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Paul Jones interview

Paul Jones today

Early Manfred Mann, Paul on right

 

Paul Jones then

 

 

 

Paul Jones was vocalist and harmonica player for Manfred Mann. The band were one of a number of British acts, such as The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds and The Pretty Things who took American blues and recycled it, with a British twist, back to the American market. Manfred Mann had a lot of chart success internationally. Within three years Paul was itching to go solo and developed careers as an individual performer and as an actor. Indeed, he spent the next fifteen years busily on the stage, TV and film in musicals, dramas and comedies.

Come the 80s, Paul itched again, this time for a return to his beloved blues, and he established The Blues Band who are still going strong to this day. He has been recognised as an expert in the blues genre and latterly was signed by the BBC to DJ for them playing the blues, gospel, jazz and soul that he loves.

Paul has recently released a new album, Starting All Over Again, and is touring with The Blues Band, with Digby Fairweather's Jazz Band, with The Manfreds and can also be heard regularly on his Radio 2 show. 

We caught up with Paul and this is the interview he gave to www.retrosellers.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With Petula Clark

 

With Julia Foster

 

 

 

 

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Digger: ... What have you been up to recently Paul?

Paul: I’ve been touring with The Blues Band for the past few days. And still am. We’ve got Croydon tonight and actually, Fiona my wife and I are doing a church in Southampton. Then it’s back with The Blues Band. We go to churches and talk about our nefarious pasts and why things have all changed. We made an album a few years ago and we’re actually in the process of making a second one and it’s nearly all gospel songs – a couple of love songs as well.  

Digger: Rod Argent hosts a great evening in his local church some Christmases, with Baroque music, a choir, jazz, rock, Colin Blunstone and the rest of the band, hymns, mince pies and mulled wine. It’s idyllic with the sounds and the smells...

Paul: Sounds great.

Digger: So, can you tell us a little about your early background and your introduction to music?

Paul: Well, there was always music in our house. My mother was quite a good pianist and she was a big fan of Moira Limpany.  

Digger: Sorry, I’ve never heard of her.  

Paul: She was a classical pianist who did recitals.  

Digger: I’ve heard of Winifred Atwell. (Both laugh)  

Paul: Of course you have. But she used to play light classical pieces – the kind of music I’ve never really managed to be fond of. That’s not quite true because there’s a few things of Ivor Novello that I like very much. That was the kind of stuff; my father was more keen on Gilbert and Sullivan and Phil the Fluter’s ball and all that kind of thing. He played the violin not quite as well as my mother played the piano. My mother came from a musical family and father from a half-musical family. His mother was the only one of my four grandparents who didn’t play an instrument, so it was always like that. But it never occurred to me to do anything musical with any commitment apart from at Christmas and times like that.  

Digger: No piano lessons?  

Paul: No. But when I was at school it was discovered that I had quite a good childish piping treble, as Shakespeare once put it. Or was it someone else? Anyway, I got roped into the cathedral choir and that’s really where I started to, as it were, do music. That would have been church music and classical music but there were two boys at school who were basically interested in jazz and one of them lent me a book on jazz and recommended various things to me. And fairly soon I was buying Louis Armstrong and Sidney Beshet and Jelly Roll Morton and that sort of record. So that’s how it started and gradually I began to realise that the pieces of music that I liked best were blues. (Laughs)  

Digger: You must have been really grateful to those guys. What were their names?  

Paul: There was Dave Lippiatt and Peter Harding. I have vaguely heard of them since but the funny thing is my school in Portsmouth is getting in touch with me, or at least the old boys are.  

Digger: What’s that about?  

Paul: I don’t know. I think they’ve all decided they need to compare notes. I have noticed that neither Lippiatt nor Harding crops up on the circulars. I blame the Internet for all this sort of thing.  

Digger: It’s a blessing and a curse.  

Paul: One of my best friends lives in Canada now and he’s actually coming back to Britain for some sort of old boys gathering and I can’t believe it! Mind you, he’s probably got six other reasons for coming back to England as well.  

Digger: They tried to do it with my old school and my ‘best friend’ from school sent me a circular email with the people who were attending – 30 names from the early 70s - and the date/place and so on, so I agreed to go. Then he emailed me back and said “Oh no, I’m not going to that, can’t think of anything worse, just thought you’d like to know about it!” Bastard! (Both laugh) His attitude was – if you haven’t wanted to catch up with these people before then why would you now? It’s a bit cynical, but right, I suppose... Next question. Why do you think that young, white, British males in bands such as The Yardbirds, The Stones, Cream, The Animals, The Moody blues and Manfred Mann were so involved with and excited by blues music?

