MANFRED MANN

MOJO EYEWITNESS

MANFRED MANN DOOWAH-DIDDY THE SIXTIES!

Formed as the British Blues boomed in ’62, the Anglo-South African R&B hit squad took the decade by the horns, wailing the theme to Ready Steady Go!, being the first British Invasion group to score a US Number 1 and forging ahead despite the ’66 departure of vocalist Paul Jones. But as the ’60s drew to a close, not even another tranche of Top 10 hits could stop the rot. “The biggest illusion in pop music is that all you have to do is succeed,” recall the group. “You actually have to succeed over and over…”

Interviews: LOIS WILSON • Photograph by JEREMY FLETCHER

Paul Jones: I was studying English at Oxford and I heard T-Bone Walker’s T-Bone Blues. Everything changed! I dropped out – my dad wasn’t at all pleased – and I started going to Ealing Jazz Club to see Alexis Korner. This was early ’62, incredibly exciting. Alexis was a serial encourager of young musicians, and we would cluster at the front. There was me, Mick Jagger… he’d point at one of us and we’d jump up and sing. I was going under the name ‘PP Jones’, after BB King and with ‘PP’ standing for my real name, Paul Pond. Manfred Mann: I moved to London from Johannesburg in 1961. I’d been playing in a jazz trio and my father made the joke: “Manfred is going to London. Apparently they are short of musicians.” In summer ’62 Graham Bond had a residency at Clacton Butlin’s and he asked me ➢

Jeremy Fletcher/Redferns

Mann alive: (clockwise from left) Vickers, McGuinness and Jones tear it up; Ready Steady Go! presenter Cathy McGowan and Jones, 1965; the new model Manfreds in 1967 (from left) Hugg, Klaus Voorman, Mann, McGuinness, Mike D’Abo; (inset) hit 45s.

“THEY SAID, ‘WE’LL SUE YOU.’ I CALLED THEIR BLUFF…”

Paul Jones

➣ to do the weekends. Mike Hugg was playing vibraphone and we hit it off. After summer we put together a jazz group, the Mann-Hugg Quartet. At some point we became the MannHugg Blues Menn, then the Mann-Hugg Blues Brothers. Mike Hugg: Graham Bond was playing with Alexis Korner and took me down to see them and I was blown away. He had these jazz musicians, Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce, but they were also doing blues. We decided to start doing that in our set alongside the jazz, so now we needed a singer. PJ: Manfred and Mike asked the Marquee to recommend “a shouter.” They recommended me. We did our first gigs on the south coast, every Tuesday at the Bassett Hotel in Southampton, then soon after Wednesdays at Le Disque A Go! Go! in Bournemouth, then Thursdays in Portsmouth. We did Muddy Waters, Ray Charles, Jimmy Witherspoon, Lightnin’ Slim’s Rooster Blues. Dave Richmond: Those early days weren’t glamorous. I used to drive Paul and me to gigs in my three-wheeler Reliant van. We auditioned for Pye and Decca and they turned us down, then EMI’s John Burgess signed us. MM: John Burgess changed our name to Manfred Mann. I found that really uncomfortable. I spent a weekend coming up with other names: The Driving Wheels, The Government… John Burgess wouldn’t have it. PJ: We did our first single, Why Should We Not? [released in July ’63], then I wrote Cock-A-Hoop [released in November ’63]. I was very influenced by Bo Diddley’s bragging blues. We performed it on [TV show] Ready Steady Go! and they asked us if we would write their signature tune. They said, “It’s got to have a countdown.” We had a gig that night and wrote it in the van on the way there. That was 5-4-3-2-1.

DR: I was kicked out soon after. I was annoying the band. My playing was too busy, I was too loud. Manfred said, “We won’t be needing you again.” It was a jolt. Tom McGuinness: In early ’63 I was in The Roosters with Eric Clapton and we opened for Manfred Mann at the Marquee. I knew Paul – we’d tried to get a band together in Oxford in ’61 but failed. When Dave went, they got me in. They said, “Will you promise to play simply?” As I was a guitarist and had never played bass before, that wasn’t difficult.

PJ: We were booked in to do our first tour in February ’64 with Joe Brown & The Bruvvers headlining, and Johnny Kidd & The Pirates and The Crystals also on the bill. We were hired as the backing band for the groups that needed one. When 5-4-3-2-1 hit Number 5 in January we got our own spot, but still backed The Crystals. TM: It went crazy, girls crying “Paul! Paul!” and chasing us and trying to cut off bits of our hair. MM: Having that first hit was the most exciting moment of my career. But the biggest illusion in pop music is that all you have to do is succeed. You actually have to succeed over and over. We naively thought, “We’ve written one hit, we’ll just write another.” So we wrote Hubble Bubble (Toil And Trouble) and it only hit Number 11 [in April 1964], and within a few months our audience started to crumble away. Such is the short-lived nature of pop. PJ: Because it didn’t make the Top 10, EMI brought in the unbreakable rule, that we never got to write another single. We had to get in proper songwriters. I immediately went to my record collection. I had The Exciters’ Do Wah Diddy which I loved, and we started doing it in our live set and when John Burgess asked us if we had anything to record, we played him it, and he said immediately, “That’s a big record” . MH: When Do Wah Diddy Diddy hit Number 1 in the US [in September 1964] we went over to tour, in November ’64. We were on a bill with Peter & Gordon as headliners, and before each show the fans brought us presents, soft toys, sweets, that kind of thing. When we arrived in LA to do [US TV show] Shindig!, on the first morning I drew the hotel curtains – Steve McQueen was getting into his car below me. That was something. TM: When we got to New York it was my birthday – we went to see John Coltrane, and Charles Mingus turned up. We hung out with the Dixie Cups and they played us Otis Redding records. The only downside was when the promoters decided to add The Exciters to the bill as they were local. They sang Do Wah Diddy in the first half of the show and we did it in the second. We apologised to them afterwards. MM: [In October 1965] Paul said he was leaving and I thought, “That’s the end of everything.” MH: EMI also let us go and signed Paul as a solo artist, and there was fear, because then we had no singer and no label. PJ: A Bob Dylan obsession had taken over the

