Stan Webb Interview 2001

[michelej1]

[I know this is long and I wouldn't put it up, but I thought the Christine comments were nice to have, though brief. I bolded them]

Stan Webb: What Can A Poor Boy Do?
Harry Shapiro, Blue Print, March 2001

Stan Webb has every right to be cynical about the music business and how the sharks in suits come on strong as your best friend while you are haemorrhaging your money into their bank accounts. But since the 1990s, as he tells Harry Shapiro, things have been looking up.

STAN MANAGES his own affairs, tours all round Europe and can stare out of the window of his neat cottage crammed with memorabilia to look at the Merc nestling against the kerb. There's a new record out, the first studio album for many years and Stan is as irrepressible as ever, wicked impersonations, and the tale of the day he told Howlin' Wolf to **** off.

Stan was born in Fulham; the family moved up to Kidderminster in the West Midlands in 1957-8, but left Stan with his grandmother for another year to lessen the disruption to his schooling – when the Head wasn't beating ten bells out of him for a continuing saga of misdemeanours. "My school was Fulham's answer to the Blackboard Jungle. I loved it. Had great fun. If you got caught, you got a good old smack round the ear-hole. If you got six of the stick, you were a hero in the playground, providing you didn't cry. And it did me no harm whatsoever. A good punch up the bracket never hurt anyone". From which you gather that our well-known guitar hero is somewhat at odds with Tony Blair's social inclusion policy.

But if you thought young Stan was a thicky, you'd be wrong. He left school with a healthy clutch of exam certificates, although not algebra "because I couldn't see the point. I was never going to walk into a shop and ask for x apples".

"I got into music when I rescued all these old 78s that my grandmother was going to throw away. I used to hear them anyway because my Uncle John used to play them a lot – Duke Ellington, Artie Shaw, Pinetop Smith, Teddy Wilson. I thought all this was great because it was American".

Was there any encouragement to become a musician? "None whatsoever. My mum didn't mind, she thought it was quite fun. My grandmother didn't care what I did as long as I didn't follow everybody else into the building trade. My dad didn't like it at all. I think he wanted me to be a rocket scientist or something. He had various ideas as to what I should do when left school, so it was a battle between him and me. But ironically, it was my dad who bought me the damn guitar. I didn't want a guitar and I think that's why he bought it. I wanted a set of drums, I used to listen to Louis Bellson – I had 'Skin Deep' on a 78 which my sister's high heels went through after one wine gum too many. Anything with drums, I loved it. But there was no way I was going to get a set of them, so I think I got the guitar because my dad thought I wouldn't play it and that would be the end of all the music nonsense. 'Give him a guitar, that'll shut him up'. And he was right. I wouldn't play it at first, but then I started playing it and got this little pink book called Skiffrock by Lonnie Donegan and started off like that. That guitar is still upstairs in the cupboard – an acoustic Czechoslovakian thing – no Dobro this. Then I got a Japanese Guyatone, tiny maple body thing with all gold plating, cost 33 guineas, just like Hank Marvin had when they were The Drifters. I had to have it because Hank did – that's how I was then – good job he didn't play the bagpipes. (laughs).

"The first band I was in was called the Strangers Dance Band, and I've still got some cards we had printed. We were 16 then, but instead of dying our hair blond and acting like tic-tac men on LSD, we actually learned to play the instruments so it sounded like the records we were copying. But because of the name people thought we had trumpets with Dennis Lotis and Geraldo in there somewhere – Geraldo and Heavy Friends – (laughs), so we changed the name – and I still cringe to this day – to Strangers Incorporated. We were actually very popular, used to work a lot. But instead of what you would think we would do at that time like Cliff Richard, we used to do Nero and the Gladiators and The Hunters which I thought were technically far superior.

"Shades Five was my first crack at being a professional musician working for Mrs Regan in Birmingham doing the Oldhill Plaza, the Plaza in Handsworth, The Brumbeat Cavern. If you didn't do those, you weren't anyone. And I'd do these every week, you'd do the circuit. That was really good discipline because at one of those places you had a revolving stage like the Star Club in Hamburg and if you played overtime, you got fined. We all wore tab collar shirts, pudding basin haircuts, corduroy jackets with plastic leather collars.

