(Promotional interview LP)
Release date 1974

Transcript from the SAHB Mailing List, Lori Reed, Chef. (Thanx to Neil for reposting the interview originally transcribed by Athanasia Vamvaka; cover scan courtesy John Dore'.)

This is Alex Harvey, of The Alex Harvey Band speaking.

If my accent sounds a little bit strange to you, that's because I come from Glasgow, which is in Scotland. Everybody in Glasgow speaks like that. I grew up there in that city and this track, the one you've just heard is a kinda reflection on the streets of Glasgow. It's written in a kind of a pidgin English, with phonetic spelling, the way the kids there scrawl on the walls. It's called Vambo.

Vambo is like between Santa Claus and Captain Marvel, coming to the rescue. Vambo is not a vandal, cos Vambo knows the streets belong to him and you, therefore he must look after it, he lives there.

I'm one of those people, I've lived in the streets. It can be a very warm place to live. People have got heart more than maybe people that don't live in the streets, think they have. Vambo is everybody's secret identity. Vambo is based on my growing up in the street. Vambo is no vandal, he don't cut down trees. Teenagago sunday go, I don't really know what that means but it means something its just, saying if if somebody was not illiterate but inarticulate, that would mean something. That would like, give some form to the language.

You see it's difficult, the English language is difficult. I think it was George Bernard Shaw said that 'If we do not pronounce words the way they are spelled, then our children will spell the words the way they're pronounced', and it makes a lot of sense, it makes it easier to be at school then.

When I was a kid, I never ever though that I would ever have anything like this, a successful band drawing thousands of people into different venues which we're doing now which comes a little as a surprise. I always thought though, that I would be involved in something that would be, that would be big. I always think that I can give something to humanity back, especially these kids I see in the street because the same energy that a kid going wrong and going wild, and being abandoned, if that energy goes in another direction you could have a very useful member of this community. I think this is the same all over the world I should imagine. As far as I was concerned, I had a great childhood, although it was a tough place to live and it was wild, there was warmth like em, where I lived, at that particular time you didn't have to lock your door at all cos that was your part of the street and hem, you know everybody else and nobody would like steal from the man next door. When it began to get difficult was when you moved to somebody else's street and I suppose this was all due to the overcrowding and the wee things that were that anybody who lived in another street became a kind of a, a potential danger. I suppose that led to the gangs that, the gangs meaning clan or tribe, sitting, holding together.

Like the Glasgow slums is, was really when the clans were moved out of the north after the Highland Clean seas. Some of them came down to the city and it became a great sprawling city and they kept the old same traditions of the clan or the family or the gang or whatever. It meant if, if you were in my city you're ok but if you're not, well you might be an enemy. I didn't roam about having no place to sleep.

There was my mum and dad and my brother and myself and we lived in one room. We had a communal toilet, a hundred people used it. So that brings a certain amount of togetherness I suppose. I didn't turn out a criminal, that was I suppose thanks to my, my own folks, like my old man, he always told me to keep out of that side of it. And then it was difficult going to school, you had to run with the pack and I wasn't strong enough not to run with the pack. Anybody that didn't run with the pack had to be very, very, sort of like, intelligent or just superior to the way we were. But we were all scared I suppose.

I think this album represents, definitely represents lots of the way I feel and think about things. The Impossible dream is quite apt because I suppose it is a kind of a an impossible dream. The album represents certain fantasies of mine, comic book fantasies if you like. The next part of it, The Man In The Jar, which is the second part of the Hot City Symphony, represents to me, an impression of New York. Suppose this guy that, that's so involved - that, that he can't get out but everybody can see him. That's why it's called The Man in the Jar.

He's smashing the glass, smashing the glass, because he wants to get out He is a failure, he's not really gettin it together, he doesn't know how to explain it and it's all getting to much for him, so that's why he's smashing the glass.

When we're on stage, we are not so much violent as an act of violence. We go close to the edge. I am the director and we're making a movie every night we're on stage and we're playing the sound track at the same time and the sound track's got to be good, that goes without saying. The band is spot on, they can really do it, anything at all from hard heavy metal to a sophisticated nightclub kind of a thing, but always, it's intense and if we can play intense, we can act on it, I can get triggered from this. If I can feel the song, I suppose I'm really an actor rather than a singer although it's still the truth, I believe it implicitly while being on stage I believe everything we're doing.

