Eyes Wide Open

by Andy Powell

  What happened much, much later on was that odd bits of information would turn up here and there about the stolen equipment. It turned out that no one had else in the US had the same stuff, and in addition we’d had it all branded with our logo, deep into the actual wood. So it was very difficult for the thieves to ‘fence’. Someone said that Joe Perry from Aerosmith had ended up with an amp or two. It was all rumour until many years later, after a return show to St Louis, during an audience meet-and-greet session, a strange guy came up to me and told me that he had bought one of my amps and really felt bad about it. He did not have the amp with him but pressed a wad of two-dollar bills into my hand, saying that he would at some point return with the amp, which he said he would donate back to me despite having bought it.

  Sure enough, the next time we played in town, he turned up with yet more of these unusual, brand new two-dollar bills—some kind of compensation, I guess. I thought the guy was slightly nuts but the third time we hit town, he arrived with a sad remnant of one of my favourite amplifiers that had been so badly bastardised and mutilated that it broke my heart. I took it from him, though, and have recently been trying to restore it as a memento of that time. It still sounds great.

  Another great benefit of touring the world is making friends in different countries and seeing life through their eyes as you get to know them. You hear stories of how our music might have helped them as students in some far flung university, or how soldiers or sailors in foreign warzones had our music with them to inspire or comfort, or how it might have fostered friendships with others. All of this is a huge honour, and I take it pretty seriously. In fact, it’s part of the impetus to carry on and keep the band together, and is an example of how, as Hilary Clinton might say, it takes a village to produce a band and its music.

  * * *

  One of the best travel adventures we ever undertook was the world tour of 1974, just after Laurie Wisefield joined the band. Ted was off in the Peruvian mountains on a donkey, but we were having our own adventures visiting Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. We were on a fifty-date American tour, and instead of going home for Christmas, Miles chartered this fabulous vintage motor yacht built in the 30s. We cruised down to Key West in Florida, where we avoided the cold weather back home and had a ball with our families for a couple of days, water-skiing, fishing, and jamming under the stars on the back deck of this fabulous vessel, with its state rooms and old-world finery. From there we played more US and Canadian dates before boarding a plane in frozen Edmonton en route to sunny Honolulu.

  Finally, we were able to get some real rest and relaxation, with time off to go to the beach and play at being tourists. One of the first things we did was convince a catamaran rental company that we were all sailors. The crew and band got several Hobie Cats and headed out into the surf, which was running at about six feet—which is a lot when you’re in a small sailboat. For the first few minutes we were flying in these things, but then one by one we all capsized and, after fruitless attempts to right our crafts, had to be rescued by an irate owner of the business. Rock’n’roll comes to town.

  We met a couple of rogues on Waikiki beach who were running a rickshaw ride business, and before long, after they discovered that we were in a famous band, a limo was produced from somewhere in order to tour the island. One of these guys kept going on about Thai stick and temple balls, and how we should try these super-potent blends of grass, which of course we did. Things got whacky. Much later on—several months on in fact—we found out that at least one of these fellows was either on parole or on the run. He turned up in London, visiting Martin at his flat in St Quintin Avenue, where Martin gave him a bed for the night and was repaid by having his rather fine Nikon SLR camera purloined. He only realised this after the chap—Dave was his name—had gone on his merry way.

  We had one date in paradise, at the University of Hawaii, before heading on to Australasia. It was a tour like no other, and visiting all these different places really turned your head around. In Japan we were treated like a teenybopper band with screaming girls meeting us at Tokyo airport. Laurie—or ‘Lolly’, as they would scream at him—was the favourite, and it took a real security job to keep the fans from invading our hotels. They were truly ingenious, using fire escapes and all manner of ploys to get to where we were. One morning I came down to breakfast and there was the actor Richard Kiel, a giant of a man at seven-foot-two who played Jaws in the James Bond movies, sitting there in the breakfast room. He was hardly inconspicuous, but acted as normal as anything.

