By Jeb
Wright
Neil
Murray’s musical resume is quite impressive. He was
an original member of Whitesnake, a member of Brian
May’s solo band, a member of Peter Green’s band, a
member of Black Sabbath and he played and recorded
with Gary Moore—and that is just scratching the
surface.
Now
holding down the low end in London’s theatrical
version of the musical We Will Rock You, Neil
still takes time to play some dates with Whitesnake
alums as well as record bass guitar parts on the odd
album. His day job is a good one. The bills are paid
and he gets to remain immersed in the world of rock
n’ roll. As good as he has it, Neil knows that fame
and fortune seem to have, at least, partly eluded
him. He was a member of Whitesnake clear up to their
seminal 1987 album. Unfortunately, he was
replaced by pretty boy Rudy Sarzo by the time the
big bucks were rolling in. Neil is not one to
complain. Instead of being bitter, or feeling that
he didn’t get his due, he smiles, jokes and
continues doing what comes natural to him, which is
playing music.
As a
bass guitar player, Neil has a style that is a
mixture of fusion, the blues and hard rock. He
detests staying on the low E string, preferring to
add flavor and personality to a song. This has
helped him in the sense that he is one of the most
well respected musicians in the world of bass guitar
but it has also hindered him as he has passed on
some ‘sure thing’ gigs because it just didn’t make
musical sense to him.
Neil is
a true English gentleman. In this interview, he took
great pains to explain each situation and to answer
each question. He recounted both the glory days and
days he remembers far from fondly. The result is a
history lesson behind the band Whitesnake and into
the musical world that is Neil Murray.
Jeb:
You’re enjoying a rare night off from We Will
Rock You. That has been an amazing show around
the world. Have you traveled with the show or are
you just in the band in the London production?
Neil:
Well, I can take as many nights off as I want but it
costs me money to have someone sit in for me. The
show can be quite relentless. It would be nice to
travel but we don’t have the chance to do that.
There are enough good musicians in the world to be
in the band where ever the show is, in whatever
country the show is in. A couple of the understudy
musicians go to Germany for a few weeks here and
there but it is very unusual.
Jeb:
You’re known for being a traveling musician. This
gig has you grounded.
Neil:
It would still be nice to be touring the world but
this gig is a really steady job. There are not a lot
of touring opportunities. I was in the Brian May
Band, after Queen, in the ‘90's. I toured with him
and was on his albums. A few years ago, they were
trying to get the script together and were
auditioning musicians. I heard Brian didn’t think I
would be interested but I went and auditioned with
all the other players. You have to be able to read
music, to some extent. I studied piano and trombone
and, in the seventies, I played in rather
complicated fusion bands. I had experience but I had
never played in a musical before. It is our job, the
former touring musicians that are in the production,
to be a proper rock band. There are limits to what
you can do in a musical but we have tried to make it
a proper band instead of a bunch of people just
reading the notes.
Jeb:
How do you think you have done?
Neil:
We have done pretty well. It is a very fine line, as
it has to be very disciplined. You have to follow
the conductor. You can’t say, "I want to test out
this lick." You have to be quite and play and do
what you’re told. When it comes time to play,
though, you have to give it as much as you would
give if you were playing Madison Square Garden. We
are not really playing to the audience; we are up in
the wings. We are off to the side. We are the
supporting cast to the singers on the stage. You
have to imagine you are on a big stage. It is all
kind of clinical but you have to do your best to
pretend that it is a more proper rock thing.
Jeb:
What makes a good concert is the interplay with the
band and the audience. It has to be an odd duck.
Neil:
People kind of take it for granted that you are
going to do a good job all of the time. It can be
pretty hard. It is more than just missing the
feedback from the audience, it is that in a rock
concert, people are there to see you. They are not
here to see us in this setting. We also hear the
same thing, every night. For seven years we have the
same licks, played by the same guys, every night.
Even if you improvise something good then it becomes
like a written part and stays in the show.
