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Interviews |
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Total Rock Interview
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| MD: | The Moody Blues -'Question', and on the line now I have no questions at all about who it is- it is Oliver Wakeman! Good Evening! |
| OW: | Good Evening! |
| MD: | How are you sir? |
| OW: | I'm very well, thank you! |
| MD: | I suppose we should start by congratulating you - you just got engaged, haven't you? |
| OW: | Yes I did, a couple of weeks ago now - we picked up the rings today so we're all very happy. |
| MD: | When's the wedding going to happen? |
| OW: | Hopefully around September next year. |
| MD: | Excellent, well if you invite us we might come along, just to quaff some champagne with you... |
| OW: | That's very kind! |
| MD: | You never know, you never know... Yes, we're always kind that way, we're always prepared to quaff other people's ale! So apart from working towards the wedding, you must be busy musically, because you're always doing things, aren't you? |
| OW: | Er, yeah, it always seems to be a little bit hectic. I had an album out a couple of months ago, called 'The 3 Ages of Magick'... |
| MD: | Which we've been playing, and it's very good... |
| OW: | Yeah, I heard it last week as well, which was very nice. It was Martin on the air with you... |
| MD: | Absolutely, Martin from 'Wondrous Stories'... |
| OW: | Yeah, he's a good old boy... |
| MD: | He is, absolutely... |
| OW: | Hopefully he's listening tonight, and he can send us an email... |
| MD: | I think he should, absolutely! Martin, if you're listening, please send us an email - studio@totalrock.com - there you are! |
| OW: | Wonderful stuff! Yes, so it's been kind of busy promoting 'The 3 Ages' sort of stuff, busy doing that, and then working with Clive Nolan, the keyboard player from Pendragon and Arena, on the follow-up to our 'Jabberwocky' album which we put together in '99. 'The Hound' is due out in February... |
| MD: | "The Hound"? |
| OW: | 'The Hound of the Baskervilles'... |
| MD: | I was about to say "the Baskervilles, maybe?", and there you go! (Laughing) |
| OW: | Yeah, sorry - when you deal with the album day in, day out, you can't be bothered to say 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' all the time - it just gets shortened and shortened! |
| MD: | How did you come up with the idea of doing 'The Hound of the Baskervilles'? |
| OW: | It probably starts off when we started with the 'Jabberwocky', really, to be honest with you. We wanted to do something, er, not so much 'progressivey', but more 'concepty', so we sort of found the 'Jabberwocky' poem, which we really liked - Rodney Matthews did the artwork for the album cover - he did a fantastic picture, and it just happened to be a coincidence that he'd finished the painting when we asked him to do one! - so it seemed too good to not do the 'Jabberwocky', and then we were sort of bandying around other ideas at the time, and Sherlock Holmes - I'll just say I've been a big fan of the Conan Doyle novels for years - and I just thought 'we'll do 'The Hound', shall we? And then the Jabberwocky thing happened, so we thought 'oh, we'll do the Hound next...'. So , erm, it just seems to work quite nicely - Clive and I both enjoy doing that sort of stuff, so , you know, it means that people who buy the stuff that I do with Clive know what they're going to get... |
| MD: | How difficult or easy is it to actually write to a particular story that's already there from someone else? |
| OW: | Erm, sometimes it's easier, sometimes it's harder. In all honesty, sometimes you can be writing a piece of music and you've just got no idea where it's going at all, and it doesn't seem to do anything - sometimes if someone's already given you the idea, in your head, it sometimes makes it a little easier to focus. Whereas other times it can be a nightmare, with the Hound for example, we were sort of trying to write certain sections of the story and trying to make it fit in between the narrative... |
| MD: | Have you taken any samples from any of the movies made about this, or..? |
