by Andy Powell
By the 90s I was becoming the de facto vocalist in Wishbone Ash, even though I’d always resisted it. I’d also done a bit of recording in New York, one time with a producer called Kashif, who’d worked with Whitney Houston. I’d been introduced to him by our old tour manager Russell Sidelsky, who was himself moving up the ladder with Kashif, Cher, and later the Def Jam label. I’d seen the way black artists were running things. It was a communal approach, it being impossible to do everything on your own. These guys had little production houses on the go. No sooner would they get some traction with a hit than they’d open it up to their circle and get everyone on board, thereby becoming even more productive. It got me thinking: I don’t have to be precious. All I have to do is keep to the fore the ethos and sound of the band. Why not bring in my old buddy Ian on lyrics? Why not bring in a session player here or there if we need it? I admired and was inspired by this production-house technique. This communal approach was how we’d originally thought of Wishbone Ash, but we had lost that after Ted quit.
Beginning with one co-write on Bona Fide in 2002, Ian has now collaborated, in an elegantly stealthy manner, on six songs on 2014’s Blue Horizon. This takes a weight off my shoulders and allows me to concentrate on the production of the albums, to create something from the raw materials in front of me. At this stage, I’ve done everything I ever felt I needed to prove as far as being in a band is concerned. It’s not about notching up credits on songs for the sake of it. Opening things up to others is a win-win situation.
Creating the songs on Wishbone Ash records has consequently become a truly fluid, collaborative affair once more. On Bona Fide, it was a simple split: Ben Granfelt contributed fully half of the songs, I wrote three, and we co-wrote the remaining two together, with Ian Harris providing lyrics for one of them. When Muddy joined, in time for Clan Destiny in 2006, things started spreading out a bit: Muddy contributed one; I had three, one of them co-written with Aynsley; three more came from outside writers; and all the band members collaborated on the remaining five, with Ian Harris providing lyrics for one of them. The subsequent albums have all seen a myriad of collaborations between myself, Muddy, Bob Skeat, Joe Crabtree, Ian, and Aynsley, plus a couple of songs from Pat McManus and one, on Blue Horizon (2014), from Roger Filgate. Indeed, the lead track on Blue Horizon, ‘Take It Back’, was a solo composition by Aynsley.
Aynsley, like Ian, has grown up listening to the band—in his case, literally from being a toddler while we were rehearsing or recording. As a result he’s also got a really defined sense of what constitutes ‘the sound’ of Wishbone Ash. I still think it’s important to follow the mission we adhered to in the early 70s. My aim has been to reconnect with what it’s like to be in a so-called band of brothers—to produce band-centric songs and to keep the joy and euphoria intact in the playing, while continuing to display the high production values that Wishbone Ash have always been known for.
There’s far more stability now in camp Wishbone, more joie de vivre. And without wishing to blow my own trumpet, I believe a lot of that comes from me: I’m able to infuse the band with that. I’m good at bands: forming them, working them, and making them productive and happy. Another point to consider is that, when you’re twenty-two or twenty-three, as we were when Argus came out, how much life have you lived? What have you got to say? It’s remarkable that we were able to fashion something of depth and meaning at all, as young as we were. But now, song-wise, I’ve got this whole life behind me that I can tap into. It seems much more natural for me to be writing songs from the standpoint of an older person than it did when I was in my twenties.
While it’s fair to say that my writing contributions on the most recent couple of albums have been almost entirely collaborative and ensemble-based, my writing as an individual was possibly at a peak on The Power Of Eternity. Certainly, I’m very proud of the songs I wrote on that album, and on Clan Destiny too.
The overriding theme in my writing has always been self-questioning: ‘What’s it all about, Alfie?’ I’m a great closet philosopher. In addition to that, relationship songs are my forte. ‘In Crisis’, from The Power Of Eternity, was written from the heart, actually on the back of a brown paper bag, while crossing the Delaware Bridge at rush hour. The words ‘Are You In Crisis?’, flashing on a sign across the lanes, resonated with my dark mood at the time. Strength in adversity is another recurring theme. People think that the older you get, the more you know, but it’s actually the less you know—or the more you realise that there is so much you don’t know. You surrender. And when you surrender, you start producing songs. You become a conduit.
