Davis: What a Wonderful Maiden

[michelej1]

Keep on Canberra Times (Australia) June 11, 2008 Wednesday

June 11, 2008 Wednesday
Final Edition

SECTION: A; Pg. 3, HEADLINE: Keep on

BYLINE: The Canberra Times

BODY:


OK, take one hand and count the number of rock or pop stars who can confidently recite Arthurian legend. That's right, Arthurian, as in King Arthur, Knights of the Round Table, Camelot, that fabled lot. Stumped?

Try Spencer David Nelson Davis, famed of the Spencer Davis Group, arguably the most under- acknowledged of the great rock bands of the past 45 years.

Davis will be performing at the Canberra Theatre tomorrow night, heading up the Best of British Rock concert with the survivors of Manfred Mann, the Manfreds.

Davis is one of those rarities among rock stars: he got into the music industry from the background of a decent university education. But his grasp of Arthurian legend has as much to do with where he lives now as where he has come from. Davis lives at Avalon, which, of course, takes its name from the "Isle of the Blessed" in Arthurian legend, the island of beautiful apples where Arthur was taken to recover from his wounds after his last battle at Camlann, and where his sword Caliburn (Excalibur) was forged.

Davis's Avalon is the only town on Santa Catalina Island, an 8.2sqkm rural waterfront settlement of just 3322 souls and, though the southernmost "city" in Los Angeles County, is in fact 26 miles (41.6km) off the Californian coast. In popular music terms, Santa Catalina has its own place in history, as the inspiration for the 1958 Four Preps hit 26 Miles (Santa Catalina).

This bit of near-useless information allowed me the opportunity to ask Davis if he knew that Ed Cobb of the Four Preps wrote Tainted Love, a northern soul classic for Marc Bolan's last girlfriend Gloria Jones which, in 1981, became a worldwide hit for Soft Cell. Davis said he didn't, which I suppose went to prove that for all his tertiary education and his knowledge of modern languages and Arthurian legend, he doesn't know every little bit of trivia about pop music. What he does know is that a television series is being made on Santa Catalina right now about an ageing rock star who escapes to Avalon. "And it's not about me," he hastens to add.

Still, it could well have been.

"Avalon is for me just as it is in the Arthurian legend," says Davis. "A sort of Utopia. It's exactly right for me, a place to which to escape, provided I can catch the last boat.

I don't even have my own bloody yacht!"

For our interview, however, Davis is calling from another of his bases, at Marina Del Rey on the Californian mainland. It's a Wednesday, 5pm, Davis is just back from performing at Tampa in Florida after a "carnival legends cruise" out of Largo to Belize in Central America. He's full of beans and bonhomie. His schedule is pretty impressive for a rock star who will, next month, turn 69.

And it has been a long, packed adventure from Bon-y-Maen north-east of Swansea to Santa Catalina. For all that, Davis still clings to his Welsh heritage and why not, given Camelot might have been as close to Swansea as a quick jaunt through Cardiff? Davis is proud to declare himself now part of the Californian "Taffia", a group of expatriates from the Land of their Fathers, the Land of Leek, that includes John Cale once of the Velvet Underground Sir Anthony Hopkins and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Zeta-Jones is also from Swansea, and Davis is quick to claim Dylan Thomas as yet another Swansea boyo.

It was not traditional Welsh choir singing, Sunday pub sessions or joining the vocal rugby crowds at the St Helen's Ground in Swansea which got Davis into music, however, but his old uncle Herman and Herman's mandolin.

"He was definitely the biggest influence on my career," says Davis. "He and a family friend called George Bean, a real Mr Bean. My mum rued the day when she let them take me down the path to music. After I'd picked up an instrument, I couldn't put it back down again. You can say I was supported or corrupted, you can have your choice of words on that one."

Davis's childhood introduction to the popular music charts through Uncle Herman and Mr Bean was eventually to lead to him reaching No1 himself. All these years later, Colin Larkin, arguably the world's leading authority on rock and pop music, rates the Spencer Davis Group's 1966 hit Gimme Some Loving as the second greatest single ever recorded. It is only bettered, according to Larkin, by The Byrds' version of Bob Dylan's Mr Tambourine Man. But, Larkin warns of Gimme Some Loving, "Don't get fooled by the horrible version played on radio all over the world. That is the re- recording with the unnecessary girly chorus, extra clunky percussion and pointless piano. You only need Hammond [organ] and bass, just like this original."

