1 MANY ROADS
AFTER a short time off Alex set about forming a new band. Despite press releases he was always clear he’d never had any intention to retire: ‘I’m an entertainer – what else am I gonny do?’ he inquired. This outfit stayed underground for a while, though, evading potential lawsuits from the now-litigious Mountain.
Without an income, Zal looked round for something that might pay as much as rock stardom had. He drove down to his local taxi hire company, asked for a gig, and became a cabbie.
ZAL: I’m sitting down the office and I get a hire for an address near where Alex lives, and sure enough it’s Alex with his new guitarist, off down to do a gig in Canning Town. So I drove him down to the gig, had a wee chat, and that was fine. That was Alex. He never wanted to look back.
Mountain had other ideas, though. When Alex had been ill they’d fallen back on SAHBWA; and this time they fell back on Zal, putting Cleminson, Glen and the remaining McKenna into a band under the guitarist’s name. To complete the lineup they recruited ex-Tube LeRoy Jones and a 17-year-old wean from Kirkintilloch, Billy Rankin.
Billy came to the fore via his well-respected young outfit, Phase – and the ubiquitous Tobin connection. ‘Eddie was our agent, and he came to a gig at the Maggie and told me about the Zal band needing a singer. We did Gang Bang, Big Louie and Ding Dong that night – I made sure of it. He told me to fold Phase, because I was as good as hired. By the way, rumours abounded I was replacing Brian Robertson in Thin Lizzy – I said nowt!
‘On New Year’s Day 1978 Eddie picked me up from Kirkie and we headed to London. Half-way down he informed me of LeRoy Jones. He said, but you can play guitar too, so you’re still hired. We rehearsed all day but afterwards no one spoke to me at dinner, so I eventually asked Eddie if I was in. He motioned for me to ask Zal. “Eh… yeah. Sorry – great playin’, man,” he said. This was to become the norm in my long friendship with Semi-Clemi. Master of communication he ain’t!’
ZAL: I was up for it but I wasn’t convinced it was the right thing to call it Zal, and I didn’t think I should still be wearing the gear when everyone else was Joe Normal – everyone’s in heavy metal outfits and look, there’s the organ-grinder’s monkey again. I ended up not wearing the suit, but I wore green trousers and the white face and as the show went on I smudged it and tore it off – maybe that was over people’s heads but it didn’t matter because the whole show was haphazard. It never had SAHB’s power. The minute Alex wasn’t there there was nothing to fire off – there was no reason to be on stage…
Alex came to see the Zal band, and stared at LeRoy for the whole show. Afterwards he came backstage, grabbed a whisky bottle and smashed it over a table, brandishing the weapon at LeRoy. ‘You’re never gonny sing mah songs again!’ he rasped. LeRoy remembers: ‘I shat myself… but out of sheer impulse I grabbed a light tube from the ceiling, broke it over the table and pointed it at Alex. Silence fell… Then Alex said: “Come and sit on Daddy’s lap - I have a story to tell you, son…”‘
Billy’s first meeting with Alex was slightly less stressful. ‘He comes backstage after the gig and says, “You were all shite!” Then he points to me: “But him… he’s good”. I was flattered, but not stupid. He was drunk that night but I got to know him better as a genuine, down-home father figure.’
Reviews reflected the Zal band’s opinion of itself. Andy Gill wrote: ‘As a singer Jones proved a disaster, obscuring the meaning of song after song. There was a lot of aimless, shambolic pratting round going on, mostly centre-stage. And if Jones is keen to stress that “this isn’t SAHB without Alex – this is Zal!”, why does he insist on dragging in half-formed ideas about rock theatre which fail to gel cohesively with the music? Part-way through the most successful song of the evening, featuring Cleminson on lead vocals, Jones returned to the stage swathed in polythene and proceeded to roll around the floor, grunting incoherently while Cleminson produced machine-gun sounds from his guitar. It was both the most interesting part of the show and the most outrageous piece of crap I’ve seen in a long time.’
It didn’t take long before the guys decided it just wasn’t happening: there was too much pressure, too little time and no impetus. Zal decided to call it a day after a lukewarm UK tour. But LeRoy blamed himself for the band’s collapse: ‘One afternoon I invited Zal over to my flat and told him to bring his guitar because I was serious about working some things out. Then Chris called to see what I was up to – I made the mistake of telling him so he invited himself and Ted over. When Zal arrived, of course, nothing got done. That was my big chance to show how sincere I was – and I blew it. After that he wouldn’t return any of my calls. In the end Mountain gave me a plane ticket and a little money, and I never saw them again. I wish I could take it all back – but I was young and made my mistakes…’
TED: I don’t think there was enough substance to Zal. Some of the music was interesting but it didn’t appeal enough to anyone.
