As a guitarist, you mention Hank B. Marvin of The Shadows, Lonnie Donegan and Bert Weedon as influences. They are not exactly blues guitarists…so how did you get into blues?

Norman Beaker: You’re right, I was born in1950 – and in the 60’s Hank Marvin and Bert Weedon were the main guitar players, they were the only ones you got to hear you see. It was very, very difficult to learn to play the guitar at the time. Now everybody plays a little bit  and you can ask each other things. My brother, who is three years older than me,  was very fond of the blues and he used to play records like Leadbelly, Howlin’ Wolf and things like that. I didn’t  think much about it as I was into the pop music stuff of the day, like Elvis Presley and Tommy Steele . I was keen on Lonnie Donegan  though, ‘cos I always liked that skiffle thing.

But I suppose that subliminally I just kept hearing the Blues  stuff…  When the album “Five Live Yardbirds” with Eric Clapton was released, I found the sound very exciting with Eric’s guitar and the Keith Relfs  harmonica. At that age, you are influenced by a great number of things and I liked the image of the blues thing. It was cool., I was also into pop and you had to choose between The Beatles and The Stones, because you couldn’t like both, a bit like you can’t like Manchester United and Manchester City at the same time…  I went for  the Stones and through that I learned about Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Chuck Berry, Jimmy Reed. Etc .So, my brother’s influence was quite heavy.  He was the drummer of the band we played in then. We learned a lot of stuff just listening to his records. After the Stones, it was The Pretty Things and The Yardbirds.  Then  I went to London. I was already in this band and we played a few gigs here and there and we met some people like Graham Bond and through him I met Jack Bruce. At the time you could meet everybody in a few weeks’ time. We were all in the same area too, of course.  I’m about 9 to 10 years younger than Paul Jones, Jack Bruce and all these people and I always was a bit like the little one on the outside but I was picking it all up and meeting all these people. Then when Alexis Korner started to play a lot I played some gigs with him in the early seventies and it just spiralled from there. I played with Alexis for quite a few years in the early seventies.

What was it that attracted  you to Alexis Korner? His eclecticism?

Norman Beaker: I liked the gospel side of things, but he also played that country stuff. He was a fantastic man and the godfather of my son Alexis. He used to come to my house and at the christening of my son he turned up with a joint in his hand. What a lovely man he was. But he was very funny and bright. He knew everything about the blues and he was very helpful to everybody.

When did you first start your own band?

Norman Beaker: Oh, even at school I had a band going. I played with bigger people like Tony Ashton when I was only sixteen, seventeen, because I  started later than all those people I mentioned. it was quite strange and also fantastic to play with the people whose records I bought! I thought: that’s what I really want to do. And I was doing that fairly quickly. Before London, I formed a band called “Morning After” in Manchester. Sort of a local band, but we did really well and we had a good following. After that I formed another band, called “No Mystery”. In fact, we formed that band to slightly get away from the blues, we wanted to get away from the stereotype blues thing!  “No Mystery” is an album by Chick Corea!, I just wanted to do something different, you want to move on and try a few things. A few weeks later though we ended up doing The Old Grey Whistle Test with Louisiana Red and so we were a blues band again. We  toured with him and all sorts of other people. So I gave up trying to do something else (laughs): I said to myself:  ‘I’m in a blues band and I’ll stay there’. I even played in restaurants and playing  jazz, but everybody always said: ‘Oh, you like the blues!’ Apparently, it came through every time!

Blues about World War II

Eventually, you became the blues band we know today.

Norman Beaker: I gave up No Mystery when we got a record deal and the company wanted us to be more bluesy and so we went that road again, but I wanted to write more original songs . I never regretted that, I guess it was the right thing to do. For the album that would become “Modern Days, Lonely Nights” - the first album as The Norman Beaker Band - I had some songs ready and I decided I wanted to write more about modern day problems. Still in the same old style, but different lyrics. The Delta blues singers were singing about their environment and I thought I should do the same. I was born in a place called Longsight, Manchester, it was quite a rough area, it’s quite strange that nearly all blues musicians I  know came from poor areas? In London some may have been middle-class, but not where I came from in the North West there were no rich areas. I  liked to write songs, I always have written songs  but I don’t see why I should  sing about the Delta, there’s a lot of Americans who’ve done that, these were mostly black folk songs about where they lived, the share-cropping and the other jobs they had to do working under white supremacy. These things should not be forgotten, of course, but I don’t know anything about share-cropping and all that stuff.. On the other hand, I noticed there were almost no blues songs about the bad times that we’ve had, such as a massive event like the second World War. So I thought I should write songs about things that people can, hopefully, understand about today. So I write more emotional songs, almost like love songs, boy-meets-girl, but not like in those 50s films as things are a lot more down-to-earth . A song like “Ain’t the Truth Bad Enough?” is about journalists who write about bad things and make them even worse and I ask: isn’t the truth bad enough already? A soldier’s been shot dead and the press talks about the widow and the three kids for days on end. They like to put the twist on stories. The week after I wrote that song, there was a football disaster with people being crushed and dying on the floor. That song is more relevant now than ever, because they keep on doing it, like with that girl Madeleine McCann who disappeared in Portugal.  Isn’t that horrible enough as it is.