| OW: | (Laughing) Er, no, I think we're a little bit, er - shaky ground on the copyright on that sort of thing! |
| MD: | Right. |
| OW: | But we have actually enlisted Robert Powell, the actor... |
| MD: | Ah, excellent! |
| OW: | ... to do the narration for us, so he plays Doctor Watson on the album... |
| MD: | Oh, superb! |
| OW: | ...so he's done an extremely good job. It's amazing, because we'd sort of mentioned it on the website, you know, and the emails we get from people, wherever they are in the world, depends on what sort of Robert Powell stuff they know... |
| MD: | Ah! (laughs) |
| OW: | ...and of course Americans come to us and say, "Oh, 'Jesus of Nazareth', and '39 Steps'", and then all the British people come on and say, "Yeah, 'The Detectives'"!... |
| MD: | Yeah, Jasper Carrott... |
| OW: | Yeah, so... |
| MD: | Did you think about getting Jasper Carrott involved as well? |
| OW: | Oh, we thought about it for a very short amount of time, but (laughs), maybe the next album, if he's listening! |
| MD: | You never know, you never - Who else is involved with the record, then - have you other guests? |
| OW: | Oh, we've got quite a few people on this one, actually - we've got Peter Banks, the old Yes guitarist... |
| MD: | Oh, wow... |
| OW: | ...Karl Groom from Threshold, who I'd imagine you play quite a lot of his sort of stuff, |
| MD: | Yep, uh-uh... |
| OW: | ...um, Arjen Lucassen, from Ayreon... |
| MD: | Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah... |
| OW: | ...we've got Tracy Hitchings the singer, from Landmarq, er, Bob Catley from Magnum... |
| MD: | Oh, superb! |
| OW: | ...erm, Ashley Holt, the original singer on Dad's 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth' album... |
| MD: | Yeah, yeah, yes... |
| OW: | ...we've dragged him in as well, and there's a couple of other singers that are just fantastic - Paul Allison, Ian Gould and Michelle Young, an American singer. |
| MD: | So, it's fairly busy... |
| OW: | (laughs) It's a little hectic, trying to organise that, so it's taken us ages to put it together. |
| MD: | Did you think about getting your dad in? |
| OW: | Errr, no... We did... (both laugh) To be honest with you, we did use him briefly on the Jabberwocky album, as a narrator, but of course the Jabberwocky poem is a lot shorter than The Hound of the Baskervilles is... |
| MD: | (laughing) Yes, true! |
| OW: | So, we asked him to do that for us because we thought it would be quite good fun to get him on an album, and not let him play a keyboard... |
| MD: | Mmm, (laughs) yes! |
| OW: | ...and then we sort of thought, 'mmm, we've used that card, and we don't really want to go over that sort of thing' - my brother works a lot with Dad, and they have a very good working relationship - I prefer to, maybe, be a little bit more on my own. Whether it's to my good or to my detriment, I'm not quite sure. But it seems, I seem quite happy working this way, so... I don't really want to rock it too much... |
| MD: | Just in case there's anyone out there wondering who on earth Oliver's dad is, it's Rick Wakeman, a man you might remember from various bands such as Yes, you know, minor bands, made minor impact, (laughing) but, I mean, have you ever had the opportunity to work with your dad - has it come up, as in a real collaboration? |
| OW: | No, no, erm, no, we've never really even talked about it, to be honest with you. I kind of, well, I quite like having just this normal-family attitude with him more than anything else to be honest. I had all the things when he was, you know, going through his heyday, when I was a kid, and it was great fun, being a kid around that sort of stuff, but as a grown-up, I sort of tend to think maybe, you know, if I do anything, I'd like to do it on my own merits, and if people like it, then great! And they'll know it's because I've worked for it, and if they don't like it, well then I've got to stand or fall by it... |
| MD: | Now that's fair enough, fair comment. What about touring, or going out live? Is there any chance of a string of dates around the 3 Ages of Magick? |
