September 2024
When it comes to a rock or pop performance, most listeners think of singers and players and very rarely pay attention to another layer of a melodic piece – the layer that gives a song an extra dimension: an orchestra. The names of arrangers, conductors and instrumentalists remain unknown to many a fan, even though quite a few of these names repeat from record to record. One of those formidable “background” presences is Martyn Ford whose orchestra, and sometimes French horn, can be heard, often without a trace of credit, on hundreds of classic albums.
The likes of THE ROLLING STONES, WINGS and LED ZEPPELIN called Mr. Ford when they needed a touch a magic, and Martyn was always there to provide wonderful atmosphere to transport their track to a different place. And it was various places and headspaces the legendary baton-waver and arranger gracefully agreed to discuss.
– Martyn, let’s start with two quotes. Bryan Ferry once described you like this: “He’s invaluable – not just from the conducting point of view. When I want a particular instrument or sound, Martyn knows who to get, he’s a fixer”; and when I spoke to John Gustafson, he mentioned “my session fixer Martyn Ford”… So you’re a fixer – like a mafia fixer?
(Laughs.) Well, yeah, we call them fixers in the recording industry in London, but the true title is contractor. And I was one, because I’d formed my own orchestra that suddenly took over the world, as everybody wanted to use it, and I contracted musicians out for recording sessions. But of course I was also a conductor, an arranger and a producer, so it was great having this facility – having my own orchestra on the sessions that I’d written for or was conducting, because everybody was handpicked and I knew who was going to come in the room. I had booked the musicians myself while other producers, conductors or arrangers had to rely on a fixer to get the musicians for them. I did my own fixing, and that put me in a slight advantage.
– So basically you came as a full package for producers and artists, right?
Yeah, absolutely. I think that was one of the reasons why I did so well for so long.
– But how did you know everybody to get this job? I mean, you come from a classical background, but you were dealing, in those days at least, with rock and pop arts.
The classical music came first. When I was twenty-four, I went to the Royal Academy of Music to study French horn, and in my fourth year I decided to put together an orchestra for a one-off concert. I’d met a guy called Ulric Burstein, a New Zealander, who was working in Britain, had aspirations to become a great conductor, and we’d got on really well. So after a few weeks, I said, “Well, why don’t I put an orchestra together and you can conduct it?” See, when I was at the Academy, every weekday evening, and Saturdays and Sundays, I went to a different amateur orchestra, scattered all over London. There were two great things about that: first of all, I learned a lot of symphonic repertoire very quickly, and secondly, I met a lot of people like me, who were doing the same thing – lots of music students from the Royal College or Trinity, or Guildhall School of Music, or Royal Academy of Music like myself. I heard them play and knew how good they were or not, and obviously, I was at the Academy every day as well, playing in a couple of orchestras there, so I was hearing all the best students of my generation who went on to do great things. So the orchestra that I put together was formidable: the handpicked students from the four or five London music colleges were an astonishing group of musicians, all aged between eighteen and twenty-four. Ulric and I picked the program between us, as we were both very keen on doing certain pieces, and I hired The Royal Albert Hall. The concert was a huge success and a disaster: we had a very good review in the press, only nobody went there – there were only about twenty people in the Albert Hall, and the Albert Hall holds about four and a half thousand! Then, purely by chance, Robin, my bassoonist, was a friend of Robert Godfrey, the arranger and conductor for a group called BARCLAY JAMES HARVEST. They’d just recorded their first album, where they’d used an orchestra, not mine, but they wanted to go on the road and take an orchestra with them, so Robin said to Godfrey, “Talk to Martyn Ford. He’s got this amazing orchestra of young men and women who enjoy and understand pop and rock. Indeed, I’d sang in a group when I was in my teens and I was listening to rock and pop all the time in the Sixties, I grew up with that just as much as I did with the classical repertoire – they were parallel, side by side. And suddenly, everybody wanted to use my orchestra. That’s how it happened.