When you released “Bought In the Act” in 1986, they were nearly all covers. Your next record, “Modern Days, Lonely Nights” were all originals. How come?

Norman Beaker: There are a few originals on “Bought In the Act”. But, the story is that we were doing an album with Lowell Fulson and we recorded the warm-up set we did for him when we played it, it sounded real exciting and we decided to put it out on cassette because after all that was Lowell’s album but by releasing a cassette it was legal see. We sold thousands of it, we got great reviews and Paul Jones played it on his show.

When did you start as a composer?

Norman Beaker: As I said, I thought I should write about my own experiences. I found it difficult to write about share-cropping or cotton picking because I’ve never done that. You can sing with a lot more dedication when you’ve been there or know someone who’s been there. I already wrote a lot of songs for many other sorts of people. I had a publishing deal and would write rock-and-roll, jazz, everything. At the time, there were very few people writing blues songs, and I thought I’d just use my own experience. And some became like standards, I mean a song like “Break it Down” has been covered by so many bands. That’s on “Modern Days”, the album we did for JSP Records. We were about the only white act on that label that featured people like Ruth Brown or Phil Guy. The owner was very excited about our album, and we were really proud of what we thought was an innovative album. It took off and we went on tour, we played Paul Jones’ radio show, did sessions with other people, we were selling out big halls for months on end on the back of that album.

Who influenced you as a composer? You don’t normally write 12 bar blues songs, but your concerts and albums are definitely blues.

Norman Beaker: No-one influenced my song-writing really. But I did learn something when we joined B.B. King on his “Midnight Believer” tour. The album was  recorded with The Crusaders and when you took away B.B. King it sounded like jazz. When you put on B.B. King, it sounded like blues. So it became obvious to me that blues is not what is there, but how it is being played together with the influence of the instruments. The song does not change, but you can play it with a blues feel.  Also, I don’t write or play 12 bar blues songs all night long because it gets monotonous, no matter how well it’s done. Besides, take a band like Chicken Shack. They usually did 12 bar songs, but their only two hits “I’d Rather Go Blind” and “Tears In the Wind” weren’t. People need to be tested a bit, like Jimmy Reed was a change from Robert Johnson. It’s not about getting better or progression , it’s about evolving.

When I  spoke to  Byther Smith I was surprised to hear that he once started out as a C&W artist – I mean, he’s one of those huge black guys now playing Chicago blues – he replied “It’s all the same notes, man!”. That’s almost what you claim: the song does not change, but the feel and the instruments do.

Norman Beaker:  When we did the Ruby Turner album for INDIGO Records, we did The Beatles track “You Can’t Do That”. It’s a real raging blues with a harmonica! It’s fantastic and it rocks as well. When we did our JSP album “Modern Days”, we were about the only white act on the label and we became  the sort of  house band for all of them, like Sounds Incorporated who did all the backing for the rock-and-rollers like Little Richard and Jerry Lee who visited the UK in the 60’s.. We were the backing band for most of the American blues musicians who to England, we were on Paul Jones’ radio show almost every week. And we had our own thing going on as well. We were one of the few if not the only blues band in the country at that time , just before The Blues Band and Nine Below Zero were making inroads again. I think we must have made around  thirty albums for JSP. You end up working so much for other people you can’t find time to put out your own stuff. Like, we’ve now worked for twelve or thirteen years with Chris Farlowe. He’s now doing some sixties package shows and this gives us a bit of a chance to go out on our own and promote our latest album.

Funky Ray Charles

The tour will promote your latest album “Who’s He Calling Me Him?” Sometimes I hear a little bit of funk, then you make me think of Ray Charles.

Norman Beaker: Oh, I love Ray Charles. And Stevie Wonder. Maybe Stevie is the most influential composer for me. There’s Al Jarreau too. When you play the guitar people always think you must be influenced by B.B. King or Freddie King or some king. Now, my favourite king is Freddie and to a certain degree he is, of course, an influence but not in the field of song-writing. Some of my stuff is fairly 12 bar, but then the words will be different. Of course, I am not trying not to be bluesey on purpose either!

Can you comment on some tracks so as to give us an idea of what we will hear?

Norman Beaker: Gladly.

 “A Little Hollywood” is a song with a blues feel, it’s like a blues-rock song and the subject is not something you would normally associate with blues, holidays. When you hear it in the set it’s a blues song, but the audience like it and they’re usually boppin’ around to it. The words are on one humorous level,  but the song is blues-rock . That was a one-off composition really.  