  I remember arriving in Australia, jetlagged, but being whisked straight into a press conference, complete with TV cameras. It must have always been a big deal when foreign acts visited Oz in those days. The first question I was asked was, ‘How d’ya like Australia, Andy?’ Blearily, I answered, ‘I’m not sure—I only just arrived. It seems nice.’ In fact, of far more interest to the press than our arrival was that of The Osmonds, who were staying at the same hotel as us in Sydney. Pauline was thrilled by this, and even got to share an elevator ride with Donny himself.

  We had some great shows there, plus some useful downtime, which Pauline and I used to join up with an old school friend, Suzanne, and her husband Bob. We hired a car and travelled out into the outback with them and our tour manager, Russell, dodging kangaroos along the way. After that we hiked into the Blue Mountains, which was amazing: abandoned mining camps, eucalyptus forests, kangaroos, parrots, and all kinds of wildlife, including a giant lizard they call a goanna that walked lazily through our campsite one night.

  From there, we went on to New Zealand, where we played Wellington, Christchurch, and Auckland. We had a couple of days off beforehand, so Pauline and I decided to get a small charter flight down to the South Island to visit the town of Dunedin, where I had some long lost relatives. I particularly wanted to see my Uncle Bill, who by now was in his seventies. He’d been my father’s oldest living brother, but dad had never met him because Bill had left Britain as a teenager, before my dad was even born, he being the youngest of the six brothers and sisters. I’d heard stories of Bill around the dining table while growing up. I was not sure if he’d stowed away on a ship or lied about his age to obtain a working passage or what it was all about, but at any rate he’d left home, much to his mother’s distress, at the tender age of fifteen, marrying out there and producing a large family while becoming a sheep farmer. What else?

  We went up to the door of his modest bungalow, which was opened after a pause by a carbon copy of my father, complete with the Powell signature bald pate, same posture, same smile and blue eyes. It was as if I’d known him all my life. Incredible. Over lunch we heard tales of his life and were introduced to his family, and then after an emotional departure we set off back to join our rock’n’roll tour. It was all of great interest to my English family, and I like to think that Pauline and I were instrumental in Uncle Bill’s arrival in the UK several years later for a truly emotional reunion. My father himself couldn’t believe it, and the tears of joy flowed freely.

  The whole tour would leave incredible memories and impressions on all the band members. We would travel far afield in later years but at the age we were at that time, the impressions and adventures were so vivid, as they are when in your early twenties. We went out in a flourish in Auckland at the Western Springs Stadium on March 15, where we played an open-air concert. Steve Upton’s custom of late had been to leave his drum stool and take over proceedings on the mic, to give us all a break. He’d taken to wearing these cut-off denim overalls and rainbow-striped socks, giving him a hint of the clownish demeanour of Robin Williams in Mork & Mindy.

  Steve would get the audience in an even better mood by doing a riff on smoking a spliff, miming the actions as he went on. This always went down fabulously in the States, where people were quite open to all that at the time. Not so, though, in staid old New Zealand, which was quite behind the times, and where the police and authorities took a dim view of this kind of brazen public encou
ragement. The final straw came when Steve announced from the centre of the stage that we were about to play ‘F.U.B.B.’, which had been so titled as a result of our drug-infused recording sessions in Miami. It was an acronym for ‘Fucked Up Beyond Belief’.

  On his utterance of the dreaded F-word, the wheels were put in motion to forcibly take Steve from the stage. To be fair, the police waited until the end of the concert, possibly fearing a riot, but down to the local jail he went, in handcuffs. This was all pretty exciting. With one word he had assured us of headlines around the world—not least in the British Daily Mail—and I’m sure it shocked the life out of his mother when she read of his escapades. Knowing Steve as I did, it was all very much out of character, but it was great in a way that he’d been so risqué.

  CHAPTER 10

  BLUE HORIZON

  (2007–PRESENT)

  Back in 2002, Jethro Tull released a live DVD entitled Living With The Past, a knowing nod to their 1969 hit single ‘Living In The Past’. Tull-meister Ian Anderson was good at those hostage-to-fortune titles: ‘Too Old To Rock’n’Roll’ (from 1976) is hard to beat. But he always had his tongue firmly in his cheek and a winning way to keep the show on the road, adapting to new times and circumstances with new music while also keeping the faithful on board with deluxe remasters and ‘classic album’ shows.

