A bit of a change this week because the archive article was not written by me. This one comes from the Merseysound fanzine and it’s by my friend John D Hodgkinson. I’m running the piece as a tribute to John, who died a year ago.
That’s John with me in the photo on my About page. And here he is in the Merseysound days, interviewing Wayne Hussey.
John was a huge music enthusiast, and that shone through in everything he wrote. He also had a great capacity for friendship and built lasting relationships with many of the musicians he wrote about. He was mourned by many, and I still miss him.
Many thanks to John’s widow Denise and to photographer Gary Lornie for permission to share this.
The Wild Swans - Merseysound, spring 1982
My original intention was to converse with just two or three Wild Swans, just the "prominent" members. Perhaps I too had been taken in by the myth that this is the Paul Simpson band - a short time in their presence is sufficient to explode this theory once and for all. The five separate identities of the group are channeled into a collective conscience, to interview separate entities would be to take away integral facets of the being.
So there we sat, huddled around a coffee-shop table. Guitarist Jeremy Kelly wonders aloud, "How are you going to motivate this conversation?" I had no doubts. Two words "Dave McCullough" see the Swans' hackles rise. The afore mentioned gent was the author of a page of ludicrous drivel. Vocalist Paul Simpson takes up The Wild Swans' cudgel. "We'd just like to divorce ourselves, totally from that interview 'cos it was fictitious, lies, I don't know why he did it."
The only conversation to have taken place between the person hereby referred to throughout the interview as "him" and Paul was a mere two minute phone-call.
"The thing was," Paul continues, "he rang and asked us if he could do an interview and we said no, but he'd already told his editor he was going to do a piece and they'd had the cover printed up. He rang Mick, our manager, and said "Please do something" so we thought we'd do a little piece similar to the N.M.E. one. So he rang me and we talked for two minutes, and a week later that thing came out, a full page, I was so ashamed walking around town that day." Jeri intimates that he "was going to punch Paul Simpson in the face".
"That is what was really horrible, Jeri believed it". The question of McCullough’s motivation arises - what drives him to fabricate in such a way, is it to increase his longevity as a journalist? If so, to attempt same at the risk of doing irreparable harm to a group's integrity is, as Jeri says "a real crud thing", and Jeri continues, "Why the press want to decry bands I just can't understand, because really, the whole music thing is about creation. People are too ready to knock others down, I could've slaved over a hot guitar or really worked out on a number and somebody could just make a mockery out of it all within a minute in an interview. People like that don't really think before they talk." Or, it would seem, before they write.
Seemingly, an age had elapsed between Paul leaving his previous group ("Them" - you'll know who it was) and the emergence of The Wild Swans. "Two years ago after Paul had left 'them', Paul and I worked together”, relates Jeri, "we worked for about a year on very experimental stuff. Then we went our own ways, I was going through other bands and Paul was developing his own technique vocally and lyrically along with Ged. So we had been coming to a point separately and then I joined The Wild Swans after being so kindly asked, and then it really happened.”
Paul: "There were huge gaps in between all that when I didn't want to do anything, it went on for ages, it was just ........horrible!”
Enter into the conversation Ged Quinn, the keyboard player, "Paul and I had been working together for quite a while, but I didn't ever want to be in a band, I'd been writing for a long time."
Ged was motivated by Paul's letters and "promises of money and girls!" So from those early, tentative steps a point was reached, the realisation that The Wild Swans were something that they took seriously.
Ged - "We saw that the band was the only way we could bring anything out, we could write as much as we liked and however good it was it would never, ever be released or be seen unless it was presented in a band format". So The Swans was, originally, a vehicle for ideas?
Paul again, "The stuff Ged was doing then, there's no way you could ever see it released, it was really dramatic stuff. Only through the group will he, or any of us, get in a position to have the confidence to do stuff like that and the......what's the word? ......channels to release it. Oh I dunno, waffle, waffle!".
"So really it was when I joined a year ago that things really started to take shape" Jeri modestly rejoins. Paul "yeah, Jeri brought things on a lot, then we got a bass-player, who shall remain nameless, and he brought things on a lot, and it's all layered up to the magnificent performance you witnessed today!!" Paul was referring to a slightly shambolic rehearsal earlier.
Jeri - "Essentially, it was Paul, Ged and I writing songs. But now we've got Alan (The Swan's new drummer) and Phil who is on loan from the Modernaires, he's a great bass-player and trumpeter. What we want to do now is build up to a position where our music is a bit more available to the majority of the country. So we're planning to do another single and then maybe a major deal. We'd hate to be in a position where we are pressured so much that we won’t be able to determine what we are going to release. If we're in a position whereby they want us to do a big hit single or something I think that would be terrible."
Phil - "It just stifles your creativity."
Jeri - "I think what we've got is special, in that it's a big social thing, that's just as much a part of it as the music, the music's just an expression of ourselves!"
Alan - "The thing is, if we sign a big deal instead of being fun, it just turns into Nine 'till Five". Jeri comes back, "All a music company is, really, is someone who is going to lend you money and hopefully make that money back at a vast profit. The whole idea of bands making music is being exploited by the record companies, in a way, is a bad one, we want to lessen that effect, so we're creating and they are not using so much."
