INTERVIEW
Photo: Dick recently pictured with the Ventnor Guitar Club
Award!”
“Whatever the truth,” Dick adds, “it seems
strange they started doing a rock opera
so soon after we did. We definitely did
SF Sorrow prior to Tommy, because they
actually contacted us and suggested we got
it out in America quickly or Tommy would
bury it. Which is in fact what happened.”
Here is another aspect of the fabled world
of rock – dodgy dealings with record labels.
Dick is candidly cagey – “I’m not supposed
to talk about it” – but suffice it to say that
by the time their album had been handled
by one or other offshoot of a given record
label, the Pretty Things did not receive one
penny from US sales.
After a while Dick left Pretty Things, and
turned to producing: he was responsible
for Hawkwind’s first album, among other
things. He played with “some unusual
punky -type people”, for the 70s was seeing
the rise of punk Rrock. And no, he wasn’t
damning of that genre’s rawness compared
with his own discipline of rhythm and blues.
“We were raw ourselves when we first
started.”
But then he slipped away from music
completely, working for Jean Machine,
that chain where the stable door to the
changing room failed to hide the contortions
necessary to squeeze into a pair of skin-tight
denims in the pre-lycra days.
Didn’t he miss the camaraderie, being part
of a group? “Actually it was that I felt I was
in a bit of a bubble, always being with the
same people, that made me want to get out.”
Pretty Things fizzled out around 1976,
but then in 1978 it was suggested they do
a reunion gig in Holland – for the originals
like Dick and the “new boys” who had
joined in 1966. “I was back in the fold, and
have been doing everything with them ever
since,” he smiles.
“There are five of us in the band at the
moment. We were six but our keyboard
player’s wife got breast cancer, so he stayed
with her in Spain. We’ve got a strange
arrangement, we ‘ve got a very young
rhythm section, with an 18 year old bass
player and 18 year old drummer. It’s great,
really good, so generally that’s who we
work with, but we haven’t parted from our
original drummer and bass player – they’re
just not working with us at the moment.”
Their manager, Mark St John, also
produces them “and comes on stage with us
to sing the high bits and play percussion.”
It’s a remarkable story of survival,
especially given that the generally accepted
adjuncts of a rock career, sex and drugs ,
were very much part of their lives. “But I’ve
still got a reasonable number of brain cells,”
grins Dick. He goes on more seriously, and
his passion for what he does is suddenly
obvious. “I actually think playing music
is very good for your general mental state,
it keeps it in pretty good order. There’s a
certain degree of improvisation in rocking
blues type stuff that requires you to have
your wits about you. And I’m still learning,
I learn from the people I teach.”
I finally offer up my question – that
question. Does he regret that he left the
Rolling Stones? “The only thing I regret is
being asked the question,” he smiles, adding
“If I’d stayed I could have been another one
dead in a swimming pool – or turned into
Bill Wyman!”
“The serious truth is that that amount of
publicity and fame and attention has got to
put you in a position that is not comfortable.
I don’t envy them the goldfish bowl. Having
said that I saw Keith when they did the IoW
Festival and he’s still very much the same
The Island's most loved magazine
life
person, just as he was way back when.
And I talk quite often to the woman who is
part of their management. She says people
always expect them to be not like other
people. And they’re of course ordinary
common or garden people, like anyone else.
“I‘m not sure I’d want to be part of the
circus that surrounds them.”
So here he is, in Ventnor, where he has
lived for nearly 20 years. “I like it very
much,” he says, as he describes the various
musical connections and contacts he still
works with. “It’s good fun and healthy
to do different sorts of music. Charlie
Watts of the Stones does this jazz thing.
Well actually he was always jazz first and
foremost, I think he found his way into the
Rolling Stones by serendipity.”
Veteran though he is, stepping out of his
musical comfort zone means he has to up his
game a bit. “I can do blues and rock with
the Pretty Things quite easily, but I have to
think when I do other things.”
He celebrates the fact that nowadays
musicians can so easily create a good home
studio, thanks to technology – “whereas
we started with one FR&V6