Patterns in the Chaos
SIX - All You Need is Cash

Earth Rise

It was just a photograph in a magazine.
They were orbiting the moon in the LEM - the 'Lunar Expedition Module' - and as they swung around it's 'dark' side, the earth came into view above the moon's horizon - a semi-circle of blazing colour emerging out of the lifeless undulating blanket of the moon's grey surface beneath them.
I looked at the photograph and it's enigmatic inscription: 'Earth rise.' (Earth rise or earthrise - is that one word or two??). It was a photograph of a view that no human being had ever seen before, and no words had ever been set to describe it. 'What a lovely expression' I thought, 'earth rise' - and immediately a song percolated into my thoughts.


It was in 1969 when man first stepped out of a spaceship and stood on the Moon. Everyone on planet Earth was looking up at the sky and everyone worshipped at the temple of NASA, the keeper of the Holy Grail, a future of unbridled excellence, the dream of the entire planet.
The moment I saw the picture I was there in that LEM, and I knew that although I was a born-again, evangelical, NASA-believing pragmatist, in that moment I was nothing but one solitary, lonely, human being.
The song just wafted up from the picture. Another song, and then another just fell off the back of the first one forming a medley, and before long I had a suite of music which I recorded on my old B&O (Bang & Olufsen) recorder. I had written nearly half of what was to become, years later, the album 'Earth Rise.'


Richard was to be the prime mover in getting 'Earth Rise' into production. He heard those original 'Earth Rise' tracks and fell in love with the idea. Later I re-recorded some of the tracks on a Teac 4-Track recorder in the front room of Sheila's house in Yardley and some of those early demos made it onto the final record - but only after we had tried unsuccessfully to re-record them.

Between ELO tour dates Richard and I would meet up through the 70's and he would often mention 'Earth Rise' as an album project he would like to record one day. But it wasn't until after the TIME tour of 1981 that an opportunity came up to do that.
 In Los Angeles, Richard's friend Debbie Spencer Rose, had introduced the 'Earth Rise' demo tapes to a British entrepreneur named Brian Leahy. One thing led to another and by 1982 a deal was struck and we began recording at Ridge Farm Studios, a sumptuous country residence in Sussex, kitted out as a hotel and studio replete with a swimming pool and all the trimmings of fame.
Yes, Earth Rise took a long time to come to completion. It was quite an epic project and without Richard's dedication it would never have made it.

Richard Tandy was in ELO from the very beginning back in 1972. He started off playing guitar, and even singing, but soon transferred onto piano. Soon the term 'piano player' was to be superceded by 'keyboard player' as synthesisers, melotrons, and later, vocoders, became the instruments shaping the musical fashions of the day.
I don't think there was a gig on the TIME tour where Richard travelled with us from the hotel to the concert. He was always there a couple of hours earlier than us and we would find him sat alone in a back-stage room practising away at a piano. It became part of the roadies drill to set up a spare Wurlitzer for Richard in a changing room. From when I first knew him he was always a man of extraordinary patience and dedication.
In my limited knowledge of ELO making records, he never left Jeff's side while the business of producing music was going on. You might think 'so what' but I have to tell you that making a record can often be a very boring business to behold. Going over the same line for the enth time is no fun unless you're part of the creative loop doing it. If you are a spectator on the outside looking in, it can be pretty mind numbing. I was part of some ELO sessions in Holland (recording the album 'Secret Messages'), and I remember all of us spending most of the time playing table football rather than sit in the studio. All except Richard that is. Richard never budged from his seat at the studio mixing desk, where he was the omnipresent sounding board for Jeff as he wove his masterpieces.

He was just the same with me when we recorded Earth Rise, a witness to every detail of the project, and every note that was played. He only missed one session of recording: One day, he had to keep an important appointment in London. It was agreed that I would get on and tidy up 'Princeton', a song already virtually complete and 'in the can' as it were. (Princeton had been recorded some years before and Brian Leahy had purchased the tapes for Earth Rise project). Richard arrived late that evening to listen to the mix that producer Steve Lipson and I had worked on.
'Hmm' he said pensively, 'I feel I have to do something on it, but I don't want to spoil it.'
Steve and I proffered some suggestions for overdubbing various things, but he just shook his head darkly. Eventually he said:
'How about if you turn the mic on and just record me breathing on it!'
'Okay' said Steve, always ready for the zaniest ideas.
We were about to do just that when he got the inspiration to play a subtle guitar part over the long fade at the end. I can still hear it way back in the mix, Richard breathing on 'Princeton'.
That's what having Richard around was like. No matter if he played or not, he breathed on everything and that made the difference. You couldn't have Richard around and not be influenced by his restrained gentleness and good musical taste.

