by Andy Powell
* * *
There’s a very clear dividing line in British popular music, and it’s simply this: before and after the arrival of The Beatles. You could feel it at the time. The Shadows continued to have hit singles throughout the 60s, and you could still see Billy Fury or Johnny Kidd popping up now and again on Ready Steady Go!, but virtually everyone else who had made some kind of mark during that first flowering of British rock in the late 50s quickly faded away into cabaret or obscurity (or both).
I know where and when I first heard The Beatles: I was at school, and I remember hearing ‘Please Please Me’ on a transistor radio during the mid-morning break. The metaphorical clouds parted and the sun burst forth.
It was the first time that what we call ‘production’ hit me. In those days, the norm for a recording artist was to be either a featured vocalist or an instrumental act. The Beatles broke the mould: it was all singing, all playing. They had this vocal sound, a homogenous texture of three voices, the chiming guitars, the arrangement—everything was so clear. I wasn’t able to articulate it as ‘production’ at the time but I knew it was something new and distinct. How did they create that sound? It was so different and so powerful.
From that point on, all of the talk was about The Beatles. Who is this band? Where are they from? Liverpool, where’s Liverpool? How do they talk up there? We were intrigued with these distinctly Liverpudlian sayings, which soon became common currency, like randomly adding ‘whack’ to perfectly adequate questions. ‘How ya doing, whack?’ became the catch phrase in the school corridors. And thus we all walked around for a week or two, trying to talk Liverpudlian. Everything before that had been London, London, London, and now, all of a sudden, it was all about Liverpool. Then we got to see them on TV, and the whole journey—for a whole nation and then a whole world—began. After that, every single, every album became an event.
* * *
The Beatles were an entity apart; that was obvious to us. There was something that was obviously groomed about them, but it wasn’t ‘London’. They had this German thing going on with their suits and haircuts, which was kind of mod but not really mod, so they stood apart from the London scene somehow which made it very interesting. Somebody once asked them in a press conference if they were mods or rockers. Ringo immediately replied, ‘Neither: we’re mockers,’ which spoke volumes. They were above labels, and they were sharp of wit. I, however, was becoming a mod—or at least I was for a while. If you’d have told me that later on I’d actually work briefly with a couple of The Beatles in recording studios, I would not have believed it possible. But this did indeed come to pass.
The mod movement in Britain all started in London in the late 50s with Italian suits, French shoes, smoky basement scenes, and a soundtrack of modern jazz—all a subtle but definite differentiation away from the drab homogeneity of clothing and lifestyle available to men in the buttoned-up Britain of those days. By the middle 60s, the idea of ‘mod’ had devolved into something slightly different: the clothing aspect was still there, but by the time it was spreading out to the regions, the soundtrack had distilled to a kind of punchy R&B, especially with danceable records from black American artists with horn sections, while amphetamines, an aid for all-night dancing, were all the rage. British bands with horn sections would start to multiply voraciously a year or two down the line—one or two of them featuring me on rhythm guitar—but in 1964, thirty miles north of London, the bands we considered mod were four-piece guitar/vocal units typified by The Small Faces and The High Numbers (soon to become The Who).
I was fourteen when my band, The Dekois, opened for The High Numbers at the Trade Hall in Watford. Given the advanced levels of published Who archaeology these days, I can fairly certainly pin it down to August 1 or 22 1964. For me it was an epiphany. I’d never seen anything like it. Pete Townshend was playing a Marshall stack and he had his Rickenbacker guitar, a curly guitar lead—all intriguing stuff, let alone their stage act, their music, their energy. We went backstage, to their dressing room, and I can remember thinking, My God, these people are so professional—they’ve got stage clothing! It was all hanging up on hangers. They travelled in a Ford Transit and I’m thinking, That’s so pro…
I can’t say they were particularly welcoming on that occasion, but I sensed there needed to be a kind of arrogance to get anywhere—which is a lesson in itself. I saw Steampacket with Rod Stewart and the ultimate female mod icon, Julie Driscoll, at the same venue, the following year. These were older guys, three or four years older, so I was watching them for signs to see how they carried themselves—and, once again, it was all about attitude. So I definitely decided that to be a rock musician with any kind of success you had to have attitude. Up to that point I was an attitude-free zone; seeing The High Numbers was when the penny started dropping.
