AUTUMN 1993

Issue No 3

Contents

Editorial

• Interview with Noel McCalla
• On the Box
• Manfred Undercover
• Manfred Mann - The Best of The EMI Years
• Chris Thompson - Discography
• Manfred Mann's Earth Band European Tour 1993
• Interview with Mick Rogers
• Earth Search (Wordsearch)

Interview with Noel McCalla By Andy Taylor

Andy First thing I was going to ask you Noel, fans know so little about your past career and your getting involved with Earthband can you tell us a little about that?

Noel Well I suppose I started in about 1974 professionally, I moved to London from the Midlands became involved with a band called 'Moon' we did two albums for Epic Records, and ten when the band split which I think was about 1977/78 I then stayed on with Epic and did a solo album with the likes of Trevor Rabin, who did the production and played most of the instruments as well, and then after doing that album I got a little bit fed up and disorientated of being kind of a pawn for them to throw around you know, so I decided to ask for a release which I did and then immediately after that I was working with a band called Smith and The Tears, who did quite well on the record front, toured America and Europe and various other places and I kind of did the Smith and The Tears thing which was O.K. but I was not an official member, more just a kind a hired hand who featured quite a lot on the vocals of the album, and then wasn't quite ready to get into any band thing of my own, I just kinda kept doing projects, I just worked as a freelance musician really, did Small Creeps Day with Mike Rutherford, Messa Forte, jingles etc., from Boneo to God Know What. In between before Manfred I started working with my own band. I was doing my own band nearly two years before Manfred intervened. My band is still going strong, as much as possible with the work with Manfred.

Andy Just going to ask you about your won band, I have actually got a tape of your own band, is that tape still available if fans were interested?

Noel I have an even more updated version now, we ended up doing an album ourselves because people asked for it. We did a cassette and then because we were quite pleased with the outcome of that we updated it, actually we did the initial backing tracks at The Workhouse, and then we took it back to our 16 track studio and remastered it up to C.D. format, and its only just recently a German company EWM have taken it on and are distributing it around Germany about the middle of September. They've taken on Germany, Austria, Scandinavia, the ones we have will be collectors items. The final product will be changed slightly. There will be updated tracks, but that will be it when that's done, it's a case of looking forward to the next album.

Andy I have the collectors item, if you can get any more copies of the collectors item I'm sure fans would be interested, tell us about the music of your band.

Noel People find it hard to describe really, can't put their hand on it, being blues soul jazz because we've just done it for music sake we haven;'t done it for anybody else except for ourselves like it definitely a music album, good lyrics, nice rhythms its probably R&B, soul idiom but we do get people who come along because the guitarists quite bluesy, the sax player quite jazzy, the drummer quite rocky and steady, the bass player is quite Bill Wyman like, standing there all calm and collected (kind of a) mixture of ages band, just wanting to do something instead of sitting on our arses complaining about what was going on around us. So we decided to get in and find out how difficult it all was.

Andy Do you do a lot of live work with them?

Noel As much as we can, we cut it back because we found that doing gigs where PA's were not much good, was costing us too much money having done it for 4 years that we'd kind of settle down now we know what to expect from the gigs we probably do 5-6 per month, on a regular quarterly basis, one every two weeks, just to keep the band working. The most important nothing for us now is for us to get the album out. The band sounds better than the album, which is often the case with a lot of bands, because we've gigged more, shame we didn't have a run of gigs before doing the album. It's ready to get out overseas to pick up the band a bit.

Andy If you have any advanced notice of gigs, let us know and we'll put it in the mag. There seems to be a big following once you've been in the Earthband.

Noel Yeah, I've never really kinda been into that riding on the back of someone and then just kinda leave it. I would much rather be doing both if possible I hope I can become the first black Phil Collins, I don't know, but keep away from the acting.

Andy Too much hair! Your first involvement with Manfred will be Plains Music, I would guess, how did you get involved in that then.

Noel Well he came to see me, he'd heard of me through a friend and he came to see me at the Jazz venue, the Bass Clef - Hoxton Square. He said he'd got some tracks to try out, and I don't think it was in his mind for me to join Earthband. I was just a working musician, been doing it a while and wasn't pretentious, had no aspirations, I kind of molded in quite well if my voice was sore I would carry on, I'm quite prepared to come in for half an hour or some and then go away again, if I can't do something I tell him, makes for a good working relationship, as long as every one is very professional about it. So Plains Music was the first introduction then he told me he had some gigs to do and asked me if I could sing Blinded By The Light and Mighty Quinn and I said I didn't know, because really at the end of the day, except for the money I wouldn't have joined the band to sing those particular songs, not my kind of song, I didn't know much about what they did or how they sounded, it was the introduction of Plains Music that made me think this is going to be different, it wasn't going to be just rock it was more organic, it's become a lot more than that.

END OF PART 1

In PE#4 Noel talks about Earthband and we review his new album.

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