There are many songs on Earth Rise that I can't listen to without being immediately transported to the antics that went on while we were recording them, and the canvas of rich suburbia that they were painted against.

Our engineer-cum-producer Steve Lipson looked like a cross between Rasputin and the pictures of Jesus you see in children's books. He looked like that all the more first thing in the morning when he would often appear silently and suddenly along some dimly-lit corridor, draped in a grey flannel dressing gown that resolved a short distance above scantily shod feet, his unruly beard locked in a coalition of anarchy with his uncombed hair. To see Steve before breakfast was to have a vision of the second coming. Steve was a revolutionary in any and every way, a subversive to anything you might treasure as normality.

One morning Richard was late finishing breakfast and I left him to go on ahead to the studio. I walked in the control room to find Steve down on his knees beside the effects rack. He was holding up a microphone to his nostrils and every now and then, he would make a rather aggressive sniffling sound.
I watched in quizzical awe as he made several samples of this nasal affectation until, satisfied he had achieved the right level of retch, he got up smiling and strode over to the desk. After making some adjustments, he played me the track with this snort inserted in it to form part of the beat. It was really quite magic - it fitted great. I can still hear Steve's nose every time I play the song 'Spaceship Earth.'

Like on nearly all my records, I sang most of the vocal parts on Earth Rise, building the block harmony pieces bit by bit by successively singing each part. It's not quite as laborious as it sounds. Once you know what you are aiming at, it can be a quick, straightforward process. One of the songs had a bit where the words: 'Morning's come' was to herald the start of a new verse in three-part harmony. I was in the middle of doing the singing when Richard cut in to tell me a vision that had just crossed his mind - It was of a Roman Emperor appearing on a balcony, one arm raised imperiously, greeting the gathered crowd below with the words: 'Morning Scum.' That was it. We all fell about laughing. From then on every time we got to that part of the song I just fell apart. It cost us a lot of money in studio time to record that one line in 'Pictures in my Pillow.'

We worked on Earth Rise throughout the summer of 1983, mostly at Ridge Farm in Sussex but also at other state-of-the-art studios in and around London. As well as the almost-complete 'Princeton', the song 'Ria' was lifted off my eight track recorder and grafted onto 24 track studio tape, so that everything except the singing and Tony Clarkin's guitar parts could be re-done. Right at the very end of the project we met Martin Smith, and he actually contributed a guitar part on the closing track of 'Earth Rise.'
Finally, the album was finished. We climbed out of the driving seat and became passengers in the back while deals and rumours of deals passed by like signs pointing to heaven. Eventually the signs became more infrequent and by early 1984, they had disappeared altogether. In the end, the Earth Rise album was never to get the major label release that Richard and I had hoped for, and was taken up by small independent labels only. Such is rock 'n' roll.

 
Richard, Brian Leahy and myself 
outside Ridge Farm studios, Sussex.

Left rehearsing at Grimm Doo. --  Below, Richard and Steve Lipson in the studio.
'....and we were wondering if you would like to work with us again?'


Paradise Garden

Martin Smith had grown up in the badlands of North London and then spent years working as a staff producer for Jerry Bron of Bronze Records. Somewhere along the line he had learned how to spot potential amongst apparent no-hopers and crucially, had gleaned a constitution able to take on board the thankless task of lovingly drawing out that potential, through long hours of careful coaching.
Martin always used to tell me that 'the three most important things about a hit song are: number one, the song, number two, the producer and lastly, the singer.'
Well I had the songs but many of them were no more than wayward, unruly children that had previously defied all attempts to mould them into fine upstanding citizens. Until they met Martin Smith, that is. Through sheer hard slog he figured out how to trap them, and then to tame them. He combed their hair, put a collar and tie on, gave them some discipline and made them presentable, many for the first time.
But there was one song that was so dysfunctional, so unkempt and out of control, it was like a junkie with a speech defect - it couldn't tell you what was wrong, or how to make it feel better - you couldn't communicate with it - the chord structure was so weird and unwelcoming, the lyric was abrasive and the whole thing so far away from the pop song I longed to pen, I had long ago abandoned it:
'Get out of here you no good reprobate - you're no son of mine!'
I didn't even bother suggesting it until Martin had demonstrated, through incredible patience, his ability to break the will of my other rebellious kids, one by one.
'Paradise Garden' was, I believed, the best song I had ever written. I loved it and the fact that it was an irreparable tearaway only added to its mystique. I had burned myself out several times trying to record it, only to end up with a pile of useless gristle. I had worked on it with others - with Richard, with drummer Steve Wheate - himself a veritable genius at making a song work - but it never responded to treatment. I was convinced it was unrecoverable and un-doable!
But I loved this outcast no matter what pain it caused me, and much of it, especially its strangeness, was not negotiable to me.

