Ping Pong Polemics

Sounds (UK) - June 16, 1979

'Manfred's bank balance is a bit low so here comes another Bob Dylan song'. That's the kind of thing the music papers were saying about 'You Angel You' wasn't it? It doesn't really affect me: if a song's good enough it'll sell; if it isn't it won't. But it upsets my accountant. When somebody made that criticism a few weeks back, he rang me up and complained about how the press were treating me. "It isn't true", he kept saying. And I had to calm him down.

Manfred Mann is musing over the the standard treatment he gets in the British music press. In his hotel room in Ravensburg, deep in provincial southern Germany, he's as far away from those papers as they think he is from the current rock and roll epicentre. But any rancour he might be feeling is tempered by the success of the European tour he's in the middle of.

"There's a kind of democracy about the rock business which I can enjoy," he continues. "I'm a real capitalist about the music business; it's so much better to let people decide on the basis of their own ears than on cultural grounds. I don't want a committee of people deciding what's right, good or fashionable. And I certainly can't base my career on appealing to the hip journalists who are raving over the latest fashions."

But then he doesn't need top. Out in Germany Manfred Mann's Earthband are doing the kind of business that put's them in the big league. Their first album, 'Watch', has sold over half a million copies here and all 5,000 tickets for tonight's gig have sold out, as did last night's shown in front of 7,000 at Nuremburg. And you'll have to pay the touts' prices for the next three nights at the Munich Circus Krone. Germany is 'the business' (as tour manager Mick cater would have it), but the rest of Europe isn't lagging too far behind. It's only when you cross the English Channel that he starts becoming an ageing has-been who's valiantly plodding round the circuit.

Manfred, it has to be said, is a bad interview. But today - considering the hassles he's been through in the last eighteen months and the spectre of further change that looms on the near horizon - he's remarkably chatty.

After his last British tour following the release of 'Watch', Manfred disbanded his EarthBand and then reassembled it with a new guitarist - Steve Waller from Gonzales - and a new drummer - Geoff Britton from Wings. They recorded the new album 'Angel Station', together in Ireland, but before they started touring Geoff Britton had to drop out with glandular fever and was replaced by the virtually unknown John Lingwood.

And as if this weren't enough, Chris Thompson, vocalist and guitarist who has been Manfred's longest mainstay in the current band, has been plotting a group of his own called 'Night', which will come to fruition later in the summer with their first album and an American tour with The Doobie Brothers. So he'll be leaving a large hole to be filled by one or possibly two new members.

For Manfred - a firm believer in Murphy's law that 'if everything's running smoothly then something's wrong only you don't know about it' - such a situation ought to have induced paroxysms of self-doubt and worry, but he's remarkably untroubled by it all.

"Chris's replacement is a big problem, obviously, but it'll be solved. What I said on the back of Angel Station' about Chris' departure was genuinely meant. We could have smoothed things over and then announced in a few months that Chris was leaving. My explanations then that the vibes between us were good would have met stony cynical journalists' ears. By saying it early people would realise that the vibes have got to be OK because we are still working together."

And to judge from the three gigs I saw them play in Germany, Manfred's gamble has paid off. The current EarthBand are a stronger, more resilient group than their predecessor. They've always had a reputation for doing really good live gigs and their European following has been built on previous tours.

Their set is built around the gems from their earlier albums - 'Davy's On The Road Again', 'Chicago Institute', 'Blinded By The Light' (which was Manfred's first try at a Springsteen song, but has reached epic proportions live) and of course 'Mighty Quinn', which now comes complete with a Pretty Flamingo introduction which passes over the heads of the German audience, but makes entertaining camouflage. But no fewer than four tracks from 'Angel Station' have been incorporated into the show, an unusually high number for Manfred to pick from his current album.

This time around there's a number of films projected onto a screen behind the band, which form an integral part of some songs (at one point Manfred even plays a silent movie accompaniment to the image on the screen) and several other little tricks add up to a rock and roll concert where the emphasis is on enjoyment.

John Lingwood is a lighter, springier drummer than Manfred's used to, but once he's miked up he carries all the necessary heavy metal power. And he's quickly established a rapport with Pat King on bass, who's now playing better than I've ever seen him.

Steve Waller's more soul-orientated background isn't the kind of style that you'd think would fit the EarthBand's solid, rocking style (and neither is his penguin-like appearance), but he adds a swing to the newer songs, particularly 'Don't Kill It Carol' and 'You Angel You', where he also takes the lead vocals. He still needs to do some homework on some of the older songs, however, sort out just how and why they have the status they do; then he'll be able to make a stronger contribution to them.

For Chris Thompson it must be a rather schizophrenic phase, playing with one band while actively planning the future of another. But from the evidence of this tour and what I've heard of the Night album which comes out on Planet soon, he's thriving under then workload.

Manfred seems genuinely surprised by the success the band enjoy in Europe as well. "Having gone through a period of total failure I find it quite incredible what is happening in Europe. I'm doing so much better than in the mid-sixties when we were having hit singles all the time. When I think back to the Sixties and having achieved household status - if that's an achievement - and now I'm playing modern music in 1979 - the argument over just how modern it is and whether it's just another boring old fart doing the rounds is ultimately a small one; the fact is that young people find it modern - it's quite incredible."

What about a musical comparison? "There's no comparison. The Sixties was this continual voice telling you that you weren't doing what you should be doing. That you sold out to yourself. I don't like saying this to a journalist because there's nothing worse than reading about a gut who puts down his past that a lot of people know him for. I can't blame anybody else. There was no-one with a gun at my head making me do it."

"I was uneasy about being a pop star, and about making three minute singles like 'Ha Ha Said The Clown' and 'Do Wah Diddy Diddy.' I felt that there was more in me and it was always a little frustrating to watch other people doing well at music that somewhere inside me I felt that I could do to. I couldn't do it because it wasn't the right band and because the public wouldn't accept it from you if you did."

"In 1969 when we broke up my instinct was to go back to a kind of jazz thing. I fell behind in the public eye with Chapter Three: the band just wasn't good enough." But was it satisfying musically?

"I was proud of the first album, yes. It meant a lot to me to put out something that was good. Mind you, you start getting a little wary when nobody buys it (again his lip curls). But after Chapter Three I decided to try almost anything I felt like without preconceptions. And that, as they say, was the turning point."

He's not even worried about being tagged as an interpreter of other people's songs which is sometimes all he's given credit for. "I'm proud of it, because now I can accept that I'm not a great writer - although I've written some things on the new album I'm quite pleased with."

And finally Manfred on Manfred - "A bit of a craftsman with a lack of flair but keeps working away and seems to do well."

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