still find that there’s some young people
that I work with who have the same) that
I had little bit of speech hesitation, just
a little bit – I was shy, but when I talked I
actually went up and down and treated it
as though I was singing a nursery rhyme
and I got through it. I just like music.
I knew when I got home from school if my
mum was “la-la-ing”, humming to herself,
that she was in a good mood, that there
was no atmosphere, and I don’t know
what song it was she was humming, but
it was like, “la, la, la”, but all I knew was
that it sounded like a cat purring … It was
lovely. And I think that in our lives, like
what we’re doing now, you and I, we’ve
only just met, but I’m making up what I’m
saying on the hoof, like everybody all the
time, we’re improvising, we’re making up
this next few seconds, we’re just making
it up. And that’s what jazz is.
What I like about playing jazz is that you
get up on the stage and you go duhduh-duh-duh-duh, you play a 12-bar
blues and, you know, get a form from
Performing Rights Society saying “can
you put down the title of the songs that
you played?” I say, “Well, I don’t know,
we just make it up as we go along for
three hours…”.
I did a lot of work playing in T-Rex, but
we never were a band as such. In other
words, we got paid wages. We weren’t on
a profit scheme, so I wasn’t with T-Rex
all the time. Like when we had the band
Sky, we fitted around that – that took up
probably three months of the year. The
rest of the time John Williams was off
doing his solo recitals. Tristan Fry, the
drummer, is also the timpanist in the
Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields and
plays on thousands of recordings and
sessions, as I do. It’s our job.
We started a band called Blue Mink in
1970 or 1969 quite by accident, where
five of us had been booked by Steve
Rowland who was a record producer,
to do a backing track or two for a band
called Dave Dee, Dozy, Mick, Beaky and
Tich, and a band called Family Dog.
It was quicker for a record producer
to use seasoned studio players rather
than get the band into a studio - they’d
probably be nervous, they’d be late,
their equipment didn’t record well,
whereas we were geared, because
we were readers and therefore we
had the equivalent of a nine-to-five job
except sometimes it started at six in
the morning doing jingles and finished
at midnight - if you were doing a late
night TV job or four in the morning if
you went on to work at Danny La Rue’s
club. We were jumping from one kind
of job to another, it was hard work, but
God, the fun, and the versatility of the
players, there’ll never be another time
like that.
I don’t really listen to very much stuff
except I like going to straight concerts
and I listen to more straight music or jazz.
I don’t know one pop group from another.
For no reason other than I never did. If
you’re right in the middle of something,
say if you’re a bus driver, you don’t collect
bus numbers. It’s just like a bus … and
my interests are as far away from the
music business as I can possibly get.
I like tiddling about in the garden - I’m
interested in aeroplanes, and stuff like
that. I like travelling. Quite like going to
Finland and working there.
When I’m in Finland I do a few classes,
a bit of recording, and I’ve got a little
band that I work with over there called
“Three Grandfathers and a Russian”.
The fiddle player is the concert maestro
of this orchestra in Joensuu. It’s a little
city near the Russian border and he’s
the lead fiddle player, but he’s a genius
jazz violinist and then if we have a sax
player we use a gentleman there who’s a
grandfather and the other bass player who
I share the job with is the Professor of
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Bass Studies at the Academy in the city.
And so we’re the three grandfathers and
the pianist is from Azerbaijan! And he’s
only about 30 and he’s a conductor, but
he’s a barking mad fantastic pianist.
When we do gigs we actually text about
four or five hundred students in the
Conservatoire or friends, just saying that
“seven o’clock, be wherever the club is,
and Three Grandfathers and a Russian
are playing”. And at quarter to seven we
get there and we set our stuff up and at
five to seven 300 people roll up!
Yeah, it’s totally and completely
wonderful. We don’t get any money
except there’s a bucket by the door so I
might come home with about 40.
I’m an absurdist, really. I like normal life
in Ditchling. I love it here. I’m busier than
ever, but it’s doing things that I want to
do. And because I flit about and have
never been in a band for very long I’m a
wage earner and have always managed
to get enough work to get by and I
wouldn’t want it to be any different. It’s to
do with my leftist views, you know.
I’d be quite angry if I was a young
married person and I couldn’t afford to
buy a little house.
When I got married in 1959 the first house
we bought was £1,320, and I had to tell
lies to get a mortgage, how has it got like it
is today? And then there’s the culture of tax
dodging. I actually believe that we should
be paying much more tax so that anybody
who wants a wheelchair can have one.
My first encounter with someone famous
was when Paul McCartney phoned me
up in the early 70s. Paul phoned me up
and said would I go and do a recording
session. I thought it was someone
winding me up.