"I started hearing all the blues stuff at this record shop called The Diskery. That was wonderful. Went up there on a Saturday, they had all these American records playing, covers all over the ceiling. And that's when I first got Freddie King Sings. I took it home and listened and thought, 'I don't believe this'.

"I left Shades Five because there was a bit of power-play going on and this singer David Yeates came up to me outside the town hall and asked me to join his band The Sounds of Blue. We did some of the Shades Five circuit, but the main thing was this one gig on a Sunday at Dudley Liberal Club, every Sunday for a year and it was absolutely packed. On bass and harmonica sometimes was Christine (Perfect) and Andy Sylvester played rhythm guitar. Then Phil Lawless took over on bass and Christine switched to piano, Chris Woods played sax.

"Me, Andy and Christine left and then Christine gave it up altogether for about three months. Andy kept writing her letters and she kept saying no, but I think she agreed to come back in the end because she couldn't stand the hassle."
Contrary to popular mythology, the name Chicken Shack had nothing to do with their rehearsal space, but was suggested to them by Champion Jack Dupree. It was black slang for a road-house blues venue.

"Chicken Shack was formed up here in Kidderminster with Alan Morley on drums, from a Birmingham band called The Redcaps who had recorded on Decca plus Andy and me. And that's when we were trying to get Christine back on piano.

"We did about a six week stint at the Star Club in Hamburg. That was brilliant, some of the best times I've ever had. Un-believe-able; the atmosphere for a start. Tony Ashton and Ritchie Blackmore were there and we all used to meet up at Kurt's Beer Shop. We were the only band doing the sort of stuff we were doing – Freddie King – and the Star Club at that time wasn't getting many people in. Inside a week we started packing them in and they were so pleased with what was happening they put the money up and cut the hours. We couldn't do any wrong."

They came back from Germany, signed with Blue Horizon and shot to fame on the back of the British Blooze Boom. Hit singles and albums followed, but like so many bands of the time, the memories are shot through with bitterness and frustration over money. As Stan has said, "You can't spend respect" and while fans are always interested in the songs, the line-ups, the guitars, the string gauges and the set lists – never forget that the first priority of a professional musician is to get paid.

"Right from the start, the business side of Chicken Shack was a total and absolute disaster. We were being managed by somebody who had another band as well. We were earning a lot of money, the other band wasn't and some of our money was used to finance that other band. This was found out for me by fiery devious means. The management was crap. We were get-ting £30 a week while our money was supposed to be going into this bank account for our well being. But I could never work out why the manager was living in a six bedroom fiat in Belsize Park and I wasn't.

"And it can take years, if ever, to sort things out. You have to have money in the first place to pay hotshot lawyers to get the money you are owed." But Stan has not given up, "I want my Blue Horizon stuff back – and you can put that in – the stuff is being distributed by Sony, I think – and what I'm saying is they belong to me because I have not been paid. As far as I'm concerned, I'm owed a lot of money."

During those early days with Chicken Shack, Stan developed an irreverent approach to the blues, doing impersonations of famous people in between the songs, telling jokes, making asides to the audience. He always had the common touch, putting his guitar on the end of a hundred-foot lead and striding out into the crowd. He never had any time (and still doesn't) for blues as broom-up-the-arse music

"One thing I did learn from Freddie King – you don't take your work out the theatre. Once I'm off that stage, I'm the same as anybody else. I'll sit down and have a drink with anyone, doesn't bother me. You have to involve the audience, tell them a story, like sitting around the fire and having a chat. Some of these bands...'Right I'm up here playing the blues, man, should I put a long note in here? I'll be stony faced, but should I wear the torn jeans or the regimental white shirt, black tie, black suit': I think all that is total crap. You should be up there to entertain."

