Interview with DEREK MOORE

February 2025

There were a few English ensembles who formed in Germany and didn’t quite fit in the other music markets, leaving a scarce legacy of cult classics, yet NEKTAR beat the odds and not only made a name for themselves in the UK and the USA, but also created a solid body of work which the band keep on adding to five-and-a-half decades after they started. More so, while many of their peers get happily locked within sophisticated boundaries of cosmic schemes, and if the grooves of 2024’s "Mission To Mars" are anything to go by, these veterans didn’t forget how to rock with gusto and abandon. Sadly, almost all of those who began that trip have passed away, and Derek “Mo” Moore is the last man standing, carrying the burden of the past on his broad shoulders and keeping the flame alive. He doesn’t mind, though – and our conversation reflects the bassist’s joie de vivre.

– Derek, even though NEKTAR were originally a British band, a lot of people thought – and, surprisingly, a lot of people still think so – that you were a German group, but now, after Roye’s passing you’re an American ensemble. How does it affect the band’s identity?

Where we live is not really relevant. I’ve lived in the United States now since 1976 – I’m an American citizen and I still have my British nationality – but the band lived in Germany for eleven years. We were formed in Germany, and we had a great reception there. German fans were thirsty for anything new – they weren’t interested in the Top 20, the pop music – and we had something new. It was our music and our light show that made it take off. We had a lot of success with "Remember The Future" which became Album of the Year in Germany, but we ran out of places to play. as we played everywhere there was to play there, so we decided that we would come over to the United States and start doing more concerts here, which we did, and eventually the band broke up here.

Then, Roye left and went to follow his girlfriend, actually, we got Dave Nelson and did “Magic Is A Child”; after that finished, Roye came back to work on another album, but it just never worked out, so I left and Ron left. [Albrighton and keyboard player Allan “Taff” Freeman] put a band together and recorded “Man In The Moon” and a few other things over the years, but Roye died in 2016 and Taff died somewhere in that area too. And then in 2018, Ron called me and said, “Do you want to put the band back together?” I’d just retired from construction business, so I said, “Yeah, sure!” and I called Ryche Chlanda, who we worked with in 1978 and did a lot of the music together that we used on the "The Other Side" album. The three of us met in a studio owned by John Kerwin – a friend of Ron’s who became a friend of ours – and we played there for a couple of years and put the rest of the album together. We added Randy Dembo, because I actually didn’t want to go out touring so I would play on the album and he could play on tour, but when we got it finished, I liked it a lot. I really liked playing it. It was a great album, so we decided we would take it on tour, and I decided I would go with it. Randy played twelve-string guitar and bass, so we had some songs with two basses, which was quite interesting, and some songs with a twelve-string. “The Other Side” came out as a double album and as a CD, and it did very well.

However, we had a lot of problems with the German band, who were pretending to be NEKTAR – we had to fight them with a lawyer, and it cost us a ton of money – but we eventually got them beaten in court, and they had to rescind their claim, because they actually patented the name in Germany. They couldn’t patent it everywhere, but they patented it in Germany! And then Ron died in 2023. We did a concert with him in June of that year and recorded it live, with five cameras, and we put that out as “Journey To The Other Side” – as a Blu-ray, because it was two and a half hours, too long for a regular DVD. But when Ron died in that September, we were already writing music for what would become “Mission To Mars” – we were writing over the three years previous, over Covid. Ryche has a little studio in his house, and we were practicing in the basement, so Ron came down and played with us on the new music, and he said, “I like this. Give me a thumb drive, and I’ll put some music together to go with it…” That was on the Sunday – and on Monday night he had a brain aneurysm. I got a call on Tuesday, and it didn’t look good, so on Friday they pulled the plug and he was gone.

