[This digest is the copyright of the Move "Useless Information" Mailing List. Re-publication or re-distribution of "Useless Information" content, in any form whatsoever, is expressly prohibited without prior written consent.] USELESS INFORMATION The Move Mailing List Digest Issue #472 May 8, 2003 In this issue: * Wizzard b sides played live * Song Of The Week (week of 4/28): "Walk Upon The Water" * Move records/hits/chart positions in Denmark * "Super Active Wizzo" (cont.) * This Is The Story Of My Love * April 2000 Roy Wood BBC Radio 2 interview ============================================================== To POST TO THE LIST: Send an e-mail to: move-list@eskimo.com Move List Info & Archives: http://www.eskimo.com/~noanswer/movelist.html TO UNSUBSCRIBE: Send an e-mail to move-digest-request@eskimo.com with the word "unsubscribe" (no quotes) in the subject line ============================================================== Subject: Wizzard b sides played live Date: Fri, 2 May 2003 11:26:45 -0700 From: "Paul Bibby" PrimoChuck wrote: >....Were any of the Wizzard B sides performed live in concert? Forgive me for being late on this one...just caught up with a backlog. This question had me scurrying to a scrapbook I had in 1973/4 which listed a Wizzard gig I saw in 1974. Sure enough, I recorded the setlist, which contained (amongst others) the Bob Brady song "Gang Bang". I don't think this was ever recorded by Wizzard - even though Can't Help My Feelings, another Brady song was b-side to Rattlesnake Roll in 1975 (not the same song - Gang Bang, I think, was an old "Mongrel" song??) Possibly the only time a "band" song was played by Wizzard live?? (Incidentally I still have my notes from this gig - if anyone is interested, I can post them up. They're not comprehensive, but give an idea of what a Wizzard gig was like in 1974 -to a 14 year-old!) ********** Subject: Re: Wizzard b sides played live Date: Sat, 3 May 2003 01:10:40 -0700 From: "Andrew Footman" Paul Bibby wrote: >(Incidentally I still have my notes from this gig - if anyone is >interested, I can post them up. They're not comprehensive, but give >an idea of what a Wizzard gig was like in 1974 -to a 14 year-old!) Please post them, the set list alone would be of interest. What did you think they sounded like? Were they great live? Did they suffer the same problems ELO got with their sound? Were they loud? Did they Rock? I FOR ONE COULD NOT GET TO SEE THEM. ELO on their OOTB tour was my first concert. ********** Subject: Re: Song Of The Week: "Walk Upon The Water" Date: Thu, 1 May 2003 10:10:07 -0700 From: "Tyler C.Sherman" Great tune by Roy & the boys but I always hated the ending. I much prefer the version on "BBC Sessions". All the essential early Move elements are present on this one. But who is playing the off-key trumpet at the end? I understand the end is probably an attempt at musical humor but it never worked for me. The lyrical imagery is a combination of hippie/druggie inflections, which is strange since Roy was never much into drugs, and a Biblical reference to Peter walking on the water at the behest of the Lord in Matt. 14:22-33. Interesting also is the admonition in the last verse-"Please don't drink & drive"- way ahead of it's time as folks didn't seem to worry about it much back then. So here is Roy, a trend setter yet again. Speaking of innovations and trend setting, we know Roy was way ahead of the pack in many areas and it's nice to hear a big name act acknowledge that once in a while. A friend of mine told me he was listening to a radio interview with the members of Kiss the other night in which they cited Roy as a major influence, not only in their music but also in using makeup. Did anyone on the list hear this interview? Wizzards, Tyler ********** Subject: Re: Song Of The Week: "Walk Upon The Water" Date: Fri, 2 May 2003 00:39:20 -0700 From: kakman1 As a matter of fact, I heard it too, but even better, I met Gene Simmons and 'Ace' Frehley (sans face paint) in NYC some years ago, when I was nineteen. They are both big Move and Wizzard fans and admit they got the idea of the face paint and over the top showmanship from Wizzard. I forget whether it was either Ace or Gene who was going to make a copy of the live bootleg collection 'Omnibus' for me, but that never happened. Kevin Kunreuther Dallas TX ********** Subject: Move records/hits/chart positions in Denmark Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 11:57:30 -0700 From: Lynn Hoskins Rob Caiger just phoned from the studio and has asked me to put a query out on the list. What Move records (albums & singles) were released