Terry Reid

Terry Reid inspires as much reverence among music aficionados as the likes of Gram Parsons or Free’s Andy Fraser, the three making up some sort of lost triumvirate of enigmatic musicians who made their mark and then disappeared. Since releasing his debut single as a teenager in 1967, Terry has run in the same circles as rock greats Cream, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, Joe Walsh and Crosby Stills & Nash – even if his name does not spark the same immediate recognition. The story most often told about Terry is usually spun as “the one that got away” – in 1969, he declined an offer to join Jimmy Page in the New Yardbirds, a group which eventually conquered the world as Led Zeppelin.

Terry Reid has enjoyed a career spanning almost forty years – from his teen years in the London music scene, to touring America with the Stones and Cream and releasing a series of albums that, depending on which side of the fence you were standing on, were either brilliant or fell frustratingly short of their mark. Reid’s performances at major festivals like Isle of Wight and Glastonbury were lauded by fans and critics alike. Around 1980, Reid seemed to drop out of the race. His only recorded work for the next decade would be sporadic guest appearances. Terry returned with another album in 1991, and has spent most of the last fifteen years gigging more regularly both in the US. 2001 brought a welcome return to his native England. In recent years his catalog has been reissued on CD, he had three songs featured on a major movie soundtrack in 2005, and 2006 brings news that Terry is working on a brand new album. The Fuze tracked down Terry Reid at his home in Los Angeles to talk about his new album, his old friends and to take a mental journey back inside Abbey Road’s famous Studio B. Meet ‘Superlungs’ himself, Terry Reid.

Hello Terry!

Hello mate! How are you doing?

I’m great. How are you?

I’m doing good, yeah.

Well, I feel like we’re old mates now. We’ve been talking all week, setting this up. (laughs)

Yeah, right! (laughs) I’ve just been so busy at the moment. I’ve been working on trying to start an album in about 3 or 4 weeks.

Oh, great!

So I‘m figuring all the songs out, and every time I sit down and start going through them, I’ve got all these songs. I’m not boasting. I wish I had about 15, but it’s more like 60. I’m not sure which ones I want to do. The way I want to do it is to go in the studio and just put as many tunes down as I can in a couple of weeks.

Just to see how they kind of evolve and what they turn into?

Yeah, see how they evolve rather than that principle of, “Oh well, we’ve got these tunes for a concept album.” I don’t want to do that. I want to cut all these tunes and then see how they come out, you know?

Well, that’s some exciting news. We’ll talk a little bit about that today as well.

Yeah.

I want to start off not by pleading ignorance at this point, but I do want to be frank. I first heard your music last year when I saw the film ‘The Devil’s Rejects’.

Oh yeah, right.

The film featured your songs “Seed of Memory”, “To Be Treated Right” and “Brave Awakening”. So, I’m a recent convert myself.

Oh, well, that is recent.

And, I was fascinated. As luck would have it, my local Tower Records happened to have not only the soundtrack album, but the CD release ‘Superlungs’, which I also want to talk about here. So, let me ask you this - how often do you run into people who are just hearing you for the first time, perhaps from a soundtrack or compilation?

Well, that’s the first time we did one. ‘Seed of Memory’, which those tunes come from, Graham Nash produced with me. There’s another one called ‘River’.

Right.

And then there’s another one called ‘Rogue Waves’, which is a heavier thing. You know, it’s more rock and roll stuff. And then…I’m losing bloody count now (laughs) Then there’s another one called ‘The Driver’, with Trevor Horn, which isn’t out except in England. That’s a whole bells and whistles number. That’s different, more of a techno thing, you know. And then there’s the first two albums, which were ‘Bang Bang’ and ‘Terry Reid’. Over time, it’s funny - I bump into like guys in groups now that are coming up, and they all seem to have these records. Over the years, this keeps happening. It’s very flattering, actually.

It’s got to be gratifying.

There’s not a lot I can say. There’s a bunch of different people that sort of get behind it. So, it’s nice to know that some of the songs stand the test of time, you know.

Well, I was going through Amazon, and a couple of the other sites just to see what other people had to say about you this week as I was getting ready to do this, and I doubt that you would admit it if you ever had, but I’ll ask anyway - have you ever gone to Amazon.com and maybe searched for what other people have said, or read your own reviews?

No. I don’t really get into that. I can only imagine what they’d say. (laughs)

There are actually wonderful testimonials from fans old and new alike. There’s one that I came across earlier this week. This person says ‘I’ve only recently become aware of Terry Reid. I was watching Devil’s Rejects and really liked the songs on the soundtrack and decided to try and find some of his stuff.’ It goes on to say ‘Boy am I glad I did. Seed of Memory has not left my CD player since I got it. Every song is good. I just wish I was around when his music came out initially. I’m 29. Seed of Memory was released the same year I was born. Why can’t today’s music sound as cool as this?’

Wow!

I read tons of reviews that say basically the same thing.

