Two Sides of Wishbone Ash

Guitar Heroes, December 1982 by Ed Park

Laurie Wisefield/Trevor Bolder

An awful lot of people, the music press included, have got the wrong idea about Wishbone Ash.  Wishbone may have been around a while but they hardly fall into the category of ‘dinosaur bands’.  OK so they’re not flavour of the month, but then that’s another stupid game invented and encouraged by the music press.  Whenever I speak to other bands I constantly hear praise directed towards the guitar sound of Wishbone, so I know the music business like them, even if the press don’t.

There has been plenty of activity in the Wishbone  camp over the last two years, with the departure of bass player/vocalist Martin Turner, the arrival and departure of John Wetton, who developed Asia in Europe to market in America, and now the recent addition of ex David Bowie and Uriah Heep bass player Trevor Bolder.

Ignoring the golden rule of best till last, I decided to wade in with the heavy stuff first when I spoke to Wishbone Ash personnel Laurie Wisefield and Trevor Bolder at Laurie’s home in Woodford, Essex.

Was Bowie a pig to work with Trevor?

“He was good at first, he was a really nice bloke to work with, he was alright because he wasn’t anybody then.  At one point we all shared the same house and all covered for each other, but gradually as he got bigger and bigger he wouldn’t even share the same car as us or the same hotel; he just became a big star.”

Do you find all that crap a bit hard to handle?

“Er, I did then, towards the end.”

When did you join Wishbone?

“About May ’81.”

Laurie, why did Martin leave the band?

“I think it just reached a point where it was time for a change on both sides really.  It was something that had been building up over a period in terms of personality and group chemistry.  We were together for a long while.  It’s always been sad that the writing was a group thing, but Martin was responsible for a lot of it, the guitars as well.”

There’s a lot of musical experience in Wishbone Ash as its members have been playing for around 20 years apiece.  I asked Trevor about his playing technique, which was an integral part of all those early Bowie albums.

“The one thing that’s a part of my style is playing bass fingerstyle, and I hit the bass really hard.  If I used a pick I’d have to change the strings every four concerts.”

One of the strongest aspects of Laurie’s technique is his use of the tremolo arm, which was originally inspired by the likes of Hank B.Marvin.

“I suppose I claw the strings with my spare fingers when I’m using a pick – it adds another dimension along with the tremolo.”

Why have you cut back on the twin lead guitar sound, that you’ve used to great effect omn previous albums?

“Mainly because everybody else has copied it and it’s nothing new these days.”

This I regards as a very poor excuse when nobody has bettered that sound, and I make up my mind to ask Andy Powell his reason for this state of affairs when I see him later the same afternoon.

Laurie, did you ever copy anybody when you first started playing guitar?

(After a long pause)…

“Django Reinhardt…and I failed miserably, Albert Lee, and some of the bluegrass banjo players.”

One aspect of his career where he hasn’t failed miserably is collecting guitars.  Compared to Trevor Bolder’s measly pair of 70s Fender fretless Precisions, fitted with DiMarzio pick-ups and Fender Jazz Bass pick-ups, a Gibson slothead EB3 and a clutch of Kramers, Laurie’s collection is positively brimming with goodies.

“Basically, if you’ve got a good Gibson Les Paul and a good Fender, you’ve got the lot, they’re the two guitar sounds I like.”

At the last count the Wishbone stash included a Zemaitis metal front, 1958 Gibson ES5 Switchmaster in sunburst, 1957 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop, 1961 original salmon pink Fender Stratocaster, 1954 2-tone sunburst maple neck Fender Stratocaster, 1966 Stratocaster, single cutaway Gibson Les Paul TV Junior (the snot green variety), one 1958 and another 1959 double cutaway Gibson Les Paul Junior in cherry, pause…Gibson J45 and Martin D45.  Not to mention a small collection of Gibson and Fender lap steel guitars, a banjo and an old maple neck Fender Telecaster.

I inquire of the man who once described security as a warm Stratocaster, what kind of amps he was using on the recent UK tour?

“Fender, Marshall, Orange, Roland, Boogie…a fair old mixture really.”

Trevor Bolder has one of the small compact Ampeg Portaflex combos for studio work, but it’s not for stage work.

“Onstage I’m using a pair of Crown DC300’s through a pair of Ampeg 8x10’s and some special 15” Gauss cabs for the bottom end. The only effect I use with my set-up is a Roland flanger.”

Even rock stars have their magical moments and for Trevor it was the almost Beatle like adulation of his early days with David Bowie and the Rock Around the Dock gig he played in the Chicago dockland area with Wishbone last year.  And Laurie?

“I once had a jam with Albert Lee and I almost froze – I guess that was a high point for me.”

What have Wishbone got planned for the future?

“We have the new album, Twin Barrels Burning out on AVM records, since our contract with MCA ran out.  Next week we go to Yugoslavia, France, Germany, Spain, then maybe America after that.  We’ll be in Europe until December.

Going by the press Wishbone receive, and the press they don’t receive, you’d be forgiven for thinking they died the death some time ago, but this is patently not the case, as they’re continually touring Europe, America, Japan, the Far East, Australia, and New Zealand.

I know you recorded the new album at Jimmy Page’s studio, the Sol, I also know that you had trouble with the monitors.  Would you go back to the Sol to record another album?

“It’s a lovely place,” says Laurie, “and we would go back there again, but now we know more about it, we would compensate for it before we started.  It’s not like an ordinary studio, it’s someone’s house, you can’t stack amplifiers in the back room, and you can’t really play on weekends, though they have permission to use it 5 days a week, but it’s a good place.”

Did Pagey come down to the sessions?

“Yeah, Trevor nearly threw him out because he thought he was the cleaner.  In fact we offered him a cup of coffee and said black or white?  He laughed and said ‘what do you think’?