A hint there of the collective conscience I referred to. There does not seem to have been a point when a group has formed, The Wild Swans grew naturally, Phil, for instance felt a part of the Swans even before he started helping out, and whether he stays with the group or not will remain a swan.
Alan - "If you tune in to the same kind of wavelength then, obviously, you put the music over with much more force."
Paul - "It hasn't always been like this, we've had people in the past, like the last bass-player who just wasn't a Wild Swan and never could be he was just on a totally different planet to us, with Alan joining, he's a Wild Swan, it's great."
Remarks are made about Phil's clothes borrowing, "You can have 'em back if you want", says Phil in a little mock-hurt tone.
"See what I mean?" Says Jeri, "Down to earth! This is what we need, we've got four egoists in the band already!"
Are there any ego clashes? Alan - "No, it all just goes in to one and soars out of control." Phil "I don't think I could be egotistical, cos I'm nowhere near as good as I know I should be. Like playing the trumpet for instance, I know I've got a million miles to go to be where I want to be with that.”
Jeri:- “I think it's the same with all of us. No matter how good you think you are there's always some standard or ideal you're going for".
"You've got to have a mutual respect for each other" Phil adds.
What barriers, if any, do The Swans feel they could break? Paul "There's no point in doing experimental music now, in 1982, 'cos that's been....."
Jeri continues "It's been expounded too much. Paul and I, when we first started off, were doing a constant amalgamation of noise, experimental, like." Paul "It's crazy, we were doing funk for months and months and it's only NOW that it's coming to the forefront."
Jeri: - "Any barriers that we break are going to be much more subtle."
Paul "No-one's going to know this now, through listening to what we're playing now. But when we do our first album it will become apparent. Just the spirit of that album."
A Wild Swans album must grow naturally, it must not be forced. Let it grow from natural creativity, just as The Wild Swans themselves have grown, are growing.
Jeri: "It was a whole idea, I must admit I've been very influenced in the playing of the guitar by Paul, I never used to play lead just hammer out rhythm and Paul used to stand there and play little bits of lead and that's the sort of thing I'm doing".
Paul - "Jeri's style now, he's not playing lead or rhythm, he's just playing 'Jeri guitar' which is everything."
Jeri - "The first band I was in was just to play in a band, to play with bass and drums, but with Paul it was directional.
Although we'd split and gone our separate ways and Paul was striving to go through his way, as soon as I was asked to come down and play, I was immediately interested again. I'd liked so much what had gone on before. I'd learned more about technique with other bands and soon as I came to work with a musician like Ged, who is special, it was great. Anything I play, Ged can immediately....I don't have to listen to what he's playing to anything I play, in fact we don't, we just play and it always ends up to be really great."
Paul "Music nowadays is just cheap ‘n' nasty, it's geared for quick hits, a quick turn over thing and we are, hopefully we're gonna put some.......I dunno, I mean when you get a Wild Swans record it's gonna be worth what you pay for it, it's gonna be so rich in texture and new feelings. Like, a friend of ours who heard the tapes said he couldn't wait for a Wild Swans L.P., it'll be like a big, thick story book. You can open that book at a page or you can read the whole thing."
I've felt that there was an empathy extant in The Wild Swans, right from the very first gig. There exists a coherence, musically and yes, spiritually (although not in the context "he" meant). Jeri's guitar has a binding quality that embraces the music, brings it together into a cogent force.
The feeling within the group is flowering, an attitude conducive to both progression and creativity. As Paul says "The chemistry of the group is right".
Phil will stay with the group until a permanent bass player arrives, he wants to play with them, he didn't approach the Swans with a "How can I impress" attitude, it was more "How can I help make the sound better", that is a pervasive Wild Swans attitude.
"Be the first journalist NOT to use a pun on the name The Wild Swans" Paul tells me.
"Changing people's outlook on things is the only way society, as a whole, can advance," says Jeri "Music is the only one aspect of it, art is another. If people are more open, more natural when talking to others, that's the way you can change society, I think all falseness should die and people's ideas expounded upon. Personal interaction."
"We all have our very definite outlets apart from music, but also there is a heavy accent on the social side."
"What else is there left to be said? Apart from we've blown it! It's got to be left to your own sense of deference now, John" Jeri tells me, "This is where you as a journalist, a creative journalist, not a hack like McCullough, that is where your perfection is going to come out, you see!” Hopefully says I, I'm working on it!
The Wild Swans, a collective consciousness. Art Music? Heart Music! and you can't beat the beat. The Swans are something to be a part of, I can feel it. Can you?
(c) John D. Hodgkinson
Listen to the Wild Swans
Revolutionary Spirit – a classic. So good they named a box set after it.
Back in the 21st century
Paul Simpson’s memoir Revolutionary Spirit is out in December. It should be a good read.
Very sad, I knew John for a few years when we were students together at the Polytechnic. He was one of the first people I got to chat with on my course, just yapping about music. Can’t wait to read Paul Simpson’s book when it (eventually) comes out.