Well, I never…that’s very humbling, you know? Well, when we put the album out, it didn’t really get a shot at the game. The company that we did the record with, ABC Records, went bankrupt. They went belly up two weeks after we put the record out. I mean, I wish they declared the bankruptcy before we put the record out, because it was out in the field, and that first two weeks is very crucial to get feedback from people in radio, to see if you get a response or if you’re going anywhere. We were starting to get all this response all over the boards because when you listen to the album, this song’s going that way, and then this song’s going a different way. We were even getting country and western picks from it. But they didn’t press it. So, it just got stuck in limbo there, until MCA bought the rights to it. And then they didn’t release it either, and it was folded into Universal. And then Elvis Costello’s record label - he seemed sort of interested in it. They released it in England, and released it as an import to here (America) – or an export from there, whichever way you want to look at it. So, for a few minutes, it was out on that label. And then somebody told me it’s gonna come out again, you know. So, it’s funny with those things, that they have it coming out. I’ve been touring a lot through England here the last year. I went over twice, and it was amazing. It was amazing. It was incredible. We did so well. We played Ronnie Scott’s jazz club in London. That’s been there forever, since the 40’s or something, you know. We did real well. I played and went through a lot of the songs. We did a different set every night, but I’d end up doing a lot of the songs from ‘Seed of Memory’, you know, ‘cause they seem to stand up.

Is it hard to muster enthusiasm for material that came out 30 years ago, when someone walks up to you after a show, and it’s brand new music to them?

No, I enjoy playing the songs ‘cause I don’t play them all the time. I mean, I think you’ll find that a lot of different artists and a lot of bands, they’ll - (laughs) – they’ll put out a record, and it’s the one they hate, and it becomes number one! And they go “Oh no!” And then they’ve got to play it every night for the next 10 years, and they end up killing each other! (laughs).

Well, yeah, you read interviews and stuff where people say the song that became the big hit was the one that they recorded in five minutes, the one they didn’t care about.

Yeah, they hate it. Not usually, but you know what I mean.

Right, I’m always reading that an artist doesn’t usually have the same choice of single as the record label.

It‘s “Oh, not that one!” But that’s the way it goes. Actually, it’s a gift in the first place. When you make an album, you always say “I’m gonna finish it, and it’s gonna be done in two weeks. That’s it.” Three months later, you’re still in there. Sometimes that can happen, but you spend a lot of time on the preparation and making sure it’s all right, and then you just don’t want to hear it anymore for a while, right? Cause it’s coming out your ears, literally. I always look at it like “Ok, so when you’re finished, it’s not yours anymore.” Because the whole reason you’re making it is to give it away in the first place. It’s not yours, really. It’s yours until you’ve finished it, but once you sign the bill in the studio and say “No, we don’t need tomorrow…” (laughs)…as soon as you sign off, it’s not yours anymore. Just give it away. You have a lot more fun doin’ it that way, because then you can listen to what people think about it, even if it’s 20 years after. God willing, they would actually still listen to it, you know.

So, does it keep the music fresh for you knowing that it’s reaching new ears all the time?

Uh, yeah. I have a terrible way of sort of - I can never really play the tunes exactly the same way twice. I‘ve learned, I think to say “Terry, don’t get too clever. Don’t make it into a disco song, you know.” The way I wrote the songs, they are very free form, anyway. They are not set in stone, so the lyric I’ll vary sometimes, according to an audience. According to what that meaning is, I’ll turn it around a different way, or maybe change a lyric on the spot to sort of make it, you know, like you’re talking to people.

Well, personally, if I want to hear the album version, I’ll go listen to the album. Some people aren’t as relaxed about stuff like that.

Well, there’s that, but I like to sort of be free with it when we play. So, I can always get inside the song, and it’s always fun to me. I love playing them. As long as I get right through the thing and don’t get lost.

Sometimes those performances of songs can turn the song into something that later on, you wish would have been the original recorded version.

Oh, dear. Don’t say that. “You should have heard the third take”. (laughs) Yeah right. I know that one. I’ve been through that before, early on. You’re doing a record, and it’s like “Ok, next.” And you go “Can’t I do it one more time? I’m just getting used to it.” There’s a lot of these new songs, the songs I’m gonna do for this next album, I really like them. I’ve been playin’ a lot of them on stage and they’ve been really natural. They’ve been going real well. When you’re playing to an audience where people know the songs, that’s one thing. Then when you throw in a new one, they go “Uh oh…what’s this all about? I didn’t pay money to hear a bunch of new crap. I want to hear some old stuff.” I’ve been very lucky with these new songs. They seem to have gone really well. They just fell right in with the other songs. So, I was a bit surprised in England. We were received so well. I’m still in a bit of shock, really.

So of your newer songs, you’ve been hesitant about them, but you tried them out anyway – and then people really latched onto them?

Yeah, you’ve got it dead right. You know, you are saying “Oh, well I like this song, so I’ll give it a try. And if it’s not going too well, we’ll cut the solo and we’ll half the second verse. Get out before the ship sinks.” But yeah, some of them go down a storm. Some of the simple things have just gone down a storm, you know? You just never know.

