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| MSJ:
It’s been a while since we’ve done an interview with and of you guys. What’s new in the world of Hawklords? |
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Adrian Shaw: Well, we had a new album out called “Dream” about three months ago and have been touring again. And now we have to start writing for our 2014 album so we’re keeping busy.
Ron Tree: Just released our second CD.
Harvey Bainbridge: 2014 is starting and a new album is being put together, and hopefully it will be different again to the last two studio recordings.
Jerry Richards: We've been pretty busy with UK and European tours for the last four years, playing UK and international music festivals as well as putting out concert DVDs. We have released two albums of brand new material, the most recent, Dream - which was released on September 30th 2013 - has received rave reviews by the UK music magazine Classic Rock, amongst many others. We've also been enjoying the comings and goings of old and new friends within the world of The Hawklords.
There will be a new album for this year's tour dates, which should kick off in the UK in October.
Never a dull moment, you know!
Dave Pearce: Not much more I can add really, except to relish each and every one of these moments as they arise. |
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| MSJ: If you weren't involved in music what do you think you'd be doing? |
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| Harvey Bainbridge: At my age, staring at the sky, hoping the idiots that run the world fade away!
Ron Tree: Art, sculpture, clothes, design.
Jerry Richards: I'd probably be doing time for heresy and thoughts that are antithetical to the nature of this imposed political reality - probably.
Dave Pearce: I'd be locked up in a lunatic asylum.
Adrian Shaw: As I’ve been a musician all of my adult life this is a difficult question to answer. I like to think I’d be doing something creative, but as I finished my education under something of a cloud and without any qualifications, I would have been considered factory fodder.
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| MSJ: What's ahead for you? |
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| Harvey Bainbridge: More fun with the Hawklords, as well as some individual music projects.
Ron Tree: Much more music.
Jerry Richards: Haven't got a clue, but I'll know it when it hovers into view and take it from there. (Or see my answer to your first question for more details)
Dave Pearce: Playing the HRH prog festival in North Wales towards the end of March.
Adrian Shaw: At my age? Probably not a lot. |
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| MSJ: If you were a superhero, what music person would be your arch nemesis and why? |
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Harvey Bainbridge: Anyone who wants to perform "Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep".
Ron Tree: Louis Walsh for one. . . (ie. mediocrity).
Jerry Richards: X-Factor's Simon Cowell for reducing “popular music” to the level of the lowest common dollar denominator.
Dave Pearce: The person who invented the sampler, which has helped rip off so many drummers' classic grooves to be used behind rubbish and never paying them a cent for it.
Adrian Shaw: What do you mean “If you were a superhero?” |
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| MSJ: If you were to put together your ultimate band (a band you'd like to hear or catch live), who would be in it and why? |
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| Harvey Bainbridge: There are so many fantastic musicians around. Apart from the guys I'm playing with in the Hawklords, Jack Bruce, my bass playing hero, Andy Anderson, Steve Hillage, Joey (ex-Ozrics), and Arthur Brown.
Ron Tree: Keith Moon, Lemmy, Iggy Pop, Del Detmar, Ron Asheton. . . I like dead folks!
Jerry Richards: I'd have Jack Bruce, Mitch Mitchell, Bob Calvert and Harvey Bainbridge. Unfortunately, I've ended up in a band with Adrian Shaw, Dave Pearce, Ron Tree and Harvey Bainbridge. Er… Hang on a minute. How did Harvey get in there?
Anyway, they're all just as foxy as those I mentioned and it's a real privilege to work with each and every one of them.
Dave Pearce: Frank Zappa and Felix Pappalardi, so I could find out if humour really does belong in music.
Adrian Shaw: I imagine an “ultimate band” wouldn’t necessarily contain the most adept musicians. For instance, Ringo is a good but unconventional drummer who was perfect for the Beatles. Billy Cobham is technically far superior but would have been a disaster on “Strawberry Fields Forever.”
So ignoring that tenet completely I’ll go for:
Drums: Aynsley Dunbar, a great technician who most importantly can swing.
Bass/vocals: Jack Bruce - creative, powerful and a great vocalist.
Guitar/vocals: Jimi Hendrix. No reason necessary.
Keyboards/vocals: Steve Winwood - a wonderful keyboard player, singer and writer.
Lead singer/guitar: Steve Marriot. The greatest soul singer the UK has ever produced. And along with Bobby Hatfield the greatest white soul singer ever.
I could easily name another ten such line-ups though. There have been so many wonderful musicians down the years.
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| MSJ: If you were in charge of assembling a music festival and wanted it to be the ultimate one from your point of view who would be playing? |
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| Harvey Bainbridge: I'd love it if I could see Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Crosby Stills and Nash, plus acts from the world music scene.
Jerry Richards: Definitely not The Hawklords, that's for sure. I'd want to sit back and be entertained by the spectacle of the thing without having to worry about what our road crew are getting up to whilst we wait for our slot…
You haven't met our crew have you? Probably for the best. It's safer that way.
Dave Pearce: For me I would like to turn back time so I could see all the 60s and 70s bands in their creative prime, who I missed because I was too young at the time.
Adrian Shaw: Assuming this is a fantasy music festival where I could choose from any acts I’ll go for:
Elvis Presley (in his young days).
The Jimi Hendrix Experience.
Vanilla Fudge.
The Small Faces.
The Grateful Dead.
Otis Redding backed by the MGs.
The MC Five.
Funkadelic.
Phil Ochs (on the acoustic stage)
Spooky Tooth.
The Beatles.
Ron Tree: I'd switch from bass to guitar and lead vocals.