And we decided, “We’ve got the music. Let’s make another album!” We auditioned drummers and had some guys who were very good, but when Jay Dittamo came in he was head and shoulders above them all. We liked what he was playing: he did “Remember The Future” and a couple of other songs that he’d learned to play the audition, so it was no use going any further. And then he told us the story of him meeting Ron in ProgStock in 2017 or 2018: Ron had cancer at that time and said to Jay: “If ever I can’t play, I want you to play for me!” So when we found he was perfect fit, he’d sort of listened to Ron’s stuff and melded some of his playing in with the way Ron played. I felt very comfortable right away. We spent two days rehearsing with the new music and getting everything set and then we went to the studio, where we spent another two days to put all the basic tracks down live, and then we worked on it from there. Ryche put all the guitars down, Kendall [Scott] added some keyboard parts, and then we recorded vocals and harmonies, all that sort of stuff. Afterwards, we did the same thing we did with “The Other Side”: we sent it to Australia to be mastered. A lot of people just do one mastering and that’s it, but we had it mastered separately for CD and for vinyl, because it’s a different feel. We put “Mission To Mars” out, and it’s gone down very well. It was Number One on Amazon, and it’s selling quite well. That’s basically soup to nuts how that all happened.

– You said that, while living in Germany, you decided to break into the American market, but you didn’t mention the UK. I always had a feeling that you weren’t really integrated into the British scene. Am I right?

We did quite well in England. We played in England quite a lot, and they accepted us, but they thought we were German. We would play huge festivals in Germany where GENTLE GIANT and a lot of other big names were there and we were headlining. They were all saying, “How come NEKTAR are the top of the bill?”

– Still, people don’t really mention you in the same breath as them, but you played on “The Old Grey Whistle Test”: first there was a promo video of “Wings” and then you were there in person. A rare thing for an unknown band.

Well, we were starting to get bigger in England, but they wanted us to be on “The Old Grey Whistle Test” after Mike Appleton, the guy who created the show, came to see us in Germany and really liked the band. He asked if we’d go to England and record for the programme, and we said, “Sure, we’d love to!” So next time we were there, we went and did it, but the promo video? I don’t know that at all, I’ve never seen it.

– Speaking of visuals: you were lucky to have your German beginnings documented by Jay Took in his “Good Day” film. Do you remember that actual day?

Oh yeah, we were in Hamburg – we were living in a youth home that Jay ran, that’s how we got to know him. It was like a camp in Zollenspieker: we were there during the week and on weekends, when the youth came to that camp, we’d be out playing. That’s where we did a lot of music. And I’m still in touch with Jay, I talk to him at least once a week. He’s a good guy.

– Did you ever feel like being part of the Krautrock scene?

Yeah, absolutely! We were definitely part of the Krautrock scene. Some time ago we – Ryche, Ron, Roye, Taff and I – did an interview for a Krautrock documentary, and they’ve just sent me the DVD.

– But Ryche wasn’t in Germany when you started out!

Oh, no, he wasn’t part of Krautrock, but they allowed him to do the interview to show where we were. We got to know Ryche when we were doing the first American tour, because “Remember The Future” came out on Passport Records there, and he was on that label then. I met him at that time, and when we were doing “Magic Is A Child” he was in and out of the studio. At some point, I said to him, “Why don’t you come down to our house in Chatham and jam with us?” So he did. We wrote a lot of music together and did some gigs with him and Dave Nelson. We even did one gig with him and Roye who came back and played with us one night. He was only twenty-one, maybe twenty-two, but he was good!

– But I guess Mike Winter was part of the scene. Does that name ring any bell?

Not really. (Looks at the Discogs page for the “Du, Ich Mach’ Keine Show” single.) Oh yeah, I wrote that! I wrote two songs for him: one was “She’s A Girl From A Good House” that I wrote in German, and the other was an ABBA song that they wanted to do a German version of and asked me to rewrite the lyrics.

– The Winter records were produced by Peter Hauke who also produced classic NEKTAR albums.