I was in the right place at the right time, and I met a few very influential people who introduced me to other people in the business, such as Annie Farrow, the boss of Air-Edel, the biggest jingle-makers in London who made all the music for advertising. She saw how successful I was, so she approached me and said, “We’d like you to fix all our sessions.” And just like that, as well as having to fix regular symphonic orchestra players, I also had to very quickly find out who the best bass guitarists, drummers, keyboard players, guitarists, all the jazz and rock musicians in London were. But again, I was very lucky, because Peter Robinson had left the Academy a year before me, but he used to drop there occasionally, and we connected – we just looked at each other and thought, “Oh, you look quite interesting!” We started talking to each other, he introduced me to his little group of friends – they were Paul Buckmaster, Johnny Gustafson, Shawn Phillips and Ann Odell – and we became a real close-knit family. One day Peter invited me to come along to the studio where they were recording [Phillips’] “Second Contribution” and I just sat in on the sessions, taking my horn out and playing a few notes here and there. I’d never done anything like that before, so I was very much a fish out of water, but I had enough sense of the idiom to understand the chords and to play those few notes. Just very, very basic stuff but it was my first introduction to non-classical music, playing professionally in a studio and working alongside Pete, who I still regard as the best keyboard player this country has ever produced, and Paul Buckmaster.
In my last year at the Academy, I can remember it so distinctly, I went into the basement of a shop in Wigmore Street to buy some jeans, and they were playing Elton John’s black album there. I was rooted to the floor: this was the kind of music that I heard in my dreams, but had never heard live, and suddenly I was hearing this amazing string playing, this amazing writing, accompanying rock-pop songs. So, of course, I went out and bought the album and played it to death. I found out that it was Paul Buckmaster who had done the arrangements, but again, Paul, like Pete, had left the Academy the year before I went there, so I never met him then. Peter introduced me to him, and we became very close friends, so within two years Paul started using my orchestra for all his sessions in England, and when I started conducting, he asked me to conduct most of his stuff – as he was a brilliant arrangement but a lousy conductor.
– How did you convince all those other students to join you in this enterprise?
I offered to pay them! (Laughs.) I managed to raise enough money to give them, I think, ten pounds each to do that concert. We probably did six rehearsals – we couldn’t do that for five-hundred pounds each now! I wasn’t wealthy at all, but Ulric and I just scraped together some money to do it. We sold a few tickets, and we paid people after the concert, so we just managed to do it – I don’t know how we did it, but we did it. And people were excited about playing in a new orchestra and playing at the Albert Hall, which they would have never done before. Also I had the gift of the gab. I didn’t go to the Academy until I was twenty-four, and most people go when they’re eighteen, and when you’re six years older, that’s quite a lot at that age. I was a bit more streetwise, a bit more mature, and I was very driven, so I just persuaded them to do it.
– So you worked with your own orchestra, but does that mean that when we hear it on a record we hear your horn as well?
On some records, yes. Obviously, I couldn’t do both at once, so if there were sessions that other people had booked – George Martin, for example, he used my orchestra sometimes, but he would conduct his own sessions – then I would put myself in on the horn section and play. I got to play for Sir George using my orchestra on the soundtrack of the movie “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and the soundtrack of “Live and Let Die”: those are the couple of things I did with Sir George. But there were a few other arrangers that conducted their own sessions: I can remember Chris Gunning always did – and he did all those early Martini ads – so I would go and book myself in to play. Yeah, it was good fun. It kept me playing. (Laughs.)
– On THE MARTYN FORD ORCHESTRA’s “Smoovin'” you’re also credited with playing clavinet and singing. Did you do that?
I didn’t play the clavinet, no. Peter Robinson would have played it. But I certainly sang a lot of vocals, and a lot of backing vocals.
– There are quite a few record that everybody knows where your orchestra is not credited by name – for instance, LED ZEPPELIN’s “Physical Graffiti” and “The Snow Goose” by CAMEL. Were you contracted to remain anonymous? To me, it’s just an injustice.
Of course, it is! I conducted my orchestra on “Angie” by THE ROLLING STONES – no credit. I think it says, “Thanks to Martyn” – but there’s no indication that I did it. And similarly, LED ZEPPELIN. I can’t remember who rang me up to put the strings, but I do remember that it was the Olympic Studios, and because I lived in Barnes and the Olympic Studios was just five minutes away, I thought, “Well, I’ll go around and make sure everybody turns up and everybody’s fine.” I turned up ten minutes before the session started, and John Paul Jones was there, who he said, “Oh, Martyn, as you’re here, you can conduct.” So I conducted the session, not expecting to, but I was very pleased that I turned up, because I ended up doing it.
– Was it “Kashmir”? I don’t remember any other orchestral track on the album?