Martin, as always set out first to discover how much of it I would really kill for, and how much was up for grabs. He took it apart bit by bit, to find out where the bottom line lay.
'Does it really need this bit?'
'YES!' I would scream back.
We negotiated like that - me fighting the rearguard action of a defeated army.
Paradise Garden was more of an odyssey than a song, droning on for about seven minutes in the original version. Although it was long, it had just two verses which were woven into a convoluted chord structure that defied natural order. It didn't have a chorus, nor an identifiable 'riff' - just lyrics, lots of them. A real loser! I could only compare it to a Bob Dylan song-monologue where, if you didn't like the words, you didn't like the song.

It took Martin about a week to capture it and cage it.
We recorded it where we did everything, on the eight-track in the front room of my house.

Then, at Martin's suggestion, we took a cache of the best songs we'd done and transferred them onto a 24-track professional format, and worked some more on them in a London studio.
'Paradise Garden' was one of them.
At the time, Richard Tandy was exiled in France for a year, escaping the British taxman, and so he hadn't contributed anything to the bulk of the tracks. But he flew over from France for just a few days when we booked the London studio, enough time to add a couple of keyboard parts and, most importantly, to be present when the singing was done.
They say that 'work expands to fill the time available' and Martin and I had tentatively scheduled an entire afternoon to get the vocal on Paradise Garden. Richard heard this and exploded:
'What do you mean all afternoon?' he thundered, 'how long is the track - in minutes?'
'Er… about five minutes Rich' I said.
'Right, then that's how long it's gonna take' he shot back.
And that is exactly what happened. I got in front of the microphone, the engineer started the tape and five minutes later we had the vocal on Paradise Garden.
Richard was a bit edgy and impatient for those London sessions, anxious to get back to France and not compromise his tax status. He was only allowed a couple of days in England.

If I was the dysfunctional parent who constantly turned his kids out onto the street as they failed to meet their promise, Martin ran the boot camp that took them in and turned them around through a regime of hard discipline. It was shock treatment that worked.
We began working on the song 'Run Little Girl Run' in early 1985, and ended up some two plus years later with a song called 'Red Shift' (which has never been released). At the outset, Martin was working part-time as a hairdresser, and would drive up each week from Sussex to Birmingham to snatch two or three days recording time in my front room studio (called 'Grimm Doo'). The fact is, although he worked like a Trojan on my music, he never earned a bean from it. He never got any recompense for all the hours of dedication and commitment he put in to raising my kids at his boot camp. Not directly that is.
But then a convergence of facts came together in a magical way, like a hidden painting coming into focus:
It was late in 1985 when we worked on the Action project. We recorded the final cut of 'Action' in the UB40's studio in a seedy part of Birmingham, and Martin played the lead guitar parts while Jeff Lynne, the producer, looked and listened.
He leaned over to me in a conspiratorial whisper:
'Martin's got a nice touch on the guitar. Do you think he could play bass?'
'Oh yes', I replied, knowing he could.
'Only, there might be a show coming up, and if it comes off, we'll need somebody to fill Kelly's position.'
Martin became ELO's bass player for the 1986 shows….
Then shortly afterwards he struck up a relationship that had lain dormant for years with an uncle who held ownership in a successful business. That uncle signed over to Martin a batch of shares and just about a year later the business was subject to a take-over and those shares became worth big bucks. It was a real rags to riches story.
The next time Martin came to Birmingham it was in a sleek, low, brand new red Porsche 944.


