Richard Wilson
My musical biography is really comprised of my musical heroes and the influences I absorbed- as well as collaborators that I met along the way. After all, trying to emulate and work with what they were doing set me on the path of music making.
It is true to say the Beatles were the first catalyst for my songwriting and singing-especially the later period from Revolver in 1966 till their demise in 1970. I can remember at the height of Punk in England in 1976-7, wishing I was 10 years older and had been around to experience the glory of psychedelia first time round.
I would listen to Sgt Pepper, The White Album and the 1967-70 EMI “Blue“ compilation albums - singing along till I had no voice.
Around this time, various Punk bands were springing up amongst my contemporaries so it was either stay in my bedroom singing to Beatles albums or get out there and play and get the full experience and hopefully get better.
At the time ,I was attending Bedford School near London -which was a 500 year old, fee paying English public school – so I had many hours listening to Pink Floyd “Dark Side of The Moon” as well as Rick Wakeman solo albums on headphones in darkened dorm rooms!
Thats how it was :Punk and Prog - all mixed together!
I liked the energy of Punk and later New Wave , which was raw and edgy and definitely the passport to picking up a guitar and actually going for it.
I remember all the guitar instruction tapes at the time, advertised in Exchange and Mart, had pictures of these guys with long curly hair and dark moustaches who looked like a cross between Tony Iommi and Jimmy Page. It was all lead playing – ie. How to play the solo from Stairway to Heaven!
This was not what I wanted. Neither did many of my contemporaries who were 15 or 16. This was 1976-7 remember. We wanted basic chords and contemporary, edgy riffs to lay out the road map of how to write songs for the New Wave. Thank God for the punk fanzines such as “Sniffin Glue” that would show 3 basic chords and then say “now form a band”. Read “England’s Dreaming” by Jon Savage- he revisits this period beautifully.
I remember having a couple of bass guitar lessons taught by a former hippy music teacher – nothing wrong with that but it was his statement “I teach music, not riffs” that stopped the music lessons immediately. Back then it was either geezers that looked like Tony Iommi trying to teach us guitar solos or painful, ultra-basic music lessons, teaching us to read music when all we wanted was a head start into the new idiom.
We take for granted these seismic shifts in popular culture now - with the mass of information available on-line and the speed of getting new cultural trends communicated via the internet and mass media. Back then, you just found like-minded people into the music, formed a band and then figured it out for yourself.
Right at the beginning, what actually got me started in 1970, was the classical guitar that my mother bought for my brother and me when I was 9 years old. I was more interested in playing than my brother and my interest was piqued further when I broke the top two strings and was left with a four string guitar! I would spend hours writing little songs and picking out Duane Eddy style licks - not having a clue what I was doing. However by 1977 things were beginning to come together.
That Jubilee year of 1977 was the intersection of various musical eras that came out of a jukebox in a certain pub I used to frequent. The Crown pub in Bedford had a cellar bar with a great jukebox and where the local bands used to hang out.
Every weekend I would go down on Friday and Saturday nights and my friends and I would listen to the new single by The Stranglers “Peaches” or The Sex Pistols “God Save the Queen”. There would be older singles left over from a few years before such as Free “Wishing Well”, Led Zeppelin “ Black Dog”, John Lennon “ #9 Dream” , The Animals “House of Rising Sun” ,Dr Feelgood and a good smattering of 70’s pub rock acts like Rory Gallagher and Nick Lowe.
To my ears all those scenes and eras and musical styles were totally valid-and still are. And such a fertile array of influences to vamp off.
My interest in the bass started with listening to John Entwistle of The Who and Chris Squire from Yes. Then, at the height of Punk, - Jean Jacques Burnel from The Stranglers. In 1979 I saw The Who movies :The Kids Are Alright and Quadrophenia. Hearing John Entwistle’s thundering bass lines, drove the point home for me to switch to bass permanently and ditch my fledgling attempts on the guitar.
The other catalyst in my musicality at this time, was not to spend hours playing covers that never sound as good as the original. Consequently I began to write original songs on the bass – spurred on by what Sting was doing with The Police.
In later years, having fronted several bands as bass player/singer in the 1980’s, I began to write more on the guitar and also get into recording. My CD “Richard Wilson –Legacy 1981-1998” follows this evolution.
I still value creative collaboration - in 1994 I recorded the “Boulevard” CD with a young soul singer called Sophia Forrester. It was lovely having us meet musically from two very different worlds.
I would like to acknowledge a debt of gratitude to the following friends and collaborators that I worked with and learned from along the way.
* Brian Deeley -an excellent rock guitar player. We were in the early bands Major Third , Crime of Passion and The Biriani Brothers from 1981-1984.
* Andy Bennette – an old pal who is also a website designer. Andy really got me into the technology of recording and engineered many sessions in the old days. Check out Andy’s site at www.nightairmusic.com
* Stephen Frederick – a great keyboard player and producer,that really gave me an idea where I could go. I think after recording Boulevard with him in 1991, with the lush production I was hooked on the studio.
* Nick Langley – we put together the band “The Hind Leg of a Donkey” – a quirky British pop band in the mid 1980’s –enough said with a name like that!
* Phil Dunigan – a great Acid Jazz Fusion player.We put together “The Groove Academy”,recorded an album “Deeper Than That” in 1995 and did a few gigs. I really enjoyed playing bass in this grooving project.
* Marguerite Olivelle – I met in Los Angeles a couple of years after I moved here in 1996. We had a jazzy duet called “Honey Ryder” and I really got to enjoy writing jazz and soul tinged songs with her on the guitar and playing the coffee shops. We also used to play “Redemption Song” by Bob Marley and “Black Boys on Mopeds” by Sinead O’ Connor –really simple arrangements that came alive with her incredible voice. She is now touring the States with her band “The Slow Signal Fade”.
* Holly Bavier - another very talented singer. We had our band “Georgia”-just a duet, writing original songs playing the clubs in LA in 2001.