Most of your back catalog has resurfaced on CD in the past few years. ‘Superlungs’ is the first collection to be made widely available here in the states as far as I know. And ‘River’ is out there, too. How involved were you in helping put together the new ‘Superlungs’ disc?

Well, I’ll tell you how it started. It started with a really, really nice fellow who works with EMI in London. And he works there at Abbey Road, you know, the studio where the Beatles wrote and recorded. Some of those things I recorded, I recorded at Abbey Road. And when that was all going on, it was nuts down there. I mean, The Beatles had holes drilled in the wall with cables going all over this beautiful Georgian building. You walk in, and it looks like a war room in the Second World War. They drilled a hole through the wall where there’s a beautiful Renoir painting on the wall. Underneath there’s four like snake cables coming out of the wall with duct tape around them. Well, you know, they modified everything. I mean, I wouldn’t stop them from doing it, put it that way. So it was an interesting time for being there. And I worked with other people like Tom Jones’ orchestra and Johnny Irish’s conductor, and it was really, really a lot of fun. So, Tim Chatsfield, by association, still had all these outtakes. The English version has a lot more different ones on it, of things that were never released. They were actually before I went with EMI in England. So, I get a phone call one day, sitting here like when you just called me. And he goes “Hi Terry, it’s Tim.” I said “Tim?” “It’s Tim Chatsfield from EMI. Well, we’ve been going through the locker. We found a whole bunch of your songs, and boy are they good.” And I’m going “What??” So, he starts naming off some songs to me. And I’m going “Two of them, I don’t recognize.” He says “Do you remember this one?” I say “Yes, I remember that.” See, before you release something you usually just have a box title - something to recognize it by ‘cause the song doesn’t have a full title yet. Because then it was still vinyl, you didn’t want a name that was four feet long. To make it all fit, you’d sometimes abbreviate, so you never got a title set in stone. So, I just say, oh well rather than decide that now, I’ll just put…so, one of the songs was just called “Fish”. I ended up calling it “Summer Seawinds”. And he says “Remember that song, Fish?” And I go “No! (laughs) What the hell is that?” “Oh, it’s a wonderful song.” I said “Well, hum a few bars.” He said “Well you must know it. You wrote it.” I said “I’m usually pretty good at this memory game, but you’ve got me.” So, he plays it on the phone, right? I said “Well, I’m glad you like it. That’s called Summer Seawinds.” He goes “Oh!?” I said “It’s a box title.” So this goes on and on, and I’m thinking to myself “Why is he calling me from Abbey Road to play me a bunch of songs?” He said “How would you feel about us putting an album out, Terry? Cause we’ve all agreed that these are great, and these should come out now.” I said “Oh, that’s great! I thought we were just having Spot the Tune here.” So, the next thing I know, he sends me the paperwork, everything else. They do a really good job with a whole bunch of pictures, which is very funny in that album. You’ve got the folder in there when I was young, right?

Right.

I was like seven years old, you know. Oh dear. So, they do a whole retrospective thing, which is really nice. He’s such a nice fellow. He came to the gig we just did in London at Ronnie Scott’s, so we finally got to meet him. He’s standing there, and he says “I’m Tim Chatsfield.” So, we put the whole thing together on the phone. He kept sending me CD’s for approval, and the mixes were great. EMI and Abbey Road. That must be one of the best studios I’ve ever worked in.

Well, that’s why it’s got the reputation it has.

Yeah, it’s also for everybody. I mean, the Beatles, well we know them. The sound of those early Beatles records - some of the things, I can hear the air. Things like “Til There Was You.” Studio B in Abbey Road. It’s got a sound to it. Like the old Columbia Studios in New York, which is not there anymore. Well, Abbey Road is still there. So, the funny thing is I talked to Tim and I said “I can’t find a studio that sounds any good, Tim.” I said, just joking, “Gosh, it looks we’re gonna have to come back to Abbey Road.” I can’t imagine what it costs now. And he says “Oh, there’s no problem there. You know, you’re more than welcome.” I went “Oh, what an idea! I’m glad he thought of that!” (laughs). He said “No problem, Terry. I’m sure we can work it out.” So keep your fingers crossed. I’ve got mine crossed here. At least we’re doing another tour and going to Europe doing some things. But, before we start doing all that nonsense everywhere, I’ve been dying to just go in there with a guitar and sit in that studio again and cut a couple of tracks. Or 20.

Wow, how great would that be!

Well, it’s there, and Tim is the nicest guy in the world. This is the thing. He said “Oh, I don’t think we have a problem.” Well, that’s where he’s at. He runs Abbey Road. So, I suppose if you are going to talk to anybody about it, he’s the guy, right?

Go straight to the top!

But we started off with me trying to identify my own tunes, which got me going a little. I thought he was pulling me leg. But they’re real gentlemen there, you know.

And obviously he’s in your corner.

Yeah, and the funny thing was the other guy, I think it’s Matt - anyway, it was such a long time; I was like 15-16 when I started there - the engineer that did the remixes, the mastering of this new one, he did the mastering of the original ones when I recorded them!

Oh, wow. How’s that for déjà vu?