If you
start in a West End Show in London, and you are with
the band for the lifetime of the show, then it is
very good job security. Some of these shows have
been going in London for twenty to twenty-five
years. You are allowed to take off as much as you
want. I could take off six months from tomorrow, if
I wanted too. I would have to have saved up enough
money or have enough work to not be paid while I am
away. The money comes to me from We Will Rock You
and then I have to pay it directly to the guys who
are sitting in for me. It is perfectly permissible
to do that as long as your stand in guys are stand
up.
Jeb:
Last year, you recorded with Michael Schenker.
Neil:
Yes, but that was done the way a lot of albums are
done these days, where nobody meets each other.
Michael is German but he lives in London. I actually
went to Germany to play my parts with the producer.
I played along with what Simon Phillips had done on
drums in LA. Don Airey had played the keyboards a
month earlier at the same studio in Germany. Michael
had recorded his guide guitar parts in London, and
that is what I was playing along too. It is all very
much layered on top of each other. You don’t ever
actually play together as a band. It happens a lot
these days. I didn’t meet with Michael in the making
of this album. I have not seen him for fifteen
years.
Jeb:
Technology is making things very strange.
Neil:
It is strange. It is also very clinical. You get the
chance to concentrate on what you are doing but it
is not very natural for me to play like that. I am
more used to recording together as a band. I think
it is the way it is, partly economically. The only
way to make albums is to make them very cheaply. You
have to make it in your home studio and then go from
there.
Jeb:
Were you really in a band called Slap Happy and the
Dum-Dums.
Neil:
It was when I was in school. There was a really
creative guy in school named Peter Blegvad. He went
on to play with these German avant guard guys in a
band called Faust. Before that, he was in a proper
band called Slap Happy. Our band played Paul
Butterflied and the Doors. I was playing drums at
that time. It was not until I went to college that I
took up the bass. I would spend hours every day in
my dorm room playing the bass. Slap Happy was just a
silly name. I would back Peter up in my simplistic
way. Peter had very avant guard ideas. He would try
to alienate the audience by playing the same riff
for twenty minutes. He would play the same riff
until the audience would start throwing things.
Peter went on to be a very good visual artist. You
can look him up on the internet and see the things
he did.
You
have to realize this was back in 1967, so you can
imagine what sort of influences were going on. I
will admit that it was the blues rock of the time
that influenced my musical vision. I actually
reverted back to my blues influences when I joined
Whitesnake.
Jeb:
You jammed with Cozy Powell’s band and even joined
the band. Don Airey and Bernie Marsden were in
Cozy’s band as well.
Neil:
It pretty much led to everything I have ever done.
The way I got into Cozy’s band was through the bass
player, Clive Chaman, who was in The Jeff Beck Group
with Cozy. Clive was West Indian but he was the
British version o f Motown. He mentored me and
recommended me for bands. After Cozy had a couple of
hits singles, he put the band together called
Hammer. I was Clive’s substitute bass player. I
never was the actual bass player but I would fill in
for Clive for a week or two as needed.
Don
went on to play with Gary Moore in Coliseum II and I
followed him into that band for about eighteen
months. After that, I went back to doing something I
did before I turned professional and that is playing
extremely complicated jazz fusion in a band called
National Health. Bill Bruford played in that band
and that led to me playing on some of his solo
stuff. When I got to the end of that period of being
completely broke—it was so totally uncommercial. The
fashion for fusion music died when punk was born.
Whitesnake formed at the end of 1977. I got that gig
because I knew Bernie. He asked me to come along and
help them audition a drummer because the bass player
they had could not be there. A couple of weeks
later, that bass player decided to go back and play
with another band, so they called me up and asked me
if I wanted the gig. Most of the guys in that
version of Whitesnake were very influenced by the
fusion thing that had been going on and that is why
the first Whitesnake album has jazzy and funky bits
on it.
A
couple of albums later, by Ready & Willing,
we found our direction. It was partly to do with Jon
Lord and Ian Paice joining the band. We also got
that part of showing off on our instruments out of
the way, we were able to write some good rock songs.