Paul: Well, it's a question I have thought about from time to time.

Digger: Yes, of course.

Paul: Because on the face of it, it looks kind of odd. But there was something so real about blues music.

Digger: And unreal about what had been going on musically in the late 50s in Britain, as well.

Paul: Well, yes, I suppose there's a definite candy floss, tinsel sort of thing about popular music at the time. I mean, that's not to say all of it was bad. But the thing about the blues is that it goes for the jugular. And I suppose those of us who had been born in or just before the war had been through all that and then that quite long period of austerity after it and we were probably just in a state of chronic boredom. And something about that really strong ... it's like you've been drinking milk and somebody says "Try this, it's called coffee" (Laughs) and it was kind of like that. I think that us exporting the sound back to America was successful to some extent and one meets people who play blues in America now, white people and, occasionally, even some black people, who say "Oh, I was massively influenced by your generation. You lot and The Yardbirds and The Animals and The Stones and so on." And it kind of strange but I think one of the reasons that they found it interesting was because they were probably hearing a lot of that bubble gummy stuff as well and suddenly we were bringing back to them stuff that was actually theirs (Laughs) but because we couldn't do it exactly the way they did it, it sounded new to them. In a curious way it was new. I always thought, oh dear, that we were fortunate really because we couldn't really do it. One or two people I've met, notably Dave Kelly from The Blues Band said "No, actually the fact that we didn't do it the way they did it and inevitably there had to be something of us in it meant that we brought something new to the blues and R&B."

Digger: Bill Wyman said that he had to point out to some Americans that the music The Stones were playing and that they were raving about originated and was being played just across town, it's just that they didn't venture across town.

Paul: Well, that wasn't really always an issue even back then. One can go back to the twenties and see white people playing blues and one of the interesting side issues of that was that not only were white people listening to the blues but Hank Williams was taught by a black person. But also black people were listening to country music, of course, so there always was this cross over between 'our music and yours'.

Digger: People tend to pigeon hole music and artists, which is a shame.

Paul: Pigeon holes become ridiculous in the end because you have so many pigeon holes that two kinds of music that would sound identical to 99% of the population and they say "I wouldn't have anything to do with that kind of music" to which the only response is "Don't be silly, you ARE that kind of music." Also the other thing about pigeon holes is that you end up with at least two kinds of music with the same name. People call some music R&B these days and they say to me "You never play R&B." I say "Some people think that's ALL I play!" 

Digger: What they call R&B in the charts bears little relation to the R&B that you were playing and continue to play.

Paul: But the thing is what we called R&B started with Muddy waters and Jimmy Reed, Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, and it went off in our direction you might say - The Stones, Animals etc. and other people started with Amos Milburn and Charles Brown and T Bone Walker, the west coast style of R&B. That sort of developed into soul and that has since developed into that, as you call it, 'other' type of R&B. I've never moved away from soul music, really. It's all, to me, a whole package. When I worked at Jazz FM, Greg Edwards, who also worked there and who had a lovely mellifluous American voice and  he did a liner for me and three times every programme I would play this little cartridge which said "Paul Jones, blues, Soul, Gospel, Jazz." That's the package for me.

Digger: Your new album Starting All Over Again is getting some great reviews. I have been enjoying it and wonder what the inspiration was for the choice of tracks. And how did you ‘sell’ the concept to the musicians who participated and also to a label which, up until now, had been releasing back-catalogue material?

 

 

 

 

Paul: Oh right, yes, that's the American label. Of course, in Europe it came out on Continental Blue Heaven which is part of Continental Record Services. How did it really come about? It really came about because of a lovely chap called Saul Davis who is credited on the album as executive producer. Well, Saul's been working in the music business for quite a few years - not quite as long as I have, but two of his more recent projects which were very good indeed were two albums by Percy Sledge and Saul is kind of an old-fashioned A and R (Artist and Repertoire) man in as much as he loves to find songs and he gets excited about songs as well as about artists. He puts the two together and expects to get even more excited. It generally works. He actually called me when he was making the second of the two Percy Sledge albums and he said "I'd like it if you could come over to Los Angeles where we're doing the album and put a couple of bits of harmonica on a couple of songs. And also there's a song I want you to sing with Percy." Well, you don't say no, so I got on an aeroplane and it's probably the furthest I've been for one session. (Laughs) It was at a time when sessions were beginning to tail off in this country because so many people had sampled so many things and everybody was making albums in their bedroom anyway, or starting to. And so the sessions which had always been a part of my life that I really enjoyed were getting thinner and all of a sudden here's one in Los Angeles with Percy Sledge, so I thought "This is great." I got on an aeroplane and arrived in LA and had something to eat and went to bed and then the next day got up and went to the studio and played the harmonica things, sang the duet with Percy and that evening got on a plane again in just that one day. I'd never met Percy, although I'd always been a fan. 