I’ve known Peter since 1962, maybe 1963, and I liked him, he was a great guy. We were playing in Germany, when we’d just finished “Journey To The Center Of The Eye” and we were doing the whole thing live – one piece of music that lasted 44-45 minutes. Peter came to a gig, liked what he saw, and said he was interested in doing something with us. We had no record label, so he asked, “Do you want to be on my new label, Bacillus?” And we said, “Sure, let’s do it!” We went to Dieter Dierks studio and recorded “Journey” that came out on Bacillus, but Peter was having financial difficulties, so he sold the label to Bellaphon and became a producer for Bellaphon where he worked with a lot of different acts. Peter was on and off with us right up until we left for the United States. Sometimes he would come to the studio but he very rarely stayed the whole time. He didn’t come to the studio until maybe "A Tab In The Ocean" but he was with us more in the beginning of “Recycle” – and he was definitely watching over us, watching what we were doing and helping where he could. But it wasn’t a matter of somebody who was going to tell you what you were going to play – we did that.

– So it was the band produced the albums?

All of them, yeah.

– And the band wrote music together, but you were the main lyricist, right?

Actually, it was me and Mick [Brockett, the band’s lighting engineer] who did most of the lyrics. And Roye. Roye would sing scat vocals and we’d get some lines from his singing.

– But who thought up all these concepts – summarized in the line “imagination merged with reality” – that your albums are based on? Which of you was interested in extraterrestrials that feature in these concepts?

The concepts were basically me and Mick. And yes, it is just that: your imagination can become reality. We’re all merged in it, all of us. And extraterrestrials was something that we were all involved with, although I guess Mick more than anybody else would push that angle.

– By the way, does the band’s mascot, this alien that appears on your logos and such, have a name?

Oh, it’s the Nektarman! (Laughs.) It’s the Bee-Man with the ear who was drawn by Helmut Wenske, our artist. He painted [the covers for] “A Tab In The Ocean,” “…Sounds Like This,” “Recycled,” “Remember The Future” – he did all of them, and he was fabulous. And there’s a tidbit. When we were rehearsing “Remember The Future” in a hall in Wembach, Germany, the record company called and said, “Come down, we have the cover for you to look at!” We went to Bellaphon, where Helmut showed it to us, and on the back cover was a blue man with wings, so we said, “That’s Bluebird!” – we got inspiration from his painting and put it back in the music. Helmut’s a really good friend of mine, he shares a birthday with me, but he’s in his eighties now. I talk to him all the time. He did the cover for “The Other Side” and for “Mission To Mars” too.

– Since we’re talking about that: “Mission To Mars” and “Devil’s Door” are alliterations. Was it intentional?

No, it was totally coincidental. But everybody has a different perspective of what we do. After “Journey To The Center Of The Eye” came out, I took the whole thing to a local high school in Germany and did a lesson on it, and the things that the students came up with, what they saw in it, made me realize: it’s better just to let people look at it and let them use their own imagination than try to tell them what you want to think. The storylines in our albums are very loose – and they’re loose for a reason, they’re loose because we want people to think about what that means to them. Maybe it means something totally different to me or to you.

– Your visual shows served the same purpose. But how could you afford to keep two special effects guys, guys who didn’t play, in the band? And, judging by the footage of your Swiss show, you had an impressive backline. Did you have any financial backing?

We had no financial backing, zero. We didn’t look at it that way at the time, We were all young and we were having a great time on the road – we had a van we all fit in together with our gear, and we played probably two hundred shows a year. That’s how we had a house that we rented and we just kept it tight.

– Were the band’s albums built like long pieces of music because you liked to explore a concept or you just enjoyed the development of your musical ideas?

The music came first, and then we would write words to it: it was always that way. The words were inspired by the music. We had some when we went into the studio, pieces like “Bluebird” were basically done – we knew what vocals were going to be – but the first side of “Remember The Future” was all written during the recording.