July 1986:  Backstage at Wembley. Jeff can just be seen peering mischievously at the camera over Bev's shoulder. In the centre is Colin Owen, sheaf of papers in hand crammed with instructions as to how Rod Stewarts's mixing desk works! Colin, ELO's sound engineer for the 86 shows is now a Christian who comes to sing and preach at Church on the Hill periodically. At right is Phil Hatton, Jeff's personal roaddie. 

  


1986


Rehearsing at the Boggery, Solihull, 
one cold day in early 1986. 
Martin and Richard - with his scarf on.

Wembley revisited
We had just come off stage at Austin, Texas, after the first show of the TIME tour in September 1981.
'Well done guys' said Bev, scanning around to address Lou, myself and Mik.
'Well of course, you've done it before' he added, looking at Mik, 'but these guys haven't.'
'Did you think they would bottle out?' someone asked.
Ever the diplomat he was (and he used to be in a group called the 'Diplomats' by the way), Bev answered: 'Hmm well - you can never be one hundred percent sure how someone will react when they're confronted with a mass of screaming kids. But you guys did good. I was watching, you seemed to take it in your stride.'
There was the hint in what he was saying that at some point in the past, someone had indeed 'bottled out' during an ELO concert. I didn't ask and I don't know. I was too concerned it might one day be me. Maybe I would notice all those people and suddenly decide to have a change of career….
But I have to say I didn't feel remotely like that at all - not then. Not at all until the day we were at Wembley Stadium, on Saturday afternoon, 5 July 1986.

We had played Wembley before - for six days in December 1981. But that was in the arena, the indoor concert hall that seats about four thousand. Wembley Stadium was a different beast - the football pitch, together with the stands, were host to a crowd of sixty thousand people that day, by far the biggest crowd I had ever stood before.
We struck up with 'Twilight' as we had done so many times before… A short bit where Jeff sings the verse, and then it was time for me to move forward to help with harmonies on the chorus:
Shock, horror! For a full second my legs would not work! - I was rooted to the spot!
For one long instant, like a toad caught in the stare of a snake, I was paralysed before the avid gaze of thousands of eyes. I willed my feet one at a time to break their bond with the decking, and then issued mental threats to my legs, before they finally transported me over to the microphone at stage front. It was a shock - I didn't realise how nervous I was until I tried to move!
But as soon as the set was underway, I was fine.

If Jeff was nervous, it didn't show. There was just the customary fake panic before going on, when he whispered to me: 'What comes after "the visions dancing in my mind"?? (the first line to the first song of the show). It was totally normal for Jeff to forget words. It never seemed to faze him, he would just make some more up as he went along. Once I went to the trouble of writing out the words to John Lennon's 'Across the universe' and pasting them to his foldback speaker so that he could sing the right lyrics for a change. It didn't make a blind bit of difference. That night as I listened with special attention, I heard yet another meandering prose vaguely based upon the original.
Before the mammoth congregation at Wembley, Jeff seemed uncommonly relaxed speaking to the audience between songs. It was something he usually avoided doing, but that afternoon he was mustard at it, talking to them naturally in his down-at-the-pub vernacular.

Stuttgart 13 July 1986.

End of another era. Phil Hatton took this shot of us of ELO in the bowels of the concert hall at Stuttgart just before ascending to the stage for the last gig of the century.
  


The mind boggles. What is Richard doing? Is he pleading with the crowd at this German concert to give him something back? Are they angry?


Someone was kind enough to snap this shot of my mush on the giant screen at the side of the Wembley stage set - the ultimate 'hello mom' pic!

Murphy's Law
For Wembley and the German dates that followed, we had rehearsed in a seedy music bordello called the Nomis complex, in north London. It was built like a nuclear command bunker, with long concrete passageways flanked by oversize metal doors behind which the decibels pounded like tormented prisoners hammering to get out. Walking along the corridors into which this combined din exuded was like being privy to the cacophony of hell.
We were there for eight days, gathered together in one half of an enormous practise room.
One day a brand new string synthesiser arrived for Lou Clark to use. Helped by the roadies, Lou quickly ripped into the packaging, and then surrounded by Styrofoam and cardboard, set up the new instrument to begin investigating its potential. He was wide-eyed like a kid with a Christmas present.
Soon he had discovered a rich string ensemble sound and as if demonstrating it to a customer, began playing Beethoven's Ninth (the piece that introduces ELO's version of 'Roll over Beethoven'). Jeff's antenna was immediately raised and he rushed across to Lou:
'Hey, that sounds great! Why don't you play that on stage and then we can dump that tape we've been using. That sounds miles better.'
'Oh no Jeff' said Lou, 'I couldn't do that.'
'Why not, you just did!'
'Yeah I know, I can play it now, but at night - on a show, you know after I've had a drink… I don't know.. I might mess it up….'
'Oh,' said Jeff, understanding Lou's dilemma with a look of disappointment. It was quite a nifty piece to play… Jeff orbited around the room for awhile lost in deliberation and then wheeled back:
'But hang on Lou, hasn't that thing got a sequencer built into it?'
'Yeah, I think it has' said Lou, reaching for the handbook.'
’Well in that case, you can record it. That will work. Then, all you’ll have to do is play back the sequence and we can have that sound instead of the tape. That’ll be much better!’