| OW: | Well, hopefully, yes. Well we did the one date in the 12 Bar Club in London in around July time, which was just really a showcase, sort of launch party sort of thing, which was well received, which was quite good, and I'm sort of going through the ideas in my head of maybe putting a small tour together next year, just maybe a four to five-piece band and maybe just doing a week or two, nothing too elaborate, but just going out there and testing the waters, because it's tricky - you never know how many people are going to be interested in actually coming out to a gig, because there are so many good bands out there - everyone is vying for the audience, and the live audiences aren't huge at the best of times. Because, I just don't think enough people want to go out and listen to bands. Obviously your listeners want to go out and listen to it all the time because it's the sort of music they like doing, but down here where I live in Devon, there's some - you know, you tend to get - the younger people just tend to just go off to disco's and clubs and stuff... |
| MD: | It's a bit of a shame, really, but... |
| OW: | It is, missing out on something, but, you know, you can't force people to go... |
| MD: | No, absolutely not - you can't really put a gun to their head and say, "Go to a gig!" - they're not going to wear that! |
| OW: | No... (laughs) |
| MD: | Now, it just occurred to me, 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' is of course is a storyline that lends itself to a lot of visuals - possibly, would there be a video attached to this project? |
| OW: | Well, we're doing a sort of CDR interview disc, which we're hoping to put out at some point next year, sort of featuring interviews with everyone that's been on the album, but the visual side of it is a bit tricky to do - it all comes down to time and effort and money really, more than anything else, although to say that, on the visual side of the artwork, for the album, we've got Peter Pracownik, who, er, people might know him for doing the Limp Bizkit album cover... |
| MD: | Oh, really? |
| OW: | Yeah, he's done the front cover for us, and we've used some wonderful pictures of his for the inlay of the sleeves - it's just a stunning, stunning piece of work - so that will hopefully give people a taste of what we'd like to do. But, you know, if the album sells and we can get out on the road with a few dates of that one, we'd like to make it as elaborate and as much fun as possible! |
| MD: | So much the better - fingers crossed and that. So when can we expect 'the Hound'? |
| OW: | February the fourth. |
| MD: | February the fourth. And is that on Voiceprint? |
| OW: | That's on Verglas. |
| MD: | Verglas... |
| OW: | Yes, the same label that do the Arena albums. |
| MD: | Aha, I see - interesting. And of course you've got the 3 Ages of Magick album out right now... |
| OW: | Yep... |
| MD: | ...and I think we should play a track from it. |
| OW: | Wonderful! |
| MD: | Thanks very much for your time, Oliver, and enjoy yourself in Devon. Watch out for one of our regular listeners down there - we call him affectionately 'Stalker Steve' (laughing), but he's a nice guy, but he's a regular listener and a big fan of music across the board, which is the way we like it really! |
| OW: | Excellent stuff! |
| MD: | Oliver, thanks ever so much for your time, we look forward to 'the Hound' and here's "Time Between Times"... |
| OW: | Wonderful... Thanks, then! Bye! |
Technical problem - music starts, then jumps and stops.
| MD: | Well, that was "Time Between Times" - something very strange just happened there - obviously it's the Fourth Age of Magick coming into vogue - anyway here we go again.... |
Track plays - "Time Between Times" from '3 Ages of Magick'
Total Rock broadcasts on channel 885. They also broadcast via the internet. More information on this and Total Rock in general is available from their website at http://www.totalrock.com.
Oliver Wakeman releases his latest album in July, through Voiceprint, on the Resurgence label. Richard Ormerod caught up with him during a short break in his promotional schedule.