Andy Powell

    “The first really decent guitar (I had) was a Hofner Colorado or Coronado or something…”

Colorama?

“Colorama, that’s it, then I had a Burns jazz guitar, which I bought from a guy who’d won it on the back of a Kellogg’s Cornflakes packet.  I remember toodling down to Oxshott with £40 pinned inside my jacket which I’d saved from doing a paper round at 13/6d a week.  I was very proud of that.  I was really knocked out with that thing because it had the most amazing tremolo on it.”
   Is that what turned you onto the tremolo arm?

“Oh yeah, ideally I wanted a Strat but they cost £160 or something in those days.  When we started Wishbone I was using one of three guitars I’d made myself, for the first year, along with all the other equipment we made.  I think we started the band with £200 total investment, and most of that went on stage clothes.  We made everything, even the clothes.”

How would you define the Andy Powell sound, the Gobson Flying V apart?

“Underneath all the cynicism and so on, I’m probably quite emotional.  I think a lot of the thing with technique is conveying some kind of emotion you know, and a lot of my sound comes from that aspect of it.”
   I’ve noticed there’s less of the twin guitar sound these days, why?

“Both Laurie and I have been playing together for a while now and we know each other’s styles really well, and also we’re very proficient at most things, and the more proficient you become at something the less wonderment there is at trying out new ideas, because you can do it.

“So you tend to rely on your own talent as it were, whereas when we started the band, we were so bad, we actually sat around with songs are we used to say ‘we want this little tune in the middle of this song, we don’t want it to be just a blowing solo’.

“In fact a lot of the time it was Martin Turner who came up with these little melodies and riffs and then we’d work out the harmonies to them and then we’d actually construct them just by singing the little melody that we liked, and then once we’d got that down, we’d learn it on guitar.”

How has the bass playing within the band changed since Martin’s days with Wishbone?

“Martin’s bass playing was very much like our guitar playing, he just dived in at the deep end, he wasn’t a great one for listening to other people because he had his own ideas.  He wasn’t what you’d call an orthodox bass player, and in some respects that’s what gave us our unusual sound.

“Trevor has been around a lot more, playing with bands like Uriah Heep, and his playing had made the band a lot heavier, he’s really fattened out the bottom end of the band, he’s a very orthodox player. Now it’s more like four competent musicians doing their own thing, there’s less wild experimentation.”

Like Laurie, Andy is an avid collector of guitars and aside from his 1928 Gibson A2 mandolin, he’s got quite a few.

“I used to have around 35 guitars but I sold most of them to Steve Stills.  I’m not too sure what I sold him, but certainly I remember a beautiful pair of Gibson Firebird VII’s, one in white and the other in sunburst.”

The part of Andy’s collection that remains includes a pair of ’58 and ’59 original Gibson Flying V’s, three 1963 V’s in burgundy, sunburst and champagne sparkle (extremely rare), a ’52 maple neck Fender Telecaster that belonged to Roy Buchanan, ’54 maple neck Stratocaster, Epiphone Texan, Sibson acoustic, and a Tele that’s been cloned from a Strat neck and various other bits and pieces, not forgetting a pair of Ray Cooper Tele and Strat copies, and a pair of Gretches.  And all this from a man who swears he doesn’t collect guitars!

Which one’s your favourite then?

“The 1963 burgundy Flying V is my absolute favourite.  It’s the one I play onstage all the time and the one I play on the new album (Twin Barrels Burning).  I don’t know if you realised, but I’ve had the original pick-ups removed and replaced with PAF humbuckers.  One guitar that I don’t have that I would like to own is a blonde Gibson ES335 dotmarker.”

Because they’re wise fellows, Wishbone Ash cottoned onto the Orange Matamp many years ago and they’re still using them.

“I seem to use the Matamp onstage which I’ve used for a long time, but Boogie is the thing now and I’m keen to get my hands on one of the new Boogie combos.  It’s a great amp.  I don’t think there’s anything better made.”

Do you use effects?

“Yeah, my effects rack and pedalboard were built for me by a guy called Peter Holmes, who I think works for Midas Sound now.  It’s got all the usual effects, distortion, flanging, chorus, tape echo, plus Fender tremolo which was taken from an old Fender Concert amp, the whole system is switchable from the floor and I have an A/B, clean/dirty situation which I can select from the board.”

Why do you think you have such a bad image with the press?

“When we topped the Melody Maker Brightest Hope Poll back in ’73, we played the official gig but we blew out the press party, because we didn’t realise how important all that stuff was.  In fact I remember we were late but still the point is we didn’t have any idea how important all that stuff was.

“For that whole year there were regular pictures and features on us every week in Sounds and the other papers, until we inadvertently blew them out, and in return Melody Maker blew us out.  They were most peeved we didn’t turn up to collect the award, they thought it was a snub and a lot of it stemmed from that….we didn’t court the press.”

Would you say there’s a certain lack of musical history at the moment?

“I think there’s been a very conscious move by the media since ’77 to suddenly dismiss our past as if we’re all embarrassed by it.  It’s strange because on the one hand there’s a very healthy move to the future, smashing down a lot of the old ideals, which IS healthy.  There’s also a negative side in that they haven’t wanted to acknowledge the positive aspects that went down.  It’s just that right across the board, anything pre-’77 is a waste of time.”

Does that hurt you?

“Yeah, I think that’s really bad.  In Japan and America people are proud of the past.  Let’s face it, XTC for example, didn’t just appear, they came out of something.”

Maybe Laurie Wisefield hit it on the head when he said, “it seems to be down to short hair and baggy tousers.”

I say bugger the baggies and bring back the most famous twin lead guitar sound in the world – you’re still the best!”

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