Martin Turner and Keith Buck- photo GibsonBass.com
GibsonBass You’ve gigged with, recorded on and
produced the Blue Bishop’s last record was that you getting back in to the
live scene, playing out again?
Martin Turner I guess you could say that yeah. I
mean not the recording. I got to know Simon the guitar player through a friend
of mine Keith Chapman (the creator of Bob the Builder no less) and we used
to see each other at parties and dinners and stuff, they’d existed for quite
a long time. When their bass player did a walkies or fell over they called
me up and said we’ve got these gigs could you fill in for us you know it would
be a doddle for you. So I had a listen to their music and it seemed pretty
straight forward really.
GibsonBass I remember seeing in my local newspaper
when you guys were playing at the Wavendon Stables and that was I suppose
putting you back on my radar again having been well aware of Wishbone Ash.
Martin Turner Well yeah, one of the dangers is when
you become a studio animal that you do develop tunnel vision sound wise. Everything
becomes more and more kind of mainline you know direct inject and all that
and you can lose the feel for live stuff a bit which I think I was in danger
of doing. So it was appropriate timing and it certainly got me back in to
the whole live thing because they’re quite a scruffy edged band and because
they all had jobs it wasn’t heavy gigging, it’s like now and again and we
could all turn up not having rehearsed count 1, 2, 3, 4 and just plough in
to it and if it was out of tune and loose it didn’t actually matter because
of the kind of music it was. That made it very, very enjoyable for me to keep
going, it certainly got me back playing on stage.
Martin Turners Wishbone Ash - promo shot, 2006. Left to right, Rob Hewins, Keith Buck, Martin Turner, Ray Hatfield (courtesy wishboneash.co.uk)
GibsonBass Did that get your mind back in to thinking
about putting together the current band and to start doing the Wishbone material
again?
Martin Turner No, not really. I had this kind of
gnawing guilt feeling, various people that loved Wishbone asked me when I
was going to get up and do it again. Gary Carter who’d run the fan club and
helped me run the wishboneash.co.uk site was constantly on to me that I must
get a band together. I had always I think like most people involved with the
band thought that Wishbone Ash has to get back together eventually you know
in some form either with Ted or with Laurie or who knows with both of them
and Steve of course. Bearing in mind I’d been constantly putting together
albums, every year I did at least one sometimes more, three or four. I was
always involved in the background you know keeping the thing alive remixes,
re-masterings and odds and sods like the Lost Pearls thing was probably the
last one I did which was reject songs some of which were really, really enjoyable.
At that stage which was what the beginning of 2004 Andy had had those tapes
(I had most of them) and he’d obviously run in to deep water trying to sort
them out. They had various different noise reductions on the tapes and they
didn’t know how to deal with it so I took the project over and sorted it out. It was really difficult to get it done in time to coincide with Andy’s Wishbone
Ash latest tour, I was working flat out on it for weeks. At that point Andy
hit me with a lawyers letter. He must of thought after that album I guess
well there’s not a lot more Martin can do in terms of albums now because it’s
all been done already so alright I’ll see if I can shut his website down and
he had a pop at me, you know sent a lawyers letter saying that they would
like me to surrender the domain name wishboneash.co.uk and secondly undertake
never to use the name again and thirdly pay their, his reasonable costs in
this matter. To which I sent a nice legal lawyers letter back telling him
to fuck off basically, to put it simply.
Martin Turners Wishbone Ash, Eindhoven 16/11/2006 performing
You Rescue Me (click the central arrow to activate video)
I was very upset and outraged by
it, I mean it was the same old stab in the back routine you know and it really,
really pissed me off big time. Then low and behold I told him to get lost
and they then put in a formal complaint to Nominet who are the kind of UK
domain name police. There was a whole dispute procedure that you go through
which ended up being found kind of in my favour, that Andy’s complaint against
me to try and get my website shutdown because it caused confusion with his
was found not to be the case and I was allowed to continue to exist. Through
that whole nasty little affair instigated by Mr Powell I obviously needed
help and it put me in contact with a few people like Martin Darvill who’s
studio we’re sitting in right now. He was just fantastic, I’d only just met
the bloke and I think it really offended his sensibilities the injustice of
it. He offered to help in any way he could and we’ve since got real friendly
and we’re working together and it was like if ever there was a time to get
a band together it’s now. It really had reached the point where it was perfectly
obvious that Andy was making too much money in his own right with just replacing
musicians whenever he needed to and there was no possibility really that any
original Wishbone Ash was going to reform and so therefore the logical next
step for me was to put together my own version of Wishbone Ash.
GibsonBass Had you seen Andy’s Wishbone Ash play?
Martin Turner I’d been along to his gigs like we
all had and I stood there and listened to these pretty much complete strangers
some of them, guys in his band playing music that I’d written and to me the
notes were there but it just had no bloody spirit. It was missing the whole
content, it used to do my head in. Most times I’d kind of head for the bar
and get some alcohol down my neck and then kind of go up, it was nice to say
hi to the guys after the show you know, Andy included until things got rather
ugly. It made complete sense to say to myself well I’ve been doing this Blue
Bishops thing it’s not really a career it was an occasional thing and Wishbone
Ash is what my life has been about as a musician and I finally started to
listen to some of the people around me who were telling me to get my bloody
finger out.
Then low and behold I was doing a Lucy Diamond session and I met
Keith (Buck) the guy who’s become one of my guitar players and we hit it off.
He knew a couple of guys he said would be ideal for the band and I’m like
woah wait a minute you know one guy at a time I’m really fussy about drummers
and all the rest of it but when we finally got together it was just bang.
It was obvious that there was a basis there for a band and it’s only been
what a year/eighteen months since we first put it together but we’ve done
maybe 25 gigs or something. It’s early days but there’s some momentum and
it’s going along great. The band sounds good, I’m thrilled to bits with it.
GibsonBass And you’ve got the new live album (New
Live Dates) obviously.
Martin Turner Yeah, that actually gives us something tangible that we can say ok this is my version of Wishbone Ash and people can listen to it and like it or not. I would have to admit that probably Andy’s treatment of me, which I think was pretty unpleasant, certainly seemed to have an effect of stinging me in to action. Partly because it became so obvious that this little thing at the back of my head which was “well I just know the band will get back together again one day, you know Steve will pop out of the woodwork and Laurie will be up for it, Ted will and we’ll all get back together and it will be wonderful” at that point you know when I realised what I was dealing with it wasn’t going to happen. It took me to the next stage.
GibsonBass.com would like to thank Martin Turner and Graham Fieldhouse for making this interview possible
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