Lou spent the next three hours programming Beethoven's Ninth into the new string synthesiser using headphones while we were all practising other things. Finally he announced it was done and we all gathered around for the first rendition:
'Ready?' said Lou grinning. 'Yeah' we all chorused back, 'go for it!'
Lou theatrically presented a finger for us all to see and then pointing it at the keyboard, stabbed the play button. The music burst into life while he stood by, sporting a proud grin and pretending to play it. We partook of this swish performance and gave a warm round of applause.
'That's great Lou,' said Jeff and it was quickly agreed, that is what we would use for the show instead of the taped introduction.

All went well until one night in Germany. Jeff announced we would be doing one more song: 'Roll over Beethoven.' The auditorium roared with applause and then the lights went down and the noise melted away to zero.
It was pitch black. An eery silence descended and absolutely nothing else happened. Just silence.….
Thousand of people normally make some noise even when they're not trying to, but that night they must have all been holding their breath because it was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop. Seconds ticked by while we all held our breath too. I could hear Jeff whisper in the blackness as clear as day: 'Lou, hurry up will yer!' It was so quiet in that hall I think everybody heard it.
Nothing happened… just blackness and silence.
We stood cringing while that awful, evermore embarrassing silence grew and grew….
In the darkness I looked over in the direction of Lou's rostrum and saw tiny beams of pencil torches jostling about in a staccato hubbub of feverish activity, while I heard Jeff's whisper bark again, this time more frantic: 'Come on Lou - What yer playing at?'
He might as well have shouted it.
Suddenly the music struck up. Phew! We were reprieved.
The crowd roared as if suddenly reincarnated. The lights went up and Hallelujah, Ludwig was away, galloping at full throttle. Brakes off, rotate - take-off!

'What on earth happened to you at the start of the last song?' Jeff asked the sixty-four thousand dollar question as we fell into the dressing room afterwards. Lou smiled the smile of the lampoon
character who had trodden on a rake left lying in the garden while he rendered his plea of defence:
'I couldn't find the start button. It was too dark!' he said, 'I had to get a roadie to come and shine his flashlight on the panel of the keyboard!'
We all doubled up in laughter.
It was the mythical Irishman Murphy who famously discovered one of the great immutable laws of life which is simply: 'If something can go wrong, it will go wrong.'
Needless to say, ELO invested in a little lamp to sit on top of Lou's keyboard after that.

Rod
Rod Stewart was top of the bill at Wembley, and for the short German tour that followed. Rod was, as advertised, the mega-star. I stood watching his performance one night in Germany. His theatrics and command of the audience was dazzling and there was a camaraderie between him and his group that told of their long association. They seemed to be pals as well as partners in a multi-million business.
I vaguely remember spending one drunken night in a bar with him and his group singing Irish-sounding shanties - one of his group carrying the lead while Rod and everyone else present chirped in with answer phrases and harmonies.

When it came time to fly back home from Germany, Rod was the mega-star in a more familiar way, the way that attracts notoriety. He was the Rod of the Daily Newsrag we all read about:
We were all seated on the British Airways Boeing with the door still open, wondering why were we waiting and what was going on. Maybe ten minutes ticked by and then out of the windows we saw the airport bus - the big articulated affair that could transport probably 150 souls at a time - it was trundling from the terminal with the unmistakable silhouette of one solitary occupant inside it. A dark shape. Someone wearing an enormous hat. The bus drew alongside. Rod and oversize hat skipped up the steps and was hastily directed into a first class seat near the front. The door closed, engines whirred, curtains were drawn, and promptly we departed for England.

