From paperlate-owner@atom.ansto.gov.au Mon Dec 12 20:26:24 1994
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 1994 19:01:58 -0600
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From: billbrink@mail.utexas.edu (Bill Brink)
Subject: Attn. Interview Heads!!!  Banks on Banks!!
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Asw I hopefully mentioned a while back, there are two different threads of
interview with TB from The Waiting Room.  Here is the other. Anyone
interested in Waiting Room subscription info, it will be at the end.
Regards,
-Bill


TONY BANKS IN CONVERSATION WITH ALAN HEWITT ABOUT HIS SOLO CAREER
 AT THE FARM

---You decided to have another go with The Fugitive, which seems to many
people as if it has more of a commercial orientation. Was that your
decision or was there any pressure put on you by the record company at the
time?

The main decision for me was that I was going to sing. Once I'd done that
then I had to work out what I was capable of singing because my voice is
limited. I'd tried singing some slightly more elaborate things such as I'd
written for Peter or Phil to sing and I realized that I couldn't handle
that - it didn't really work, especially with certain kinds of words that I
made them sing! (laughter) There was no way I could sing them; I couldn't
get my teeth around them and so I had to do something fairly
straightforward and in order to sound convincing as a singer. I guess at
that point things like drum machines and so on were starting to come in
more and more and the change in Genesis as a whole happened as well. Those
machines do tend to tie you a little bit in certain ways. They give you a
lot of freedom in a sense that there's so much you can do with them but
they tend to lock you into a particular tempo; if it's in 4/4 then it's in
4/4 for ten minutes! That kind of happened on a song like This Is Love,
which was done very much on the drum machine with the organ and the reggae
style going right through it. That kept things a bit tighter. That was the
way I felt at the time, I wanted to write that kind of song. I think that
the songs on that album are a little bit tighter, they're not as long in
the main and the chords aren't as flowery. I was surprised with my voice as
well, I could take how I sounded. It's often difficult when you hear your
o- n voice to hear yourself as a singer, but I thought to myself that I
sounded as good as a lot of people who like to call themselves singers.
There's something nice about someone singing their own thing too. I've
noticed on some of the albums I've done more recently than that that people
will go for the songs that I've sung just because I'm singing them and I
find that odd in a way. It's almost as if the person who wrote it is
singing that they are singing directly to you, if you know what I mean. I
like the album very much myself. I think it had chances with single success
but I couldn't get any sort of response to it.

---The first single did get a certain amount of airplay at the time.

Yes it got some airplay certainly and the second single, And The Wheels
Keep Turning was played a certain amount. Gary Davies used to play it quite
a bit and every time he did he'd say, "That song's great". So I thought,
"Great, this is it we're going to get a hit!" but unfortunately no-one else
seemed to agree with him. I had less expectations for the record actually
than I did for A Curious Fee/ing but you always hope something is going to
happen. Whenever I hear
This Is Love, I always think that it sounds very good for its time. As I'm
sure you're aware, this business is so wrapped up in people's perceptions
of what they think and what they want and it tends to be all based on
image. You can see how well someone like Madonna does - she's got no voice
and it's all based on her image and people love that kind of thing because
they can relate to it. It's much harder if it's all based on the music
although there are certain people who over the years have managed to break
through like that. I think Genesis are an obvious example as are Pink Floyd
and others like them who have got little in the way of personality as
identities. I tend to keep a very low profile with the group anyway and
when you try to stick your head above the water people tend to say, "Who's
that bloke?" ! (laughter). People were telling me that This Is Love should
be released as a single, which we did but it didn't get the airplay that it
needed in order to make an impact.

---Strangely enough when I was looking through our collection of press
material for things to go with this interview I actually found about four
or five reviews of the album and they were all favorable! I thought at the
time when the trend was still very much anti the established bands that the
papers were going to crucify it but they didn't.