Yes, “Kashmir,” a pretty amazing track. It’s the only track and the only time that I worked with LED ZEPPELIN.
– But why it wasn’t in your contract to be credited on records?
You have to remember that I’d only been in the business a couple of years, and there was no written contract – the contract to book the orchestra was a verbal one. According to the Musicians’ Union, a telephone phone call is a legal and binding contract when it comes to booking musicians. So I learned the hard way. My first hit record was Johnny Nash’s “I Can See Clearly Now”: I did the arrangement on that and played the synthesizer in the middle, but I did not get a credit on the single. It sold millions of copies around the world, so I said to Johnny that I was very disappointed I didn’t get a credit, and he was very upset that I didn’t. On the album that had the single on and a couple of other tracks that I also arranged, I got loads of credits, which was great, but it was too late, really. The credit on the single was much more important to me. Anyway, eventually, because I became established and was well-known, I was in the position to say what I wanted and most of the time I got credited. But with some of the big superstar people like ZEPPELIN or THE STONES, you can’t exactly tell them what to do, can you?
– “Angie” and “The Snow Goose” credit, respectively, Nicky Harrison as David Bedford as arrangers? Why not you?
Nick Harrison did do the string arrangement for “Angie” but he couldn’t conduct, so I always conducted his stuff and did a lot of other things for him, and David Bedford used my orchestra. David mainly conducted his own things, but occasionally I conducted his stuff, and I did the CARAVAN sessions with him, but then I took over as CARAVAN’s arranger anyway. So I did a lot more for CARAVAN than I ever did with CAMEL.
– Were you comfortable working with other people doing orchestrations?
Of course, because they wanted to use my orchestra. And every time they contracted my orchestra, I was making money anyway. (Laughs.)
– Yeah, but didn’t you want to be doing orchestrations yourself?
I did, but I had no choice: it’s the artist who chooses the orchestrator. John Paul Jones did the orchestration for ZEPPELIN, but I was lucky that I was there and got asked to conduct it. There were lots of arrangers: Bruce Baxter, who did LINDISFARNE and Chris Rea, always used my orchestra, as did Paul Buckmaster – I conducted a lot of Paul’s stuff for Shawn Phillips, and I did [Elton’s] “Blue Moves” but I don’t get a credit for that. The orchestra does, but I don’t get a credit for conducting it.
– Was it the same for ELO’s “Eldorado” with Louis Clark?
Yes, he conducted that, but I played horn on those sessions.
– What was the usual process for such sessions? You arrived with your orchestra, received sheet music, rehearsed and played? Or there were occasions where you had been given demo recordings beforehand?
For a session where my orchestra was just brought to play, we just turned up and played it. The British musicians have the reputation as being the best sight readers in the world, which is why a lot of people come to London to record orchestras as well as anything else. If I was arranging it, then I’d be sent what they’d put down so far – it’d be the rhythm track or a rough mix with a guide vocal on it – so I would orchestrate it and then go into the studio with my orchestra and conduct it.
– How often did you actually meet artists in the studio?
It varied a lot. When I did “Angie,” [Mick] Jagger was there; when I worked for WINGS, Paul McCartney was there in Abbey Road; when I did “Kashmir,” only John Paul Jones was there. Robert Plant and Jimmy Page weren’t, although I met Robert quite a lot later because of his connection with Phil Collins. Bryan Ferry was always there, Johnny Nash was there most of the time, but not always.
– But they didn’t interfere with the orchestra arrangements?
Sometimes they’d want changes, but generally speaking, they were happy with what I did. Phil Collins was always in the studio when I did his stuff – I did his first three albums, and on the second one [1982’s “Hello, I Must Be Going!”] I arranged three tracks including “Don’t Let Him Steal Your Heart Away” where he asked me to change the strings on the middle section, which I did as it was very easy to change. But on Frida’s album [“Something’s Going On” from 1982] that he produced, Peter Robinson did the amazing string arrangements for my orchestra and I conducted it, and Phil didn’t change anything. So it’s not often that you get asked to change things, not in my experience.
– You mentioned Johnny Nash and I immediately thought of Bob Marley. One of his records credits you as a synthesizer player. Did you play for Bob?
This sounds terrible. I remember going to a Bob Marley session at Air Studios, walking in there and seeing them all lying on the floor, absolutely smashed out of their heads. You got stoned just walking in the room, so I can’t remember what I did or what track. I cannot remember what I did, which is awful because I wish I knew and I’d like to be able to play the track and hear what I did. I kept a session sheet with the musicians on it, with time, studio, producer, artist, whatever – and I can’t find the Marley one. I’m going to have another look.