Digger: If it's not impertinent, why did they ask you?

Paul: Well, Saul has always had this thing that because all of my influences in my early career were Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye, Ben E. King, Percy Sledge, he always had this thing that I could sing that kind of music. And fortunately...he's right. (Both laugh)

 

 

  

Sam Cooke and Percy Sledge

 

 

Digger: How many takes did you have to do?

Paul: Oh no, we just went for it. And also I think I might have been a bit over-enthusiastic here and there so he took out a few bits that I threw in. (Laughs) He made my performance more subtle than it actually was. But the thing is he'd been talking to me about coming over and doing an album even for a year or two at that point and I kept saying "Look Saul, it's not that I don't want to do it, it's just that I haven't got time." We had The Manfreds going, The Blues Band, of course which is thirty years old now. Radio and TV work and I just did not have time. But this kind of whetted my appetite because while I was over there I saw some of the session guys he was working with and they're absolutely brilliant. So, about a year and a half ago there was supposed to be a tour building in America and to cut a long story short relationships between our side of the Atlantic and theirs deteriorated badly and the tour collapsed in powder. So Saul rang me and said "Your tour is cancelled, come on over and do the album." (Laughs)

Digger: You would almost suspect that he had something to do with it!

Paul: (Laughs) No, no. So we immediately began arm-wrestling about songs, which was a process which went on for about ten days or something and then he assembled the band and booked the studio. All I had to do was turn up and sing the songs that we'd agreed on. It’s an interesting collection of stuff actually because some of it's mine and some of it's his, and I think it’s turned out fine. Especially from a musical point of view because the band is really great. We had Jake Andrews on guitar and Alvino Bennett on drums and Tony Marsico on bass and Mike Thompson on piano. He was brilliant because he came in quite late on the sessions and one of the things that we then did was this big jam called Alvino’s Entourage. That’s sort of the last track on the album, except for the bonus which is the Percy Sledge duet. When we were still putting the plans together for my album I said to Saul “You know, that duet with Percy is really nice.” and his album at that point was about three years old “Do you think there’s any chance we could get it and put it on my album?” It’s by no means the first time that sort of thing has happened; you often get these collaborations between people and the track comes out on one person’s album and the a few months later it’s on the other person’s album. I think that’s fine, so we asked Percy and he was okay and his record company were fine with it and so we put the track on my album as well. The interesting thing is now there’s a company that’s re-issuing Percy’s album and I’m not sure what I think about that, but no actually it’s great.  

Digger: How’s it being promoted? And how are sales?  

Paul: Well, you talked about that record company in America which, as you know, is a re-issue company and for some reason I think they were not geared up for new product. But actually this, to me, is an album which has a long shelf-life so first of all I’m not giving up on anything and secondly I need to do some more promotion on it myself. As far as Europe is concerned or at least Britain it’s been very, very good. Jools Holland got me on his programme ‘Later’ and I sang one of the songs on that.  

 

 

 

Jools Holland

 

Digger: He’s got a great job, hasn’t he? What an eclectic show that is.  

Paul: Oh yes, remarkable actually because on that particular edition of Later that I was on there was Chrissie Hynde and The Pretenders, there was Regina Spector who I have to confess I’d never even heard of and I thought “My goodness, this woman is remarkable.” And she’s been going great guns ever since then building a great reputation. Baaba Maal was on it and this wonderful Dirty Dozen brass band from New Orleans and I can’t even remember their name now.  

Digger: How does that work? Obviously there’s a camaraderie there but there must also be a little bit of competitiveness for the musicians?  

Paul: I’m not sure there is any competitiveness. Actually, there probably is but listen, at my age you don’t worry about stuff like that. It was lovely to go and see Chrissie and the guys again because I used to go and see them when they were just starting. The drummer came up to me and said “Do you remember us?” And I said “OF COURSE I remember you. (Laughs)  

Digger: Ah! He was being all humble, or maybe he thought your memory might be going!  