I couldn’t believe it. And he still works at EMI. He did a lot of the Beatles stuff, too, you know. He’s got a good job right?

Right.

That kept him busy. It was amazing. So, I had to rap with him on the phone a bit, too. And he says “Yes, Terry, I remember when you came in…” and all this. He was telling me a story of the first time I came in there, which I sort of remember. He tweaked my memory. I’d come down the first day to London to record and sing. I didn’t know what I was gonna do. I had a band. I was in a band. He said “No, just come down and we have some musicians we want you to play with.” So I come down, go to studio B, and meet John Birch, the actual producer who I thought I was working with. He produced Manfred Mann and a lot of people like that. And he was involved with Tom Jones a lot, too. So, I walk into the studio, figuring we might be in there. It’s this big room. It’s enormous, and you probably remember when they did “All You Need Is Love”, when the Beatles had this big party with balloons and everything, right?

Right.

That was Studio B. It’s enormous. So, I put my head in there, and there’s this whole band and an orchestra and horns and Big Jim Sullivan, a guitar player who’s famous in England, sitting there. And I said “Oh, excuse me guys. (laughs) I probably got the wrong studio.” So, I go into the booth to watch, and John Birch says “Well, go on. Get in there. We’re gonna start.” And I go “Where?” And he said “Well, that’s your band.” I said “All of them guys? (laughs) You’ve got to be kidding! There’s like 30 guys in there!” And I almost had a breakdown. I’d never played with an orchestra before, and I didn’t know quite how that all sort of went. It was a bit more than I could handle. The band was a lot. But it was a funny thing. And this guy, he’s telling me on the phone he remembers the look on my face when he said “That’s your band.” He said “You just looked like you went white.” But some of them tracks were that day when we first went there. Like “Better By Far”, things like that, you know. Funny, isn’t it? When someone tweaks your memory, you remember it just like yesterday.

Stuff that you haven’t thought about for years, all of a sudden comes rushing back.

In fact, I was trying to forget it all them years! (laughs) I was trying not to remember that. I mean, walk on stage and remember that one, you just might run out! It was funny. We started backward, and then I recorded there for quite a while. But that’s how the album happened, anyway. Then EMI America re-released this one, which is sort of half of the other one. If you can buy import, see if you can get a hold of the English one, mate. There’s a lot more songs on that one.

And that one is already out as well?

Yeah. That’s been out in England for quite a while, yeah. Well, what they did is EMI America used some of the outtakes. They used a bunch of the ones from the two first albums, and two or three outtakes. I think it was about five, six outtakes on the English one. It is available in England, with all of them on.

I’ll have to check that out. Amazon’s got all that stuff available.

Yeah. You could click on there and there it is. Boom. It’s got a different cover. It’s got me with a silly haircut. Me looking behind a wall or something.

The songs on the ‘Superlungs’ collection are all pre-1970. Would you like to have seen the collection span more of your catalog, or do you think they are gonna go forward a few years on the next one?

Umm, yeah. I mean, I think they’re just dealing with EMI or CBS Records tracks. They’re not gonna go to the next ones. There’s plenty from the two albums. Maybe they’re gonna use different ones from the two albums. They’re not gonna go to ‘Seed of Memory’ and things like that ‘cause they’d have to license through another company. They’re not gonna do that. It’s usually hard to do that, you know what I mean? The best or the worst of, over all that time. It’s very complicated doing that. I was talking to Graham Nash [of Crosby, Stills & Nash] when they did their big four-CD compilation of all their stuff. That was a nightmare for that guy. He traveled halfway around the world trying to find out where all the masters were. They were all over the place. But that was all with Atlantic [Records], so all this stuff was recorded from there. It was just a matter of which studio locker were they all in. The thing was, there was a big fire that they had at the studios in New York. I’m not sure which studios Graham told me it was, but they had a big fire, and they lost a lot of tapes. A lot of people did. The thing was, David Crosby always had a way of storing - David was the one that always said “Always make a safety copy. Always make safety’s and keep them somewhere else.” And everybody would go “Oh no, that means we’ve gotta sit here for another few hours to make a safety.” No, we’ll get somebody to make a safety exactly and check it. So, it was really good. Thank God he did because when it came to the ‘Déjà vu’ album, they only found out - get a load of this - they were all on pins and needles when they played it. They only had one master multi-track of all the tapes - Dave’s one copy. The other one went bye-bye, went up in smoke.

Holy cow!

I know! He had to be sittin’ there with a big grin on his face. “Told ya, make a safety.” That’s typical David. He’s a wiz, I tell ya. He’s brilliant. Graham says when they got there, “I kept looking at it, and when somebody would go near it, it was like ‘Don’t touch it!’ ”

Don’t even breathe on it! Don’t even look at it!

Don’t look at it, right! (laughs)

The story of your involvement with the genesis of Led Zeppelin is a time worn story...

Yeah. I see quite a bit of Robert [Plant] and them. When we were just in England, Jimmy Page showed up at the gig.

Oh did he?