– And still you returned to your early material on “…Sounds Like This” to improvise on. Why?

Because we had so much music that we’d already written that it was backing up! (Laughs.) We couldn’t record fast enough, so I said, “Let’s have a competition to get some fans in the studio and do a concert!” About forty people turned up, we set up the equipment, including the PA, and just played. We played for two days and then we came back, played for another two days, and from that we came up with that album. In fact, the later version of “…Sounds Like This” – the new one that’s just out – has both times we did it. And you know, it was great being able to do that, to put all those songs out. Now we had to write more music, and it left space for us to do “Remember The Future” which we were working on at the time.

– You followed “Remember The Future” with song-based “Down To Earth” as if to show there was nothing precious about progressive rock.

There were individual pieces, rather than one long piece, on the album, but the storyline still linked them together. We had a bunch of songs that we wrote, and we liked the idea of the circus. We went to “Circus Krone” in Munich to take some of the pictures. But I’ve never, ever thought about what we were playing – we play what we feel – and we were playing this music way, way before progressive rock was even a name. We thought of ourselves as just a rock band, we’re just playing our own version of rock.

– As I mentioned, you weren’t really part of British rock scene. So how easy was it for you to get guest artists like Robert Calvert and P .P. Arnold involved in “Down To Earth”?

Oh, we just told them to come, and they got paid to do it. But Bob Calvert was a hilarious guy, and he enjoyed recording with us. And P. P. Arnold actually sang [a version of] “Little Boy” that was never released. When there’s a reissue of “Down To Earth” – it’s going to come out maybe in the next year – I want them to look for that track, as I already talked to P. P. to ask her if she wants to have it released.

– There’s a piece called “Nelly The Elephant” on that album, which was covered by artists like Bernard Wrigley and Mike and Michelle Jackson. What’s so special about it?

I don’t know. It started with jamming, and it just felt like you could see an elephant lumbering down, so we continued: we did the basic track and then added brass to it. It’s a great song, and we get asked for it a lot, but we don’t play it live right now. I haven’t played it live since NearFest, since 2001 or 2002. IRON MAIDEN took “Nelly The Elephant” and “Crying In The Dark” and “King Of Twilight” for their label as well as some other songs that they were interested in owning for England, and they recorded “King Of Twilight” and “Crying In The Dark” on their “Aces High” single.

– What was your impression of their version?

It was fun. PINK FLOYD did some of our music too – they used a direct copy from one of the songs that we had written two years before their album came out. Nick Mason even flew to New York in 2001 or 2002 to see the concert in New York that we did. I am flattered when people like our music, and the financial aspect doesn’t really matter: there’s not enough money in it to worry about.

– You don’t get royalties from MAIDEN?

We got a few at the time but not anymore, and we didn’t get anything from FLOYD. There also was a thing on the Internet that got a couple of million views, a copied sample of our music that we eventually got paid for. It wasn’t a lot of money, though.

– But where could those pop artists who covered “Nelly The Elephant” hear it?

Don’t ask me. I didn’t even know somebody covered it. (After listening to the Wrigley and the Jacksons recordings.) These are different songs called “Nelly The Elephant”!

– They are indeed, but you’re credited on those records… which of course is less important than what you did on “Recycled” that made NEKTAR one of the first bands to raise this ecological awareness.

Yes, that’s where our heads were at the time.

– The band used choir on that album, on “Unendless Imagination” and a couple of other tracks, and you played Mellotron on early records, but you don’t have classical training, right?

Yes, I do. Yes, I do. Absolutely! I played classical music before I was in a band – I started playing it when I was seven years old. If you listen to the bass, it’s very melodic, more like a cello would play, and that comes from my classical training.

– You played cello?

No, no, I played keyboards and I went to bass from keyboards. But I love the cello: I like the way that it interacts with music.

– So if you could – and did – play Mellotron, and you had Alan Freeman, a standalone keyboard player, what did you need Larry Fast for?