Paul: It’s years since we’ve seen each other. And Baaba Mal was somebody who I just vaguely knew about but he was absolutely sensational. I just went up to him afterwards and said “You’re absolutely amazing.”  Like he didn’t know. (Laughs)  

 

 

 

Chrissie Hynde

 

 

 

Digger: Like a gushing fan.  

Paul: A little bit like that. I really enjoyed doing the show and Jools was terrific. And the trio was terrific and Gilson is a wonderful drummer.  

Digger: Jools has a clumsy style but he gets there, he stutters and stammers from one bit to the other but it’s very endearing.  

Paul: Bumbling? I think it’s all cultivated.

Digger: Columbo style?

Paul: That's exactly right. I think Jools is absolutely fabulous.

Digger: He's great and he's also a big fan of The Prisoner which means he's got to be good in my book... You now have a reputation as a blues expert, not least by virtue of your Radio 2 show. For a blues novice, what artists and would you recommend as an introduction to the genre?

Paul: Oh, if you really want to do this there's so many wonderful compilations now of the history of The blues so that it's really quite easy to walk into a major store and just look at the 3 or 4-CD boxes, handily presented. It's great because you get everything from Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charlie Patton and Robert Johnson, Bessie Smith and Ida Cox and on up to T-Bone Walker and Big Joe Turner and of course not forgetting the likes of Johnny Winter and Paul Butterfield.

 

 

Blind Lemon Jefferson

 

 

Digger: I'm familiar with these names by virtue of what you and The Stones and the other guys did, really.

Paul: You can start where you like really, as long as the thing you start with gets you excited you'll wind up with everything else. You can start with B.B. King or Jeff Beck, eventually you'll wind up with Robert Johnson and Charlie Patton. Nowadays there are so many - I don't enjoy reading things where people say "The last great Mississippi blues men." And you think, don't be silly, the last great Mississippi blues men have yet to be born. And there are so many good young people about, but the problem is you get a lot of people who are slightly stuck in the past and so if I say Alvin Youngblood Hart is somebody really to look at and listen to somebody will say "Oh yeah, he hasn't played the blues for the past three albums." It's not true, he's merely taken a lot of other things on board as well and that's where he came from in the first place. 

Digger: The supporters of Hendrix had a hard time getting a blue plaque on the house he lived in because Handel had lived next door.

 

 

Controversial Handel and Hendrix plaques

 

 

Paul: I think the forces of common sense won in that case?

Digger: They don't always.

Paul: But then just give it a few more years, that's what I say. Then either people will prove to have been a flash in the pan or they'll prove to be of enduring importance. 

Digger: You've got to accept, though, that the sixties were something special in terms of a cultural explosion. The 70s was dire compared to the 60s even though I grew up as a teenager in the 70s and have a soft spot for them. There were so many things coming together at the same time in music and other areas of the arts in the 60s. I don't think we've had that level of creativity since.

Paul: I mean I'm not very sure of myself on what happened in which decade.

Digger: Why's that then Paul? (Laughs)

Paul: I'll tell you why and it might not be what you think. I spent the 70s working entirely in the theatre and I had very little to do with the world of music except doing sessions and the sessions were very interesting. There was lots of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd-Webber but there was also Ruby Turner and British Electric Foundation and Tom Robinson. And when I look at the 70s I think it wasn't THAT uninteresting. We had everything from David Bowie to The Sex Pistols depending on which side you like to travel.

Digger: And all the pretentious rock.

Paul: Barclay James Harvest, Genesis and Yes and all that sort of stuff. But from my point of view what was much more interesting was what we were getting from Aretha Franklin and James Brown and War. War is one of the great events in the history of popular music, partly because of having Lee Oscar on harmonica. A lot of what I do on the harmonica these days is based on the way in which Lee Oscar interacted with the horns in that band. I think they had their fans at the time but really they need to be revived, resuscitated and re-analysed because it's a very seriously important band. There was a lot of great stuff going on in the area of jazz-rock, The Blackbirds, and blues Rock and Latin Rock like Santana. There was a lot of great music.

Digger: Okay!

Paul: Didn't you like stuff like The Stylistics?

Digger: Oh yes, I was a soul boy, so I was going into obscure shops in the London suburbs on the tube hunting for unusual and new soul releases. Buying it just because it sounded interesting and then it became mainstream some time later. Which is, I suppose, what people were doing in Liverpool and Newcastle in the early 60s.