in Denmark / Scandinavia? What were the hits? What were the chart positions? If anyone can help, please contact Rob at face.the.music@dial.pipex.com. Feel free to share your info with the list. Thank you! ********** Subject: Re: "Super Active Wizzo" Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2003 13:56:00 -0700 From: "Ian Leatherbarrow" My first post to this list, so hello to all. I've been reading the posts about Super Active Wizzo with interest. I do own a copy on vinyl, but it currently resides in my estranged wife's attic (don't ask) along with the rest of my vinyl collection (at least one Move album but can't remember which, loads of ELO stuff, coloured vinyl and so on). I recall listening to it once or twice, but never really got it at the time - it must've been mid to late 70's when I bought it, so the stark difference between what I was listening to then (ELO - what else?!) just seemed too much. The one thing I do recall was the sleeve - it looked like a big box of washing powder, in white, green and red(?). I now desperately want to listen to it again, but although I can get my albums back at any time there's not much point, as my current amp doesn't have a phono stage, nor do I have a turntable for that matter - I'll just have to wait for Rob to come up trumps with the remasters! Here's waiting...... Regards, Ian Wigan, UK ********** Subject: Re: "Super Active Wizzo" Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 02:19:43 -0700 From: "Andrew Footman" >As a point of interest, "Super Active Wizzo" was actually assigned a >catalog # here in the states by Warner Bros. (BS-3065) and got as far >as having test pressings made up. Hi Tyler, Yeah i have heard a promo USA and a promo German exist but have never seen them. You have a nice item, i may one day locate one. If i am lucky. Burbank are you out there, have a look for me. ********** Subject: This Is The Story Of My Love Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2003 01:34:27 -0700 From: "George Mackenzie" A 4.15 version of This Is The Story Of My Love can be found on the CD "Glam Greats 2" on CRIMSON CRIMCD 3006. It also features See my baby jive. ********** Subject: Re: This Is The Story Of My Love Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2003 03:38:42 -0700 From: "David Woodier" The UK issued single edit shows 5.11 I can only assume the version with the piano intro is lifted from the EATF album tapes, which had a number of piano interludes throughout. Shortened versions I guess are so the Record company can get more tracks on the CD's? But what do I know! ********** Subject: April 2000 Roy Wood BBC Radio 2 interview Date: Sun, 4 May 2003 13:21:06 -0700 From: Lynn Hoskins Someone on the list was asking me about this a couple weeks back, and it completely slipped my mind until I ran across it while searching the Move List archives for another item. The interview was done around the time "Main Street" was released. Not for re-posting or re-distributing. Enjoy! BBC Radio 2 Richard Allinson Show 10th April 2000 [transcribed by Daizy] Show opens with FOREVER Richard Allinson: The song is called Forever and I don't know how I'm going to get away with this 'cause you probably know already, but the man what sang that is - according to popular legend, is a man who on his very first day at school introduced himself to Sir as Ulysses Adrian Wood (Roy laughs) and he's probably not changed a heck of a lot since those early days of being different. The surname must have given you a clue. One of this country's most influential musicians with us tonight on Radio 2 - Mr. Roy Wood. Hi Roy. ROY WOOD: Thank you, thank you. How are ya Rich? RA: I'm very well. Yourself? ROY: Alright I think, yeah. That Ulysses thing is a load of rot by the way. RA: No, it's not! ROY: Oh it is! I tell you what it is, when we started The Move when I was about like 17, we used to have to do interviews for Fab magazine and all those teenage magazines, and they used to have a questionnaire that you filled in to say what sort of food you liked, you know, your favourite girls, all that sort of thing and of course I was busy in the studio and the roadies filled mine in (RA laughs) so consequently - that's what they put my name as! RA: It's all coming out now! ROY: And it's like, been in somebody's archives ever since. RA: What are you doing in Derby? ROY: I moved here about, almost 3 years ago. It's all right. The folks are nice and friendly and all that. RA: 'Cause you used to have the biggest house in Birmingham. I used to drive past quite a lot (Roy laughs) and think "That's ROY WOOD'S house!" and