CHRIS: It stated going in a direction we weren’t focussed on. We were trying to have a laugh and enjoy ourselves but we weren’t happy. It was either have a laugh or cry… I became Chris ‘if it’s cash I’ll do it’ Glen… It was either work for Mountain or don’t do anything.
Ted, Chris and Billy stayed together for a short time, demoing songs Billy had written. ‘Then Jim White from Mountain dropped by our houses to collect our equipment for a “stock check”,’ Billy says. ‘By the time Ted and Chris had been informed of this, we had been dumped. End of story. After that I kept myself in London as an in-house songwriter for CBS. I had the influence to tell Mike Batt his Bright Eyes demo – obviously without Art Garfunkel – was pap. Anyway. fellow writer Patrick Campbell Lyons had a song called The Actor Prepares that he wanted Alex to record. I played him it. “You know what?”, Alex said, “that’s what I’m supposed to sound like – but I’m not gonna do that.” With hindsight I understand what he meant: he stood by his gut instinct and he moved on when things bored him. He told RCA he wouldn’t sign his dog for the amount they were offering - £200,000… I was there!’
BY March 1978 the New AHB was ready for a triumphant appearance at the London Palladium. It was billed as the long-awaited moment that the Vibrania Suite would be performed for the first time. Only it wasn’t – because Mountain took out an injunction against Alex playing new material.
Instead the show consisted of the band plus strings, brass, pipes and drums, dancing girls and Richard O’Brien. They performed pre-SAHB material like Framed and Midnight Moses, big-show numbers like Cheek to Cheek and Big Spender - and even Anarchy in the UK, arranged into a waltz by Tommy Eyre. ‘It was an extraordinary evening,’ Allan Jones reported. ‘Someone in the audience shouted it was good to have him back. “Ah ain’t ever bin away, bebby”, he replied’.
Alex would later explain the show had been an experiment, to see what happened if he tried to work again. He’d suspected Mountain would pull a legal one, but he wanted to know how far it would go. ‘It took a lot of unravelling but finally I was able to work again,’ he said. ‘They tell me I set a precedent or something’. In what appeared to be a gesture of hatchet-burying, Alex invited all the Mountain bosses to the show – but afterwards he invoiced them for the tickets.
The ‘experiment’ story might also go to explain the mention of the Vibrania Suite – because as far as anyone knows, it never was written.
Later in the year the New Band recorded their album The Mafia Stole My Guitar and prepared to go on tour. The press release stated: ‘1978 sees Alex re-emerging with a new band featuring his 18-year-old protege, Matthew Cang, whom Alex predicts to be a guitar giant of the future. Also in the band is Hugh McKenna, formerly with SAHB, Don Weller on saxophones, Gordon Sellar on bass and young Simon Charterton on percussion and drums. This mixture of youth and experience promises to yield a blend seldom heard before! This is surely destined to be the sensational band of the Eighties.’
HUGH: After I left SAHB I got a lineup together very quickly with Ali Thomson and my sister Mae. It got offered a deal but it was blown out for political reasons because a label exec didn’t like my drummer. We got offered another deal through Deep Purple’s management but by this time I’d got in tow with a millionaire entrepreneur and he advised me it was a poor deal, so I blew that out. I was drinking and taking drugs, so I made what might seem like ill-advised decisions. People might say it was ill-advised of me to walk away from my SAHB wage, which was probably the equivalent of £2000 a week at the time. Months later I wasn’t earning anything at all. But it’s what I felt at the time.
What made me go back with Alex? Money – I had none… Alex’s manager called up and said Alex had been asked if he wanted a keyboard player for the tour, and he’d said he only wanted one, me… I got very drunk and very out of it on the tour but I enjoyed working with that band. Gordon, Don and Matthew were all great musicians. Nothing was said between Alex and I about me leaving SAHB. I think we’d have got on a lot better if we’d both cleaned up our act. I know from experience that I get along better with everyone now I’ve cleaned up – I’m more comfortable with myself so I’m more comfortable with others.
But by the end of that tour it got very niggly and we’d stopped talking completely. One night a guy from a record company showed up. I think Alex felt if I’d said I was into working with him again, we’d have got a deal. But I wasn’t really paying any attention… There was a lot of really long drives, a lot of boredom, and I was knocking back a horrendous amount of drink. I knew I couldn’t do without a drink by that time - it wasn’t until my sister said something I actually thought about it…
If reviews of Zal had been sour, reviews of Alex’s show were at least neutral, with the majority of each article talking wistfully about SAHB rather than NAHB. When they finally turned to the subject in hand, most writers sadly concluded it wasn’t up to much. Harry Doherty wrote: ‘Alex still exudes that hypnotic godfather stance. His vocal is strong as ever. Legendary version of pop classics added humour. But the new songs were rather listless.’