Paul: That's right, yes. I'm just looking at my own album here and thinking what it's called and it's called Starting All Over Again and that's from the 70s - it was Mel and Tim. WHAT a great record that was. And didn't you like the Chilites?

Digger: Yes, Oh Girl and Have You Seen Her?

Paul: Man, there was loads of good stuff around. Groups like The Temptations were doing some great stuff.

Digger: And a lot of the people who didn't make it in the 60s were coming through in the 70s - Bowie, Bolan, Elton John, Slade and so on.

Paul: A lot of the people who I've mentioned were 60s people who were still 'on'. 

Digger: I just think the fashions got dire and I had to suffer them when I'd have preferred to have been a mod. Velvet and satin flairs, kipper ties, platform shoes, shirts with big Harry Hill collars and prints of planes or ladies on them. All a bit naff compared to the stylish, snappy, crisp, nice lines of the mod clothes.

Paul: (Laughs)  Ahh! You're probably right. I've thrown away my platforms.

Digger:  When visiting the USA, what has been the biggest thrill for you when meeting blues musicians and locations?

Paul: Yes, I've always been pro-America myself (Laughs) and it was lovely to work with those guys. I kind of vaguely knew of Jake Andrews. One person who we haven't even mentioned in connection with my album who is very important is Carla Olsen, who is, in fact, the producer. She produced the album in the studio, not Saul. Saul basically helped to choose the songs and pick the band and he was basically the executive producer but Carla was the producer. And assembling a band like that with Jake Andrews on guitar - I knew about him because Carla had produced a couple of albums of Jake's and I wound up with copies of them and played them on my radio programmes. He's a very, very good young guitar player whose dad actually played in and American band called Mother Earth with Tracy Nelson and Jake plays lovely guitar on it and Alvino Bennett I was aware of from when he played with Stevie Wonder and I also know he did some recording with Bryan Ferry. He's a fabulous drummer - solid as a rock and very exciting and so it was a thrill for me to work with those guys and we had a terrific studio with all the modern technology but they also had all the old analogue stuff as well, so we could get all the 50s flavours that we like. And I just really had a whale of a time. And I just think they did a terrific job after I came home to England as well because they were left with the job of mixing it - I didn't do anything on that and they did a great job.

 

 

   

   

Ready Steady Go

 

 

 

Digger: What is your view of the demise of the album cover with the advent of CDs and MP3?

Paul: I think it's a shame. What was the name of the guy who died the other day?...Tom Wilkes. We were playing in a place last night where they had all the Fillmore posters. They had all those on the wall and I thought that there was a lot of good stuff and you could do things with the 12 inch album sleeve that don't really look so great on the little 'un. But, then again, people are quite constructive with what they're doing with that format these days. Some of them are just daft because they don't hold the record properly. "Oh, wow, we've got this amazing concept for the sleeve." "Yes, my friend, but the CD falls out on the floor." 

Digger: A problem is, when you get to my age, I don't know about you, but I have trouble reading the things when they're that small. You used to be able to read the Sergeant Pepper sleeve notes or whatever because they were printed at a decent size. That's when I knew my eyesight was going, when I started complaining about how small they were printing the CD wording.

Paul: Yes. Actually the sleeve note is something that's gone as well as the pictures. 

Digger: It was all part of the experience, wasn't it?

Paul: Yeah, absolutely, but there's no reason why that should be. I got hold of a new album from Robin Trower the other day and the sleeve notes basically consist of his notes that he made in his diary while he was making the album and it's fascinating.

Digger: Yeah, I like all that trivia. How something was made and what experiences, decisions and thought processes went into creating it. 

 

 

 

Paul on stage

 

 

 

Paul: Some people would say it's not even trivia.

Digger: What were the origins of The Blues Band?

Paul: After... I got into the theatre completely in 1969 having just come back from a notorious tour of Australia and New Zealand with The Who and The Small Faces.

Digger: What was it like being on that tour?

Paul: Em... hairy! (Both laugh) 

Digger: I can't imagine two bands with more of a reputation - maybe The Move or The Kinks, because they had naughty reputations too.

Paul: I don't know, I stayed away from people's reputations. I mostly hung about with Roger Daltrey who turned out to be the most normal, ordinary. Actually, I don't mean ordinary because that sounds disparaging. He's a bloke, like me.

Digger: I was told that that with his background he'd either have been a musician or a villain.