Jeb:
Did you know David Coverdale before you joined?
Neil: I
had heard of him. I had heard the song "Burn." I
didn’t know him, though. I was blown away from his
charisma and his commitment to the music. I had
never had a singer perform in rehearsal as he would
on stage. Other singers don’t have that same front
man persona that he really has. Vocally, he was very
much along the lines of Paul Rodgers, who is one of
my favorite singers. David was also influenced by
the blues stuff of the sixties that the rest of the
band was into. We would name check people like Eric
Clapton and Miles Davis. David, throughout his time
in Whitesnake, really grew his musical vocabulary.
Jeb: In
America, the general public didn’t even know about
the band before Slide It In came out. I would
have said Love Hunter is where you began
hearing the Snake sound.
Neil:
It was getting there on Love Hunter but I am
more happy with Ready & Willing.
Jeb: It
has to be thrilling to play next to Jon Lord and Ian
Paice.
Neil:
Ian might be my favorite drummer that I have ever
played with. I must have held my own with my strange
influences. I was putting as much in on the bass as
I could without going over the top.
Jeb:
Most blues rock bands of the era only played the two
low strings on the bass and only worried about
keeping the bottom end for the guitar player to solo
over. Not you.
Neil:
On the one hand, I was very much going to be as
forceful about what the bass was going to be doing.
I was not in awe of anybody I was playing with. It
must also be said that some of the guys in the band
might have wanted me to play more conventionally
part of the time. They may have wanted me to be more
in the background and to get out of their way. Your
playing, generally, is a product of your
personality.
Nowadays, to be honest with you, I would be more
amiable and would not be insistent on how it was
going to go. I used to be like, "I am going to do my
moving bass parts and I don’t care if you don’t like
it, that is what is going to happen." There have
been many situations since the early period of
Whitesnake where the songs don’t allow you to do
something interesting on the bass because the song
is not written that way. I am slightly worried that
if you put me in a situation to where I had a lot of
freedom, I might not play that way anymore because I
have done so much where I am either copying other
people, such as Geezer Butler in Sabbath, or John
Deacon with Queen’s music, or where the style of
music calls for the bass to not be moving around.
I was
extremely lucky with the early Whitesnake albums
produced by Martin Birch. He would have the guitars
so quite that even I was thinking, "Shouldn’t there
be more guitars on these heavy rock records?" The
bass, however, was very loud. Martin went on to
produce Iron Maiden, and the bass is very loud on
those albums, as well. Later on in my career, this
led to one of the complaints I have about my career
when I was with Black Sabbath. If you listen to
early Black Sabbath records, the bass is hugely loud
and important. When I was in the band, the bass is
fairly inaudible. It is certainly not where I
thought it should have been. Perhaps I should have
fought to have the bass be as important as it was
when I was in Whitesnake.
The
track "Fool For Your Loving" is a good example. I
redid the bass after I heard what Jack Bruce had
done on Cozy Powell’s solo album, Over the Top.
I decided that I was going to be more busy on the
bass than I had put down on that song up to that
point. When it came to mixing, Ian Paice was very
heavily involved and we ended up where the drums
were very dominant and the bass was very much in the
background. I said, at about Midnight, that I was
not happy about it. I said, "I would have never come
back and redone the bass part if I knew the bass
part was not going to be able to be heard." I, then,
went off to bed. About three o’clock in the morning,
my phone rang and it was Martin Birch. Martin said,
"Neil, you were right. We have turned the drums down
and turned the bass up and it is the way it should
be."
In so
many circumstances, the bass player would be told to
shut up and just play the root notes. It would not
matter who the bass player was. For example, if I
play with somebody as incredibly talented as Brian
May, his way of composing songs is totally different
from the sort of fairly loose, jamming thing that
Whitesnake would do. His approach would be much more
composed. Perhaps the song would not allow for much
movement on the bass. You would just be holding down
the note or the chord and it could really be anybody
playing.