And he sat there and laughed his head off the whole way through. I was cracking jokes the whole time. I can’t necessarily say, you know, “Hey Jimmy!” He was ten rows in front of me, sitting across the table. It was like just a club. And rather than get attention to him, and then everybody bug him, I let him have a night off. It was dark, and nobody really saw him there.

Yeah, he wouldn’t be laughing anymore if you pointed him out to everyone.

Exactly. That wouldn’t be funny, would it? So, he had a good time. He stayed all evening. Afterwards, we were having a good ‘ol time.

That’s good.

So, we started years ago. See, we all came up together, really. I mean Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, the Yardbirds…a long while ago, like in ‘65. In ’65, I toured with him with the Stones - when he was with the Yardbirds. Jeff and Jimmy were both in the group then. So, I’ve known Jimmy for quite a long time, and then when he was putting a group together, we were talking about it, and he was talking to a bunch of different singers. He wanted me to do it. He wanted Steve Marriott to do it. He wanted a bunch of people. The thing was he really wanted to put it together and I came up with the idea of Robert and John Bonham. And hey, I must admittedly say, it worked. Boy, did it work!

Yeah, no kidding.

See, that’s why I keep hearing about it. It’s like “Why the hell did you do that?” And I’m goin’ “I don’t know. It just sounded like a good idea at the time.”

Well, people were forming new groups all the time. Nobody had any way of knowing what would happen later.

I could tell you a couple of other suggestions that didn’t work. At that time, everybody was putting groups together. There were a lot of suggestions that sometimes we’d say “Oh, that would never happen”, and it did. Or we’d say “Oh, that would be incredible.” Blind Faith was the one that always got me. You know, it seemed like the perfect group. Steve [Winwood], Eric [Clapton] and Ginger [Baker]. I think it lasted for ten minutes, before they all started arguing. It’s hard enough playing with in a group with Ginger in the first place. So it’s funny, you put groups together thinking it would be a great idea, but it doesn’t necessarily mean so.

Yeah. Well, every time your name is mentioned, it seems like the Zeppelin story goes hand in hand with it.

Like I say, we still see a lot of each other. Me and Jimmy were talking over there about how we should get together and maybe do something. I mean, hey, you never know. Any given time, we could do something. So, who knows?

People usually talk about it as a tale of bad luck or missed opportunity, but I get the impression from reading other interviews with you that you don’t really see it that way.

Oh, no. No, I don’t think bad luck. That’s how people perceive things. It’s like “Well, I would have done it.” But, you know, they didn’t ask you. It’s none of your bloody business. Stay out of it. Not only that, they don’t know what they’d be biting off in the first place. I mean, it was no easy row to hoe, I’ll tell you that.

Well, what were your thoughts when you heard Zeppelin’s first album? Was that something that you could have heard yourself doing, looking back at it?

Well, see that’s the thing. I didn’t look at it that way ‘cause Robert’s a good friend of mine. And I got on with John [Bonham, Led Zeppelin’s drummer] real well, as well. And I was just happy for them. It was great ‘cause they were in a band in Birmingham that was knocking around, and suddenly - BAM! - we all know when you’ve got something that’s really going on. It was just as much as a shock to Jim and all of them that it was really happening. John Paul Jones - I’ve known him for years – was with Donovan. He was Donovan’s bass player and he did a lot of other things, but he wasn’t your first heavy rock choice, you know. He’s a very, very good musician. And it’s just amazing how he fit that band like a glove. It was perfect. Everybody just fit together right. I always say if you get a group that really works, don’t try and explain it. Don’t try and figure it out, because it will ruin it.

Just enjoy it.

Yeah, exactly. ‘Cause anybody in the band starts to say, “Well, the reason that we play so well…” uh-oh, here we go (laughs). It’s not gonna be the same thing anymore. You don’t stand and figure it out while it’s happening. Just shut up, and put the hammer down. It’s rock and roll!

What can you tell me about the concept behind the cover of these the ‘Superlungs’ CD? It bears more than a passing resemblance to Led Zeppelin’s first album cover, from the photo and the title font, to the orange photo on the back.

Uh well, that wasn’t my choice. That was EMI. I don’t know. Actually, I never picked up on that. I know what you’re saying. The grey and the orange, yeah yeah.

If you hold them right next to each other, and they’re almost the same. Except you don’t look like a zeppelin. (laughs)

I’m not on fire, right! I’m not going down in smoke. No, I think that’s just the art department, but actually I didn’t pick up on that.

Well, I think it’s a clever nod to the story most often told about you.

Yeah, it’s a sort of innuendo…yeah, that’s pretty cool, actually.

So, you’re comfortable with that?

Oh yeah. I’m comfortable with everything. I mean, you can’t design press, you know.

Well, what was funny was when I picked it up at Tower Records, I’m holding it and I’m looking at it as I popped it into the CD player, and I’m thinking to myself “Damn, this looks so familiar. Where have I seen it before?”