I didn’t play Mellotron on “Recycled” – Larry Fast played electronic keyboards on that album, and Taff played the organ. Taff also got a little Moog, but Larry made it more classical. The only time that I played Mellotron on, and it was the first Mellotron I’d ever seen, was “Journey To The Center Of The Eye” – as far as I can remember, anyway – and I played piano a few times. I think I did that on “Magic Is A Child” – I played rock piano.

– How did you get Larry to play with you?

Oh, I knew Larry for years! He was on Passport Records, along with Ryche and with us. When I first came over to the States, I took a taxi from New York City right out to Marty’s place – Marty Scott was one of the owners of Passport – and I met Larry there. We became friends and we were friends from that time on; eventually, we had a house together, me and Larry, and we would do our individual things. Larry’s a genius, he really is. So when we did “Recycle,” I asked him if he wanted to be part of it, and he said, “Yeah!” He came over to France, played his part, and it was awesome. Then, we took the record back to Germany and played it for Bellaphon, and I told him, “Look, I hear a choir at the end and I hear different things in there now that it’s got to this part…” But we needed more money to go in the studio and Bellaphon allowed us to do that, so we flew back to England and went to AIR Studios, George Martin’s studio. where we did a lot of edits. There is an edition of “Recycled” out with both versions: the one that we did first and the one that we did second.

And I remember saying, “I’d like to hear a steel drum in the beginning of the album,” and Larry replying, “I can do that. Do you have a synthesizer?” The guy in the studio got a Korg, I think it was, so he got it out of the closet, and Larry looked at it, set it up and said it was okay. The guy asked, “You don’t want to hear it?” and Larry said, “No, that’s it!” (Laughs.) He knew from what he programmed that it would work, and sure enough, he played six or eight different notes and got the synthesizer to sound like a steel drum: it sounded awful in the beginning, but you could hear it building. George Martin was in the studio, watching, and he was absolutely enthralled with what Larry was doing. I have a lot of respect for Larry. Great musician!

– You mentioned the two versions of “Recycled”: you mean the first mix that was done by Geoff Emerick and the final one?

I loved working with Geoff, but he pointed out that there were some pieces missing, and the album just didn’t feel finished. So we got a choir in to do the end part, and some of the choir had perfect pitch, but because we had a keyboard and an organ, the organ tuned itself to wherever the power was going into it – we were on 240 volts in England – so the track was a little bit out. I don’t remember whether it was too slow or too fast, but we had to tune the track to concert pitch, and then the choir sang and we moved it back to what we had before. But I love the way the vocals came out and how it blended with the choir!

– Then, Larry joined you on tour and he also played on “Magic Is A Child” – but you didn’t incorporate him into the band as a member. Why?

There was a problem, because we just moved over to Polydor and Larry was still on Passport Records. Marty didn’t want him to play on our album, but he did, without telling anybody. You didn’t see his name on the record when it was released.

– “Magic” was your first record without Roye. How did the band’s dynamics change in the band when he left? 

It was different music, but we had no problem with that. That was another direction, when we went from “Recycled” right to “Magic Is A Child” – but it’s the same if you listen to “The Other Side” or “Mission To Mars”: it’s just a different direction. We spent a lot of time with Dave writing music, so by the time we went to the studio we felt very comfortable. A lot of the stuff in the studio was just me and him – I was engineering and he was playing it. Listen to the solo on “Listen”: we had all the machines doing tape echoes, and then I played it and recorded it while he played it. It was intense!

– How did you get Robert Fripp to play on “Train to Nowhere”?

Robert was in the studio, so I played him “Train To Nowhere” and asked, “Would you put something down on one of the tracks?” He agreed but he didn’t want anybody to be there – he wanted to do it on his own. Robert was playing all the different volume-pedals stuff that he was into at that time, and when he finished, he just left it for us to listen to. Then, Dave put a solo down on top of his music, and that worked well.