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

● Paul Jones

(vocals, handclaps, harmonica)

band. We did With God On Our Side, and it wasn’t like I didn’t like Bob Dylan, but I wanted to do music of black origin, and I felt as the lead singer I should be entitled to choose. I said, “I’m going.” They said, “We’ll sue you.” I called their bluff and they asked me to stay until they found a replacement. It ended up being nine months. In that time we did another Dylan cover, If You Gotta Go, Go Now, which made Number 2, and then Pretty Flamingo which got to Number 1, and which I did not like.

TM: Things got brittle between Manfred and Paul. I found myself in the position of the child of a divorcing couple. Manfred would say, “Would you ask Paul if…?” blah blah, and Paul would say, “Tell Manfred that’s fine, but also tell him…” Then Pretty Flamingo got to Number 1, and then it was how are we going to replace Paul, find a new label and still have Number 1 hits?

Mike D’Abo: I was playing keyboards in A Band Of Angels. We did a lot of Beatles covers, but I’d written Invitation, and the band got me to sing lead on it. When we performed it on [TV show] A Whole Scene Going, Manfred Mann were also performing and saw the playback. Manfred, not giving anything away, asked for my phone number. MH: We saw Mike singing and knew he was the one. He had a great voice, and as a bonus resembled Paul a little bit.

MD: I had to pass an audition and a screen test and record a number of songs with them. Eventually Manfred invited me to his house, and as I walked in, I saw this very cool, incredibly good-looking man. I thought Manfred was about to say this is our new singer, but he said, “This is our new bassist, Klaus Voorman.” [Vickers left in September ’66 and McGuinness moved to guitar]. Klaus Voorman: I was working at an advertising agency for guitarist Mac McGann. He was a friend of Tom McGuiness’s and recommended me. I went for a rehearsal at Manfred’s. We started doing some songs and at the end I said, “Am I in the band?” and he said, “Yes, yes”, and that was it. Me and Mike, being the new boys, bonded. He has a good soul. MD: In late ’66, the Daily Mirror put a photo of me and Paul shaking hands with Manfred in the middle, looking like a boxing match referee, on their front cover. It was very much, the gloves were off. Paul put out High Time which went to Number 4 then I’ve Been A Bad Bad Boy which went to Number 5, and we signed to Fontana and did Bob Dylan’s Just Like A Woman which got to Number 10, so it was Round 1 to Paul Jones.

PJ: Except, I was still with John Burgess and he wanted me to do more songs like Pretty Flamingo. He also recommended a manager/agent, who recommended a music director… I had more people telling me what to do than I had when I was in Manfred Mann.

MD: I was told my job was to keep the hits coming, so it was pop ditties: Semi-Detached Suburban Mr James got to Number 2, Ha! Ha! Said The Clown, Number 4, The Mighty Quinn, Number 1. A band needs a galvanising force. I was writing songs like Handbags And Gladrags and I wanted to be Otis Redding, but having just joined I was never going to get much say. MH: By the end, the live shows had stopped and we were only getting together in the studio to record hit singles. Manfred and I were doing TV commercials and had done the soundtrack for [1968 kitchen sink drama] Up The Junction, and we put a band together just for fun – Emanon, which is No Name backwards. We decided this is what we want to do, and that evolved into [jazz rockers] Manfred Mann Chapter Three. MM: Manfred Mann were a great pop band but we had no credibility. By [May 1969 single] Ragamuffin Man, I was frustrated. It got in the Top 10 but I needed to do something different. MD: Manfred came up to me in a TV studio in Holland and said he wanted to go back to his jazz roots. I was delighted. I was already writing, producing and recording at Immediate. TM: We did Ragamuffin Man on the Eamonn Andrews show and me and Eamonn demolished the best part of a bottle of brandy in the green room after. Then I got in a taxi, thinking “That’s it, I’ll have to get a proper job now.” Less than a year later I was in the chart with McGuinness Flint.

MM: I formed Manfred Mann’s Earth Band in 1971 and am still touring. The Manfreds [with Jones, D’Abo, Hugg and McGuinness] are doing their thing. Sometimes I get asked if I’m going to be playing a date they are doing, and sometimes they get asked about the lyrics to [1976 Earth Band smash] Blinded By The Light, but it’s a slight irritant. What’s important is, there’s a good relationship between us all. M

● Manfred Mann

(keyboards)

● Mike Hugg

(drums, vibes, keyboards)

● Dave Richmond

(bass)

● Tom McGuin-

ness (bass, guitar)

● Mike D’Abo

(vocals, keyboards)