Then I saw The Who, as they now were, at the Dacorum College in Hemel Hempstead. I’d stood in the crowd in front of Townshend watching him play and, to use the vernacular of that time, I was mind-blown. The band by now was into the whole auto destruct thing. I literally ran all the way home. My dad was on the nightshift. I woke my mum up at around one in the morning and said, ‘You’ve no idea—I’ve just seen the most amazing thing!’
I’m not sure my epiphany was entirely appreciated. Nevertheless, even in the cold light of retrospection, The Who had a huge impact on me. A few years later, in, I suppose, a bit of a fairy-tale sort of denouement, we ended up opening for them in the States. I can’t honestly say they were much more welcoming on that occasion, but by then, of course, I had acquired some attitude of my own.
I wasn’t a big pill-popping mod, although some of my friends were. For me, it was all about getting an edge over the norm. We were growing up on very regimented 50s housing estates; everybody did things the same. Sooner or later you craved the opportunity to be different. And funnily enough—it seems absurd, in a way, looking back—that usually meant finding someone or something to copy. Individuality by uniform … as long as the uniform wasn’t what your dad was wearing.
One of the key guys to emulate in those days, when I was fifteen or sixteen, was Steve McQueen. He was the kind of movie star who dressed in a modernistic way—the lapels were a certain cut, the raincoats were shortened, the shoes were French or Italian. Everything was trimmed down, like the Mad Men thing you see on TV these days.
Our aspirations, though, weren’t limited to style. Free market economics was a big part of life: we were all hustling. Remarkably, given the penury of a time soon to come, I was never without money in my teens. I wasn’t specifically encouraged by my parents to take on lots of part-time jobs as a teenager but I always felt that I should. And, right from the beginning, I equated playing music to making money.
It wasn’t that I wanted lots of money, but I was very keenly aware that you had to pay your own way and take responsibility for yourself. It was there in my family background, from my mother’s and my grandmother’s experiences. More to the point, we didn’t get pocket money. All the local kids had jobs and if there were any jobs going you hustled to get them. I delivered newspapers every day of the week: before school I’d get up, come rain or shine, and do a newspaper round. Friday nights I worked in a fish-and-chip shop; Saturdays I worked in an electrical shop. There were milk rounds, and I even had my own ice-cream round for a while—in fact, around 1966 or ’67, I had my own ice-cream truck! My future colleagues in Wishbone Ash would never let me forget it, but actually that was how I learned to drive, before I even had a driving licence.
Putting in the hours like this meant I could save enough money, for example, to be able to go up to London and have a bespoke mohair suit made. My shoe place of choice then was called Raoul, with French shoes a speciality. All dressed up, we would then go into London or into Watford. We aspired to the Flamingo Club scene down in Soho, which Georgie Fame had started—jazzy R&B, ska rhythms, Hammond organ, and a classy horn section, all grinding out in a smoke-filled cellar with hipsters, gangsters, and bla
ck US servicemen on weekend leave.
It all seemed so sophisticated—and it was. In Watford, where the vibe was somewhat less rarefied, we could go to the Free Trade Hall or Kingdom Hall and see all the London bands that were doing the circuit at the time. By that time my whole musical world was expanding into Stax, Motown, and blues. ‘Our’ bands were The Action, The Creation, The Who, Zoot Money & His Big Roll Band, Spencer Davis, The Birds, Steampacket, Gary Farr & The T-Bones, Cliff Bennett & The Rebel-Rousers, Georgie Fame & The Blue Flames … it was a good time to be alive.
Around this time my good mate Bob Moreton—who was in a way my artistic guru, turning me on to Salvador Dali among others—played me a song by one Albert King. It was called ‘Personal Manager’. I was instantly hooked, and he’s still probably my favourite bluesman of all the Kings. I was really intrigued when I saw the photo of him on the record sleeve playing this odd-shaped V guitar by Gibson.