Yeah, it never dawned on me. EMI America did that album cover. The one in England, me and Tim Chatsfield were very involved in. He would say “Do you like this picture? Do you like that?” And in the end, I said “Look Tim, you take the ball. Whatever you want to put out. I like all of what you do, and then quite frankly, I’m very flattered that you are gonna do this retrospect thing. Hey, I like this, this and this - you pick the ones. Leave me out of it. It will all work for me.” And he said “You know, I just wanted to run it by you.” If it was a new album, that’d be a different deal. I mean, you want to have control of what you are putting out new. But on re-releases and things like that, you have to let the company feel involved in the thing. Because it’s their piece of merchandise, and you have to let them go with it. Because it’s the past, it’s not like representing me, necessarily. It’s all good.

I think it’s a clever cover. I think it’s a striking cover, and I think you kind of look like Jeff Beck on the front there.

Yeah, there you go. Oh, he’d love that.

Now, your album ‘River’ came out at a crucial point in your career, and you had extricated yourself from entanglements with Mickey Most, and you moved to the states, and yet the album seemed to herald a softer, gentler Terry Reid.

Right.

Was that intentional? Did you decide, well I’m gonna tone down my rock sound here a little bit?

No, no no. See, I never intentionally did anything intentional. (pauses) That sounds silly, but yeah…

I get what you mean.

I hate to be intentionally doing things, you know. Like this next album I’m gonna do, I’m not gonna be intentional about anything. Actually, ‘River’ is when I started to do things that I used to do before being in a rock band and doing Madison Square Garden. I did that song “July” – off one of those first albums - once at Madison Square Garden, on the Cream tour. You’ve got to believe how hard that is to sell a Samba in the middle of 50,000 people that were all out of their brains! It was not an easy sell. It was like playing “All I Have To Do Is Dream” at a Mohammad Ali fight. That’s not gonna go. I pulled it off, but rock and roll is what was desired. So as we got into ‘River’, I was doing a lot of things, which I do now. I always have leaned toward Latin Sambas and things. It’s always been a love of mine. It’s like ballads - I’ve always had a sort of way doing that. So, that album, I started to do just basically what I wanted to do. A bit of everything. Different kinds of things. You see a lot of different colored albums like that now.

The album has two distinct halves. The first half is more rocking than the second half.

Right. I made half of it in England. And then everybody started going off and doing things. [Drummer] Alan White worked with Yes. David Lindley worked with Jackson Browne because that record “Doctor My Eyes” took off, and that was a number 1. So I figured “Well, hang on a second here. I’m the only one in England. There’s something wrong with this picture.” So, I took off. I mean, that’s what I wanted to do, but we had this band there in England - David [Lindley] and Lee Miles, a bass player who I still play with now. They’re from America. Lee said “Well, man, why don’t we go the States?” I said “Good idea, Lee. Good idea.” Especially when he says it’s 80 degrees and we’re standing there in the rain, you know. I’m going “Lee, there’s something about that. You’ve got something there.” That was it. I just split.

You’ve been here since ‘71?

Yeah.

35 years!

I’m a bit used to it now.

It’s growing on you?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I live in part desert now, so I’ve really gone bananas. Now I feel like I’m living in Bonanza. It’s beautiful up here.

Well, you’ve been holding court out there in LA for years now, and you’ve got friends that stop by and join you at gigs now and then.

Yeah! Oh yeah, that thing is The Joint down in town. That turned into a hoo-ha. I mean, so many different people would stop by. It got around to where we were doing it every Monday, and I mean, everybody. I couldn’t believe it, I was singing “Catch the Wind” with Donovan one night, who I started off with, with Mickie Most. And we’d always been such good friends. Obviously we don’t see each other that much, but we had such a good time that night. He stayed all night. He and I were talking away - oh, it was just fantastic!

I’ve actually been to The Joint. I went and saw a young guy named Richie Kotzen there.

Oh yeah?

Yeah, so I know where that is. It’s very intimate. I’m gonna have to try and catch you at one of your shows down there.

We haven’t been doing it lately. We’re gonna start doin’ it again in a while, but I’m not sure when, because I want to do this album, and then I’ve got, you know, other commitments doing things. So, I laid off it for a while just to give it a rest.

Well, I’ll keep my eyes open.

Yeah, I’ll print it when we do it.

Now, I also saw a clipping from ‘93 at the Coach House when you were part of The Flew with Joe Walsh.

Oh, yeah!

And it dawned on me that, being the pack rat that I am, I think I even have a concert flyer from your Las Vegas appearance at the Huntridge Theatre.

Ooh, yeah. I remember that one!

Was that group - or any of the other groups you’ve had, for that matter - with Mick Taylor and Brian Auger, and the like, ever meant to be anything more than a passing fancy?

With Joe, you never know what anything is. (laughs)

Was there a plan to record or to do something further with it?

Well, not really. Me and Mick have always talked about recording something, but then Mick has got his own thing, and he’s always all over the world doing things. We went to Hong Kong together a couple of times. These people are just great to play with. And Joe, I knew the Eagles thing was brewing. It was just before they got it all set down on stone or on paper. So, they were negotiating and they were figuring all that out. And Joe, you know, wanted to get out and play. Rick Rosas, the bass player, had been playing with Joe for a long while anyway, and Joe called me, and he says “Come on, come and sing with us. We’ll put this band together. We’ll call it The Flew.” God, here we go. Good ‘ol Joe comes up with a name. He said “Nobody’s used that name.” I said “You know, I don’t think they ever will.”

