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Date: Fri, 11 Aug 1995 14:29:56 -0600
To: paperlate@atom.ansto.gov.au
From: billbrink@mail.utexas.edu (Bill Brink)
Subject: Another Ant interview (about the very old days)
Sender: paperlate-owner@ansto.gov.au
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Reply-To: billbrink@mail.utexas.edu (Bill Brink)

Alan said it would be ok to put 1 or 2 more of the interviews that he has
done with Ant here so this is the next.  Those of you who are amassing a
list of obscure titles should sit down before you read this one.
Hope you enjoy it,

-Bill


ANTHONY REMEMBERS SOME OF THE UNRELEASED SONGS THAT HE AND MIKE RUTHERFORD
WROTE TOGETHER IN THE LATE SIXTIES, WITH A LITTLE JOGGING OF THE MEMORY BY ALAN HEWITT.

To coincide with the forthcoming release of the "Echoes" CD and Lyric book,
I thought it might be interesting to ask Anthony about the remaining songs
from his work with Mike which he has mentioned to us on previous occasions
and in the introduction to the Lyric book itself, so here goes...

In the introduction to the Lyric book you mentioned a few of the unrecorded
songs from the period where you were working with Mike. You actually give
the titles of some of them which were Rebecca, What is the Meaning,
Farewell, Queen Bettine, and Beside the Water's edge.. What can you
remember about those songs?

Absolutely nothing! (laughter). Queen Bettine was written about someone
called Bettine who wasn't a queen, I mean she was a queen in the sense that
she was female. It was during the very early and idealistic days. I think
it was written before some of the more sad pieces like Stranger and Lucy:
An Illusion and it was all very idealistic and full of hippy platitudes. I
think it was the first song I wrote where we were exploring some of these D
tunings where we had the top string tuned down to D which gave a certain
character that was exciting to those pieces. I remember a lot of us
gathered that winter at Philip Black's place, he was a relative of Lord
Grade who had two big houses and the whole crew of us used to go and stay
at one of them. That was also where I met Harry Williamson and it was
through Richard McPhail who left Charterhouse and went to Millfield, and
that's where he met all these new people. Queen Bettine came from that
period where we were playing this D tuning and Iyrically it's fairly basic
with things like, 'Now is the time to be free/Now is the time to be
loved/Now is the time to speak out.. I think that was the chorus in fact.
Rebecca was late '68 really. I can't remember much about that one actually,
it was just early experimental days with Mike and two twelve strings. What
Is The Meaning was definitely a duo with Mike. That one had a slightly Burt
Bacarach chorus; it had a slightly sort of commercial chorus rather than
some of the others which didn't really have choruses like pop songs but did
have a little bit of a sort of major seventh chord-type background, that
was quite nice. That must have been that post love affair period really;
wondering why and wherefore. Beside the Water's Edge was a bit later I
think and there's nothing really special to tell about that one. I did all
these songs with Mike and there's that legendary tape from the late summer
of '69 which has been lost which had these songs on it. That was the one
where people were saying; 'Oh you should be doing your own thing, why don't
you do a Moody Blues..?' which various people said to us. That was the time
where we used to get our knuckles rapped by Tony Banks because we used to
stay up late after the official group rehearsals were finished and we used
to stay up all night finishing this stuff and then we'd stagger into group
rehearsals the next morning and the others wouldn't be very pleased.
Farewell was another one from that time that actually did have a great
atmosphere playing with Mike. It had a long instrumental outro bit and I
did a twelve string solo whereas the others were mainly songs without any
real instrumental freedoms. This one had an instrumental section that used
to go round and round and it was quite good actually.

There were two others as well, which I asked Mike about, although he didn't
remember them. They were Lady of the Locket and the Pretender's Lament.

They were later actually. Lady of the Locket was inspired by Mike's former
girlfriend. It was probably the first of these sort of magnum opus type of
songs and to be honest it didn't really work. It was very experimental but
it was quite complicated and it had a lot of sections to it. I think that
that was probably more of an exploration of twelve string chords than an
interesting song. That was from
l9

1972, it was quite a long time after leaving the group. Pretender's Lament
was from around the same time and I seem to remember that because Richard
Scott was re-sitting an A level which he needed to get in order to get into
York University. I still had my notes from my A levels so I gave him some
advice and he actually passed the exam. I must have come up against Perkin
Warbeck or Lambert Simnel, so that was inspired by the historical context.

Do you still have recordings of these songs or are they irretrievably lost?

Sadly I do. On The Pretender's Lament there was a lot of pretense !
(laughter). There was some pretend singing really, a kind of free
vocalization with an approximation of the notes. I had a big writing phase
then which was mainly piano pieces which I played to Mike. Of course that
was where the piano piece that became Take This Heart originated from and
we decided that that had something that we could develop in it. Yes, these
things have been taped but they aren't very good. It's the sort of thing
where you can listen to about 30 seconds of it and then it goes into the
Dark Ages! I think that the best ones have already been recorded, the songs
that had the naivetŽ of the time which was their strength and they are not
over the top. I think the rest are ones that are simply not good enough
really. What is the Meaning has quite a nice chorus but I think it would
seem a bit too Sixties somehow. I did try Farewell as one of the extra
tracks for the CD re-issues but it didn't work. Although one or two of them
were written very personally like Stranger, most of them were very much duo
songs in terms of both the emotion and the guitar timbre. Farewell was
particularly like that and I tried doing the solo thing at the end with one
guitar and it just didn't work at all.

Have you ever thought of recording the original version of Little Leaf?

Well not with the chorus of 'Bury my sorrow in fields of tomorrow...'!!  I
think I would have to draw the line there although the verse was quite
sweet actually. Of course if Genesis decided to get back together and
record some golden oldies then I suppose it would sound OK. There was
another song called Darkly Shone The Night but that was so grisly that I
can't even remember that one! Queen Bettine would be the one where I could
have fun because it was Beatle-ish and it reminds me of a very "up" period.
Lyrically it's dead naive but it might be worth a try.


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