* * *
I left school at eighteen, after completing seven or eight O-levels and two A-levels. I could probably have gone to university if I’d pushed myself. I knew that I was fortunate in having passed the 11-plus and had the advantages of a grammar-school education. However, I never really understood why I was at grammar school, because I never had the direction at home to make full use of it.
I wonder now if perceptions of ‘class’ in Britain created more of a ball and chain around your ankle in those days than it would today. There are still class differences, of course, but back then society felt more rigidly delineated. Ideas above your station weren’t encouraged, though I think my dad gave it a fair go in his own way, despite being a staunch socialist. Maybe I felt university was beyond me, or maybe I just felt the muse too strongly. Either way, that’s what I did.
By then I was playing in bands with horn sections—seven or eight-piece ensembles. I was with two bands in my later teens: one was called The Sugarband and one was called The Ashley Ward Delegation. While I was still at school it was pretty much a weekend situation, but there were certainly times when I would stagger into school having done a gig on a Wednesday or Thursday and just about be able to make it through the day.
We were getting gigs in our own little world around St Albans, Watford, Hemel Hempstead—all these little satellite towns of London. Occasionally we’d make forays into London. We always had a Hammond organ, which was pretty unusual, even in those days. Four of us would have to lift this thing in and out of the van, and we were only skinny little kids. And, yes: we actually had vans. There were always older guys in the band, and someone would have a driving licence and the wherewithal to sort out a hire-purchase agreement. The van would, of course, be painted with our band name on it—we had a very ‘pro’ attitude. Yet somehow I felt the need to do two things which, I have to admit, do seem polar opposites. One was to go on the newly invented hippie trail to Marrakesh; the other was to have a go at something like a ‘proper job’. In retrospect, I needed to get both of these daft ideas out of my system.
CHAPTER 2
OUTWARD BOUND
(1969–70)
Even at the time, the 60s seemed to move very fast. Every few months there was something new. One minute I was a mod—sharply dressed, sharp music, sharp attitude—and the next minute I was on the hippie trail to Marrakesh. That isn’t a euphemism: I actually did go to Marrakesh.
I must have been nineteen, because I’d already spent some time at the John Lewis Partnership on their management-training scheme. Also, as far as I can recall, I’d only just got together with Steve Upton and Martin Turner—the beginnings of Wishbone Ash, the band that I would spend the rest of my life in. We’d had something of a rehearsal, at least, when I broke the news. My mind was made up. I had decided to go overland to Morocco in a Land Rover with a collection of other like-minded hippie wannabes—all complete strangers.
I suppose it was a kind of compressed equivalent to the gap year of today; a bit of fun and experience in between school, and what was to become my university of the road. I’d played in bands since the age of twelve and had always equated earning my keep with playing music, so it was a bit of a shock to find out at age eighteen that I needed to find a career. In my mind I already had a career: I was a musician, but in what I saw as my need to conform, the best thing the school career’s officer could come up with was the retail industry. I was conflicted, to say the least.
The curious thing is, none of this was down to parental pressure. I don’t think my father ever visited the school while I was there. I don’t think I got any real guidance from my parents. My dad certainly wasn’t encouraging me to be an engineer on the night shift at Vauxhall Motors. I don’t criticise them for that. They were just so busy making a living. It was a different world back then. There were management-training schemes in all kinds of industry at that time in Britain. Retailing was something I’d actually done. I was good at selling. Hell, to be a musician—selling your talents to an audience is one of the basic requirements, after all.
And so it was that I started off in Trewins at an affiliated store in Watford, and from there moved to the flagship branch of John Lewis in London’s Oxford Street. I spent my first summer there, sweltering in the oppressive heat, without air conditioning, trussed up in a suit and tie, a far cry from hippiedom. It was pure hell. I could see that there was possibly a real career there, though. In twenty years I might become a department manager. I liked the merchandise that I was selling, and the company had a good ethos. The idea was that we sales people were partners, rather than employees, sharing in the profits.