Nor did he have much time for bad manners – whoever the perpetrator. "Me and Keith Moon were down at the Speakeasy and Mike Vernon was there with Howlin' Wolf who's not saying anything. Mike said, 'He doesn't really like white people'. So I thought, 'Fair enough, you can't really blame him for that, but why the **** did Mike bring him down here then if he doesn't like white people?' Keith Moon does this Hitler salute, 'Pleasure meeting you Mr Wolf' and stomps off. I thought, 'Bloody hell, it's Howlin' Wolf, you know, I'll buy him a drink'. So I asked him what he wanted. 'I'll have a Scotch' (Howlin' Wolf voice). I went to the bar and bought him this huge drink which wasn't cheap. I gave to him and he just walked off without saying a word. So I shouted after him, 'You might have said thank you. you grumpy old bastard. **** off! Mike looked shocked. 'You can't say that, It's Howlin Wolf'. 'Why not? Miserable old git'."

Eventually the Boom (or as Stan sees it "not so much a Boom as a Wet Fart") ran out of steam as bands shifted out of the clubs into the college circuit and onto the big stadiums. Chicken Shack went heavy.

"Through the seventies we just went on in various guises. But when I left that management in the mid seventies and joined the Boogie Brothers or Savory Bron as me and Miller Anderson used to call them. We were seven weeks in the States with Deep Purple and anybody will tell you that the band we had then was so hot, it was such a dynamic band. If it had been worked on, it would have been huge, massive. We were promised we would do the tour with Deep Purple, come back, have a rest, do an album, then go back out headlining. And then, I think in Albuquerque – Jimmy Leverton the bass player had climbed up this papier mache palm tree and the whole thing collapsed in the swimming pool. There was a big row with the hotel manager and I could hear it all going on while I was being told 'Guess what lads, you're headlining for the next seven weeks'. We were all totally out of our heads by then – complete lunatics. We did this and it was a disaster because everybody knows you can't put a seven-week tour together on the spot. And then it dawned on me that it must have been a con because it must have been arranged before we'd even left England. Talk about winning the pools and tearing the cheque up!

"You see, there was a little crew of us who used to meet up at the Speakeasy, Mr Moon, Mr Bonham, Mr Avory and me – and it was crazy times. I told the management that I would be a good boy over the seven weeks, but after that I wouldn't be responsible. So it went over the seven weeks and I wasn't responsible and started really going to town. And then me and Miller Anderson went to get the cheques for what was a 14 week tour, seven weeks as a guest spot with Deep Purple and seven weeks headlining and I got a cheque for eleven hundred quid. That was the final insult. We all left."

By the end of the seventies, early eighties, Stan had just about had it with the music business because it was then that he began to find out about the missing wonga from Chicken Shack; "it was like finding out that your mum had ripped you off!"

The final knife in the back came when he was contacted by Decca to say they were holding a large royalty cheque for Chicken Shack. When Stan saw the account he could see that the band had been paid huge advances ("and it details where these went, if you are reading this, you bastards"), the band had sold well and this cheque was the balance. "I had paid this money back in sales and never seen a penny of it."

Things went from bad to worse. Stan has always been more comfortable on stage than in a studio, but during these down times, he even lost his taste for that, "I found it really hard to get on stage. It's a horrible feeling. If you've got to go on a stage and you don't want to do it. It's like being afraid of heights and somebody making you walk to the end of a diving board. Horrible."

But Stan recharged his batteries, reformed Chicken Shack and began to discover a fan base in Germany he never knew he had. "'Poor Boy' off Imagination Lady was a big hit in Germany as was the album – and I didn't even realise this. We'd be on stage and the audience would be shouting for 'Poor Boy' and to this day I cannot go onto a stage in Germany without doing that song – much as I don't want to do it.

"There's a lot of new stuff opening up for us – Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Scandinavia and, for the very first time in my life, Spain. We've been lucky to do some very big festivals – like in Norway with BB King, Otis Rush and Ike Turner (although Turn It In would have been more like it). And we grabbed the front page of a national newspaper – big picture of me, a star rating for each of the artists and we came out best of the lot.