– What you should remember is Roger Glover’s “Butterfly Ball” where you played both in the studio and on stage, at the Albert Hall.
Yeah, “Butterfly Ball”… Roger asked me to do the arrangements, and I did. I also fixed the orchestra, played horn and conducted tracks that I wasn’t playing on. And yes, I did the live concert at the Albert Hall with Roger Glover, but though that was my orchestra, I didn’t conduct it. He asked Del Newman who’d arranged the strings on “Yellow Brick Road” to conduct, and I was pissed off, to be honest, but I got in and played horn as well. It was a great, great fun to do. The concert was pretty chaotic. We put it together in an afternoon, so it was a seat of the pants job, while the studio work was very well organized and very professional. Roger was very professional. He’s a great guy, and I’m still close friends with him. I see him quite often, and he’s still gigging. I went to a DEEP PURPLE concert last year in Birmingham, and it was the best DEEP PURPLE concert I’ve ever been to. It was amazing.
– “Butterfly Ball” is credited to Glover, but I hear a lot of Eddie Hardin influence there. Did you deal with Roger or with Eddie when you worked on that?
Oh, with Roger. But of course, Eddie was playing keyboards and put down the rhythm tracks – that’s why you would hear his influence. Yeah, poor Eddie is no longer with us, he died a few years ago. When I saw him last at a concert about ten years ago, he was touring with Spencer Davis.
– One of the numbers from this project, “Love Is All” which Ronnie James Dio sang, is very much similar, melodically, to “Carolina County Ball” by ELP, Dio’s band, so I was always interested in how that happened. And you recorded with ELF, right?
Yes, I did some arrangements for them. And then Dio did some of the “Butterfly Ball” tracks, and he did the live concert, too.
– No, it was Ian Gillan who sang there.
Well, Gillan wasn’t the only singer; Johnny Gustafson sang at the concert as well. I’ll tell you a story here. When I was sixteen or seventeen, I went to the Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham, where I was living at the time, to see THE MERSEYBEATS. Johnny Gustafson sang some of the songs and played bass, and my jaw was on the floor: I had never seen anybody play the bass guitar like him then. He played with a plectrum and he played very hard and very rhythmically – and, of course, that’s how he carried on playing. Just think of [ROXY MUSIC’s] “Love Is The Drug” with that opening bass line – typical Gus! So I saw him, never knowing that maybe ten years later, we’d become very close friends. I met him through Pete Robinson, Ann Odell and Paul Buckmaster, the group that I became part of. We were very close friends for many years. We did a lot of work together, and he played on my album. It was wonderful. And I only told the story because Carol, my wife, I’ve only been married just over a year, is from Cheltenham, and we went back there on Saturday night – we went to the Everyman Theatre to see a play, and it brought back the memories of seeing Johnny Gustafson there. Amazing how life goes in circles!
– By the way, did you know Glover from those sessions with ELF?
I can’t remember. Did Roger produce ELF? So he must have been in the studio when I did my arrangements.
– Since you mentioned your album, let’s move to your orchestra records. The “Let Your Body Go Downtown” single: it was written by Lynsey de Paul and Mike Moran, and you had worked with them earlier, hadn’t you?
Yeah, I’d already worked with Lynsey a lot. She used my orchestra on all her records and we’d become quite close friends, and then I did some arranging for her. When she did a week at the London Palladium, she asked me to be her MD, and I conducted the orchestra in the pit for her. And Mike Moran was probably one of the top three session keyboard players in London, so I used him a lot on my albums and on other things. I knew both of them very well, so when I was trying to make a hit record and they’d just come second in Eurovision with their poppy thing, “Rock Bottom” – and disco was all the rage then – I asked them to write me a song. And they did.
– And how did the “Smoovin'” LP come about? And why is it the only album by your orchestra?
I did some arrangements for THE SENSATIONAL ALEX HARVEY BAND and some for NAZARETH, and then Dan McCafferty did a [self-titled] solo album which I arranged and conducted as well, and they were all signed to Mountain Records. One day I got a phone call: Mountain invited me in and said, “Would you like to make your own record?” I couldn’t believe it! I was just a backseat boy doing arrangements and conducting sessions, and I never expected to get an album deal. So I made that album, and it’s been digitized and remastered, and re-released now. I’ve just digitized the second album which I did and which had “Let Your Body Go Downtown” on it, and I’m about to release that once it’s been remastered. That was my only sort of dabble at trying to be an artist.
