. I don’t know how he felt about that, but it can’t have been easy for him. Nevertheless, it was getting the Wishbone Ash name back out there, and the show was playing to packed houses.

  For the second phase of European dates in May, Phil Manzanera from Roxy Music and Jan Akkerman from Focus replaced a couple of the original team. There was no shortage of guitar players from the 70s who’d perhaps slipped out of the public eye but whose musical chops were in good shape. I don’t know if everyone involved was trying to rejuvenate their career, but certainly there were one or two who hadn’t been very visible for a while. Whatever the motivations, for all of us it was great fun and, if you listen to the recordings, some really great music was produced.

  Some of those involved were more ‘rock’n’roll’ than others. Top of the list would be Leslie West: you just don’t get any more rock than Leslie. He is, despite his best efforts, indestructible. It was a disparate bunch, all right: Steve Howe down with the pixies at one end of the spectrum, Leslie West dancing with the devil at the other. Somewhere in the middle were Ted and me.

  It could have been a bit daunting on that front for Ted. He had only made his stage comeback, after many years away, on our British and European tour earlier in the year, but he delivered the goods. Though we only played three songs, Ted donned the white outfit every night and ‘became’ Ted Turner again. It was as if he was playing a role. When you’ve been offstage for a number of years you definitely do leave your stage persona behind. But he had had enough experience to know what that character was and he could recreate it, albeit with a new West Coast, new-age twist.

  With Miles involved as he was—compering every night and revelling in the over-the-top pantomime aspect of the whole thing—you know it’s going to be fun. And with Leslie involved it was always going to be rock’n’roll. The first thing he’d say when he got on the tour bus, looking at the non-white rhythm section, was, ‘Jews and blacks at the back of the bus!’ His being Jewish would be quick to follow. Miles’s girlfriend Adriana (later to become his wife) was also on the tour. She was a beautiful Argentinian with a big handbag, and Leslie would be haranguing her every day: ‘What’s in the bag, bitch?’ He simply did not care.

  There were times when we were touring in Italy by rail and there’d be great arguments on the platform about which train we were supposed to get on. Leslie would go, ‘This is the train …’ to which the entire entourage would say, ‘No, Leslie, you’re wrong.’ No one else would get on, the train would start moving off, and there would be Leslie West, drifting off into the sunset with this huge hold-all he carried, including his mini Steinberger guitar inside it. Eventually he’d reluctantly throw the bag from the train before jumping off himself—a heavyset guy landing on his face on the platform. I remember blood everywhere, Leslie screaming and then, later that night, making it onstage with a broken nose, his head bandaged up like something out of the civil war. Things like that happened night after night. He and Jan Akkerman butted heads a lot. He would always call Jan a ‘Gypsy Jew’, as if he wasn’t really Jewish like Leslie. Alvin Lee took a lot of heat for having made his career on Woodstock. Mountain had been there too but had not been selected for
the actual movie. This was a big thorn in Leslie’s side, and he let Alvin know it. He would just needle everybody, find their Achilles’ heel—a nightmare, but also hugely entertaining.

  Shortly after the European leg of the Night of the Guitar adventure, in July ’89, the original Wishbone Ash regrouped for our first US dates in this particular format since 1974, prefaced by a couple of shows in Brazil. We shared the bill with some of the other IRS artists, including Leslie West. He and I went down from New York to Rio de Janeiro to do those first shows, and when we got to Rio Leslie didn’t have his papers in order. Passport control put us in a holding room for an hour—during which time Leslie figured out the only way to get through was to get distraught, so he started blubbering. The Brazilian officials just couldn’t deal with this grown man crying and freaking out. And sure enough they let us through, happy to get rid of him, no doubt. It’s an education being around Leslie West, but after a while you’re happy to leave school.

  * * *

  Things back in Britain were progressing fairly well. Here To Hear was released in the Summer of 1989 (June in America, ahead of the US dates; August in Europe). Wishbone Ash embarked on a substantial tour of English town halls and theatres in September and October, followed almost immediately by a similarly substantial tour of Germany. Further British and European dates followed in the first quarter of 1990.