  In many regards, Wishbone Ash have followed a similar path. As was expressed robustly during the court case, I passionately believe in Wishbone Ash creating new music. I’m equally passionate that when the band does so, there is often evidence of a thread of DNA linking it back to the best of what was produced back in the day. I’m not interested in writing or recording thinly veiled copies of ‘Living Proof’ or ‘The King Will Come’, or anything else from the back catalogue, but there will be a sound and a spirit that we can draw from and tap into while crafting new work that resonates with people in the here and now.

  One downside of having such a long history, with the greatest commercial successes and greatest public awareness at the beginning of our career, is that—outside of the core fan base, which has followed all the twists and turns—an impression can be formed that the current Wishbone Ash is ‘Andy Powell plus some other guys’, the implication being that, unless there are more of the ‘name’ players from the 70s involved, it somehow can’t possibly be any good. Who are these ‘some other guys’, though? Are they people I’ve just bumped into in pub bands and co-opted into this tour or that? Of course not!

  Even during the tough times in the 80s, we never settled for mediocrity. Players were always found with personality and quality, with something exciting to bring to the table in terms of their energy and musicianship. Even the short-term alumni of Wishbone Ash cannot be doubted in this assessment. To give one example, John Wetton, a ‘name’ musician, lasted one album and no live shows: I didn’t click with his personality, but his playing was superb. To give another, Phil Palmer, a pro sideman and a musician’s musician, stepped up to the plate at a week’s notice and single-handedly saved some dates.

  In the calmer and more predictable waters of the new millennium, Wishbone Ash has become a firmly established, solid, and viable commercial entity. To imagine that I’d take my eye off the ball and start working with mediocre players is bizarre. Casual students of 70s rock may not have heard of Muddy Manninen, Bob Skeat, or Joe Crabtree—not least because Joe, for one, wasn’t even born in the 70s—but take it from me: there are no passengers here, no dead weight. Setting aside the magic of the first years of the original band, I’d argue that the current Wishbone Ash is the best Wishbone Ash there has been.

  If that sounds like hubris or marketing, or the ramblings of a dotard, all I can suggest is this: listen to the music, watch the live DVDs, check out the evidence.

  * * *

  I view the ‘modern phase’ of Wishbone Ash as beginning with Bona Fide in 2002 and gathering a further head of steam with Muddy Manninen joining in time for Clan Destiny in 2006. Our first concert DVD of this modern era was Live At The Spirit Of ’66, filmed in the venue of that name in Verviers, Belgium, in February 2006, two months before Clan Destiny was released. Ray Weston was still in the band but it was early days for Muddy Manninen on second guitar. None of this mattered, though, because everyone played a blinder.

  A typical Wishbone Ash live set from these past fifteen years or so is roughly two thirds 1970–96 material, from Wishbone Ash to Illuminations, and one third ‘modern era’ material, from Bona Fide onward. The sixteen-song set on Live At The Spirit Of ’66 is a fair example: two songs from Bona Fide, three from the forthcoming Clan Destiny, and eleven from the seventeen albums up to Illuminations. The ratio on the set captured on our next DVD, Live In Hamburg (2007), is similar: eighteen songs, five of them from the current album, Clan Destiny; one from Bona Fide; and twelve from all the previous albums, many of these different selections from those heard on the Spirit Of ’66 set.

  That two-thirds/one-third ratio feels right. And barring maybe three or four ‘signature songs’ that people probably have a right to expect, we have the freedom to shake up the oldies part of that ratio on a regular basis. As I’ve explained previously, I very much live in the present, but I’m proud of the Wishbone Ash legacy and always respectful of what fans want to hear when they come and see us. And, happily, we’ve found a way to keep it interesting and refreshed for all concerned. A couple of times in recent years, like Jethro Tull—and like many of our British rock peers—we’ve based tours around whole ‘classic albums’: Argus in 2007 and Live Dates in 2014. Even then, though, we bookended those sets with some of our most recent songs. It’s all about paying respect to our heritage but not being a slave to it.