Paul: I wondered about that. He never seemed particularly villainous to me - I think he made the right choice. Anyway, there was one really classically famous thing on that tour which is still discussed and talked about and things are written about it in Australia, where we were all required to leave an aeroplane. They generously landed it first. But they said "You lot, get off." And we said "But we're going to Brisbane." and they said "No, you're getting off." And it made the national TV news and the front pages of some of the less salubrious papers. It was an ordinary flight and we were probably flying across from Perth to the east coast and they stopped in Adelaide and told us to get off. It was painted as being that we were drunk and brawling and things like that. Nothing actually could have been further from the truth. It was an early morning flight and we'd had a gig the night before. Most people were either asleep or dozing over a newspaper.

Digger: What triggered the fact that they wanted to throw you off?

Paul: Well... they took against us. I think it was the length of some people's hair and things like that. They decided that they would come through the cabin with coffee and tea and literally, I promise you they did this, they served all the people in front of us and then they pushed the trolley through the four rows that we were occupying and started serving people behind us. And I couldn't stand it - I had been looking forward to this coffee for an hour.

Digger: Now we're getting to it. It was you that sparked the international incident. (Both laugh) I saw an American comedy film and this guy makes a gentle request to the stewardess and she is officious and misreads it and this escalates to where there's a huge security alert. I think the same applied with you guys - the people already had a view of you and how you'd behave and ironically ended-up creating a situation by their behaviour.

Paul: This is it. I mean, this was comic enough, it really was. The stewardess was pouring coffee for everyone else and there was The Who, The Small Faces, me and my band and this Australian band and I just said "May we have some coffee?" and the stewardess said (Australian accent)  "You'll get your coffee when I'm good and ready." (Digger laughs) And I said "No, actually, you'll pour me some coffee NOW." 

Digger: Oh dear!

Paul: And the stewardess said "I've never been spoken to in this way in my life." And I said "My, you've led a sheltered life." And that was it. They sent for the captain, he said they were putting down in Adelaide and you're getting off. Honestly, when we got off they called in the press and TV and radio and they told them that we were drunk and brawling and everybody was in their seat. The most exciting thing that really happened was Kenney Jones, who was at that point still the Small Faces drummer - he subsequently became The Who's drummer, was sitting behind a family with a small baby and this baby was in her mother's arms and looking over her shoulder and Kenney stuck out his pinkie finger for the baby to grab hold of. The baby's hand is so small they can grab onto it. And that, I promise you, was the most exciting thing that happened on that flight, other than, of course, the coffee incident.

Digger:  Which you were the instigator of. (Both laugh)

Paul: Yes, it WAS me!

Digger: You've got all these guys who've got really bad reputations and I think a lot of it is unfounded, throwing TVs out of hotel rooms and so on. Sometimes they do it just because they feel as though they have to!

Paul: Do you know something? The Manfreds were staying a hotel recently and our road manager turned on his television set and all he could get was snowstorms. He called down to reception and asked if somebody could come and fix it. A guy came and couldn't fix it. So took it away and they brought a new television set. When we all checked out the next day there was the price of a television set on his bill. They said he'd broken it, he'd trashed it. He said "I did nothing apart from switch it on and phone down to get someone to come and help get it working."

Digger: Outrageous. Did they give up in the end?

Paul: Yes, yes. We were a group so we must have trashed it.

Digger:  Even though you're not 20 anymore. So... was it as a result of frustrations with the ‘pop’ output of Manfred Mann that you left the band?

Paul: Em, it was for a whole raft of reasons really. To be honest, I haven't really said anything about the origins of The Blues Band. I did all that acting in the seventies after that tour because it seemed like more of an occupation for a gentleman. Not that I was. I carried on working in the theatre all through the seventies, including a period of a year when I lived in New York when I was on a show on Broadway. The thing is that I really enjoyed the theatre but after a year of not doing anything musically apart from the odd session I was just desperate to play blues. And I thought I'd call some musicians and stick a band together. And so I did. And so that's really how The Blues Band came about. The thing is, part of my leaving Manfred Mann was the repertoire - you see I had been responsible for most of the songs that we did, either by writing them or by choosing them out of my record collection. And gradually we started to have more pop songs coming to the group - I don't know where from - publishers obviously in those days. Whether this was at Manfred's instigation or the record company's I don't know. But the point was that all of the music we'd done before was what they now call music of black origin and there was an awful lot of music of white origin coming our way. And I didn't dislike it or hate it or anything like that, it just wasn't my taste. Even the Bob Dylan songs. I mean I was happy to do a couple of the Bob Dylan songs we did do, especially as one of them went to number 2 in the charts. I had no desire to be a member of a Bob Dylan tribute band and we were doing more of his music. That was one thing and another thing was, and you might think this was trivial, I was kind of fed-up with people calling me Manfred!