It’s become increasingly apparent to me that some guitar players picked up the instrument in the first place because they weren’t comfortable singing their own songs. Or, to put it another way, using an instrument is an alternative to using the greatest gift of all: the human voice. This thing around your neck can be an artifice. It’s been an amazing revelation to me to find a way to tap into the truth as I know it and give voice to it in songs. I’m so grateful to the band for allowing me to figure this out. I’d also credit Eric Clapton, because I saw Eric go from being a guitarist to a writer and singer of songs. When people who play guitar give vent to their own voice, it turns out to be pretty nice. Peter Green and Gary Moore come to mind, too, though Jeff Beck’s an exception to the rule. After years as a reluctant singer, I’m happy with my voice now.
Having said that, I don’t need any kudos from critics these days. The only critics that matter to me now are the audiences who come out to our gigs, come rain or shine. An audience can tell if a song has verity. When you tap into something that you did or that occurred to you and sing your song about it, there’s nothing more powerful.
* * *
The current Wishbone Ash is in a good place. It’s an extended family. Attention will inevitably always focus on the two incarnations from the 70s, from the time when Wishbone Ash were gracing the album charts and receiving regular media coverage. During those years there were four other guys (including Laurie) and me, and maybe some people still draw an inference from the fact that when we all met again in court, forty-odd years adrift from the triumphs of our youth, it was those four other guys ranged against me. But that’s not the full picture.
As I count it, seventeen other people have come through the ranks of Wishbone Ash since then, and I have remained on very cordial terms with almost all of them after we parted ways. One consequence of the court case that I haven’t mentioned so far, which caused me some distress, was finding that Ray Weston had allowed the financial fallout from the Live In Chicago/Permanent Records situation back in 1992 to fester. Although we’d parted on good terms in 2006 and had seen each other since, it appeared that he still had a gripe that somehow some money had gone missing and I was responsible for it. And so, seemingly solicited by the Martin Turner camp, he wrote a statement about this particular issue to cast doubt on my character. The judge ignored it because it simply wasn’t relevant, but on a deeper level it was relevant to me.
Ray, I thought, are you serious? I’ve never contacted him about it, but I was angry. I have great memories of fun on the road with Ray, so it was very disappointing.
I’ve observed so many bands over the years. You’d encounter them on the road, where the overall atmosphere was pretty negative—sometimes very aggressive, sometimes bullying, sometimes just depressing. We’ve had elements of that in Wishbone. There were times, during the period when Laurie was in the band, where people would not dare to come backstage after the show because we would be bitching every night—‘You were too loud’, ‘You were hogging the limelight’, and so on. I saw Martin almost break his hand on a table top while arguing with Steve. Steve would often goad Martin, and you could goad Martin very easily. So I’d had some times like that with Wishbone but I’d come to the conclusion that if I was going to stay in the band, I wanted a happy band, and in later years it became just that. That’s why it was so disappointing that it ended the way
it did with Ray.
I sincerely hope and believe that the days of falling out with people in the band are over. Partly it’s down to character; partly it’s down to the external circumstances you have to live and work through, like skirting bankruptcy over a long period and getting stiffed by record labels. These were part of our lot, and I guess that same sort of thing has been part of the lot of so many of our peers. The ones still here, still touring, still making music, are the ones who didn’t crack, or who at least didn’t crack completely, under those kind of pressures.
In recent years, everything in Wishbone Ash has been so much more mature—a natural consequence of age and experience. It really has become a big new family, an extended family where you might see the cousins every once in a while, like Ben Granfelt, Mark Birch, and Mervyn Spence guesting on the 40th Anniversary concert, or Roger Filgate contributing to Blue Horizon, or the likes of Jamie Crompton, Phil Palmer, Tony Kishman, and Mike Sturgis just keeping in touch.
