1979 Interview Bob Welch

[michelej1]

Bob Welch: Three Hearts Up His Sleeve
Mark Leviton, BAM, 16 February 1979

IT ISN'T EVERY DAY that a song, Phoenix-like rises from the ashes of its own failure and goes on to be a hit. It's even more unlikely that a song originally ignored by the public can be re-cut years later and achieve great success. But that's exactly what happened when Bob Welch remade his 1972 tune, 'Sentimental Lady', on his debut solo LP, French Kiss. Not that 'Sentimental Lady' wasn't masticated a bit in the intervening five years.

Bob originally wrote the song for inclusion on Fleetwood Mac's Bare Trees album (it was his second album with the group after becoming their only American member in 1971), and it was released as a single, sinking without a trace. Fleetwood Mac at that time did not exactly spell H-I-T in the broadcasting industry. It wasn't until Welch found himself working on a solo album five years later, after leaving Fleetwood Mac on the eve of their breakthrough and floundering with power trio Paris for a couple of years, that the last-minute inclusion of 'Sentimental Lady' in his plans became the catalyst for his own emergence as a strong, individual voice on the pop scene. The new version has a different feel, a lighter and less doom-laden mood, but it remains basically the same song rejected by record buyers years before. "I admit I was kind of disappointed that the song wasn't a hit when Fleetwood Mac put it out," Welch says with a slight grin today. "But why be bitter?"

It is November 15, 1978, and the red digital clock in the Sunset Sound Studio has just clicked silently over to 1:01 a.m. Guitarist Todd Sharp is in the middle of his thirtieth attempt to lay down a complete solo for 'China', a song that his employer Bob Welch intends to include on his new LP, Three Hearts, the long-awaited follow-up to French Kiss. By patching Sharp through the control board and miking his guitar amp in the studio, he can sit quite comfortably next to Welch, producer John Carter, and engineer Warren Dewey, while the 24-track tape machine captures the action. This makes immediate post-mortems easier than if he had to trot back and forth through two heavy, soundproof doors.

Sharp's previous 29 efforts would have seemed more than brilliant on most albums, but he's not an easy man to please. He insists upon redoing the whole thing when a new idea occurs to him in the midst of improvisation or when he partially muffs a note. His task is a difficult one. He's got to overdub a two-minute guitar part, work in two different changes of mood, as well as provide shapely fillers between verses while avoiding "stepping" on vocal and instrumental lines already recorded or envisioned. All that, and he's also got to be precise but emotive, uncluttered but rapid, and provide rhythmic and melodic ideas that will blend in with the track and its placement on the album

After each of the previous 29 takes there were short conferences, as Welch or Carter pointed out which phrases to retain and which ones to toss out, treating this one guitar part like the pivotal point for the entire album. They don't require perfection, exactly, but neither do they want to hurry and get a section that's merely okay. Besides, Sharp believes in pushing himself to the limits of his creativity. At well over a hundred dollars an hour, he doesn't want to squander time. But then again, he'll have to live with the completed work the rest of his life. Vinyl cannot forget, and musicians tend to remember their errors only too clearly.

Take 30 sounds absolutely perfect to me, and I'm happy that I'll be able to hear something else after over an hour of the same painstaking guitar breaks. Even the most dazzling music becomes tedious under such conditions, dissected and rebuilt in minute variations over and over. Sharp, however, isn't happy with the solo and neither is Carter. Welch puffs on a cigar and waits while Warren Dewey rolls back the tape, and the thundering riffs come blasting over the studio speakers once again. Then, Welch's breathy, multi-tracked vocal sweeps in on the tape, with opening lines that serve as an appropriately macabre backdrop for my caffeine induced restlessness-"I'm adrift on a sea of mystery/Sailin' round cape unknown." I begin to feel like the fabled bluesmen who, the stories go, were locked in Chess recording studios and not released until they'd finished an album. Sharp's guitar work is fast and biting; he's bending notes like a berserk Peter Townshend, and Welch's voice still booms out, casually tossing lyric mindblowers like "Long long ago I had the power/To levitate the world with just my will." If Welch is nothing else, I realize, he is "somewhat cosmic."

The finished audio product may seem like a seamless musical gestalt to the listener, but it's most likely the result of work spread out over several months, utilizing several different studios and musicians. In some cases individual notes or words are "punched in" to the tape, and the technology of the studio has advanced so far in recent years that only superbly trained technicians can detect such modifications. A 24-track machine allows so many opportunities for overdubbing, stereo "panning" effects, and more subtle tinkering, that it's easy to conceive of the recording medium as one of unlimited options. In fact, what goes in is not what necessarily comes out. With computer mixes and advanced electronics, reedy voices can be deepened, a guitarist who can't play for more than two bars without making a gross mistake can be spliced to sound like Clapton, and songs that sound lousy as demos can turn into platinum discs. That's the "lie" of the modern studio.