The first show ELO played in 1986 was at the National Exhibition Centre. It was called 'Heartbeat' - a charity event to raise money for a children's hospice, and nearly every Birmingham artiste was represented. The Moody Blues were 'top of the bill' (ELO were next in line). The show was hosted by Jasper Carrot who introduced a multitude of Birmingham talent: Steve Gibbons, the Applejacks (the first Birmingham group to have a number one, reformed specially for the event), the Fortunes, Robert Plant, Roy Wood, and many more.

The ELO of 1986 was a different ELO from the one of four years before mainly because Martin had replaced Kelly on bass guitar. I suppose Bev must have eyed up Martin in the same way he had eyed up Lou Clark and me on the '81 tour. But Martin just looked like he had played big rock concerts all his life. I remember on the very first gig looking across to see him and Mik Kaminski prancing nonchalantly about the stage as if in some kind of aborigine line dance. Martin was just a complete professional.

All You Need is Cash!

It was late one sunny afternoon in July 1986 when we drove through the big iron gates into George Harrison's estate at Henley-on-Thames. The long driveway emptied out into a scene from Disney - a turreted mansion erupted out of the trees like an enchanted castle, replete with stone gargoyles that peered down from the parapets with questioning eyes:
Who's this lot coming in?
George's mate Jeff by the looks of it, with some of his crew from that group of his, that Eclectic Lice Ornaments lot.

'Cor, look at this place will yer…!' one of us whispered in the car below. There were four of us: Jeff, his personal road manager Phil Hatton, violinist Mik Kaminski and myself.
George was sat outside on a patio overlooking the grounds.
'Hello's' and nervous handshakes went all around before we sat down at the small picnic table bedecked with cans of beer.
He pointed to them, 'Help yourself.'
We supped beer while swivelling around in our chairs, to take it all in. George's castle hovered behind us while in front, a rolling landscaped garden; a playground of mother nature's best wares spread out around the castle and formed the 'estate' - more like a theme park than a back garden. George caught our eyes wide with wonder, and raising his beer can aloft as if to make a toast, announced with a wry smile: 'All you need is Cash!' in playful parody of the song 'All you need is Love' - and probably also, George Martin's book 'All you need is ears.'
He must have smelled the anxiety in the air and sensed the need for a joke. We all laughed and felt a little more at ease. Or maybe it was just me who was nervous. I remember, it was no different the first time….

We were playing at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, some months before, in March 1986.
Jeff rushed in the dressing room and said breathlessly: 'Er, lads - He's here, he's just landed.'
'Who?'
'George' said Jeff. 'Yeah, he'll be coming down in just a minute. Try to make him feel at home will yer please. You know, just act normal, okay?'
'Yes Jeff' we all said with perfect timing for once. Thus reassured he disappeared to chaperone his friend, fresh from the heli-pad into the dark bowels of the NEC changing rooms.
Bass player Martin Smith looked down at his bare legs and hurriedly found his trousers, slithering into them at maximum speed. We all bumped into each other in the flurry of activity to get dressed so that we can concentrate fully on being normal. We've got to make George feel at home as Jeff has just instructed.
Enter George... Silence.
We are all lined up like toy soldiers, frozen to the spot, standing to attention in the cramped billet of the changing room. George smiles - 'Hi' he says warmly but he might as well have screamed at us like a demented sergeant.
We make 'Hello' and 'Hi' - type noises while our bodies nod slightly as they spontaneously jerk in an involuntary bow before the great star. Jeff hovers behind his pal George Harrison glowering at us with his eyes: 'I thought I told you lot to act normal!'
But what is normal about meeting a living legend? I mean what is a normal person supposed to do? Break wind or burp, do a silly dance, slap him each side of the cheeks like Morecambe and Wise?! You can't be 'normal' when you meet a Beatle because a Beatle is not a normal person. A Beatle is a star and a star is composed of different DNA to the likes of you and I, it's a well-known fact.
Somewhere between the slums of Liverpool and that NEC dressing room, the constituent parts of George had been totally re-arranged and he had become subsumed into another species... a species to whom the likes of me was at best, a pesky embarrassment, and at worst, a threat to their continued well-being.

After we had played our set that night, George came on stage and did some rock 'n' roll numbers along with every one else - Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, the Applejacks, Denny Laine, Jasper Carrot, Roy Wood, Steve Gibbons, Nobby Holder, Dave Edmunds - the stage was choc a bloc with stars.