We go our own ways, do our own things, but we can get along like normal people—like people who worked together for a time and shared a few ups and downs and a few laughs along the way. Most people reading this book will have colleagues and friends they worked with for a couple of years maybe twenty or thirty years ago. It’s easy to drift apart but, actually, there’s no reason you can’t stay in touch or at least reconnect every so often with such people. Bands are no different. Well, they can be—but they don’t have to be!
The current Wishbone Ash has been together, at the time of writing, for nearly eight years. That’s the longest period of time together for any line-up of the band. It’s also been one of the most productive line-ups: three studio albums (The Power Of Eternity; Elegant Stealth; Blue Horizon), three DVDs (Live In Hamburg; 40th Anniversary Concert; This Is Wishbone Ash), three live albums (Road Works Vols. 1–3). A fourth concert film, documenting a series of theatre shows in Paris, will be available, all being well, by the time this book is published in the autumn of 2015, by which time I’m sure we’ll be thinking about another studio album.
So what has made this unit so stable? Well, the foundation stone is certainly Bob Skeat. If we’re off the road and I don’t call Bob for a month, I always know that when we do connect next we’ll be able to carry on from where we left off.
Muddy is the polar opposite to Bob. Maybe it’s a Finnish thing; maybe it’s to do with the cold dark winters up there, but he never wastes time on small talk—or any talk. It sounds weird but we’ll actually communicate post-tour more comfortably by email, but nevertheless I’m one of his biggest admirers. Muddy’s a total Anglophile in his cultural tastes and has, in fact, recently moved to Britain. One of the reasons Ian Harris and Muddy have hit it off is in a shared interest in English history and music, plus a wacky sense of humour. For all his apparent Nordic gloom, Muddy has a particularly refined sense of the absurd. He loves the ridiculousness of Monty Python and the strains of Roger Miller singing ‘I’m A Nut’ can often be heard in the dressing room after a show.
Muddy is serious about his music, though. He’s brought a distinctive, rather ‘weird gothic’ songwriting aspect to the band. ‘The Raven’ on Clan Destiny and ‘Dancing With The Shadows’ on The Power Of Eternity, for instance, are pure Muddy. There’s his dark Finnish soul right there. I’m older than Muddy by many years, but I still think I’m far more in the present and far less rooted in the past than he is. It’s a luxury to go through life with that retro-centric focus, but it’s great that we have one member of the band who can indulge that luxury and draw from it. If there’s one thing Britain’s always been good at, it’s talented eccentrics. So perhaps Muddy will fit right in.
Muddy and I will clash from time to time—quite frequently, in fact—but we get it out of the way very quickly because we realise that we’re both very sensitive souls. We’ll often second-guess each other. We co-wrote on The Power Of Eternity, which was interesting. The way it works for us is that he’ll produce me and I’ll produce him. We’ve both got enough respect for the raw essence of an idea so we give each other enough of a chance to flesh it out individually and then we come back and refine it together. There’s a certain intensity there, and I think Wishbone Ash fans want that.
Aside from our different personalities, Muddy does a lot more conscious listening to music than I do, and that feeds into his writing. With me, if there are any musical hints to other artists’ styles, it’s more subconscious. I’ll occasionally say when we’re working on something together, ‘Oh, that middle eight sounds a bit Stones-y—shall we scrap it or keep it?’ Muddy and the others are usually less bothered than I would be about these occasional spillings-over from the box of influences. There is, after all, very little that is new under the sun, in music.
Muddy has heart and soul—you’ve just got to dig deep to get it. And, crucially, he’s in it for the long haul. ‘You’re not going to get rid of me that easily!’ he’ll say laughingly. And I’m always very glad to hear it.