When I answered the phone I was
covered in cement ‘cause I was doing a
bit of bricklaying, and I said “when’s the
session?” He said “well, now. Can you
get to Abbey Road studios? My brother,
Mike McGear, and Roger McGough and
somebody else, well, we’re doing a song”,
and he said “I’m producing it, so I’m not
playing bass, and I came to Danny La
Rue’s club where you were playing coupla
nights ago and I really like the way you
played”, so I did go and do the session.
And the song was called “Thank You
Very Much”. Paul was the first, I suppose,
famous person I encountered.
We still speak on the phone sometimes.
Out of the four George Harrison was one
of my dearest, best friends. Ringo I knew
quite well, I’d done some work for him
and Paul, I’ve done quite a few bits of
work for him. He did an album called “Sir
Percy Thrillington” which was a big band
version of the Ram album, but also other
bits and pieces like “Give My Regards
to Broad Street”. Paul isn’t just a bass
player. He’s a fantastic songwriter, lyricist,
plays the piano, plays drums, plays bass
quite well – er, and the guitar, and he
sings – crikey. No wonder he’s famous!
But I don’t think they were comfortable
with being famous, you know? It was
just that chemistry, suddenly, in the
early 60s, there were a lot of young
people about that had grown out of the
rationing, the sweet rationing and the
poverty and the hard times – suddenly
they were all getting work and they could
just about afford the train fare to go to
Brighton and have a fight with the mods
or the rockers – whatever you were –
yeah, a lot of young people suddenly
became a brand-new marketplace for
product, and that’s it.
The mods and rockers era frightened
the life out of me. Anything violent does.
I’m not very good at stamping on ants or
watching all this stuff on TV, I do shut my
eyes if there’s something horrible going on,
and then I switch it off. I’d sooner have a go
at the crossword or go out in the garden.
The thing is, I’m a local boy. You know?
And there’s not a lot of money to be
made if you’re a freelance employee. I
get used – I work for so many different
people, and most people who are in a
regular job are scraping by, you know?
How do people afford to buy a house or a
new car? I’ve no idea. I’ve never earned
a lot of money.
that product” and that would be morally
wrong, you know? It’s like Walk On The
Wild Side or Space Oddity or Rock On,
all those dozens and dozens of records
that I played on. I only played on it once
and it was my job – I’d get booked to
do a recording because a producer was
stuck for a bass player and he had to
scratch his head…He might think Herbie
Flowers is quite a good name for them
to remember. And also I would go and
play the bass and the producer would
only book me if they liked the sound I
got or if they like the style that I played
in or if they thought “oh, this one needs
to be quite clicky” and get Herbie, ‘cause
I played on that record and that – and
then you become flavour of the month,
but when I’d go out the studio, in those
days you used to be given a brown
envelope with probably six pounds in it
or nine pounds or 12 pounds – over the
years it went up a little bit at a time, but
it was wages, and I could go home some
days with four little brown envelopes
with £24 in it, which in 1965, it was quite
good money.
I’ve done silly things, but I don’t feel guilty
about just being ordinary.
I’ve always been an extrovert, it’s not
that I’m a show-off, I’m just a bit of a
gasbag, a bit of a know-all. But you have
to be. If you get in the studio and you
get a band staring at you or there’s a
conductor and sound engineer, you’ve
got to hold your corner and have the
confidence. Once I went home thinking
“oh, I played terrible” and then a week
later the piece of music was used as the
theme tune for Sportsnight, and I got
£12 for it - and for years they used this
piece of music and I’d just rolled up on a
recording session all those years ago.
There was this black guy who was as
nervous as we were called Quincy Jones,
and the film was “The Italian Job” with
Michael Caine, and the film’s music is
massive in Japan – like people buy the
CDs and DVDs because they love that
kind of playing, and we were given a part
that had a rough outline of what Quincy
Jones wanted and then the rest of it you
made it up.
You go home thinking “God”. But no,
actually, when you’re working so hard, then
you got out the studio you forgot totally
what the piece of music was, who was
People say you wrote “Grandad” and
yeah, it sold a million singles in a couple
of weeks, but no-one else covered it.
That’s how you make money - by getting
other people to record your song and it
getting played all over the world. Instead
of that it was on the radio a few dozen
times and so I got a little bit from the sale
of the records…maybe I haven’t got a
very good business mind. I’ve never had a
publisher. I’ve given the copyrights away.
I don’t own the masters to any record of
any group that I was in, so I would get
no profit from that. I don’t know what – I
don’t know how to do that, and if I don’t
know how to do it I don’t deserve it and I
don’t want it. It’s like when we played on
Jeff Wayne’s musical version of War of
the Worlds, which was massive, million
million earner for Jeff, when he recorded
it – he’s a dear friend – he said he was
scratching about to get the money to do
it, and he said “look, if you don’t take
wages I’ll give you a” – I don’t remember
what the small percentage was. And
I said I’d sooner be paid wages and
he said “well why?” I said “because if I
take royalties it means that I’m taking a
share of the profits. It means then that
I’m sort of involved in the procreation of
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