There may be a reason they didn’t use that name.

Yeah, he says it’s something that nobody wants (laughs). He’s the funniest guy. He’s a lovely guy, Joe.

Well, what are people gonna say after the gig? Hey, did you catch The Flew the other night?

Did you catch The Flew! (laughs) He’s so corny, he’s great. I tell you what, man, he’s one of the best bloody guitar players I’ve ever played with. We sometimes would do a song. We’d be in the middle of a song, and he’d be playing something - I know what he’s doing. He’s playing something that’s another song, a Beatles song, or something. Next thing I know, I go “Ok, you want it? We’ll do it.” So, I go into the song and he’s right there. We’d play until everybody comes into the song, and he comes back to what we were doing. I mean, the audience is in the middle of that song going “Did they just do a Beatles song or not? What happened there?” And we’d take risks. It was out of control.

That’s flying by the seat of your pants.

Oh, absolutely. You never knew. He was tuning up one night, and he uses Paul McCartney’s “Blackbird” to tune up to - to make sure the guitar’s in. Right? And he did it once, and I started singing, and he had the whole audience singing it. It was the Coach House, actually. He had the whole audience singing it. He played the whole song. I’ve never done it in my life. I said to Joe “Do you like that song?” “Never done it before”, but it sounded good. He played the whole thing note perfect. I couldn’t believe it, but he’s a wiz man. Brilliant guitar player.

Has there ever been a point when you thought about moving back to the UK, or maybe that moving from the UK in the first place was a mistake?

Uh, let’s think about that...NO! No, hang on, let me think about it again...absolutely NO! I just was over there just before Christmas, and I’ll tell you, I’d forgotten how cold it gets there when I was a kid standing with short pants at the bus stop. And in the village where I come from, my parents are there, God bless them. Me and me wife went up and stayed there for a few days to see them, and when they go to the store, they drive by that bus stop. It’s so cold, I’m going “Well you didn’t have a decision when you were a kid, but if I had I woulda split then.” Yeah, I love England. I love London. I love going there, but I couldn’t live there. I’m spoiled rotten, I suppose. I don’t like the weather. I love London, though. And where I come from, Cambridge, is beautiful countryside in the summer. But you see, like I say, I’ve been over there twice this year, and now we’re going back in May, so it’s a perfect world, in a sense, to go back and forth.

Are you surprised now and then by some of the people who show up at your gigs?

Oh, are you kidding? Oh man, we played Cambridge on this last tour. There must have been 20 different people that I went to school with. And of course, I know them by name, but of course, we’ve all got a few more years, and then I got to figure out who’s who. It’s always when you look in somebody’s eyes - you know who it is, then.

You end up trying to match up their face with your old high school annual.

It’s like “Oh God, I don’t really know.” I feel bad when I don’t remember, but then after a couple of beers, it’s like we’re all back in the same place again. Then we played Gateshead and Newcastle, and all my father’s family are up there. And about 30 of them all turn up. My Aunt Edna, who’s 80...cousins and second cousins, I mean you can’t believe. They brought the kids and everything. When we finished the gig, I had another room, like a state room. We turned the lights on and we had this whole state room with chairs and tables, so we had a big party there for about two hours after the gig. It was great. Oh, they’re crazy up there, you know. And I’m sort of like the token kid that comes around every now and then.

What about people that come to your shows in LA? Do you get a lot of fans traveling a long ways to see you?

Yeah, yeah. There were a lot of people flying from Chicago and from all over the place. We did BB King’s in New York, and this guy comes up and he says “Man, I really enjoyed that. Boy, I wish I could stay a couple days. I’ve got to fly back in the morning.” I said “Oh yeah? Where to?” He says “I’m going back to France.” I went “France?” He said “I live there.”

That’s the kind of trip I’ll be making this spring to see Gary Moore in the UK. He’s doing a tour with BB King.

Oh wow. Great. Yeah, I know Gary real well.

Do you?

Of course, we all came up together.

That’s amazing. The London scene was bubbling with all kinds of music.

I know BB King real well ‘cause he was on a Stones tour we did. That’s an honor, knowing him.

Who’s been most valuable to you as a producer?

Umm, there’s different ones for different things. I mean, Tom Dowd was a great producer. It was great working with Tom. That was really an experience, because he introduced me to a lot of different musicians that were right for what we were doing. They weren’t necessarily the most popular, but he was a real musician’s musician. With all the people we worked with, it was great to learn how to put certain musicians together. And then working with Graham Nash and Al Schmidt. Al Schmidt engineered that ‘Seed of Memory’. I think ‘Seed of Memory’ was the one that I “got it” more on tape more than any of the others. Everything went so easy. Al Schmidt is a consummate producer/engineer. He just did that Norah Jones album.

Oh, yeah?