Once you've accepted the inevitable paradox that a falsehood can be the basis of truth (an idea which seems more than reasonable to me at 2:15 a.m.), it's easy to understand that Sunset Sound's tools and technology are the liberators of Sharp's talent. They allow him the freedom to go for his best shot. Going on stage and playing before a live audience has very little to do with making records.

"Recording is a very scientific process," Bob Welch explains a few days later when he's had a chance to think it over. "A live performance is more spontaneous. In the early '60s people would go into the studio and jam on a blues riff for half an hour. I sometimes love that, but I wouldn't put out a jam as my next album. I understand the 'underground' is interested in documenting performances. That's one way of doing it. The reason they did that in the old days, without overdubbing, was because that's all they could do. Now, me – I want to use all the technology that's there.

"With the availability of 24 tracks, doing it all live in two hours is like copping an attitude: 'I'll record like Buddy Holly!' But when Holly or The Beatles did that on three or four tracks, they were going after the state of the art of their time. New groups like Van Halen or The Stranglers seem to want to be like that, recording fast and cheaply. But how can you ignore what is? I don't want to throw technology away. I'm not that kind of person, and luckily I don't find the machines dictating anything to me. I like a live feel, but in front of a live audience. I don't think of the studio as a performance. It's into a microphone, which is kind of like jacking off."

At 2:28 it's 45 degrees in Hollywood and a final guitar part is agreed upon, sort of. "It got a bit DEVO in there," says Sharp, obviously wanting to give it another go for improvement's sake.

"He's from Akron," comments a sleepy Carter, who just as obviously is contemplating removing most of the just-recorded guitar part anyway. After several hours work on one section of one tune, some of the perspective on the project has been lost, and certain balances may need to be restored in the future. Whatever happens, Warren will know how to make it seem complete and of one piece.

"What about that other part?" asks Carter, referring to a keyboard overdub that caused some difficulty earlier in the evening. "Does that go into the history books now?"

"I guess it does," replies Welch, staring intently at the list of equipment they'll need to get ready for the next night's session.

Bob Welch grew up in the lap of luxury in Beverly Hills. His mother was an actress and his father, Robert L. Welch, moved from television work to movie productions, such as Bob Hope's The Paleface (1948).

"There are lines I constantly re-use," says Welch, "like, 'I was born in this city.' I was born right here, had chauffeurs driving me around, met famous people at the big parties my parents threw. Everyone talks about how crazy Hollywood is now – this was 1952. And the old Hollywood was far crueler than today, if only because people now are more honest about their motives; they just say they want to make money. There isn't much hypocrisy about ideals. But your career could be ruined so easily in the '50s.

"I've always written songs about my version of all that. People over the years have sung about how decadent it is, but they're all transplants. I'm a native. It's more normal to me – I used to hang around the studios with my dad, after all. Now Bob Seger – whom I love – is from Detroit, and he comes out here and writes 'Hollywood Nights'!" exclaims Welch, throwing up his hands.

Welch parlayed his connections and burgeoning musical talent into stints with several show bands, playing L.A. clubs and Las Vegas showrooms. He settled eventually with a group called the Seven Souls, a multi-racial R&B outfit that became very popular, especially in posh European resorts, as the band spent more and more time away from the U.S. While in France, Bob spent his time getting high and inspiring Parisian dancers to frenzied frugs. The Seven Souls recorded an album and a few singles, including 'I'm No Stranger', co-written by Welch, which was a minor European hit in the mid '60s. They had a few discs released on the American labels Okeh and Venture, but were buried in the British Invasion and Flower Power. In 1969 the band broke up and Welch decided to stay in Europe for at least a while.

One day in 1971 Judy Wong, now a Fleetwood Mac secretary, called Bob and told him that Jeremy Spencer had joined the Children of God in Los Angeles, leaving Fleetwood Mac without a second guitarist to duel with Kanny Kirwan. Christine McVie recalls the band going through endless auditions with hack guitarists before Welch turned up.

"Bob actually never played a note," she told Sam Graham in his book on Fleetwood Mac. "All we did was sit around and talk until dawn, and we just thought he was an incredible person. I remember saying to Mick that I didn't even care what his playing was like, he was such a good person. If we'd hated his guitar work it would have been a real drag."