Digger: Like they call Peter Noone Herman or Ian Anderson Jethro?!

Paul: (Laughs) The thing is that what would happen, especially in foreign countries rather than the UK where we were able to put things straight because we were around all the time, the announcer would say "Manfred Mann" and on would come this band and I would sing, so people thought I was Manfred. So people called me Manfred. (Digger laughs) And I thought "I'm bored with this." The third reason I left was because somebody said to me "You realise if you went out on your own you'd get a lot more money?" (Both laugh) 

Digger: Who was that? Mike D'Abo? (Both laugh)

Paul: No, it actually was quite a few people.

Digger: Was it true?

Paul: Oh my goodness, yeah. I made more in the first three months out of the band than I made in the three years I was in it.

Digger: Maybe they had one of those contracts that were notorious at that time where you didn't get a lot of the percentages.

 

 

   

 

 

 

Paul: Yes, there was that about it.

Digger: A good move then?

Paul: Yes, except I didn't really have the degree of autonomy about picking material after I left that I thought I was going to have, because by the time I had a manager and a musical director, a publicist and a road manager and one or two other people I actually had no more choice in picking songs than I had before.

Digger: When you were in Manfred Mann were you given choices?

Paul: Everything was a group decision.

Digger: Even though the band was named after Manfred?

Paul: Oh yeah, but the band had been called other things before it was called Manfred Mann and it didn't really alter his position in the band, except towards the end. Actually after I gave notice of my desire to leave, don't forget I was in the band for nearly a whole year after that. I had attempted to leave at the end of 1965 when the band had only really been having hits for two and a half, going on for three years.

Digger: They used one or two of your songs as the intro for Ready Steady Go.

Paul: They actually commissioned 54321 as a signature tune so that was great for us. It didn't do them any harm. I think Manfred started to assume a position of leadership really which didn't trouble me at all as I was on my way out. But, yes, I thought when I'm out of this I'll be in charge and I was and I wasn't. I could have been a lot stronger, but, in the end, what's a problem? I'm still here, I'm still having fun and I'm still building my career.

Digger: You have several careers, as you always have, and you're still touring with those guys which is great.

Paul: That's good fun, and with Mike D'Abo in the band as well as me, it's a bonus.

Digger: Which one of you gets called Manfred now?

Paul: We DON'T! That's really good, actually. Finally it's changed.

Digger: Joe public, bless them. A lot of the time they don't know or care about who's who or who did what and why. They just listen to the music... DJ, blues musician, actor, pop star. What have been your biggest achievements and what would you still like to accomplish?

Paul: Ooh, that's difficult... Which of those things do you like best, and the answer is all of them. Actually, it's interesting that you say blues musician because I'm generally thought of as being slightly wider than that. This enables people who are very narrow-minded about the blues to say that I'm not really a blues musician at all - I do some other things too.

Digger: Like jazz and pop and musical.

Paul: Yes, and when I'd been on Later With Jools promoting Starting All Over Again I noticed on the Amazon UK charts that it was in their soul chart. In fact, its highest position was there and it got into the blues chart as well and the classic rock chart (Laughs) but the highest was in the soul chart which was quite fun. There have been high points in my career like 1984 when I was in The National Theatre doing Guys And Dolls and The Beggar's Opera which was pretty exciting. Especially as that's where I met Fiona and we shall be celebrating 25 years of marriage...

Digger: Well done.