– This second album, was it the one called “Hotshoe”?
Yes. “Hotshoe” was the second album that was never released, but it exists. It exists. Some of it is awful, but there maybe four good tracks on it. I’m probably going to release a little EP in the next few months. It is what it is: it sounds dated but it’s got amazing musicians on it just, like “Smoovin'” does, some of which still sound amazing in my opinion. I remember Hughie Burns, top session guitarist who went on to play for WHAM! and George Michael, played on it for me. He did an interview for “The Sunday Times” where he was talking about what he did and what his background was, and they asked him what was the thing he liked most recently, and he said, “Oh, I’ve just done this amazing album with Martyn Ford. It’s way ahead of its time. It’s absolutely fantastic!” It was very kind of him to say that. The orchestra just sounds sensational, absolutely brilliant there, and I’m very proud of it. And some of the tracks still get used now and then for backing tracks on videos and for samples.
– You even covered SPENCER DAVIS BAND and CLIMAX BLUES BAND on “Smoovin'”!
CLIMAX BLUES BAND, did I do that?
– Yeah, “Flight” was from their repertoire.
Oh, was it? “Flight” is amazing. The strings are fantastic there: (sings) “Digga digga digga digga digga dam…” And “Icarus” is another track that I’m proud of, as well as “I’m A Man” from SPENCER DAVIS BAND. I went through songs that I liked, trying to find the ones that I could make funky. “Sneakin’ Up Behind You” by BRECKER BROTHERS was funky already, and I just did my own version. Whether people like the track or not, they’re actually brilliantly played and there are some great solos, as I used really good musicians
– One of them was the young Simon Phillips.
Oh yes, the greatest drummer in the world. One of my jobs when I was a student at the Academy was playing in the pit of the very first West End production of “Jesus Christ Superstar” where Simon, then aged sixteen, was playing drums. So I’ve known him a long time and I saw him very recently. Mo Foster died a while back, and there was a big charity concert in London for Mo’s widow, and Simon flew over from L.A. to play, which was amazing. I still think he’s the best drummer in the world and I always have done. He’s just unbelievable. Simon has a group called PROTOCOL and they’re doing some gigs. Just keep an eye on him and go and see him because he will blow you away. PROTOCOL are playing at Ronnie Scott’s next year.
– There was another band that you were involved with, so-called SPHINCTER ENSEMBLE with Buckmaster, Robinson and Morris Pert. You already talked about this combination of characters but not of their record which was released some ten years ago.
Our group of friends used to hire “The Harrodian” – a sort of social club of the shop “Harrods”: they had a club in Barnes, very close to where Paul and I lived – where we just got together and jammed. There also were Johnny Gustafson, Trevor Morais, the drummer from THE PEDDLERS – I bought my first house off Trevor – and Tony Walmsley, who messed around on guitar. We had hours and hours and hours of tapes, and some of it was absolute rubbish, but then Pete Robinson had this idea of digitizing them all and taking out little bits that worked.
– And you and Morris Pert later worked on Mike Oldfield’s “Five Miles Out”: arranged by Morris and conducted by you.
Yes, Morris Pert, he died a few years ago, I went to his funeral. He was a very close friend of mine, we were at the Academy together. An amazing man, a brilliant percussionist, an outstanding keyboard player and composer. Do you know he’d written symphonies? He’s had symphonies performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra. On “Five Miles Out” Morris did the arrangements, but he used my orchestra, and always asked me to conduct his stuff. He did some arrangements for the London Symphony Orchestra “Classic Rock” albums, and I conducted those as well.
– You seem to have a very interesting working connection with the keyboard players. To mention just a few, you worked with Dave Greenslade, Pete Wingfield and Gary Brooker. Do you have any special understanding when it comes to interplay between keyboards and orchestra?