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| MSJ: What was the last CD you bought and/or what have you been listening to lately? |
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| Harvey Bainbridge: I've been listening to a lot of world music. the Art of Noise working with Debussy's music, not forgetting Tomita's Snowflakes are Dancing - a beautiful take on the music of Claude Debussy.
Jerry Richards: Mostly classical music and jazz on the UK's BBC Radio 3.
Although, I did hear the latest album by The Queens of the Stone Age, recently. I highly recommend it. It's beautifully recorded and absolutely rocking.
Dave Pearce: Be Bop Deluxe at the BBC springs to mind, plus a live recording by Gong.
Adrian Shaw: The last CD I bought was Berlin by Lou Reed. His dying motivated me to buy this as I had always meant to but never gotten around to it.
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| MSJ: Have you read any good books lately? |
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| Harvey Bainbridge: My last read was DMT: The Spirit Molecule - an intriguing study.
Ron Tree: Time Reborn by Lee Smolin.
Jerry Richards: Nothing of great note: some pulp science fiction, but mostly technical manuals about my ProTools studio recording set up. It's good to read, folks - must do more, myself.
Dave Pearce: I'm not a vivacious reader and I'm still trying to finish reading a book called “The Frank Zappa Companion.”
Adrian Shaw: No. However I have a huge backlog of great books that I’ve been given and intend to read…soon.
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| MSJ: What about the last concert you attended for your enjoyment? |
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| Harvey Bainbridge: The Cleveland Symphony Orchestra in Cleveland Ohio. . fantastic!
Ron Tree: Adam Ant was the last.
Jerry Richards: I watched Arthur Brown's set at a festival at which I was invited to play during the summer of 2013. A wonderful performance by Arthur and his band: at the top of his game and in truly fabulous voice.
(And he's a really nice guy, to boot! Check 'em out, people….)
Dave Pearce: Seeing a guy called “Ryan McGarvey” at a local club back in November, which I now have a recording of... yes I was that impressed.
Adrian Shaw: I so rarely go to gigs nowadays. As I tour quite a lot and nowadays live a long way from anywhere it’s difficult to motivate myself to go out much. And to be honest I’ve lost interest in the contemporary music scene, by and large. The last concert I went to and really enjoyed was when Arthur Lee toured Forever Changes and that was some years ago. |
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| MSJ: Do you have a musical “guilty pleasure?” |
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| Adrian Shaw: Quite a few. I’m not going to say what they are and leave myself open to ridicule. I look forward to seeing what the other Hawklords members mention though, so I can take the p*** out of them.
Harvey Bainbridge: Alma Cogan.
Ron Tree: Bond music.
Jerry Richards: Yes. I like making up nonsense songs in the light opera style of Gilbert & Sullivan about my girl and my cat, which, on occasion, I'll sing to them. It drives them both crazy. Bless 'em. (This is actually true, by the way, just in case you thought I was making it up. I mean, who would make up stuff like that?) |
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| MSJ: What has been your biggest Spinal Tap moment? |
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Harvey Bainbridge: Joining a rock band!
Jerry Richards: Surely, “The Music Business” is all Spinal Tap?
Dave Pearce: Dropping both drumsticks at once in the middle of a performance and looking like a rabbit caught in headlights.
Adrian Shaw: I think the funniest thing I ever saw on stage was forty odd years ago. I was playing in a band that played working men’s clubs, hen nights, in fact anywhere we could make money. We sometimes had to accompany strippers, both male and female. One night we were asked to play at a hen night behind a guy who titled himself “Bubbles.”. His whole act built up to a climax where, as he removed his G string to reveal all, a bubble machine would pump out bubbles as a strobe light flashed. We were playing away frantically behind him and as he removed his G string with a flourish he slipped on the soap that the bubble machine had deposited on the stage, his legs went up in the air and he landed stark naked flat on his back. What a finale. |
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| MSJ: If you could sit down to dinner with any three people, living or dead, for food and conversation, with whom would you be dining? |
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| Harvey Bainbridge: Alexis Corner, Iain Banks, P.B. Shelley.
Ron Tree: Sid Vicious, Jesus Christ and Astrophysicist Professor Brian Cox.
Adrian Shaw: Once again, so difficult to name just three. Assuming there would be no language difficulties I’ll go for Johann Sebastian Bach, Groucho Marx and my late father. I have a few things I’d like to say to him.
Jerry Richards: Adolf Hitler, His Holiness The Dalai Lama, with Lemmy to MC the whole shebang…
Dave Pearce: Could I be a fly on the wall at that one?
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| MSJ: What would be on the menu? |
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| Harvey Bainbridge: Vegetarian and meats with copious amounts of wine and a few dancing girls.
Ron Tree: Mexican veggie sh*t.
Adrian Shaw: Definitely vegetarian as I’m is a life-long veggie. Something Southern Indian, maybe a dosa to start followed by a thali.
Jerry Richards: Dried ashes for some, laughter and rock and roll for others and ambrosia for me! G**damn it… |
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| MSJ: Are there any closing thoughts you would like to get out there? |
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Harvey Bainbridge: Be realistic about the motives of these rich politicians!
Ron Tree: We are one. Love is God.
Jerry Richards: Yes: have as much fun as you can before you grow up (or better still, don't actually grow up). Don't hurt yourself or anybody else and don't give a f*** about stuff that just isn't important. You'll know what that is; it's all marked “Bullsh**”.
Dave Pearce: Never turn down an opportunity to try something new.
Adrian Shaw: I’m disappointed that people still treat animals so badly. And thank you for asking interesting questions. |
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| MSJ: This interview is available in book format (hardcover and paperback) in Music Street Journal: 2014 Volume 1 at lulu.com/strangesound. |
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