remember the Munsters or the Adams family? ROY: Oh yeah. RA: Well it was one of them, a big old creaky thing. ROY: Well it looked like that on the inside as well, all the cobwebs and that. RA: Did it? ROY: Yeah! RA: Well listen Roy, it's good to talk 'cause it's been a long time and you've got a new album out, well ... er, it's the latest album. ROY: The new old album. RA: And it's called Main Street and it's actually 24 years old! ROY: Yeah, how weird! RA: What's the story? ROY: Well, when Wizzard broke up, probably about 1976, I'd got this idea for a solo album which I was gonna do and a few of the lads in Wizzard were still sort of, not working, so they came in the studio with me and we recorded it and the record company just sort of sat on it. They didn't like it at all. I don't know what's happened over the 20 years, nearly 24 I think it is, and all of a sudden the tapes have found their way to another record company - Demon Records and they wanna release it. Which for me is extremely weird, I mean the songs to me sound like ancient history and they've never been heard by anybody! RA: Well, we'll play one in a minute - but have there been major changes in how you feel about it? 'Cause it's 24 years! You must have been able to release it yourself surely? ROY: No. I mean it belonged to someone else, unfortunately the people that ran the record company were also our managers as well, which is not really a very good idea and they just put it away in some sort of archive and all of a sudden it's found it's way out and Demon Records rang me and said, "Do you want to be involved?" And I thought, well at least it's not a compilation album of all the old hits or anything like that, maybe I should represent it a little bit and make sure it's not like misrepresent-ent-ented ... misrepresented! RA: Nice of them to ask you if you wanted to be involved! Oh yeah, "This is your album, would you like to be involved in this?" (Roy laughs) ROY: Yeah! And you're only 24 years late! What's your problem? RA: What was it like listening to stuff that you'd done that long ago that isn't known by us yet 'cause See My Baby Jive and Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday and Blackberry Way and stuff, they're hundreds of years old and we all know they are you. But we don't know this stuff yet. ROY: The first thing - because I'm a recording engineer as well as a producer of records and all that, the first thing I wanted to do was remix it, you know? On modern equipment. But that wasn't possible. So we've just put it through a sort of gizmo thing to brighten it up a little bit and just thrown it out and see how it goes really. I mean I've got no intentions of reforming Wizzard or anything, it's just nice to see the songs out at last. RA: So this is good original analogue stuff is it? ROY: Oh yeah - Steam radio stuff, mate! RA: And you've done the sleeve artwork as well? ROY: Well the main thing I didn't really want was then to throw a picture of me looking like Wizzard on the front of it you know, because if anybody went into a shop and bought it, it might give out the wrong messages, because it doesn't actually sound like Wizzard much at all. RA: Alright let's see what it does sound like, this is...well it's obviously Roy Wood. This is from the current album, which to us is new, but it's actually 24 years old and it's called Main Street, we're gonna be playing French Perfume - tell us the story behind this one Roy. ROY: Obviously I'd been listening to a lot of Django Reinhardt at the time, hence the guitar solo in it, which is quite funny actually because I had a quite expensive acoustic guitar but when you actually recorded it, it didn't sound authentic or anything so the piano player had this really old duff guitar - the action on it was about 2" high you know, it was really horrible to play and it had a weird name like some sort of cooker or something and we were all taking the mick out of it. Sat down playing it, it sounded great, it sounded just like the real thing. RA: And this is what we hear in this? ROY: Yeah. RA: Ok this is from Main Street, it's Roy Wood's new album and it's called French Perfume. (Play French Perfume) RA: That pianist is just trying to show off isn't he? (Roy laughs) He's trying to cram in as many notes as possible! French Perfume is from what should be the new album from Wizzard but it's actually 24 years old, it's called Main Street. That had all my favourite bits of Wizzard in because there were key changes and all sorts of style changes and it almost felt like it was all about to fall apart but it never did, do you know what