In
Queen, John Deacon often was playing fairly standard
things. But when he had the chance, he would be up
at the top of the neck doing interesting stuff. When
somebody has a very orchestrated idea of what a song
is supposed to be like, and isn’t looking for the
bass to have a lot of freedom—it is just a different
approach. In Sabbath, the bass was very important
and Tony Iommi wants something interesting. However,
some of the time, you just have to play the riff.
Later
on, in the eighties and the nineties, the drums
became more important, sound wise. Unless you were
very lucky, or you played in a three-piece, then the
bass is buried. Even in Van Halen, often times the
bass is buried. It is very difficult to have both
the bass and the drums be up front.
Jeb:
Tell me what happed to Whitesnake around the time of
Saints & Sinners.
Neil:
We continued on the lines of Ready & Willing
and Come & Get It, which is to say that we
would go to a residential type place, like
Clearwater Castle to record.
Jeb:
Isn’t that the haunted castle?
Neil:
We did a lot of practical jokes on each other. We
did a lot of Ritchie Blackmore type pranks, but not
as vicious as he does. We would make plants move
with invisible wire and stuff like that. Bernie and
Micky [Moody] are individually funny people. When
you put them together they are five times as funny.
David was not Mr. Serious back then at all. However,
it did get to be that after four or five years,
things were getting to be too much the same,
musically. We started coming up with the same ideas.
We had enough success in Britain, Europe and Japan
to coast along a bit. From my point of view, I
thought it was time to change the music a bit. I am
not sure some of the guys in the band thought the
same thing. Ian Paice, at the same time, was going
through a crisis of confidence. He was not playing
like he normally did. I don’t know what had happened
but he was not the same person. He didn’t have the
force of personality that he had before that. He
recovered that when he reformed Deep Purple.
David
was not terribly happy with the attitude in the
band. The songs were sounding kind of safe and old.
For one reason or another, David wanted to go and
find someone who would be more forceful and heavier
to play drums. He signed Cozy Powell. Previous to
this, Mickey Moody had also left the band in 1982.
David wanted to also leave the management, who were
also the record company and the publisher, which was
not a good thing. David had gotten us all into that
situation, which was very, very poor. He kind of set
some of us up in the band to make very little money
from those albums. We were making changes both
musically and business-wise. Since Mickey was out,
therefore David thought Bernie should be out too. He
wasn’t sure if I was right for the band. He was
probably fairly bored with my style of bass playing.
He always like the clanking style of playing with a
pick like Glenn Hughes did in Purple and Trapeze. He
liked a bass that had a lot of treble in it.
Ian
Paice and myself were asked to play on Gary Moore’s
album Corridors of Power. Gary is one who
likes the bass to be supporting and not challenging.
He does not want a conversion with the bass. He
wants it to stay out of the way, which means that
you don’t really need me. I was not very motivated
with that. After 18 months, it just wasn’t working
out. During the recording of Victims of the
Future I left.
Jeb:
You were on that album were you not?
Neil: I
recorded it but the only track that they kept was
"Shape of Things." All of the rest was re-recorded.
At this point, in 1982, Mel Galley is someone who
David wanted to write with. He actually had wanted
to write and work with Mel for sometime. I think
they made a very good partnership. A lot of the
songs on Slide It In still sound like
Whitesnake but they have moved on. It sounds fresh,
instead of sounding tired, as it did on Saints &
Sinners. Now, David had Mel and Cozy onboard and
a few months later, Jon Lord and Mickey Moody
rejoined. Colin Hodgkinson had taken over for me.
They did the album Slide It In and toured for
a year or so. David was not as happy with Colin as
he had hoped he would be. Mickey left permanently at
this same time and John Sykes came in. In 1984, Mel
Galley had an accident, and that meant it was not
feasible for him to play anymore, and Jon Lord left
to rejoin Deep Purple. This took the band from six
people down to four people. This is the Whitesnake
that people got to know in America when we toured
with DIO and Quiet Riot.