Sounds was one paper that tended to be a little bit on our side when the
others weren't with both Hugh Fielder and Barbara Charone there and through
them there was a sort of history of enthusiasm. In pure musical terms there
were two or three tracks that worked well. And The Wheels Keep Turning was
a high point on the album for me. I also really liked At The Edge Of Night,
which again I thought had single potential. On the first album I'd worked
with Chester on drums and it was nice to work with him in a studio
environment outside of the band. I wasn't quite using the right man for the
right course in that particular situation but it was still fun to do. With
Daryl on The Fugitive it was fantastic for me, he just gave a kind of magic
to everything. He was very enthusiastic and he had a good ear for drum
parts and things like that. I went through quite a few drummers on that
record. I used Steve Gadd, who at that time was rated as being one of the
finest drummers in the world; it was quite a thrill for me when he came
down here. There was also Tony Beard who played on This Is Love and that
track has actually got the best drumming on the album overall. The original
drummer I had lined up to do the whole album actually proved to be not
quite right for it and this presented a problem. We were in the studio and
we were saying, "well, who shall we have, who's the best drummer in the
world?" (laughter) so we called Steve Gadd and he was coming to England
anyway so he came down here for a day and did three of the songs, which was
great. I thought what he did on Man Of Spells was nice, it's very simple
but it has a good feel to it. I enjoyed doing the album and I was doing The
Wicked Lady soundtrack at the same time and the two were running
concurrently, which was the only pressure I had, to get The Wicked Lady
material finished. Then I had a problem with- the guy who was helping me
produce it, he had to go off all the time and it became very difficult to
get us together at the same time in the same place (laughter). I was very
pleased with the result. Given everything I had started off with - the
decision to sing on it myself and all the other things as well, I was
pleased with it.

---The instrumental pieces on the album surprised quite a few people
because they were a lot more sparse than perhaps they were expecting.

The one called Thirty Threes was just an improvisation; a condensed
improvisation just done on the piano with the drum machine. Afterwards I
improvised a Vocoder thing on top of it and I thought it had a great
atmosphere - I liked that one very much. The other one, Charm, I don't know
about that, I'm not so sure about that as I did it as a bit of a joke with
the silly noises and things. It needed very heavy drumming in the middle,
but the drummer I used on that, Andy Duncan, really wasn't up to it. At one
point I thought that I would play the drums myself on that as it was so
simple that even I could do that! (laughter) It was one of those tracks
that wasn't necessarily going to make it to the album in any case.

---When the CD version of the album was released there were two extra
tracks included. A lot of people wondered why they weren't put on the
singles as B-sides.

Well I think it was the old thinking that with the first single you put an
album track on the B-side because there's no point in not doing it. In
Genesis it's almost a standard philosophy but it's not being mercenary. The
way it works is that the B-side of the first single has to be of a good
standard as the single is going to be two examples from the album. Later on
you have the chance to put a non-album track as a B-side which can attract
people who have the album to buy the single for the B-side and that gives
it a sort of lift and starting point in the charts, a chance to go
somewhere. I suppose that the same reasoning applied to my album but the
first single didn't do anything. So when the time came to release the
second single I was left wondering what to put on as the B-side to that. So
we used Man Of Spells on that, waiting for the time when it was all going
to happen - which it didn't!  I always had a soft spot for the song called
Sometime Never. I liked the Iyric to that but anyhow it's there now for the
people that want it.

---Something that was quite a revelation was the video that you did for
This Is Love. Did you ever do a video for And The Wheels Keep Turning ?

No, I just did one for This Is Love. I've never seen it since I did it actua=
lly.

---I think that tbe star of that video is the iguana (laughter).

The director was really desparate to use an iguana in the video (laughter).
It's kind of wierd when you do things on your own. When I'm with the group
and it comes to videos I have as strong a role as anybody but when you're
on your own, your self-confidence is a bit lower I think and so people do
tend to get their ideas over on you. I just let them do more or less what
they wanted to do. It was enough of a strength for me to be focal and
central to the whole thing and I found that so much more difficult and it
also made me realize that I could never front a band. That's the way it has
gone more and more since then, which is why I have never sung a whole album
since then. I could sing the whole thing and sound as good as Bob Geldof,
that's not a problem but when you come to look as good as Bob Geldof then I
couldn't do that ! (laughter). The problem is that having realized that I
couldn't do that, it lead to the decision to not sing again on anything
that I thought would be a single - I didn't want to have to do a video as a
front man.

---You've already mentioned that at the same time you were doing all of
this you were also doing The Wicked Lady soundtrack.  It was quite a
controversial film in it's own way as the Board of Censors wanted to ban it
from domestic release because of the whipping scene.

That's down to Michael Winner, he always tries to push things as far as he
can to get some publicity! flaughter)

---How did you actually become involved with that project?