Yes, I worked with all of them at one time or another, but as for special understanding, not really. I only need to know what chords they are playing. As an arranger I have more an affinity with the drummer than I do with the keyboard player, because I write a lot of my arrangements very rhythmically and I like to copy the fills that drums do. It’s a very effective device which I enjoy doing, which I probably copied off Buckmaster. For example, if you listen to a track called “Ocean Deep” on Cliff Richard’s album “Silver” that I did, the drummer there was Graham Jarvis, a wonderful drummer, and the cellos part I wrote copy exactly what he did, and at the end of “Hideaway” by Mike Rutherford, the strings are doing the same fill as the drums.
– “Hideaway” was a great song.
I did Mike’s album “Couldn’t Get Arrested” I think it’s called [“Acting Very Strange” from 1982. – DME] – and I love that song. Nobody knows this, but it’s George Harrison playing guitar on it at the end. It’s an amazing track, and I love my arrangement. It just works. Sometimes you hear things that you did and you just think, “Yeah!”, and sometimes you hear stuff and think, “I don’t wanna hear that again, thank you!” I’m disappointed I didn’t get involved with MIKE AND THE MECHANICS that he formed after he’d done that album.
– What about PROCOL HARUM’s "Grand Hotel" and Brooker’s “No More Fear Of Flying”?
I can’t remember what I did on “Grand Hotel”; I think they might have used my orchestra – as did Gary, but I don’t even know who arranged it or who did the sessions.
– George Martin.
Oh, okay. If George was the producer, then he would have conducted the strings and I might have played. I didn’t know Gary that well, but we meet occasionally. I saw him at Phil Collins’ wedding, he played there with Eric Clapton, and that was quite a day!
– So tell me, please, about your collaborations with Sir George.
There were only two or three, really, the ones I mentioned earlier. The soundtrack for the movie “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”: I’ve never seen the film, but I gather it was awful, and it didn’t do very well. But George re-recorded all the songs from the original BEATLES album and booked my orchestra. It was really exciting to do, to relive “A Day In The Life” in Abbey Road’s Studio One where he’d originally had an orchestra doing that amazing big climax. And I did it with my orchestra, with Sir George conducting and me playing. See, I knew George very well, because I did most of my work at Air Studios, and he was one of its co-owners, but I didn’t work with him that much, although I bumped into him all the time, and when I was in the studio, whatever I was doing, he would quite often come in to say “Hello” and have a listen to what I was doing. And he also produced the soundtrack for the movie “Live And Let Die” where, of course, McCartney sang the title song which my orchestra was on. Marvin Hamlisch contacted Paul Buckmaster and asked, “What’s the best orchestra in London?” Paul sent him to me, and Marvin came up to my house in Barnes. I didn’t like him at all: I found him arrogant, rude, and difficult to get on with. But anyway, he used my orchestra and then after maybe two or three sessions, he used another fixer. He was of a certain type – he didn’t like working with young musicians, he wanted to work with the old school, and my orchestra was very young, very green. But it was fine.
– If we’re talking about soundtracks, another one of those was “Tommy” by THE WHO.
I don’t know why I got the job, but Pete Townshend asked me to do the arrangement for “Bernie’s Holiday Camp” which was just an organ. So we took the Rolling Stones mobile studio and parked it in Leicester Square in London, as the Odeon there has got a huge Wurlitzer organ, the one that rises out of the floor with the flashing lights! We used their resident organist who knew the instrument very well. I gave him the music, and he played it, while I was sat in the studio with Pete Townshend on one side and [movie director] Ken Russell on the other, who were both very professional and very together. That was an interesting day and good fun. And then Pete asked me to do an arrangement for “Pinball Wizard” which Elton sang. There’s a little bit of strings on it that either ended up on the studio floor or else it’s so low in the mix you can’t hear it, but it was a hit track and I was part of it.
– For that matter, I cannot hear any orchestra on Kate Bush’s “Babooshka” that’s mentioned on your site.
I wasn’t on it. She used my orchestra on, I think, two of her albums – first was “Lionheart” – but I didn’t arrange it.
– Back to “Tommy”: there was a guy who played on that soundtrack, Paul Gurvitz, who you worked with in THREE MAN ARMY and BAKER GURVITZ ARMY as well as THE GRAEME EDGE BAND.
I don’t know how I got the job. I obviously had a bit of a reputation, so Adrian and Paul Gurvitz asked me to do the arrangements on "Hearts On Fire" that I still play occasionally. We recorded all those albums at Decca, which is quite a strange studio up in North London, and I remember those sessions quite well.
– You worked mostly with British musicians, but let me ask you about sessions you did for non-U.K. artists. First would be "Hamburger Concerto" by FOCUS.