The band is composed of Zal Cleminson, he plays electric guitar, amazing electric guitar. Sometimes they call him 'The Green Rubber Man'. He's also an excellent ventriloquist dummy, primarily a comical side kick. He's my feed. See, he's always looking at me, but I don't really know this, and we have little things together.

Chris Glen is on bass. He's kind of a, an anchor. He's a punk really. He's the pretty one.

Hugh McKenna plays the keyboards. He's the real musician, the real sort of brains, that he's been brought up and legitimate musical sources and his cousin is the drummer Ted McKenna, and both of them read each other, like they understand each other.

When I was looking for a band, I wanted a band from my own home town if possible, and I wanted a band that was a unit and that we could get together with like, like, be a family so that we're united against everything because it's a tough business, I don't mean in a physical sense, I mean in a mental sense. We've gotta sit like, and think like one man. We can sit round in a circle and solve most problems. We were very heavy and loud and aggressive and when I found them, it was up to me, using my experience to mold it into something that was more direct and more penetrating and maybe even more simple. I was working in the musical 'Hair' at the time, I was playing guitar in that and I'd written lots of songs and some people came and suggested I should start a band. So, I looked about, asked about and then I heard about this certain band in Glasgow. I went up to hear them and see them and immediately we communicated, we, immediately, right off. Then it was a case of working hard, really working hard. I learnt in Hair, not because I'm speaking to America, but one thing I did learn was working with Americans, their attitude to show business I liked very much. Like, being at rehearsal at nine o'clock meant nine o'clock, it didn't mean five minutes past nine and things like that, you know like professional, discipline and em at first maybe the band thought it was er, being a little bit really serious which, but it was, but they responded to it, marvelously.

The band originally was called Tear Gas which about sums up what they were about. They were like that, something like hand grenade, exploding. Well that was great but we wanted to cover all facets so that we could still throw hand grenades, yet at the same time, supply some kinda hope and er, so, it must of worked because here we are almost two years later, we just finished this our third album and it's gone into the charts.

[Begin side two]

This is Alex Harvey again.

Our songs are for everybody. We get a cross section, from what the press call Teeny Boppers and many Teeny Boppers about eleven, twelve years old, but we also get serious, whatever that means, fans of er all kinds of music, we get some jazz people coming along, and we get theatrical people coming along, and we even have had something in the continent some classical critic whomever, review rock record in his life and it was ours. That's the kind of people we want, but the youngens are the ones are the ones I care most about obviously because, sometimes they get excited and they start swaying about and I tell them not to do that and not to be naughty and yer stay still and they do it.
On the other hand, you can get a band that says, ok we're gonna wreck this place. That's very easy, very, very easy to do that. It's much more difficult to say, we're not gonna wreck this place because the next time there is a rock and roll promotion, it's gonna cost you more money to get in if you cause the damage. It's their property.

Personally, I don't know and I would like to know, what I mean to these kids. I don't know whether I'm supposed to be their uncle or brother or whatever. I only know that I don't lie to them and maybe they can tell that, because they're not as silly as lots of people think they are. They're a whole lot smarter, a whole lot more intelligent . I reckon that every five years, the kids get more intelligent younger, despite what everybody says, I think it's getting better, I don't think it's getting worse. I suppose it's up to whoever listens to the band or sees the band in action to decide what is being represented. I suppose they can identify with the songs because they are all bursts of fantasy, reality and it's about the same problems of the same people that they are thinking about they are growing up with, heroes, semi heroes, gods and demigods, but I don't like to think or intellectualize on that part too much because then I might start to try to be something else. I like to, to keep straight ahead, I worry that they might think I'm some kind of leader and they don't need any leaders. It's up to them they can be their own leader. Blaming leaders, you see that always happens, even with politicians, I don't think it's fair to ask some man to be the leader of a vast country, it's impossible I would say, it's absolutely impossible, the man only becomes a shadow, he's killed before he's dead. It's up to the people themselves, if they always blame somebody else, then they ain't never gonna get any better and, when they build up a hero, they either shoot him or they tear him to pieces or they eat him, or the alienate him or they attack him without fail, it doesn't matter who it is and I don't want that. I'm not a particularly good guitar player, but I, I do know what the tempo is right spot in the middle and em that's why I've worked quite a bit even doing sessions and things. I know kids of sixteen that I would like to slam their fingers in the door cos they're so good. It's natural that they should get better, the standard has never been better than it is now. Some of these kids are absolutely astonishing what they can play. Now they we have achieved some kind of stature, it's inevitable that I won't do anything else but do what I've been doing, I won't take any lessons or anything like that, try to change it because, that could change the whole flora. Anyway, I've got the best band in the world and probably the best guitar player. Sometimes I like get, I like to play a little sometimes but right now on stage I don't play very much at all. I said the best guitar player in the world, Zal Cleminson now he's self taught but he is a phenomenon, he's a freak he doesn't use any formal style at all, he's just got a natural flair to be a guitar player. And on the album, Zal featured mainly on Vambo and in Man in the Jar. The next track, Give my Regards to Sergeant Fury, features our piano player, Hugh McKenna, he plays a kinda Rag Time chorus in the middle. We wrote this one because we all like Vaudeville and everybody is a sort of song and dance man and it's a kind of song and dance number. It always puts me in mind of er somebody like Donald O'Conner or something or Dan Daley. It's all in fun, it doesn't really mean anything, just give my regards to Sergeant Fury.