"It's one of those lovely little back-stabbing tricks that fate plays on you. When you reach a certain age and you are still here with your own teeth and you haven't shoved 12,000 tons of Bolivian marching powder up yer hooter – lots of nice things can start happening to you. You should get a medal for a start. But people are curious to see what you are like these days and that's been happening a lot over the past eighteen months. You get to know people in the audience who come to see you regularly (they're all called 'Mate', funnily enough). 'My great-grandfather told me about you. I was listening to you on one of those cylinders the other day'. People will come up to you and say, I've brought my son along – he's learning to play blues guitar and he's got all your records. And it's this 15-year-old kid – and that is very flattering. That's why I kept the name Chicken Shack. I thought if I keep it long enough, some sod will notice."

Stan's new album, simply called Webb, is out on Indigo, who also boast an impressive back catalogue of Stan-related material. The album has got a rare quality about it, very retro sounding, back to the fifties and the non-digital sound of warm valves in amps.

"The amazing about that album, when we went to the studio the week before we started recording, apart from one idea, we didn't have a single thing down in tape – not a word. I was just sat down in front of a kitchen table at this big country house place where we did the basics and me and Fred just wrote. It was the easiest album to record. Fred was great, all the guys were fabulous players – all had the sheets – it was so easy to do. For the quick time that it took to do the album, we couldn't have made any more of it."

One of the most intriguing tracks on the album is 'She Loves You', a foretaste of a forthcoming Indigo venture called Beatles Blues, for which Stan's other contribution is a jaw-dropping arrangement of 'I Saw Her Standing There'.

"The idea was not to do any of the highly complex songs or the more melodic ones – but just stick to the simple ones. I mean can you imagine trying to knock out 'Yesterday' to a Jimmy Reed beat – you'd get burnt at the stake for that."

These days Stan admits to times of serial laziness; "I'll go through periods when I quite happily do nothing whatsoever – play snooker, have a drink, do some cooking." But then he'll get itchy fingers and take his band out there, musicians who have stuck with him for an incredible length of time: drummer Bev Smith and guitarist Gary Davies have been with him for twelve years and the bass player Jim Rudge joined a year ago after the spot have been filled for the previous nine years by James Morgan.

"I am very self-critical. When somebody says something is great, I will often say, 'It's okay, but I should have done this or that.' And then it's 'Oh, you artists are never satisfied, are you?' To which I reply – 'Well, you shouldn't be".

[kick.inside]

Harmonica? I never knew she played that. I guess I'll have to add that to my mental list of the other 500 instruments she plays.

[aleuzzi]

[QUOTE=michelej1;990965]

"Me, Andy and Christine left and then Christine gave it up altogether for about three months. Andy kept writing her letters and she kept saying no, but I think she agreed to come back in the end because she couldn't stand the hassle."]


Typical Christine. The most unwilling rock star in the business.

[jbrownsjr]

[QUOTE=aleuzzi;991540]

Originally Posted by michelej1

"Me, Andy and Christine left and then Christine gave it up altogether for about three months. Andy kept writing her letters and she kept saying no, but I think she agreed to come back in the end because she couldn't stand the hassle."]


Typical Christine. The most unwilling rock star in the business.

Haha!! She's such a slouch only putting in 40 plus years in the music business...

[Gailh]

Originally Posted by kick.inside

Harmonica? I never knew she played that. I guess I'll have to add that to my mental list of the other 500 instruments she plays.

So that's piano and other assorted keyboards, guitar, bass, assorted percussion, cello, harmonica and of course chair.

Jesus that's verging on the irritating!

Gail

[PenguinHead]

It's no surprise to me that she played bass. As she has said, she always considered herself part of the rhythm section of the band. Her piano playing isn't full of flourishes typical of most piano players - "twinkly bits" as she refers to it. And... hasn't she played guitar on stage with Fleetwood Mac? Was it on Save Me A Place on the Tusk tour?