It was without doubt the end of an era. Finally SAHB went their separate ways. Alex continued to chase his personal rainbows; Zal headed for Nazareth; Hugh got lost in the blues; and Ted and Chris plotted similar courses into the waters of harder and harder rock.
ZAL: Being asked to join Nazareth was very flattering – playing in a guitar band like that, doing these big heavy riffs again… It was an opportunity to turn the clock back and be the kind of player who loved doing big guitar. They took me out to the States so I could get a feeling for how big they were. I joined them during No Mean City and chipped in a few tracks, and we went touring then did Malice in Wonderland.
But I always had the impression money was being pissed away – doing an album in the Bahamas then going to Montreux to mix it, then living in the Isle of Man because they were tax exiles… It came to the third album and we were in Fife to write and I was thinking, this is going to be like Malice again – I’ll put a lot into it, Manny Charlton will help but they’re all down the pub, and I still don’t think I’m part of the setup here. Because I’d being saying, am I in here, what’s happening? They’d said yeah, no problem, royalties coming in – but it didn’t work like that. And anyway I wanted to try some Zappa stuff, and it was too complex for what they wanted to do.
So I went back to London and started working with Dave again, then Barry Barlow from Tull asked me to get together and we did the Tandoori Cassette thing – we moved to Henley to be near his studio. We spent two years on that. Alan Mair put Angel Talk out, but that was it. We did some gigs but ten people turned up. No one really knew each other. Dave came in but he and Barry didn’t get on and it just didn’t happen.
Then I got invited to do Elkie Brooks and started making a shitload of money – about £1000 a week, which at that time was big big money. But it was just work by now. Then I did some stuff with Bonnie Tyler and then Midge Ure… and I stopped after that.
TED: I went for a drink with Alex one night after Zal had split. We bumped into an engineer who knew another engineer who knew Rory Gallagher was looking for a drummer, so I got the Rory gig on the back of just happening to go for a drink with Alex. And that was three very happy years with Rory. I felt like I was being a drummer again, as opposed to Ted McKenna from SAHB. The energy level was completely different. But even though it was demanding it was too limiting in style. Rory was quite upset when I told him – I found out later no one had even left his band before.
Then Tommy Eyre got me into Greg Lake’s band. It was quite good but sadly it wasn’t happening for Greg. Then Chris asked if I’d join Michael Schenker Group.
CHRIS: When Ted arrived Schenker had all these rules. He told him, drink when I drink, don’t drink when I don’t drink, turn up on time, this that and the next thing – and then said, except for Chris – he does what he likes.
TED: Yeah. Rule 27: Except For Chris… I was like, you think I don’t know that?
CHRIS: There was ridiculous money flying around, and we were wise enough to watch it now. We did an album in 1981 that cost us between £250,000 and £500,000 to do. This was when the average cost was £50,000 – I mean, how many bands at Chrysalis didn’t get to make an album that year because of that? We’d been in the studio for about two months and we only had three backing tracks down, and I thought, they’re gonny pull the plug. But they came down and said, very good lads, keep it up… Then I realised Chrysalis owned the studio! They were just shifting paperwork around, keeping the money in-house, and they knew Schenker would be good for it in Japan… so you make £500,000 and they say, sorry, studio costs – and all they’ve done is generate a situation where they kept ten times the standard album cost off us. You get used to this shit…
HUGH: I stopped drinking for a while but I got into spliffs instead and started having 25 spliffs a day and got ill through that… Then I drank again… Then when I came out of hospital I cleaned up my act, but then I got into coke and made myself ill on the drugs… And so I drank again. But it’s 18 years since I’ve had a drink. There’s a chemical that generates a craving for more alcohol - it’s meant to be ejected through urine but in alcoholics it isn’t ejected, so as soon as you have a drink you’re building a craving for more. The only way to stop drinking is not pick up the first one. I don’t even think about having a drink any more.
After I’d left Alex’s New Band I split up with my girlfriend and went home to my parents – I had nowhere else to go. Alex sent me the odd tape from time to time but I don’t think he liked what I did – it wasn’t very inspired. I was in hibernation.
Then I got a call out of the blue to play with Denny Laine. It was the guy who’d booked me on Alex’s tour, and I said, great, when do you want me to come down? He said, today – you’re booked on a flight in four hours! So I just packed a bag, got the flight and I’ve been here ever since… That’s what saved me from permanent hibernation, just getting up and going.
I worked with Denny for about four months, but after that, unfortunately, he couldn’t afford to keep the band together, so it broke up. I wrote piles and piles of songs and got pub work, playing old standards on the piano, Beatles, Elton John and all that. Then I was with Paul Johnson for a year, touring with BB King and things like that, and that was when I made myself ill with the spliff, so it was back to writing and pub stuff, then I joined a semi-pro band, Blue & Bitter, for a while.