One happy by-product of the Oxford Street job was that it put me right in the centre of London, albeit as a commuter still living at home. I’d been playing in bands that occasionally made forays into the city, and that was appealing. Life in London promised a whole new level of excitement, but I simply wasn’t invested in this new career. I felt like an imposter—an actor playing a role. I give credit to a wonderful personnel officer, Silvia Lieberman, who basically encouraged me to go with my feelings, and that eventually led to me leaving the partnership.
I started growing my hair again; I ditched the suits and put vents in my Levi’s. Whilst on holiday in Wales, I answered an ad in Melody Maker—one of the foremost music papers in Britain at the time. The wording struck a chord with me:
Wanted—Lead guitarist: Positive thinking, creative and adaptable, for strongly backed group with great future.
I’m hazy about the exact chronology, but probably just before the initial rehearsal with Steve and Martin, I went up to Macari’s, a well-known music shop on London’s Charing Cross Road, to sell my guitar to fund the Marrakesh trip, which was already scheduled. This was my precious Burns guitar, which I’d saved for with money that I’d made from my newspaper round some years before. I remember my mother had actually pinned the £40 that I’d saved into the inside pocket of my jacket when I’d made the train journey to Surrey to buy the instrument. (The previous owner had actually won it in a competition on the back of a cornflake box.) As a side note, a few years ago I found an identical model and purchased it, with the idea of renovating it for sentimental reasons. That short-scale Burns Jazz guitar really was a great instrument, with an innovative floating vibrato system that surely helped form my lead-guitar style back in those days.
I was determined to experience travel on my own. I needed an adventure, and the trip to Morocco was to be the first time I’d ever left the country. I’m told that when my parents took me to Victoria station to meet my new travelling companions, I never even turned round and waved to them. I was more than ready to get out and experience life. Even as a young kid living on our housing estate, I’d always roamed far afield. When I got a set of roller skates I wasn’t content rolling up and down the driveway—I went to the next neighbourhood. Similarly, as soon as I got a bike I rode for miles, visiting different towns.
So there I was, sometime in the summer of 1969, a passenger in a bone-shaking old Land Rover, driving across Europe on t
he way to somewhere I barely had any idea about. Perfect. I stayed for six weeks, and as one might imagine soon hooked up with a couple of furry freaks from Leeds who had the same idea. There was indeed something in the air, and it smelled rather exotic. Yes, it was the first time I smoked hashish, procured from a man in a tent on the beach who sat crossed-legged on a woven carpet and deftly used a machete to casually chop off a lump from a large hash cake the size of a dinner plate.
The first stop was Tangiers. I saw belly dancers, I heard Moroccan musicians, I travelled on to Fez and Marrakesh, staying just off the Medina, where we saw Bedouins and the strange blue men from the desert. Then we travelled up into the Atlas Mountains, where the Land Rover promptly broke down. We ended up staying with a tribal family and being entertained by one one of their daughters, who danced for us after we had all shared the same family food bowl—my first taste of the wider world. I marvelled at how this little family survived, the women washing clothes in a mountain stream and so on. It was an eye-opener.
And then I came home. My senses had been overloaded and my immediate wanderlust had been satiated.
* * *
The audition that I attended before the trip had been interesting, if somewhat of a long-winded process. I made the call to London from a public callbox in Wales.
‘Hi, my name is Andy—about that ad in Melody Maker …’
‘Well, you need to come to St John’s Wood where we’re rehearsing in the basement of our manager’s parents’ house, 21 Marlborough Place …’
So up I went to leafy North London on the train with my homemade guitar to meet with these two chaps, Steve Upton and Martin Turner. I have a vague recollection that maybe I came back a second time and Ted Turner—‘no relation’, as we would be forever obliged to keep saying—was there, while Martin and Steve tried to come to a decision about which one of us they would eventually decide on. At one point they told me that they’d been unsure about Ted due to his lack of experience but that his mother had really pleaded with them to give him another try out. Ted had also been for an audition with Jon Hiseman’s Colosseum, where they reached the same conclusion as Steve and Mart.