Remembers Welch, "I really didn't even know I was going to be able to contribute songs when I joined. I was closer to the rhythm and blues end of things than they were at that time. I did have a few things that seemed to fit, though, and the band was very open."

Welch's first album with Fleetwood Mac, Future Games, established him as a superior songwriter with a smooth vocal delivery and a sense of poetry in his lyrics that blended perfectly with the airy Mac ambiance of the time. In addition, his guitar sound, influenced by the likes of Wes Montgomery especially on the title track, made a good match for Kirwan, who had often been overpowered by Spencer and Peter Green.

After Kirwan was fired in 1973, Welch took on more responsibility on stage and in the studio, splitting the writing chores with Christine McVie for Mac's most adventurous album, Mystery to Me. Welch, it became clear, enjoyed writing about parapsychology, witchcraft, and Bermuda triangles, but approached his subjects almost abstractly, as in 'Future Games' and 'Miles Away', where phrases seem suggestive and evocative rather than literal.

The question of how anyone from Fleetwood Mac survived 1973 with sanity is worth pondering. The addition of guitarist Bob Weston and vocalist Dave Walker to their four-piece lineup brought only problems. Walker frequently failed to show up for gigs, and Weston had similar erratic tendencies. The group wandered around the U.S. for six months opening for the likes of Urian Heep, and fighting among themselves incessantly. Rumor (always a big factor in Fleetwood Mac affairs) has it that the two new members were kicked out by an enraged Mick Fleetwood after he discovered one of them had lustful designs on Mick's wife, who was travelling with the group. They managed to complete the Penguin LP before the break-up.

When the demoralized remnant moved back to England, their manager Clifford Davis had the bright idea of forming another Fleetwood Mac, and actually booked a tour for them (the lineup included unknowns Steve Emery, Elmer Gantry, and Kirby). The group was greeted in New York with flying beer bottles, and promoters were understandably incensed. The fake Fleetwood Mac was pulled off the road by court order resulting from a suit by the real group, but it wasn't the last the band heard of Clifford Davis.

"For six months we did nothing but try to extricate ourselves from the legal mess," remembers Welch. "We moved to L.A. to renegotiate our record deal. We were running out of money, so we recorded another album, Heroes Are Hard to Find, and toured in the fall of 1974. In the middle of recording the album we'd get these 20-page letters from our English lawyers, which had to be answered immediately. The situation was nightmarish, but we thought the album might make it and vindicate Fleetwood Mac once and for all. It did pretty well, but not enough to lift our spirits. I was burned out and couldn't even think about writing any more songs, so I told the group I'd rather leave than be a drag on them."

It took a while for Welch to come out of that possible Pete Best-ish oblivion and form Paris, where his songwriting sounded just as spacey and imaginative as always. Paris provided a valuable forum for Welch's songwriting, but the power trio lineup pushed too heavily against the words and melodies. Welch now dismisses the band as "too artsy-craftsy" but continues to rework ideas from songs like 'Narrow Gate', 'Beautiful Youth', and 'Pale Horse, Pale Rider'.

"I'm afraid of being too explicitly mystical and religious," admits Welch. "People like Todd Rundgren are always doing that, with pyramids on their covers and so on. I'm an entertainer. I have these interests, like more and more people do, but I still don't think you can come out and make it so bold-faced. You can't just make a speech. There's a song I wrote called 'Ghost of Flight 401' about the Bermuda triangle. This was before television jumped all over it and cheapened the whole story. Now I wouldn't put it on a record – the effect is ruined.

"I've found you can get over-abstract, too...so abstract with your personal symbolism that you wonder why the **** people don't understand. There's a song I wrote called 'Narrow Gate', full of religious symbols and tied in with Andre Malraux novels. Short of printing an exegesis, how do you get anyone to understand? My 'Danchiva' gets lots of airplay and hardly anyone knows who Shiva is."

The contract Welch had with Capitol Records called for three Paris albums, and he'd only delivered two when the group split, so he began to prepare songs on his home Teac 4-track for another project. He got together about 20 tunes, some cannibalized from Paris tracks and phantom numbers that Fleetwood Mac had recorded and kept in the can.

"There are pieces of things always lying around, snippets of melody or words," says Welch. "I revise old songs constantly, incorporating aspects of other failures. That way, the finished project is the best combination of three others. I don't mind plagiarizing myself – I'd rather do that than plagiarize from the Rolling Stones. I might even want to go back and do a whole Bobby Blue Bland type album – go backwards and forwards at the same time!"