  So, these recent songs, you might be wondering: are they any good? And who’s writing them? Fair questions both. You can surely guess my answer to the first. The answer to the second is a bit more involved. Let me explain.

  In the early days, and certainly for the first couple of albums, Wishbone Ash was a band with a sound in search of songs. It’s now a band with songs, with something to sing about, and with a sound. We’re older and wiser but we still seek to tap into and deliver the euphoria we found when the planets first aligned for us back around Argus. I’ll explain also that I always use the term ‘we’ because a band, though a singular entity, is made up of pluralities. It matters not to me that the current ‘we’ is different to the original ‘we’. The concept of this band and many bands is that a band can only exist if the ‘we’ aspect, the team aspect, is always to the fore—just like sports teams, actually. Indeed, it’s been my experience that when it ceases to be that way, the band can be seen to be standing on shaky ground.

  A team also needs a leader. It took me a while to realise this and even longer to move, reluctantly, into that position. It took only a little while longer to find that I could actually enjoy this, even finding creativity in it, despite the obvious pressures of responsibility. The gamesmanship and navigational skills required to keep this musical entity viable and vital take a lot of energy. As a side note, I rarely find card games, gambling, or board games relaxing. My theory is that my everyday existence requires such a lot of these skills that I need some very different kind of stress-buster when relaxing.

  Back to the early days …

  The way I look at it is this: by the time the original band recorded Argus, we had three years of intense living under our belts. In a collective sense, we were able to just spew all this out. It was the four of us bearing our collective soul—a band that lived and breathed together. We were also reading a lot of news as well as mythology and philosophy, all of which became topics of conversation in vans driving home from gigs. All of that played into Argus.

  After that we were, in some respects, spent. The success of Argus had surprised us and left us self-conscious. We needed time to assimilate all of this, to get things in perspective. Ted’s solution was to quit the band. Martin stepped into the breach in the mid 70s and started writing about his ex
periences—which, by then, weren’t our joint experiences. We could play fantastic embellishments to that music—and some of it is music I’m still happy to have been a part of, and still happy to perform onstage—but it wasn’t so much a collective production. We were all living different lives. We weren’t able to completely buy into Martin’s vision.

  Nowadays, to me, it’s the best of all worlds. In the band as it is now, there’s a team. All of us are able to bring something to the table, which gives everyone a sense of gratification.

  Over the past few years the team, in creative terms, has grown outwards to include not only the four band members but also all of my sons, a few friends, and some fellow travellers. A close perusal of the writing credits on the five albums from Bona Fide on will reveal those regular collaborators: my son Aynsley Powell; my friend Ian Harris; former member Roger Filgate; and fellow road warrior, guitarist, and fiddler Pat McManus. Pauline even chips in with lyrics sometimes.

  Where lyrics are concerned, Ian Harris is the most prolific of this inner circle, and a very old friend indeed. He was introduced to me by Roger Dean, a fashion and fabric designer I went to school with, who made lots of the threads I wore onstage in the 70s. I remember one time when he and Pauline took off to John Lewis’s fabric department in Oxford Street, returning with a roll of green velvet with pink spots. I was flabbergasted, but Roger proceeded to produce the most amazing double-breasted suit for me, which I loved. I had met Ian in that context. Ian’s wife Maggie was Roger’s model, and we all hit it off immediately. He has an encyclopaedic knowledge of rock and is the same age as me; he had been a mod and had seen all the same bands as I had in the 60s. In short, Ian was much more in sync with me culturally than some of the actual members of the band I helped form back in 1969. The London sense of humour, for example, is a million miles away from the yokel laughs of Devon and Cornwall. No offence to my West Country brethren, but when the phrase ‘Get yer handbag off my plough’ results in paroxysms of guffaws, you really have to be from that part of the United Kingdom to get it.