Yeah, after all…I mean, I’ve been raving praises about him for years and years, and then suddenly he did the Norah Jones thing, so there’s a character that maintains through fidelity when you’re making records. He worked with Count Basie as well, so he’s just timeless. Working with Graham [Nash] is always great because he’s a buddy of mine, and he treats me really well. Very nice man.

As far as the album that you are going to be recording, are you going to be producing it yourself, or are you going to be working with somebody else?

Well, I’m just in the throes of who’s gonna produce it. I’m not gonna say “It might be this, it might be that.” Until we just get it locked in the next week or so, I don’t want to say, ‘cause it’s a toss up. I mean, I’m co-producing it with somebody, but I don’t want to say who it is until it’s really locked in stone. It’s one of those. But it seems real good, and we’re all on the same page as to what we’re doing. I want to do it real quick, that’s the main thing.

Not just dwell on it.

No hanging around and getting negotiations. I want to just get onto it because we got this tour in May. So, I’d like to have it for when we go and tour.

I know that Otis Redding made an indelible impression on you as a vocalist…

Oh, yeah, on everybody.

…but who inspired you as a guitarist?

Uh, wow. I don’t really know. I’m not really a lead player. Gosh, there’s so many guys. Well, Jimi Hendrix is a lead player. Jeff Beck is a rock and roll guitar player. I think he’s the ultimate guitar player, but I could never figure out what the hell he does. I’d look at him and go “Oh go away. Nobody does that.” He’s a total original. I mean, Jimmy [Page] is a great rock and roll player, you know. They’re all great in their own right when you look at it. They all criticize each other ‘cause that’s, I suppose, artists’ perfection. Jimi Hendrix across the board, I must admit is the most intimately magical guitar player I’ve ever seen. He can play absolutely anything. Anything. It didn’t matter what guitar you give him. He could play anything. And he always loved playing. He was great. He was just amazing.

You play a lot of acoustic guitar; at least I get that impression. Were there any people that you picked up cues from, as far as acoustic guitar players?

One player in particular is Richie Havens. That’s who really taught me to tune in and showed me…and he got me confused as hell. I didn’t know what the hell was going on after I met him, and he kept showing me. He’s a very kind and patient man. And he said “Terry, it’s real easy.” I had no idea what he was doing. You know Richie, when he starts playing, I said “Would you do it a little slower? Just a little slower, like about to a tenth, you know.” But he’d laugh. We had a lot of laughs, and over the years, he’d be like “Well, I’ve got a new thing.” I’m still working on the other one! He’s the most influence as far as like freeform acoustic guitar playing.

Are you as comfortable expressing yourself with your guitar as with your singing?

Yeah. Well it’s a simpatico thing, with acoustic guitar, especially. You’ve got the freedom to be playing one thing and singing something totally different. You have the independence to do that. That’s what I like to do. So, that’s when you become really an accompanist. Instead of playing the same beat as you’re singing, I mean, that’s more of how rock guitar goes. You know, rock guitar you follow your lead, as you might say. But acoustic guitar, you create your own mood within the thing. You’ve got a separation.

Well, you’ve mentioned the new record that you are going to be working on. Do you have a projected kind of time frame this year that you want to have it out?

Yeah, I want it out by May. April or May.

So, going into the summer then…

Yeah. I’ve got all these songs. It’d be great to get this one out. I want to do a real personal album. Just sitting down and playing more. And some unusual things that I want to try, you know.

Here’s hoping that you are able to get that out in that timeframe that you are looking for, and that we see some more live dates.

Yeah.

I’m gonna keep looking. I’m assuming if you play in LA again, the dates will be up on the web site.

Yeah. Well, we’re working on some, you know. I’d like to do some with Elliot Easton again. He was with The Cars. Me and Elliot have been working on some things. There’s a great band there. Just where we do it, I’m not sure. I got a promoter that keeps calling. He’s looking for some different places to do a show. And that would be a lot of fun, so we’ll see what happens.

We like to wrap up with something that really has nothing to do with anything, and that is what is your drink of choice?

My drink of choice? Oh, I don’t know. I’m not really drinking that much. Uh, well, in what genre?

Well, it could be chocolate milk, iced tea, whatever you like to drink. Whatever floats your boat.

I love carrot juice. I love scotch. Not together!

You could be onto a new drink there! (laughs)

No, no. I don’t know how long you’d last with it. Eww, it wouldn’t be very popular. Yeah, but I don’t know. I think I like carrot juice. More than anything, I love carrot juice.

You and Rick Derringer.

Really? I don’t know. I just love it. I could drink it anytime. I could drink it in the middle of the night, or in the morning. My wife goes “Oh, not another one.”

There’s worse things that you could be drinking.

Oh yeah. Done all that, you know. I like a good drink, when the mood hits or something. Usually if I’m working on something late, I’ll have a bevy.

That’s all I have for you, Terry. Anything you want to add?

No, that’s a very good one, man. Thank you very much.

Sure thing. Thanks very much Terry. I enjoyed this.

God bless you.

Take care.

In a bit. Bye.

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