“Girls of the World” is not strictly blues either. I wrote that one a long time ago, maybe twenty years ago and it was supposed to sound like a Stones thing. Strangely enough, when I recorded it, everybody said it sounded Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing”. So I decided to check with the performing rights agency and you know what? I wrote mine first! (laughs). So I gave Mark Knopfler a copy and he said ‘Oh, I thought I had written it first!” (laughs). The lyrics are funny, it’s about people being virtually the same all over the world you see.

“Option On You Baby” is a straight up and down 12 bar shuffle. Other bands copy old 12 bar songs and the lyrics aren’t always that good, so I thought: why not keep the format and write your own, words, I like my songs to have a bit of fun about them. This song says: I love you every morning, I love you every day, ‘till the undertaker takes us away (laughs heartily)

“When the Fat Lady Sings” is a favourite of mine. We call this a ‘minor blues’, it’s really an emotional mode to play in. You can’t help being moved, even if it’s played badly. These are the most fantastic songs to play live.

“When Life Kicks You Around”: you said you heard Ray Charles in it? Well, you have no soul if you don’t like Ray Charles, it’s not possible! It’s similar to Ray Charles, the chord progression is from C to E and there’s also a bit of Cole Porter. You find it in older music and in soul music. It could have been a bit slower, but is sounds nice to. It would ‘ve been more emotional when played slower, but it would have been more depressing, another “Georgia On My Mind”.

“You Can Talk”: that’s a real blues song, also one of my favourites. If we could play this style of blues songs all night long, that would be great! This is about people ignoring poor people, saying ‘Look at them!’And I say: ‘When you suffer like they do, then you can talk’. I’m sort of defending the down-and-outs of this world.

“Like I’m Not Your Man”: Johnny Guitar Watson, it’s funky and different from all the rest.

There’s no excuse for that one, I heard it and I liked it.  It’s just a great song and Johnny had just died, so it’s a sort of commemoration to him. I like playing funk. Within the blues framework . Many guitar players of my era started out as rhythm guitarists, and then switched to bass and next to lead, so they’re pretty well experienced. Nowadays, they go for lead guitar from the start and you lose such a lot not having played rhythm. I have been booked often just to play rhythm; there aren’t too many goo rhythm guitar players around any more.

“Love isn’t Everything”:  You’re right, this is humorous and at the same time it’s a bit more. The lyrics say that love isn’t everything, until it’s gone. It’s almost like a book where you have a twist in the tale that changes the end. You don’t realize how important it is ‘till it’s gone and we all need it. It sounds sort of funny, but it’s quite deep, very sad. If you read a  Charles Dickens novel like “Christmas Carol” or “Oliver Twist”, it’s because it’s so depressive that the humour comes out so well you know. It makes you more emotional towards the song. Micky Moody plays slide; I’m not such a great slide player but Micky is fantastic.

The show will basically be the album “Who’s He Calling Me Him?” ?

Norman Beaker: We  are promoting  that one, but the show will feature all the albums and probably a Jack Bruce song as I’ve worked with Jack for so many years. And some stuff I did with Phil Guy and Ruby Turner. It will be like a memory lane together with the new album and a couple of new songs you haven’t heard yet. We’re working on a live album and it may be out when we’re in your country. The title is “A Tale of Blue Cities”, remember Charles Dickens’ “A tale of two cities”! (loud haha) 

Every time I’ve seen you on stage, you were cracking jokes. Humour really is important to you, also in your lyrics, even now as we’re doing this interview.

Norman Beaker: When you play serious music, like blues, I think you need a break and the audience do too. I’ve always done that. When the punters go home they should say: what a lovely evening, great music and it was fun as well. As long as the music is serious, you should let them off the hook a bit, relax a bit, and have a chat… If I had had a choice a hundred years ago, I’d probably have wanted to be in a variety, you know  vaudeville… Every time I go to a pantomime or a show with the kids, I want to be right there on the theatre. I don’t have that when I watch a gig. I’ve got recordings of all these famous English comedians, even from the time before I was born. It’s not just about the jokes, also about the situations. I would have loved  to be in a pantomime, that would’ve been great! (final burst of laughter).

© Eddy Bonte Original version in Dutch first published in Flemish blues mag "BACK TO THE ROOTS" www.backtotheroots.be

www.normanbeakerband.com

Discografy

Who’s He Calling Me Him?;  Delicious Records, CD DEL110.

The Older I Get, the Better I Was; Citadel CIT5CD.

Into the Blues; JSP Records, CD 230

Modern Days, Lonely Nights; JSP Records 1120 (LP)

Bought In the Act; Clardan, CLAR002 (cassette).

Taxman’s Wine c/w Doubt You Lord (45t, als “No Mystery”).