| RO: | Oliver, I've just listened to your new CD "The 3 Ages Of Magick". What inspired the album? |
| OW: | The 3 Ages of Magick has been a project dear to my heart since my initial idea for the project back in 1997. I have always had a love of legends, mysteries and the unexplained. The 3 Ages is basically about the way magic has been perceived over the centuries, about how it was done back in the dark ages and that anything that was magic that you couldn't understand and then how it developed into science and stuff and that became the second age of magic, and then the new age where everything could be done through technology. |
| RO: | How did Steve Howe get involved? |
| OW: | I have known Steve for many years on and off as a kid during Dad's involvement in Yes. I really got to know Steve when my brother and I accompanied the ABWH tour around America in the early 90s. One day I was walking through Barnstaple town centre in Devon near to my home. I walked past a record shop that had a poster for my "Heaven's Isle" album in the window and at that moment I bumped into Steve. He asked me what I'd been up to and as I was stood in front of the poster in the record shop window, I moved aside to show him the poster and told him all about the recording. He asked me for a copy, which I duly handed over and he said he'd have a listen and give me a call. To cut a long story short - he called and invited me over for tea and a chat. We discussed all sorts of things and we met up on various occasions following. During one of these meetings Steve asked if there was anything I'd like to play him. I played him a few rough ideas of some pieces I was working on to do with the "The 3 Ages" project and he really liked them and wanted to be involved. We continued to meet up and the recording was finished in late 2000 and mixed in early 2001. |
| RO: | Who are your main musical influences? |
| OW: | I love pretty much all types of music and even the genres I don't like I can usually find something that interests me - even if it's just a keyboard sound. My early love of music would be bands like Styx, Dad, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd and Yes although I also like a lot of 80/90's bands: It Bites & Dan Reed Network for example. I also like classical music and particularly like Chopin. As for players - obviously Dad would be a favourite but I was also very influenced by Jon Lord of Deep Purple and Dennis De Young of Styx. |
| RO: | What do you think of the term "progressive rock" as a description of what you do? |
| OW: | I don't really think of myself as a progressive rock writer. I write what I feel and if that sounds like progressive rock then so be it but I don't sit at the piano and think "Right what sort of progressive rock can I write today?" I also write loads of music in different styles, on "3 Ages" there are classical pieces, Celtic influenced pieces, piano solos & orchestral songs along with a couple of prog rock pieces. I know that it's an easy tag to place because of my family but I hope that any prog rock fans that hear the album can enjoy some of the other music on there. Which they hopefully would because by definition - being progressive is when new ideas are linked to existing ones to create something new, i.e. progressing! |
| RO: | You have a famous dad. Inevitably this means people will draw comparisons. Does this bother you? |
| OW: | I'm very proud of all that dad has achieved and enjoy all his music. It never really bothered me when people used to talk to me about Dad but I always felt like Rick's son. As to comparisons, I can understand that people are always going to draw them with Dad and myself as we are both piano/keyboard players writing music for a specific audience. But I have never just sat down and learnt Dad's pieces of music - I went through formal music training and was a regular in the local pub jamming sessions from about the age of 16 so I've had a lot of experiences from other musicians. If I sound similar to Dad on occasions then it's only by chance as I just feel comfortable playing in the style that I do. |
| RO: | You're based in Devon, deep in the South-West of England. Are there many opportunities for people to hear your music there? |
| OW: | I play regularly in the North Devon area with a Rhythm & Blues band called 'Smokestack'. We don't play any of my music, as it wouldn't really fit in with the set -which doesn't bother me at all, it's good to play in a different style to that in which I write as it teaches me more and, I hope, makes me a better player. |
| RO: | It's a very beautiful part of the world. Does the local landscape inspire any of your music? |
| OW: | Definitely, my first album was solely inspired by Lundy Island, which is just off the North Devon Coast. Devon has a very natural beauty, which constantly amazes me. Living in surroundings like these it's difficult to not be inspired! |
| RO: | What do you do when you're not making music? |
| OW: | Music takes up an immense amount of my time what with writing and gigging although I do enjoy driving a great deal. Especially down here in Devon, as there are so many great places to see. |
You might have heard of the 3 ages of man; youth, old age and
you're looking wonderful, but 'The 3 Ages of Magick', the title
of Oliver Wakeman's latest work is something you will have to
learn about and for this album he had managed to get Yes guitar
maestro Steve Howe to play a major part, something I know he was
particularly pleased about, writes Martin Hudson. To date readers
of Wondrous Stories will be aware of Oliver's debut album, 'Heavens'
Isle', based on his perceptions of Lundy, an island off the north
coast of Devon and his other album, a collaboration with Arena
and Pendragon keyboard player Clive Nolan, titled 'Jabberwocky'.
He is currently finishing off a second album with Nolan titled
'Hounds of the Baskerville', besides which he has been commissioned
to do other albums and pieces of new age music for other record
companies. However, it is 'The 3 Ages of Magick', to be released
on Resurgence, that he will be concentrating on over the next
few weeks.
