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UP TO SCRATCH Interviews by kind permission of Seamus Collins.
TERRY: “I dug Woody Guthrie and Huddie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter so I borrowed a guitar off a posh kid at the Grammar School and learned a few chords. I was a bit erratic but I could squeak and scratch a similarity of Grand Coulee Dam, Maid Freed from the Gallows and stuff like that. I was
getting pretty good when the posh kid wanted his guitar back. I worked
those chords out on the Broadwood upright piano in my mother’s front
room – one with a bad yellow grin.
I was part of the St. Albans scene in the 60s: Bob Kerr, Maddy Prior, Henri Harrison, Tim Hart, Donovan, Mick Softly, Mac McLeod, whatever.
We all hung out together at different times. Bob gave me my first paid
piano gig. Trad jazz. I got into that and blues and boogie. I’ve come
back round to the folk side.
I joined Henri’s rhythm and blues band, Cops n’ Robbers. The
highlight of my piano years was playing for John Lee Hooker – his
entire 65 UK tour. That, and playing with Buddy Guy. John was the very
coolest, though. Cops n’ Robbers set Donovan on his career through our
Tin Pan Alley contacts. I don’t see anything of him now. I co-wrote
something of a garage classic, You’ll Never Do It Baby, done by the
Pretty Things, the Lyres, Holly Golightly and other punky people. I
still hear it played.
It would be a big task to name all the folk bands I’ve been in – Phil and June Colclough, Fife and Drum, Heymaker, Boneshaker, are a few that come to mind. I see myself as a writer mainly of songs, poetry and
prose.
What I dig the very utmost in music is the Anglo-Celtic tradition. I’
m still erratic. My daughter says I’ve got Chord Tourettes. I squeak in
a lower key now days and scratch the same as ever but I can hit the
spot given the right conditions. I am always up for playing with ACW.
He’s such a trifickly great mandolin player. His playing always gives
me a buzz. You can climb inside a sound like that. empathetic, even
with my wandering ways.
I met him back in 1985. We’ve been gigging together on and off ever since. The most unusual thing we did was Saturday Superstore with the
festival band. Oh, yeah, we both went across to Poland once. I met a
Polish geezer in a market in Gdansk who sang me one of my songs. He’d
learnt it from Ronnie Wood’s brother. Sometimes me and Adam get a noise
going like the hairy old St. Albans days grooving in the lean-to
shelter at the side of the Cock public house. I like that a lot”
ADAM: “I spent my youth in the depths of mid-Wales between the Black
Mountains and Hergest Ridge. In the early days I had a liking for
baroque music and, Leslie Penning, the featured artist on the Mike
Oldfield singles, ‘In Dulci Jubilo’, and ‘Portsmouth’ gave me lessons
in the basement of Buzz Music record shop in Hereford.
The lure of city lights finally took hold and I moved north to Stoke-on-Trent, bought a mandolin and some tin whistles and lost myself in
the music of Planxty, The Bothy Band, Martin Carthy, Matt Malloy, Mary
Bergin and just about anybody who had ever played a mandolin. I played
with anyone who wanted me and with a few that didn’t.
I cut my teeth with Cut-Throat Jake; paid my dues with the Green
Velvet Ceili Band; went electric with Heymaker; unplugged again with
Boneshaker; raved with Surreal; chilled out with 3-Spirits, went off
with the fairies in Full Circle and Greensward; returned to the glory
days of the mandolin with the Jack Lyn Frets Orchestra; strayed onto
the wicked path to sin with bluegrass band Plucked and paid the rent
with Moody Food.
Between gigs I moonlighted at Synergy studios where I made industrial quantities of tea for Pete Brown (lyricist for Cream and Eric Clapton) and sax man Dick Hextall Smith; set up mikes for the Sutherland
Brothers, and David Gray; pressed the record button for Jeffrey’s Velvet Jacket and nameless indie bands; upset the nation with ‘Squidgy’
which sampled Princess Di; stole beats with Parkes and Wilson. Mother,
and the Detroit DJ Terence Parker; remixed Loleatta Holloway’s
‘Dreamin’’, Simply Red’s ‘Ramblin’’, Darlene Lewis’s ‘Soul Fly Free’,
Sylvester’s ‘You Make Me Feel Mighty Real’ and the number one Euro hit
‘Doop’. I probably did sleep but I don’t remember it. I once
hallucinated Keith Chegwin turning up with half the street to record
the Neighbours theme for the Big Breakfast.
I badly needed a rest, so I left the beats and sequencing behind and returned to my acoustic roots, with Up To Scratch, to play some loose,
lo-fi, organic music.”