– There’s some other thing about “Magic”: at the very end of “Spread Your Wings” a single bass note appears quite unexpectedly, wrapping up the album. Did you put that note there on purpose?

Yes, that was very much intentional. At the time a lot of people were smoking dope, so we figured they’d be listening to the album and they’d be sort of nodding off and then boom! – they’d get woken up! (Laughs.)

– Why did you leave the band after that record?

It had run its course for me. It became hectic, and I wasn’t interested in doing it anymore. I tried to do something with Roye, though: I went to Europe, and we wrote a bunch of music, which he used on “Man In The Moon” and took credit for it. He talked to me about it, and I said, “I don’t care if you use it!” I was out of the music business anyway, I was out of it. And then I didn’t really hear much at all from anybody until we did NearFest. Roye called me up and said, “Are you interested in doing a concert?” I thought, “Well, my kids had never heard it. Sure, why not?” We rehearsed every Sunday – me and Taff, and Ron, and Larry – and we got two girl singers, Maureen McIntyre and Michelle Eckert, and percussionist/singer Scott Krentz, so it was really coming along, and then, for the last week, Roye came over, and we went into the studio that was owned by Vinny [Schmid], our sound guy, to rehearse all the songs that we’d already rehearsed without Roye. We played the festival, and it was fantastic.

– How was it – seeing the guys with much less hair?

It never even entered my mind. It’s music… The music is what’s important.

– What did you think when you listened to the band without you on “Man On The Moon”?

I thought the music was okay but the mixing wasn’t very good. In fact, in hindsight, I think it was probably a little bit too long, and when a vinyl record is too long it takes away from the bottom end. On “The Other Side” and “Mission To Mars” the bottom end is really there, because we didn’t overdo it with the length of each side.

– How did it feel to be playing with Ron – in terms of rhythm section, rather than personalities?

I loved playing with Ron. We played together for sixty years, so he and I were very tight. We think the same – or we thought the same. We could not see each other for ten years, but when we got together to play, it was instantly there.

– He sometimes used a double-bass kit and sometimes a single bass drum. Was it difficult for you to adjust to that?

Not at all. Ron was very selective, but I played to whatever he played – or he would play to me. He was probably the best drummer I’ve ever played with.

– You didn’t play for a long time, so what did you do for all those years?

I got married and I got into plumbing, heating and construction. I had three corporations and as many as fourteen employees. I also did a lot of sporting clays shooting and I had other things to do.

– Didn’t you feel the urge to play music?

No. It wasn’t until we put it back together that I felt, “Wow, it’s pretty good to play again!”

– You’re the last remaining founding member in the band. Does it feel like there’s responsibility of keeping the flame alive?

Yeah, but I like keeping the flame! I like that. And certainly, I love the new music. I love “Mission To Mars”: it’s going to be a trilogy. We’re already writing music for the second album.

– So you had a single concept for an album but decided to split it in three parts? Why?

We just thought that was what we wanted to do. The same with the title. The title came to me, and I said, “Let’s call it ‘Mission To Mars’ and write about it!” And everybody went, “Yeah, let’s do that!”

– It’s short but surprisingly rocking.

Yeah, yeah, yeah! That’s us back to our rock roots.

– One the album was out, it was announced that the band would stop touring, but now I see a list of dates on your website. So are you stopping or not?

Well, we were touring, but we weren’t playing that much; we played a couple of short tours a year, and that’s what we’re going to do now. So we’ll probably play again, but it really depends how well the tours go. It’s very tough on your body, touring. I live in North Carolina, and the rest of the guys live in New Jersey, so it’s hard even if you want to rehearse.

– Did you accomplish everything that you set out to do when you were starting?

I stopped playing for a while, but I’m still playing now. Soon I’ll be seventy-nine years old, and I can’t see myself playing much beyond eighty. I just can’t see it. Still, the sense of accomplishment is always evolving.