It is the title of the album that may cause initial curiosity
especially the spelling of the word 'Magick'! Oliver explains,
"It is actually the original spelling from the olden days. It
has exactly the same meaning and also it looks a bit different
and is more eye-catching. The idea for the album came, probably,
just after I'd finished the 'Heaven's Isle' album. The first idea
was a follow up album based on a track I'd written about Celtic
myths and legends and then I put down a few ideas. Then I thought,
well maybe just doing an album on a myth or a legend was a little
bit too Wakemanesque shall we say, so I thought a better way to do it would be to
sit and write pieces of music about various, not just legends
or Celtic myths, but interesting history or mysteries and just
write a piece of music for each one and try and link them together
as an album. So I mentioned this to some friends and after a few
years I've been inundated with paper cuttings about UFO sightings,
Stonehenge etc. and I've got a whole folder full of everything.
People kept on giving me books and I sat down and read all these
things and every time I read something it gave me inspiration
and so I've ended up with a couple of Celtic pieces, a couple
of orchestral pieces, couple of sort of rocky tracks and a couple
of ambient pieces. The 3 Ages is basically about the way magic
has been perceived over the centuries, about how it was done back
in the dark ages and that anything that was magic that you couldn't
understand and then how it developed into science and stuff and
that became the second age of magic, and then the new age where
everything could be done through technology. Actually I can quote
for from a book I read about it, it says ' "We live in the third
great age of magic in the West. The first was the period of the
Roman Empire, when strange cults and mystical ecstasies and psychic
experiment swept over the Roman world from the East. The second
came during the Renaissance, with the rediscovery of the ancient
world's occult lore and the recovery of a man-centred picture
of the univ erse, a view of man as a potential God. The third,
in our own time, began in a reaction against 18th-century rationalism
and gathered strength with the founding of the Theosophical Society
and the Order of the Golden Dawn."
And having determined the remit for the new album Oliver then
had to select subject matter for the tracks and he has ended up
with some curious titles, some more straight forward than others,
but each no doubt with a tale behind it. 'The Storyteller' for
instance.
"The Storyteller originally came from a track I originally wrote
for a friend of mine. He was writing a book and the story was
that his wife was in a coma and she was sending telepathic thoughts
from England to him in America. He got these thoughts in a dream
and as a result decided to travel across from America and then
started to write a book about the whole journey to get back to
his wife. So I decided to write this based on that and then got
more into the idea of how the mind works and people in a coma
what they can and can't hear and developed it from there. It starts
out quite morose and gets sadder and sadder and then lifts towards
the end and the story is about him getting through to the end
and then I thought about the title and the thought of calling
in just 'coma' was little depressing. So I thought what could
be a good title for it and thought why not just 'The Storyteller'."
The track 'Whales Last Dance' conjures up pictures connected to
Oliver's 'Heaven's Isle' album.
"Yes it was around the same time, or maybe a year after 'Heaven's'
was finished and I think I was watching satellite TV and was watching
Animal Planet and there was this story about this guy travelling
across Australia and visiting various nature reserves and while
they were on their way they suddenly heard a radio message about
a whale that been beached. They went down there and the piece
tells about how they tried to save them and about this whale dancing
around in the sea having fun and then what it was about to do."
The album starts out with 'Ages of Magick', the first of thirteen
tracks, but there does not seem to be any real order.
"That's because each track just tells a separate story and they
are in no particular order except for tracks twelve and thirteen,
'Through the Eyes of a Child' and Hy Breasail'. The last track
is a Celtic title and it means phantom isle and originally came
from a book I read on fairy folklore and basically it's the Celtic
way of saying phantom isle, which translates into fairy isle.
It goes back to the Arthurian legends and what is called the fairy
isle or people call it the Isle of Man because the fairy folklore
they have there. Other people thought always thought that it translates
in to Isle of Avalon which a lot of people believed to be in Salisbury
because most of it was under water and there was an island there
and that's where it comes from about fairy folklore. The track
before it, which is called 'Through the Eyes of a Child', I sort
of thought about various things and suddenly thought narration
would be good and thought about 'Jabberwocky' and dad did the
narration on that and we've got Robert Powell doing the narration
on 'The Hounds of the Baskerville' and I thought I'd have some
narration on this one. Then I thought seeing as it's quite an
in depth title for an album and quite in depth stories for each
song I thought the idea of someone well known and mature trying
to explain to someone what magic was would make the album too
serious. I thought what better way of doing it than asking a little
kid what he thinks magic is and what he tells me is what magic
is at the end. They have a child like fascination for it and I
recorded it down in Cornwall and it is the son of the engineer
Paul Craddock, he's called Joseph and he's only two and a half.