Yeah, FOCUS came over to London to record quite a lot, and since Paul Buckmaster was going out with Thijs Van Leer’s former girlfriend, I got to meet Thijs and somehow he asked me to do some work on it. But the biggest non-British band that I ever worked with was TOTO: David Paich came over with the tapes from L.A. and I my orchestra played on “Toto IV” which won six Grammys. That was an amazing album, and that was part of the early arranging career of James Newton Howard, previously the keyboard player with Elton’s band. So he did the arrangements for “Toto IV” and came over to London, to record at Abbey Road. Now James is all over the place as one of Hollywood’s biggest movie composers.
– Surely, GRATEFUL DEAD’s “Terrapin Station” was more left-field.
Well, that’s another example of Paul Buckmaster’s arrangements. “Terrapin” is an amazing track: it’s very long, very drawn out, and the orchestra plays a huge part in it – and I conducted that!
– Lou Reed’s “Transformer”: another non-British thing.
My orchestra played on “Walk On The Wild Side”: there’s a violin line, one note all the way through the track that we did at Trident. And Herbie Flowers who died the other day played the bass line: (sings) “boom, boom”…
– Again, on European side, you worked with BONEY M.
I did a lot of fixing for them. All those records that you hear, it’s not the three people that you see on stage, as I sent out half a dozen session singers to Hamburg, and then they came over and we put orchestra on some tracks.
– And back in England, on JAPAN’s “Quiet Life” you reunited with Ann Odell.
Great album, and I’m very proud to be part of it. Ann’s arrangements were amazing, and she always asked me to conduct. She did some of London Symphony Orchestra’s “Classic Rock” sessions as well, and I conducted those for her. She arranged Bryan Ferry’s “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” that I conducted. She probably did as many arrangements for Bryan as I did. Bryan obviously liked her stuff.
– Then, having worked with Paul Buckmaster for years, you finally got to play on Elton John’s “Slow Reverse” where he duetted with Cliff Richard, right?
No. I don’t remember doing that, but I played on his album that’s got “Blue Eyes” on it [1982’s “Jump Up!”] because James Newton Howard did the arrangements and used my orchestra on that – I played on “Blue Eyes” and another track. And then also it’s my orchestra that Paul arranged and I conducted on “A Single Man” – but I don’t get a credit.
– But you get it on a Harry Nilsson record.
Harry did a movie with Ringo Starr called “Son of Dracula” and I played on its soundtrack. We went to the old CTS Studios, they put the movie up on the screen, and we improvised all the soundtrack. But before that, Paul did “Without You” – that was my orchestra, and I played on that: you can hear the horns on “Without You” – predominantly at the end.
– We can’t pass over your "Bible" oratorio, of course. How is it doing?
At the moment it’s just resting. We’re trying to get somebody interested in publishing, and we think it would make a great stage musical because the material is very strong. Unsurprisingly, it’s outdated, but some of its tracks still sound great. But again, it was Paul Buckmaster and I who co-produced and co-arranged, with Nick Harrison doing some of the arrangements. I’m trying to arrange a meeting with somebody in L.A. who I want to talk to who has connections with the theatre and musical theatre. She’s a great fan of Paul and was his close friend, so I think that she should be very interested in this particular project. It deserves to be out there, and I’m working quite hard on that. The trouble is, I’m getting old and I’m still working, so I have to devote my energy to working and trying to make time to promote other stuff as well as spend time with my new wife and walk my dogs every day. And I still play the horn two or three times a week. I’m off to Prague next week to conduct on another recording so, you know, there’s always things happening, and it’s quite difficult to keep up with everything.
– You said you walk your dogs – but you also breed Irish Water Spaniels. How did you take it up?
I’d always wanted a dog, and when I bought my first house in 1974, when I was thirty, I could do that. I went to “Crufts'”, which was at Olympia in those days, just up the road over Hammersmith Bridge from Barnes, to see more or less every breed that existed. And when I saw Irish Water Spaniels, I went, “That’s what I’ve been looking for. I’ll have one of them!” So I bought one, and then I bought another one, and then I started breeding and started showing, started training, started competing in field trials and was very, very successful for many years. So I’ve been one of the top breeders in the world for 50 years. It’s a hobby of mine. I’m slowing down now – I’ve more or less stopped, but I still have three dogs here.