Welch went into the studio to recreate his home demos with drummer Alvin Taylor and John Carter, a producer who has also co-written many songs, including Sammy Hagar's 'Red' and the famed Strawberry Alarm Clock hit, 'Incense and Peppermints'. Welch sang all the vocals and played guitar and bass ("I prefer to play bass, really. Guitarists tend to make busier bass players.") At the end of the sessions, Welch yielded to his business manager, Mick Fleetwood, who insisted on the remake of Welch's masterful 'Sentimental Lady'. Just to sweeten the deal, Fleetwood supplied himself, Lindsay Buckingham (who replaced Welch in Fleetwood Mac) and Christine McVie to help out. The single provided Bob with his first gold record and helped push French Kiss into the upper reaches of the charts for most of 1978. A second 45, 'Ebony Eyes', did nearly as well, and Welch toured the country, forming a band from local musicians through auditions.

This helped Welch overcome the feeling that he had ditched the Fleetwood Mac gravy train just as it pulled out of the station. "In the sense that I contributed something to the sound of the group I felt very proud that they were making it," Welch says philosophically. "I didn't feel like I was missing the boat, because it's really a different group with Nicks and Buckingham. What happened with them was totally unpredictable. When I left Paris it was a little scary not having a group to lean on for the first time, but I've been in so many bands, it seems like I've played with groups for 120 years instead of 12. I think I found my niche, though. In hindsight I realize the only thing I could have done was leave Fleetwood Mac when I did."

It's late evening on November 16 and Bob Welch is overdubbing some vocals on 'China', which finally got its guitar solo late the previous night. Welch's voice is almost always double-tracked. He's got a high, light range and finds – like singers Speedy Keen and Matthew Fisher, who have used identical methods – that to avoid sounding thin and weak he's got to double his vocal. He's closely miked, so his voice is very immediate and cutting. For 'China' he wants to provide a choral sound at the end, and is planning out the jazzy intervals for his harmony vocals. The song has three parts in a descending two-note figure, which he effortlessly doubles, taking only ten minutes or so for the whole thing. The result is like the Swingle Singers as arranged by Stravinsky doing a song by Jimmy Page.

Later that week, Welch reclines comfortably on a sofa in a Penguin Productions office. In front of a beautiful stained glass penguin that for some reason is leaning against a wall in a windowless room, Bob discusses the work on his second album, Three Hearts.

"We got very much into a keyboard sound that isn't on the first album. I used David Adelstein for that, along with Alvin Taylor on drums and Todd Sharp, with Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie for some backing vocals. Stevie sings on 'Devil Wind'. Christine sings on our remake of 'Come Softly to Me', and on 'Don't Wait Too Long', sort of a redone version of 'Good Things Come (To Those Who Wait)', which disappeared from Mystery to Me after the covers were printed. We thought we had our songs all picked but then Carter convinced me to give another try to 'China', which was originally on a Paris demo tape. Sammy Hagar had done a version with Carter before, too. When another song, 'Nightmare', wouldn't come together on my Teac, I went with 'China' as a replacement.

"Originally we were trying for thematic coherence, a little subconscious theme. 'Devil Wind', 'Little Star', and 'Don't Wait Too Long' all deal with show business, with the L.A. phenomenon of little girls getting trapped by Svengali types, so-called Holy Men. You know the guys - they've got an entourage of young girls supposedly learning higher consciousness but what they're doing is sucking the guy's joint.

"My attitude about people searching for Truth is 'Be Very Careful.' Many things – like Zen says – can only be apprehended by getting rid of the rational part of your mind, getting insight beyond thought. That can be rough. I don't write about psychic things as a teaching tool, but because I'm interested. I don't know if it's possible, or even desirable, for everyone to be – I hate this phrase – 'a cosmically conscious being.' Whatever that is. But then, who am I to say what's possible? I'd be interested in the Bermuda triangle even if it turns out to be weird ocean currents or some other physical explanation. I don't need it to be occult. But there are themes to deal with there."

One track that unexpectedly made it on to Three Hearts is 'I Saw Her Standing There', which Stevie Nicks and Bob spontaneously began to warble during one late-night session. "We had lots of fun with The Beatles song," says Bob. "We slowed it down, made it real ominous. They did it bright and cheerful, we did it almost bluesy, nasty. We were just getting loaded in the studio and came up with the idea.

"I don't normally feel comfortable spending $150 an hour to develop ideas," explains Welch. "The ground work should be there already, but in this case it worked out. Usually, just being spontaneous is nothing. I don't want to just lay down a beat and scream, get out raw emotion. That's easy. Anyone can express emotion, put it down on a Teac, and call it free jazz, but there's no art to that. Like most modern art today, it's self-annihilation. 'We don't need brushes or canvas. We have life happenings. Life is our art.' But that's a philosophical statement, not art.

