Roy Wood
Yeah, one thing I had a go on that I wasn't very happy with was violin because I was used to playing a cello. It's a different action . It's like marching and chewing gum at the same time. It's weird.
When we were first started we were doing a lot of Motown stuff, but actually playing it more in a rock way. Everybody in the band sang and we did a lot of harmonies.
When we were doing songs like 'Sounds Of Silence,' this is when myself and Carl Wayne were having a few problems. He didn't want to sing my songs . So I let him choose songs that he'd like to sing and he came up with some of those. I didn't always agree with that because to me it sounded too cabaret.
When we did the program I started rolling around the floor and biting the neck off my guitar and all that as you do. To begin with I didn't feel comfortable doing it but I had a few large vodkas before I went on so I was all right. We had a great reaction from that. Up until the breakup of the Move that was the image that we portrayed.
When we did a lot of that Motown stuff there were four of us on the front line. When we started the evening we'd start from one end of the band and just go along. The lead singer would change all the time. That's the first time that I actually managed to put it into a record.
Well, obviously I wanted it to sound as original as possible. I suppose the influences that we had were probably from the actual power point of view we wanted to be like the Who. Vocally we wanted to be like the Beach Boys, whatever was good at the time.
We should have gone over years before that. I always wanted to and I think most of the band did.
We happened to be in the studio next door and I think Noel Redding came around and said, 'Do you fancy having a sing on this?' We just went and did it and it was great.
Unfortunately, most of the songs that I write I don't write them with guitar in mind. I just write it as a song and that was probably one of the ones that left an opening for it. The song's all right, I wouldn't choose to sing it now.
Tony Secunda was always full of surprises. We'd played a gig in London and we went back to the hotel and Carl Wayne came up to me and said we've just been told that we're in the studio tomorrow and we've got to record a single, have you got one? I said, 'Well not on me. Not at the moment.'
To me, 'Blackberry Way' stands up as a song that could be sung in any era, really. We do it with the new doing all sort of fanfare things in it and it works really well. It goes down great with audiences.
The record company was never behind us. Because Wizzard was very successful in England at the time, the management also managed ELO and they thought, 'We'll put ELO over in the States and work on them over there and keep Wizzard over here to hit the charts over here.' I think that's why Wizzard suffered in a way.
The first people I ever saw were probably Little Richard and Gene Vincent.
The best thing I ever heard was in the '60s. I heard Jimi Hendrix play 'I Can Hear The Grass Grow' after a rehearsal, and it was brilliant.
That's more of the direction we wanted to go in for a long time. I think that short spell of that cabaretism spoiled all that, really. It ruined the direction of the band.
Really, the management then asked me to take over producing the band. But then myself and Carl had our differences and everybody wanted a piece of the cake. So we just put it down to a band production because Carl was involved in the production; he wanted a say in what songs were on the album as well. He chose a lot of the cover versions.
One day I was actually over there and the telephone rang at the hotel and it was him! 'Hi, Roy, it's Brian.' I nearly fainted 'cause he's one of my all-time heroes. He invited me up to this house. We arrived and I went with the bass player from the band, Rick Price. We were supposed to meet one of the ladies from Warner Brothers.
Of course, the wind sort of swept up and the music was flying around in mid air and they were trying to play off it. You had to be there. It was quite funny.
It makes you wonder. I was always a big fan of Eddie Cochran, because basically he was the first person to play all his own instruments on his records. Apart from guitar he played drums and bass and everything. It makes me wonder what he would be doing now if he were still alive. He'd probably be a really top producer.
It intimated that Harold Wilson was having an affair with his secretary, which everyone knew was the truth. Obviously, you can't put that sort of thing into print. You probably could get away with it now but not in those days, it was really libelous. We've never received a penny from it. I lost more than everybody else because I wrote it.