I mean? ROY: Yeah, yeah I think you're right and I think that the reason the record company didn't release it is because they found it difficult to put it into a category and it sort of went over their heads a little bit I think. RA: Why didn't they just file it under Wizzard? ROY: Yeah, file it under bin. RA: That's my favourite from the album, that one. ROY: Yeah, I don't mind it. I mean, I thought because I hadn't even heard the tapes for about 10 years, I thought when they sent me a copy of it I was gonna really hate it and I was sort of surprised in a way really, 'cause I mean the sound of it could be better - obviously, but the style of it seems to be ok, I don't know why. RA: I think if you'd made it better - it might have sounded a bit too clinical, it works for me like that. ROY: I was going through a period as well, as you can tell from other tracks on the album, I think I might have wanted to be Frank Zappa at the time and get involved with the jazzy end of it. RA: You sang backing vocals for Jimi Hendrix? ROY: Yes it was a studio down at Barns and I was in the next studio doing some stuff with The Move and we'd just been on tour with Jimi Hendrix and he just needed a bit of vocal backing on the Axis: Bold as Love album, and he sort of dragged me on doing a bit on that and it was ok. RA: Did he play guitar on any of your albums? ROY: Unfortunately, no. RA: You've played saxophone for The Beach Boys? ROY: That was great! 'Cause I released that solo single 'Forever' which a part of it was dedicated to The Beach Boys because it was obviously influenced by them and everything, and Brian Wilson was doing a review page in the Santa Monica Times or something like that and he'd got a copy of the record and gave it a glowing review and when I was over there he actually phoned me up at the hotel and I couldn't believe it 'cause he was always one of my sort of idols you know. This was at the time when he'd left The Beach Boys for a while as far as live performances went and he was producing them and they were having some secret sessions which ended up being the album called '15 Big Ones' and he invited me round to that and I couldn't believe it! It was great! There was this one bit where I was just standing there singing on the same microphone as Brian Wilson and Carl Wilson and I thought I'd died and gone to heaven, you know? It was just unbelievable! RA: Great stories. And what's the real ELO story? 'Cause everybody says you set up ELO with Jeff Lynne - at the time I can remember this was a big big thing, the Electric Light Orchestra were going to be massive and then you just disappeared! ROY: Well it was a political thing to be honest. It had nothing to do with the music and nothing to do with me and Jeff either. Obviously the press had to make some sort of story out of it and they made up a thing that we'd fallen out. But in fact we stopped speaking for about 3 weeks and that was it really. It took a long time to get ELO on the road, it took about 18 months 'cause we had no guidelines really and we went through quite a lot of different sets of string players before we got the people who really wanted to do it. We did a few gigs in Britain and then we went over and toured in Italy and because I hadn't been over to Europe for a while and I'd written all the hits for The Move and everything - the press and the media wanted to speak to me. That caused a bit of a problem in as much as Jeff didn't get much of a look in. But some people from the Management Company were there at the time and they could have sorted it out but they didn't - I think they did a poor job to be perfectly honest and it ended up with Jeff really getting the hump about it. Then we toured there for about 2 or 3 weeks and then what we should have done is gone away on holiday really and had a break for a bit, but we were dumped straight back in the recording studio to do the second album and that's when it all went a bit pear shaped and I thought maybe I should leave now while we're still friends - and we still are in fact. I mean Jeff's moved to America now but we speak to each other quite a bit on the phone and we get on well. RA: And you've both still got your same hair! (Roy laughs) That's the most amazing thing, two men whose hairstyles have not changed in about 30 years! ROY: Yeah well, you know, I mean, it's been suggested by various people that I should have my hair cut and my beard shaved off and all that. RA: NO don't do that! ROY: There's no way I'm gonna look like one of Boyzone, if I do that I'll just look like a bank manager! (Allinson laughs, "Do not do that!") RA: So what's a typical day like for you now? 