Well, the guy from Atlantic Records over here, Phil Carson, was approached
by Michael Winner. He'd already done something with Jimmy Page and he said,
"Do you know anyone who might want to do this film thing?" and Phil Carson
said, "Well this guy Tony Banks, he wants to do it". So he came to me and I
must admit that I wasn't a hundred per cent sure about doing it but I
decided to do it anyway. I worked on that particularly as it was to be an
orchestral soundtrack and I was doing the Fugitive at the same time, so I
worked with an arranger on that. So in a sense a lot of w hat you hear on
that is him really in terms of what the orchestrations are. With a lot of
the pieces I just played them on the piano and recorded them and then he
orchestrated it; some of them very faithfully and others he adapted more
than perhaps he should have done but it was fun to do and all the main
themes sounded great with the orchestra. The main moment that it was used
was during a soft porn sequence (laughter), which wasn't quite right and it
wasn't w hat I'd intended, it was supposed to have this beautiful melody
and I had all sorts of images for it. Anyhow, it was great fun to do and in
contrast with The Shout, The WIC/;ED Lady had the music really up front and
it sounded great. When I saw it at the cinema it sounded fantastic and it
made me want to do more.

---Did you actually enjoy working with an orchestra this time around rather
than with a band?

Well it was great fun to have that and I felt a bit daunted by that. I was
there for all the recordings but I didn't get involved directly. Everything
was done through this guy Christopher Palmer who was the orchestrator.
Working with people that are professionals in this field, it's a different
approach. They look at music differently to how I would and that's what's
great about it, it's one take and it's there and it sounds fantastic!
There's none of this overdubbing and cheating (laughter) to make it sound
good and I did love that although it did end up a little syrupy at times.
On the second side of the album I actually did my versions of some of these
pieces, which were really just the demos. I did this awful version of the
main theme with a drum machine which was done specifically because Phil
Carson said, "Do a rhythm version!", so that they could put it out as a
single. I heard it the other day actually and I thought it was
embarrassing!

---The other surprise from that project was the single. It was extremely
low key.

It was a bad move. I don't think it should ever have been a single. I think
we should have just put out the album and if the film had been a success
then the album would have done OK - that's how it works with films. as it
was, it was never going to do anything but I think that a couple of the
things on there sound good. Musically I can't remember all that much about
it apart from the main orchestral theme which I thought was very good.

---A lot of people like that album an awful lot and they wonder why it's
the only one that hasn't been released on CD.

It's down to the fact that it was on Atlantic, that's why. If the album
sold five hundred copies I'd be surprised and to put out a CD costs them
money. For the sake of completion if someone like Virgin will get hold of
it then it's possible. From their point of view they don't think it's worth
it and we haven't put much pressure on them for it. It would be quite nice
if it was available.

---As you've pointed out, the main problem for many people is actually
finding the album, it's quite hard to find.

Bloody hard to find! (laughter)  I mean, I see my role within the group as
providing all the rarities! (laughter). There are a few really obscure
things throughout my career with all these singles.

And that's where we leave it for this issue. Next time around Tony will be
talking about the Soundtracks album.


*************************Waiting Room Info

Here it is,
THE WAITING ROOM is available via subscription at the following rates: UK
=A35, Europe =A37.60, USA/Canada/Worldwide =A310 (US readers may prefer to s=
end
$20 for four issues). Please make cheques etc. payable to Peter Morton and
send them toPeter at:
 26 Oldfield Avenue, Stannington, SHEFFIELD, S6 6DQ, England

England. OVERSEAS READERS PLEASE NOTE: International Money Orders MUST be
drawn on a UK Bank draft and MUST be in =A3 Sterling - US personal checks
etc. are NOT acceptable.

***(Special note from Bill:  International money orders payable in pounds
would probably work, but the best thing to do is get cash (UK cash) from
your bank, conceal it well in an envelope, and  send it by insured mail.
Most American banks will give you a fairly decent exchange rate and believe
me, even with insured postage, it's cheaper than money orders, etc.***

I hope that was informative.  If you have any other questions, let me know.
Oh yes, tell them where you heard about TWR.  Thanks,
-Bill




 ...eyes that swivel 'round like smoke.
                                                                -Ivor Cutler

       -billbrink@mail.utexas.edu