We asked him questions about magic and he kept on asking questions
about screwdrivers such was his fascination with machinery. In
the end the only way we could record it was by having a microphone
hung above his head and follow him around the room and recording
just about everything he said. I think I've got two hours of him
chattering away. He's unbelievably clever. In the end we chopped
it up and put pieces together and I think it works quite well.
The story behind the song is really a musical montage, it's supposed
to be a child's viewpoint of the piano which is why the original
piano is an upright piano and you get the effect of someone walking
away from it and then the modern piano comes in and eventually
the violin with the voice and at the end of it the last track
starts and is the epic of the album. There's always one, isn't
there," laughs Oliver!
There are many other curious titles, too many to go in to too
much depth but 'Lutey and the Mermaid' is worthy of a few words
from Oliver.
"Lutey and the Mermaid is an old Celtic myth about, obviously,
a mermaid and a guy called Lutey who's a fisherman. One day he's
out on the beach and when the tide goes out he finds a mermaid
there and he rescues her and she says 'to reward you for that
I shall allow your family to have good fortunes for the next nine
years but if I do do that for you you must come to see me at the
end of the nine years........................ Which proves I haven't
made any of these titles up."
The theme though has to be magic and so there is some sort of
magic attached to each track.
"It's either magic or a sort of mythology or legend or a mystery.
No card tricks though, it might be a bit more difficult to write
songs about that. It's all new music that I've written over the
last three years, obviously pieces develop and some have developed
a lot because they were ideas from the start. The original album
was to be on mysteries and mythology and anyone who has seen the
website will have seen the logo up there for the past couple of
years but you just keep working at a project. I can't work on
an album and knock it out too quickly, I think things have to
develop and so I had this album finished two and a half years
ago and then sat and rewrote most of it, rewrote it again and
so it constantly changes and has to evolve. I think basically
you write something put it away and then go back to it. Not all
the titles come easily, some do, some don't. You know what you're
writing about but finding ways of making it work to catch the
imagination."
The mood of the music can be translated by its pace and by the
types of instruments on offer.
"To harp back to 'The Whales Last Dance', it starts off quite
light with images of the sea with pipes and then at the end there's
a sort of sound montage with the sadness that this whale trapped
on the beach and that's what I'm trying to do, to create what
I can see in my head in music," explained Oliver.
With the album Oliver has managed to link progressive rock elements
with Celtic and traditional tunes by bringing together keyboards,
violin, pipes, flutes and whistles, not to forget Steve Howe's
guitar sounds.
"Well it has to be done or you're not actually creating anything
different. By doing a crossover, there's couple of orchestral
pieces, there's classical pieces and Celtic pieces, by having
such a variety of music all within your own style you hopefully
allow more people that might not have heard it to listen to it.
You may get more people who're into mainstream that like The Corrs
liking the Celtic pieces and they might buy it and hear other
pieces and say 'oh, I like this kind of music'. Hopefully that
helps people discover new things."
For the listener, Oliver Wakeman plays nearer to style of that
of his father than say his brother Adam. Had that made it easier
for someone such as Steve Howe to relate to when he originally
asked him to play on it?
"It's not something that's done deliberately and it's tricky that
people say that but it's one thing that winds up my mum when people
say 'oh it must be great to have two sons who just play the piano
and I presume that's because Rick plays'. My mum always turns
round and says, 'hold on they both trained and have done fifteen
years of practice', which is true but most people don't think
about that. It's tricky, yes, I've been influenced by dads playing
and style but I don't think dads ever really watched me play the
piano, I must be honest, he's never sat down and taught me because
I've done that through other music teachers. Maybe there is something
hereditary, you don't know, it's how I feel comfortable playing
and it seems to come quite naturally and I certainly don't sit
down and listen to one of dads albums and copy it note for note,"
Oliver emphasised.