"I think if you're really trying to reach an audience you must be accessible. It doesn't matter if the top ten critics love your record, but if it doesn't sell you probably won't get to make another one. You might say this commercializes music, but people like Mozart and Schumann were doing the pop music of their time – not that I'm trying to compare myself with them.

"Humanity lies in not reacting like mere animals. I write from emotions. To write lyrics is hard, because it's like imposing meaning on the sheer music. A melody for me can stand alone, without words. The level of your skill helps with that aspect. If I knew symphonic arranging I might come out with whole scores. There are so many areas to manipulate, which is what human consciousness is about – we bring order to chaos."

In early January the Three Hearts tracks are finished, and on the 12th floor or the Capitol Tower John Carter is guarding the goods. The tracks have fallen into two groups, five rockers and six medium tempo slow numbers, suggesting perhaps a soft side/hard side approach to the sequencing. Each cut is filled with variety, uncliched arranging, and enough hooks to catch a school of fish. When Welch writes a part for a string section, it doesn't just lie there or follow the chords slavishly. It swoops and swirls, full of contrapuntal lines that provide real emphasis under the verses. The same approach is used for the other instrumental and vocal parts, each is crafted to add something special to the mix, with no treading water, no pointless repetitions.

Taylor's drumming is taut and in places startlingly complex, as in the uncanny third beat accenting on 'Jenny' or the almost mechanical DEVO-ish rhythm on 'Don't Wait Too Long', where he smashes an off beat that you never feel coming. Sharp's crisp guitar work graces Welch's original 'Here Comes the Night', 'China', where his hard-fought solo approaches nirvana, and 'I Saw Her Standing There', where he handles the slightly dissonant riff with aplomb. Adelstein fulfills Welch's wish for a strong keyboard presence on 'Don't Wait Too Long', which sports a very Beatles-ish mellotron and 'Church', where his moog states the melody firmly before electric piano enters to take over the richly written chords.

Welch's lyrics are as evocative and handsomely delivered as ever. His Hollywood opus, 'Devil Wind', has him shouting, "I was born in this city/It destroyed my old man/But he came to this city/From an innocent land," while 'Church' is a more symbolic song about spiritual starvation: "When you were young you got down on your knees/And prayed for someone.../Come down from your church and talk to a man/Who knows why you cry."

His vocals are weaved around a plethora of descending bass lines and intricate multi-tracked guitar parts, and the occasional use of strings, chimes, autoharp, and organ contribute an atmospheric edge. He keeps the sound high and light without sacrificing power. On his remake of The Fleetwoods 1959 'Come Softly to Me', Christine McVie provides a very warm vocal part, and the counter-lines serve perfectly as the foreground and background shift pleasantly back and forth.

Welch even manages to pull off an updated Motown sound tribute, 'Precious Love' and 'Jenny', with an intro drum part out of Phil Spector and the shifting dynamics of middle period Fleetwood Mac. The title track, which combines notions of love triangles with a pun on bridge bidding, manages to blend a feedback-style guitar solo with expertly arranged violins.

"We'd like to get three singles off this album," says Carter contentedly, "You can imagine it – three hearts, three hits."

Whether or not Three Hearts smashes up the Hot 100, Welch has proven that he can follow up the success of French Kiss with work that stretches his musical boundaries a bit farther while also providing the kind of exuberant rock and unique balladry that audiences have come to expect from him. He plans to begin live shows again in March, kicking off with a tour of Japan, where the metaphysical aspects of his lyrics are perhaps more properly appreciated.

"I write about magic, about unknown powers, quite a bit," Bob concludes. "Black magic is used for personal gain, white magic for the betterment of mankind. The power source is the same. Either way you've got to take responsibility for it. Just like music."

[chiliD]

Good article! Thanks for posting!

I remember reading this article in BAM "back in the day". To this day it still irks me that they switched the chronology of Penguin & Mystery To Me.

[holidayroad]

Originally Posted by michelej1

"There's a song I wrote called 'Ghost of Flight 401' about the Bermuda triangle. This was before television jumped all over it and cheapened the whole story. Now I wouldn't put it on a record – the effect is ruined.

It's interesting that he said that...and then went on to put it on the album!!

[bretonbanquet]

Originally Posted by holidayroad

It's interesting that he said that...and then went on to put it on the album!!

I thought that too Great article, and it made me go and listen to "China"