Purely from my perspective, there’s a bit of a blessing and a curse in always playing with another guitar player. Sometimes you think, Oh, wouldn’t it be nice just to have the freedom to play solo in a band? But the other side of it—the blessing to counteract the curse—is that you’ve always got a new guitar teacher or sparring partner to pit yourself against, to inspire you. It never gets complacent. I never need to go for guitar lessons: there’s always someone there! I’m sure it’s been the same for my various partners—all seven of them.
I’ve written already about the huge, often under-appreciated impact Bob Skeat has on the well-being and forward movement of Wishbone Ash. He has an ability to cement everything and make it real and to sanction the musical correctness of any new idea. He’s a consummate musician and, if required, he’s going to get up there and vamp away on jazz, folk, blues, or whatever it is. If Bob has to go and play party music one night, he’ll go and do it; if he’s asked to sit in with the pit band in a West End musical, he can do it. That’s partly the nature of being a bass player, but Muddy and Joe are the same way. That’s the point we’re all getting to in our lives. If it turns out there’s a global bossa nova revival in the offing, Wishbone Ash could go out there and play ‘Girl From Ipanema’ with the best of ’em. As a musician, you’re always still open to influences, using the language of music to find a dialogue with anyone who is participating.
When Ray left us in 2006 I asked Mike Sturgis, who’d been with us in the 90s, if he could recommend any drummers. And just as Mervyn Spence had recommended Mike Sturgis, Mike Sturgis recommended Joe Crabtree. The power of the Wishbone family! ‘He’s the closest to my style that I’ve met in recent years,’ Mike said. ‘If you like my style, I’d recommend Joe …’ So I called Joe and we brought him in on The Power Of Eternity, purely on that recommendation. What he brings to the band in addition to his musicality and prodigiously accurate chops are his organisational and computer skills—he’s a whiz at that stuff. He’s enabled me to computerise our whole business. Everything has become a spreadsheet.
We have a huge database of information now. If I say, ‘What set did we play in Hamburg in 2005?’ it’s there at the click of a mouse. Which at least means people in Hamburg (or wherever else) don’t hear the same set twice. Joe’s been a huge resource to the band in that way, a fantastic asset, and to cap it all he’s a genuinely nice guy. Joe was looking around for something to sink his teeth into in the music game during the mid 2000s. He had done a few gigs with David Cross from King Crimson, and he’d played full-time with the English prog-rock band Pendragon. So he’d seen a smattering of what it’s like to be in a touring band. But he’s really thrived in Wishbone Ash. We can throw any kind of music at him and he will translate it and make it work. And that’s amazing. It wasn’t always the case in the early days, with Steve Upton. Steve had his own idiosyncratic style that would either fit the music or wouldn’t. I remember Martin, in particular, would spend a lot of intensive time with him, trying to make a part wo
rk, mimicking tom fills and spitting out kick-drum patterns verbally. It was often quite funny to watch. With Joe, he can take the music and give it legs, and that’s massive. He’s also extremely calm and controlled, and I rarely see him get rattled.
On the subject of Steve, I’ll never forget that before we got Nelson ‘Flaco’ Padron to play the conga part on ‘F.U.B.B.’, we gave Steve a try on the track. We were in Criteria Studios, Miami, with Bill Szymczyk. We ran the track for him and Bill isolated the conga part in the control room as Steve attempted to lay it down. I say ‘attempted’ because, in addition to the strangely camp dance he was doing around the drums, there was this stream of guttural grunts and noises that were obviously going to destroy the recording of whatever part he was coming up with. He’d never played these kind of drums before, and they require a very specific technique of the hands—cupping them, using the fingertips, and so on. The rest of us were in tears, literally on the floor in the control room—at dear old Steve’s expense, of course. Needless to say, a new round of respect for Latin drumming was forged once we heard Flaco do his thing. This merciless piss-taking was never far from the surface in those days, and Steve would have been the first to have found someone else’s weak spot and exploit it. Man, we were cruel to each other, but these cruelties were great tension-busters.