'The 3 Ages of Magick' does contain a variety of instruments that
today can be recreated on keyboards. How had Oliver gone about
transferring it into reality and how had he found the musicians
to help achieve it?
"It started off that it was going to be a keyboard album and I
wanted to get something out so people didn't thing that all I
did was with Clive. At the end of the day I want to do this as
a living and this is what I have to do so I thought if I just
do an instrumental album that's great but when I sat down in the
studio I thought that there was so much more to develop. Then
I got a bass player, who used to play in a local band with me,
to come in and have a listen and ended up with real bass. Then
I thought if I had real bass I ought to have real drums and then
some guitar, not that I'm very good on guitar and certainly not
up to Steve's standards by any means. Steve's been a good friend
to me over the years and we became quite close so we decided to
meet up and have a chat and he became more and more involved.
I thought this was great, keyboards, guitar, bass and drums, that'll
do and then I was due to go in the studio at the beginning of
August last year and had a bit of an upheaval in my life and cancelled
all the studio time and everything had to be completely rethought.
Then about two or three months after this I thought I'd do it
a bit differently and because of the Celtic music I thought why
don't I get some more traditional instruments in. I spoke to Steve
about it and he said, 'what, you want to take out keyboard solos
and give them to other people' and I said, yeah why not," laughed
Oliver, "it's not something I'd normally do. I thought why not,
it would make it more of a band album and make it more interesting
and at the end of the day it wasn't supposed to be a flash album
to show off me and Steve. There are good solos but it's supposed
to be an album that all people can get some enjoyment from and
so I got in touch with a violinist who I used to go to college
with, Jo Greenwood, we'd been good friends over the years, so
I gave her a call. She was up for it and then the lady that helped
me a lot with the radio promotion for 'Heaven's Isle', she mentioned
to me that her ex stepfather played pipes and whistles and so
I gave her a call. His name is Tony Dixon and he came around and
we've been friends ever since. He played flute as well and Uillean
pipes and it all turned out fantastic."
The drummer for the album is Landmarq's Dave Wagstaffe who actually
did some vocals on 'Jabberwocky' and that's when Oliver had originally
met him when that album was recorded at Thin Ice Studios. For
the record the bass player who Oliver mentioned is Tim Buchanan.
Steve Howe appears on every track bar two and his interest in
Oliver started back with 'Heaven's Isle'.
"Yes he liked that and he only lives thirty minutes away so it
was easy for us to meet up for a cup of tea and generally have
a chat. I am obviously a great admirer of what he does and it's
very nice when someone that you've known from being a kid and
you suddenly find yourself working with them. Obviously I hope
that he was interested in working with me whether it be to work
with a young musician, which I think Steve was really in to. Steve
is really a musician who enjoys his music and enjoys developing
music and it all just seemed to work. We had two ways of working,
the first was where I would have a song and send him the tape
up so he could listen and work out what he thought would work
and arrangement what would fit and maybe change some things and
originally that was his input. Then he'd get a tape or a disc
of a song and work and record and at his studio and then say,
'how's this, what do you think' and most of it was first take
stuff. Then when we booked into the studio in Cornwall he came
in with more of the acoustic guitar stuff so he really was involved
with the whole thing, not just for turning up and doing guitar
solos."
Meanwhile the 'Hounds' album continues to come together.
"Yeah, that seems to be coming on nicely. It's been a bit stop
start project, mainly because the last year has been so up and
down for me. It's been very difficult to find time to do it. It's
been the same for Clive with the record company releasing albums
and Arena taking off further than they have before and so it's
tricky to find time to sit down and arrange and record let alone
write it, but we finished all the writing and the recording's
almost finished and hopefully it will be released in February
which will be six months after 'The 3 Ages of Magick'. Robert
Powell is Dr. Watson and has done the narration, Tony Fernandez
is on drums, Tracy Hitchings plays Beryl Stapleton and Bob Catley,
who's playing Henry Baskerville, Arjen Lucassen plays some guitar,
Paul Allison is on there too and that's a few of them anyway.
Bass is being played by Peter Gee and John Jowitt."
So there you have it, Oliver's musical update with a bit of magick,
not a lot, but enough to keep you going until its release on 23rd
July!
MH
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