Davis readily confirmed there are, in fact, three versions of Gimme Some Loving, and that the third is indeed quite crappy. "This was a late 1970s version," says Davis. "Someone decided it could do with a guitar solo, but it did nothing for it. Like so many 'great' notions, it was a total flop in reality. I'm no traditionalist, not someone who necessarily believes the original version is the best, but I have to admit that the third version of Gimme Some Loving makes it pretty meaningless."

Although Davis admits to being absolutely chuffed by Larkin's high rating of Gimme Some Loving of which he was unaware until I told him down the line he willingly accepts Larkin is spot on about the original version.

"Steve Winwood's Hammond organ playing is undoubtedly sublime, and needs no augmentation whatsoever. And I prefer his lead vocals on the original, too. I concede the point that there was an intensity, a bareness about that performance from the four-piece band [Davis, Winwood, Winwood's brother Muff on bass and Peter York on drums] that is truly remarkable.

"As for rating the second-best single ever recorded, I have to say I feel 'honoured' is the word. And the song came from virtually nothing. It was supposed to reflect the Summer of Love, and the original working title was actually Gimme Summer Loving.

Thankfully, someone thought better of that. But it was really just a primeval yelp, an incredibly raw piece of music with simple, almost silly guitar chords E G A C, that sort of thing." A good enough yelp, it should be added, to get almost four million air plays in 42 years.

The record is all the more remarkable when one considers that, at the time it was made, Steve Winwood was just 18 and try to pick that from the maturity of the vocals and Muff Winwood and York both, like Davis, still 23. The Birmingham quartet's first No. 1 had, incredibly, come a year earlier, with Keep on Running, when Steve Winwood was still 16.

This was followed by another chart-topper in Somebody Help Me, then When I Come Home, Gimme Some Loving and the brilliant I'm a Man, before Steve Winwood left to form Traffic he subsequently joined Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker and Rick Grech in that most super of super groups, Blind Faith.

Davis and the Winwoods went on to success in many areas of the recording industry in the United States and Davis and Steve Winwood stay in close contact. Davis is also close to Alan White, the drummer from Yes who had joined Baker, Winwood, Grech and Denny Laine in the rock-jazz fusion Air Force in 1968. White, perhaps most famously, was also with John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band on Imagine and with George Harrison on My Sweet Lord. Davis and White often appear together in the Seattle-based band the North-West Rockers.

Indeed, Davis's life story reads like a Who's Who of rock. His first girlfriend and busking companion was Christine Perfect, who married John McVie and became Christine McVie, an integral part of Fleetwood Mac. "What a wonderful maiden name," says Davis of the former Ms Perfect. "Yet what a terrible name to be burdened with. We met at arts school. Our mutual interest was more musical than amorous, I have to say, but some things did go on." The interest began to evaporate, says Davis, because in the early 1960s rock music was all about all-boy bands. "We were dyed-in-the-wool macho. I've often wondered since what we would have been like if we had thought of incorporating a female voice into the group."

Early on in his music career, Davis was in a skiffle group with bassist Bill Perks, better known these days as former Rolling Stone Bill Wyman ("Yes, I always thought Perks had far more personality than Wyman," says Davis.

"I always told Bill I liked it far better."). Whether the Davis story will ever make into print is still in the lap of the literary gods. "I'm in the throes of trying to get myself sufficiently organised to get it written," Davis says. "I certainly have some tales to tell, but I never really realised how hard it would be to get it done. Given I started out with Ian Campbell and Christine in folk clubs and cafes in the north of England, listening to and trying to emulate the likes of John Lee Hooker and Huddie Ledbetter, I like the working title of Coffee Bar Cowboy."

Another possible title might be Keep on Running, taking the line from the Spencer Davis Group hit.

"It's definitely about me as I am now," Davis says. "I still can't stay still. What started out as a hobby when I was a kid became a life- long obsession."

That obsession has led, once more, to Davis bringing his incredible talent to Canberra. And as long as he keeps performing as he does, audiences will keep on running to his shows.

Spencer Davis performs at the Canberra Theatre on Thursday night, heading up the Best of British Rock concert with the survivors of Manfred Mann, the Manfreds.

[sywlindseyfan]

hmm I wonder too....maybe they would have been a fleetwood mac, hahaha

[Gailh]

"Some things did go on" - did they indeed!

Gail