Yes the second meeting at George's house was no less nerve racking for me than the first. I felt like I was tripping over my tongue the whole time, but ex-Beatle George was the perfect host.
We sat around drinking our canned beers while he explained the history of the castle and the estate, a veritable Garden of Eden in downtown Oxfordshire. George treated Mik and myself to a boat ride around the grounds and then it was time to eat.

We found ourselves in a humble kitchen where we met Olivia, George's wife, and Rachel, the maid. The kitchen was a totally functional room with utensils and pans hanging on the wall and cookers, stoves and sinks along one side. In the middle, a big old country table was laid out ready for the meal.
'It used to be the servants quarters but we use it nearly all the time now' George told us.

We sit around the long table eating and chatting, pretenders to squiredom in stately residence barely a longboat ride from the earthy seat of the English realm itself. Called to dine with a King crowned by the renown of battles won, a Knight of the noble house of Beatle, whose exploits raised the hearts of men far and wide, whose glory spread to the distant reaches of the entire globe.
I pinch myself - yes I am here, and this is the man who once sat at the top of the known universe but today, just today, he is sat with us chewing the fat in this scullery parlour.
George seems to me, a natural recluse, a man content to look back on what he's done and in no hurry to do anything remotely like it again. Interested more now in nature and the seasons, and a continuing search for meaning and purpose... He is not a man chastened or wearied by his travels, simply a man who has travelled, but is thankful now for having arrived. George exudes that air of gentleness, which I hazard to guess, he has always had. He reminds me very much of my friend Richard Tandy in this, and in his playful hermit-like contentment, unruffled and determined to stay that way.

After dinner, we all sign the visitors' book waiting for us in the hall, and then proceed up the ornate staircase to 'the music studio'. A cassette tape lying on a desk seems to jog George's memory: 'Ah Jeff, I've had this tape sent to me… it's an old Buddy Holly song… I'd like to play it'…. We all listen to 'Peggy Sue got married' and George asks Jeff if he will help produce a version of it with him singing:
'I thought maybe you could sprinkle some of your magic dust on it!'
'Oh that's a great song' I proffer, like a show-biz impresario giving priceless advice to his protégé.
(It must have sounded crass, but I meant it. I've always had a special love for that song - it was one of the first I ever learned to play! A lifetime later, when Mandy and I were looking for a musical way to tell our story, we plumbed for 'Peggy Sue got Married.' We use it with a great big long intro which I talk over about how I learned to play guitar. But that's another story… )
We follow George through a door into 'the guitar room' - he says proudly. It certainly is. Every piece of wall area is taken up with guitars of all shapes, size and pedigree. Tons of them, all hanging there like priceless paintings. It's like being in The Louvre after closing time. One of them catches my eye - a Rickenbacker 12 string. A film shot from years before flashes through my mind, George playing that guitar….
'Excuse me - is that the one you played Hard Days Night on?' I asked, staring gloatingly in homage.
'Yep, this is the one' says George, picking it off the wall. Suddenly, I remember a bit of that song that I, and no one else I knew, could ever figure out…
'Er… can you show me how you played the lick at the end of that record?' He seems delighted to be asked.
'Oh that, that's simple' he says.
He plays it and I stare at his fingers. I can hear the tune, it's just like the record, I can see him doing it, but I still can't figure it out!
George spots my bewilderment and, motioning me closer, plays it one note at a time, explaining each one. Suddenly the penny drops!
A twelve-string guitar has six pairs of strings, each pair sitting close together. Four of the six pairs have strings tuned in octaves to each other. Normally you just strum across them both to get the octave sound, but if you pluck just one of the pairs downward, you get a different octave than if you pluck it upwards!
That was the secret of how George played the lick on the end of 'Hard Days Night.'

I just looked at him and smiled. It was so stunningly simple, what can you say?
When Columbus returned from discovering America, a detractor in the royal household back in Spain said something like this to him:
'That was no big deal - all you had to do was sail west until you came to it!'
Columbus replied: 'Yes, you are right, it is easy when someone else has shown you the way!'

That night in Henley ended with us all sitting around, beer cans and guitars at the ready.
'Play us one of yer classics Jeff, and I'll play yer one of mine'... said George.
Classics never came better shod.

Hello Robert..