'Cause you say you produce and you engineer as well as, I mean you must still be writing you must still be playing? ROY: Well what I'm doing at the moment is, there's a band called Roy Wood's Army that we've got on the road, it's a 12-piece band, never do things by halves. I'm working on writing some stuff for them at the moment, some original stuff, 'cause we did a tour just before Christmas, about 30 odd dates and in order to get a big tour like that you have to go on and play the hits and everything. But I'm getting to a stage now where I'm getting a bit bored of that 'cause I have been doing it for donkey's years, playing the same old theatres and singing the same old songs it's about time we did something new and the band agree with that so I'm writing a whole set of new material and hopefully we can get a new show together and shelve the hits show for a while. RA: the live performance is obviously still really important to you 'cause you can play so many instruments - you could just multi-track yourself till the cows come home and do your own albums. ROY: I'd need a few more pairs of arms to play on stage I think. RA: Exactly how many instruments do you play? ROY: Quite a few. Well it's over 20 anyway. That came about because when The Move were first successful when I was 17, it was a hobby of mine to collect instruments and I used to buy all sorts weird stuff and it's difficult to have the instruments in your house and not have a go at playing them. So I got into playing loads of instruments because of that. Then I did a couple of solo albums which actually were solo, I played all the instruments designed the cover and all that you know. But since I have the new band, there are so many of them in the band anyway, I don't really need to play anymore, I mean they are really good musicians. RA: Which instrument came first? ROY: The first thing I ever played was drums at my sisters wedding when I was 5. RA: Could you reach the pedals? ROY: (laughs) Yeah I was on blocks! RA: Did you teach yourself all of them? ROY: Yeah, well I went to drum tuition when I was a little kid and then as kids do, you get bored of it, and then my parents sent me to piano lessons when I was about 10 or 11 - I got bored with that within about a month and I suppose when I was about 12 the next thing I wanted to do was, I wanted to be Hank Marvin. In fact I heard him on your show recently, I just loved the sound of his guitar - I just wanted to do that then and that was it. I was in a band when I was 14 playing Shadows and Beatles songs. RA: The thing that amazes me about you is this, and it just keeps coming up again, is diversity. 'Cause in the 80's you had another band called Helicopters, you've worked with Rick Wakeman, Phil Lynott and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Is there anybody out there you'd like to work with who you haven't yet? ROY: Um... phew, I dunno, I mean I'm open minded about it really, I mean I'd like to work with a few newer people as Tom Jones is at the moment working with young bands. I played on stage with Dodgy and Ocean Colour Scene, that was enjoyable. Yeah I'd probably like to do a bit more of that. RA: Fingers crossed. Are we going to have to wait another 24 years for the next album Roy? ROY: I flippin' hope not! (both laugh) As I say, I'm working on material at the moment, it's gonna be a certain style, another diversity for me if you like, which will suit the band really well coz the band's got a big horn section - 3 trumpets, 2 trombones, 2 saxes - all girls unfortunately which is a rotten job. RA: Hell. ROY: It is! Real hell! Do you want a job? RA: Yes - Can I come and carry your sheet music? (both giggling) I'd like that. It's good to talk to you Roy. ROY: Yeah thanks a lot Richard. RA: 24 years in the making, the new Wizzard album is out, it's called Main Street. Roy Wood's new album is, as we speak, in your head I suppose? ROY: Oh dear, yeah. I've just got to reiterate the fact that Wizzard are not getting back together or anything, it's nothing like that really. It is interesting that the album's out and I suppose at the end of the day, I'm glad about it. RA: Too right! So are we. ROY: Thank you. RA: Take the rest of the day off Roy! ROY: Cheers, Richard. Thank you very much, I'll see ya. [end] End of Useless Information #472 ******************************* [This digest is the copyright of the Move "Useless Information" Mailing List. Re-publication or re-distribution of "Useless Information" content, in any form whatsoever, is expressly prohibited without prior written consent.]