Paul: So, that was like a major time for me. What was kind of extraordinary was that I never thought that anything like that would happen to me. I just thought I'd molder along, really. The Blues Band was doing well - we'd had three albums in the charts which was quite good as we never even expected even to make records. What happened was, at some point in the early life of The Blues Band I'd had a call from The Really Useful Company to ask if I'd be interested in taking over one of the parts in Cats. And the part that they offered was not a great idea - the part was for a dancer, not a singer and not an actor. I thought I'm a singer and an actor but certainly not a dancer. I can move in time with music if the choreographer is gentle with me (Laughs) but I said "No, that's a really bad idea. And also, the other thing is I can't do six months because of my band. But if you ever have a space of three months then I might be your man." So about six months later they rang up again and said "Paul Nicholas is leaving the show but he's coming back. He's only going to be gone from the show for six or eight weeks. Would you do Rum Tum Tugger for that short period?" And I said "I'd love to." So I went and played the part while Paul made a movie and that was great. And Richard Eyre, who was at the National Theatre doing Guys and Dolls rang me up and said "I didn't realise you were still doing theatre." And I said "Well, when asked, but I can't do this six nights a week for months one end thing." And he said "How about coming to The National Theatre to do Macheath In The Beggar's Opera and you'll probably do about four performances a week, probably less." I said "I'm your man." So I was at The National Theatre. Then Ian Charleson left Guys and Dolls and inevitably they asked me if I'd take over from Ian Charleson. And I just went "Yeah!" The Blues Band can still play one night a week so I did but unfortunately after a few weeks of that I collapsed with exhaustion so I had to either leave the National or The Blues Band so I left The Blues Band and I was out of the band for two years. But we got back together in 1985 and all was wonderful. So I suppose I'm leaning to the thought that being there was great. But when it comes to future ambitions, I mentioned before we started really, that Fiona and I go to churches and things and I am ambitious to do more of that. At the moment we do some - we've been used on Christian television programmes and we have been to Rumania, Bulgaria, Armenia, Moldova, The Falkland islands. 

Digger: They'll have you back in Oz now, will they?

Paul: Oh yes. There are two places that someone told me I would never work again. One was Australia and the other was Germany. And I've been back to both.

Digger: What was the German thing?

Paul: Oh! Germany is another story! (Both laugh) 

Digger: I'm obviously aware of The Beatles and The Philippines incident and how they upset Marcos unintentionally. These things can last for a long time.

Paul: That German one didn't last very long at all... Actually, come to think of it (Laughs) it lasted about ten years. But that was because I never attempted to go back to Germany and as soon as I did, fine, no problem. So, we just want to do more of that and Fiona has given up the theatre and does much more of it. She does a lot of stuff on her own as well as accompanying me on everything that I do in that field. Weekend conferences and ladies' meeting and lunches and all sorts of things like that. We have spoken to actors and policemen and the general public over quite a sizeable chunk of the world but it's something that's it for the rest of my life. We don't call it religion because religion has got so many demerits against its name now. In any case, even when Jesus Christ started there were problems with what you'd call religion. He had his biggest problems with the established religious leaders of the day. We still have the same problems. We don't call ourselves religious but we do want people to know the good news about Jesus Christ. He came to save us and all the wonderful things he did and the healings and so on are still available today. People don't realise it so we go round telling them. 

Digger: What makes you sad, what makes you smile, what makes you angry and what makes you hopeful?

Paul: Sad - Not much makes me sad really, but I think what makes me saddest is my own inability to live up to my standards. Which is why I get help. Smile - Al Kooper, he's constantly sending great jokes on the Net and some of them are less great but it's not just the jokes, he just is a lovely, funny human being. Angry - People who purport to be Christian religious leaders who refuse to believe God. Hopeful - I could say people in general but what makes me hopeful is my faith really. It's the most wonderful thing that happened to me. It didn't happen to me, I decided to do it. 1984 was a big year, I met Fiona, we got married and we became Christians.

Digger: Paul, thanks - I think we've covered all my questions, you've been very generous with your time and it's been very interesting talking to you... Oh! One last question... How do you look and act so young? Is it good bone structure, do you go to the gym every day, do you eat yoghourt and fruit?...

Paul: I am reasonably careful with what I eat, but that includes relaxing the rules occasionally.

Digger: Do you have a grotesque portrait in the attic?!

Paul: Listen, that's a horrible book. Have you read it?

Digger: No, I have only seen the film.

Paul: They recently made it into a new horrible film. 

Digger: I know the 1940s black and white version where they use colour film to show the portrait and it's really grotesque.

Paul: Oh, was it horrible?

Digger: It would have been shocking at the time. More so because of the colour contrast. The producers were acclaimed for that effect, but I think they just couldn't afford the colour film for the whole movie.

Paul: (Laughs) How can we get away with making it in black and white? Well, I hate the thought of a picture getting uglier in the attic. I've seen the Picture of Dorian Gray at the New York Museum of Modern Art and it's just so horrifying. I'm not really into that sort of thing. When asked, I say I go to the same doctor as Cliff Richard and they say "What, you do botox and spend fortunes?" And I say "No, no, no the doctor I'm talking about is available to everybody and he's absolutely free and his name is Jesus."

Digger: Good talking to you Paul.

Paul: Thanks. And you David. Look forward to seeing the finished article. Take care. 

 

 

Paul with Jean Shrimpton in his first major film role Privilege