Being part of ELO meant getting invited to parties, many at the sumptuous residences of the famous - As well as Jeff Lynne's castle-cum-home in Meriden there were parties at Bev Bevan's house, at comedian Jasper Carrot's, and then one night at Robert Plant's countryside retreat south of Birmingham. Robert had made the big time as the singer of the supergroup 'Led Zeppelin.'

I didn't think he would remember the guy who had been thumbing a lift on the Halesowen by-pass one night in the sixties, and him stopping to give me a lift in his battered old van with 'Band of Joy' daubed on the side in a big coloured script that looked like it had been painted by a three year old. But I remembered him and that van. The inside of it had all the functionality of junk yard - a kaleidoscope of bits of equipment - motoring and musical - amongst which, within which and upon which young Robert and the members of his group, perched like stowaways in the bowels of a tramp steamer. It was cramped, dark, noisy and smelly. We made our acquaintance as we trundled along, exchanging small talk about the local group scene before wending our separate ways into the night.

But now he was a megastar and as I walked across the grounds of his Warwickshire home, I could see the unmistakable locks of his long blond hair atop his large frame standing in a glazed porch way, greeting the guests as they filed up to him like it was a royal investiture, which in a way, it was.
I studied the protocol: The invitees were presenting themselves in ones and twos while those immediately behind, at the head of the line, stood back a polite distance as private words were exchanged between host and guest. A stream of commoners full of nervousness and expectation, waiting behind the line on the floor to have their passports stamped…

We joined them in the ante-chamber of the porch and I fell in behind Richard, knowing that he would be familiar with the drill for these occasions. 'Follow Richard and you can't go wrong' the inner voice said…
Richard walked forward and said something, offering his outstretched hand to be shaken. I thought he said 'Hello Richard' but decided I must have misheard him because I know Richard does not say inappropriate things like that. Anyway, it was obvious that Robert Plant knew Richard Tandy because I distinctly heard him say 'Good to see you Richard' as he shook his hand with a warm smile. And why not?, Richard was a star too. Not with the same notoriety of image maybe, but a chap who like Robert had been called up from the gutter to the lofty heights of the new English class that rock 'n' roll had created.

I stepped across the imaginary line and moved up. 'Hi Robert' I said - and to my horror he replied:
'Hello Robert, thank you for coming!' and immediately I realised in a moment of smouldering dismay just what the protocol of greeting royalty is: You introduce yourself with YOUR name, not theirs!
But anyway it proved one thing. He had no recollection of the fellow musician whom he had given a lift to all those years ago, and even if he did, he now thinks his name is Robert.



Action 1986.  Above, with drummer Jim Simpson

 Left at Birmingham Town Hall for a special a photographic presentation. 
Left to Right:  Jeff Lynne, Richard, Bob Catley (Magnum singer), Dave and Martin. 
Photos: © Metro News





Publicity foto for release of 'Berlin' on the Sonet label, 1984. Richard and Dave under the name 'R & D.'


 Photo Copyright Sonet Records
Tandy Morgan

It was always a problem - what to call ourselves. Richard and I racked our brains to think of suitable moniker which we could live with, and appellations bounced between us like a shuttlecock at a Chinese table tennis tournament. But eventually we tired of all the exotic, convoluted constructions we came up with and decided to render ourselves simply as 'R & D.' Apart from standing for Richard and Dave, this was also shorthand for Research and Development, which nicely described the state of play in our little group. And so under the banner of 'R & D' we had a record out called 'Berlin' in 1984.

Two years later when both the 'Action' charity record and the previously recorded 'Earth Rise' album was released by the small Wolverhampton-based heavy metal label that Tony Clarkin had introduced us to, we became 'Tandy Morgan.' Later still in 1992, when the ELO fan club suggested putting out the tracks that Martin and I had put together at Grimm Doo in the late 80s, we added his name to become 'Tandy Morgan Smith.' By this time the Compact Disc had supereceded vinyl records, and the amount of recording time that could be squashed into the new format increased from forty to over seventy minutes. We decided to take advantage of the new technology and give the fans a value for money and used all the available space with 17 tracks of music. Sheila came up with the title for it - 'Why don't you call it the B.C Collection?' she said as we all turned with 'why?' written on our faces - 'you know, BC as in 'Before Christ!'' That was it. The B.C Collection was released in 1992.
All photographs are copyright David Scott-Morgan unless otherwise credited.