When you see our band remember one thing, the music is first and then the show must go on. The one thing we do is, it must be economical, the minimum of props for the maximum effect, we wouldn't ever use any lavish sets. Lots of it must be spontaneous, some of the best things we've ever done have been a prop that happen to be lying about backstage someplace, then it can be used, it's complete improvisation. It's got to be kept fresh, it can't be too studied. We have a beginning, a middle and an end, which is very tight but internally it allows me to take liberties. The band can follow me, like at times I can go right off time, that give me time to do something if I see something, a section of the crowd that I can work to. The band, now experienced enough to know about that and to go along with it.

Zal wears a clowns makeup, but he doesn't wear it just because he wears makeup, he uses it and remember traditionally a clown was a tumbler,an acrobat, musician, a comedian, he was everything he was complete all round. He can pull and does expression with, he's a mime artist really and he does not, he only knows about it now because people have told him. I reckon he's a, he was around maybe before five hundred years ago, I feel things like that very strongly, I'm sure that he's been about, maybe in somebody's court in medieval times.

When the band and I first met they were, and I noticed this was very strong, they were extrovert off stage and introvert on stage. We had to revert, reverse this a little, we had to bring out what they could do. I was extroverted both places I should imagine, so it had to be developed and brought out. The dramatic side of it to make it dramatic to exaggerate the situation, to explain it as if we were talking to Martians or Pigmies in the Congo or somebody that couldn't understand English to get the point across whether it was funny or serious or both together. Sometimes we don't know what way it's coming across, some people have said that it's it's menacing and sinister, Well I can't understand that part of it.

In discussing any kind of rock theatre, my philosophy is that it must be cheap, it must be cheap using what you've got there quickly and efficiently to express what you believe. For instance if somebody was goin to sing a song about escaping and there happened to be a ladder lying back stage, now you could use that ladder to and then you're escaping with this ladder. Maybe bands like ours could put out, I think it's it's a gas really, I admire it very much because it's entertainment whatever else he is. I once said that he said em why not me for being horrific what about Boris Karloff and I thought that was wonderful. But where Alice is acting, ours is different I suppose is, we mean it and we are only being theatric to express that we do mean it.

And getting back to props again, ours are all cheap, we use a sheet of polystyrene and some wall paper and things like that, an old rain coat, the minimum of glitter, we are I suppose a matt finish rather that a glitter finish.

We want to be international and we have found that having our pipers with us really makes things happier. Like after a gig when we go to a hotel or something, any place at all all over Europe so far and one of them pipers only has to open up that case and take out his pipes and everybody gets the communication and they wonder, what's he doing with a rock and roll band. We keep these pipers for two reasons, one they help to spread international goodwill, two they're a very valid part of the act. It's no gimmick. It really is a part of the act.

In Anthem they come on and it does help to move, it does help to move the people, it does happen to be part of the song, that's why we have them with us. Anthem is a song in two parts. The first part is a vocal which is I suppose quite angry and violent and then the second part is peaceful and non violent and that's the way we like to finish the act, non violently.

This is Alex Harvey and it's been nice being with you and we really are looking forward to coming to America. Till then, as they say in my own town, lang may yer lum reek and if you don't know what that means it means, long may your chimney be black, which means long may you have enough fuel to keep warm.

©1996-2002 dwm