The
record company, Geffen, were starting to swing into
action at this point. John Kolodner was telling
David different things to do. David is one of these
people that digs his heels in and won’t change and
won’t change and won’t change. Then, suddenly, he
changes. And when he does change, it is like the
past does not exist. There was a need, in my
opinion, for Whitesnake, whether I was in it or not,
to become much more like what was successful in
America in the mid eighties. Geffen’s idea was that
Whitesnake should fill the gap that Zeppelin had
left. They wanted it to be very, very powerful. They
wanted a band that could deliver in all aspects.
John Kolodner didn’t want any old looking people in
the band. He didn’t want any people with beards and
mustaches in the band and he didn’t want any
overweight people. The image had become very
important. John Sykes looked fantastic and Cozy
looked good. At that time, I looked reasonable. We
were a very MTV friendly looking band where the
previous Whitesnake bands were not. Musically, we
were evolving. Sykes being brought onboard made it a
very heavy rock band.
Jeb:
Why did Cozy leave?
Neil:
There were discussions of how equal everyone in
Whitesnake should be concerning finances. Cozy and
David could not agree, so unfortunately, in early
1985, Cozy left. We spend quite a long time looking
for drummer. We got Ansley Dunbar for the album.
Jeb:
Slide It In really brought Whitesnake to a new
level of hard rock.
Neil:
You have to remember that Sykes and myself only play
on the remix, the one that was released in America.
The entire album was recorded and released without
John and me on it. John re-recorded a lot of rhythm
parts but did very little soloing. Most of the
soloing on the American version is still Mel Galley.
When these changes happen, you don’t get told who is
on the album. For instance, when Saints & Sinners
was released, you are supposed to kind of
believe, from the interviews at the time, that it is
Cozy, Colin and Mel playing on the record. If you
listen to it then it is obviously not them. People
seem to need it in black and white. On the British,
German and Japanese version of Slide It In,
the 1982 lineup, Cozy, Jon, Colin, Mel, Mickey and
David are on it. All of the bass on the American
remix is me. I am basically just copying what they
were doing; I didn’t put much of me on it. Sykes
didn’t have the opportunity to redo the solos
because we ran out of time. The American version
ended up more like 1987, where the British
one is more like Saints & Sinners.
Jeb:
When you heard the first three tracks on that album,
"Slide It In," "Slow & Easy" and "Love Ain’t No
Stranger" were you excited to think this was going
to be the one?
Neil:
"Slow & Easy" was an older song that we had redone.
We tried it for Saints & Sinners and it was
brought out again. When it was first recorded it was
a more traditional blues/rock Whitesnake song. The
Mel Galley songs were more melodic rock than blues
rock. I thought that is where it should go. The
fashion, at that time, was for the guitar hero. The
leads went more toward the Randy Rhoads and Eddie
Van Halen style, and that was fine with me. I wanted
the band to change but I wanted it to still be good.
When we got to 1987, it became more about
John Sykes and David Coverdale. It was their baby by
then and they went completely mad with over dubbing
and layering sounds on top of each other. The sound
is huge but the bass became very unimportant and
pushed to the background.
John
Sykes insisted that my name, Ansley Dunbar’s and his
name should be on the cover of 1987. David,
seeing as the lineup had changed by the time the
album had come out, would have rather not seen our
names on there. We are not in the videos. A lot of
people assume that Rudy Sarzo plays the bass on the
album and that Vivian Campbell and Adrian Vandenberg
play the guitars and that Tommy Aldrige plays the
drums. On the one hand, I have got to play with lots
of great people and have had a certain amount of
great success but other times I have really kind of
missed out. The guys who toured with Whitesnake on
that album made an absolute fortune. I didn’t but
that is just the way it goes.
Jeb:
Was your split with Whitesnake a bad one?
Neil:
It was something that slowly happened. John Sykes
and David Coverdale were recording in various
studios in Canada, the USA and the Carribean
throughout the end of 1985 and into 1986. We started
in Vancouver in ‘85 and I had done all of my parts
by the end of six weeks. A year later, I went back
and re-recorded a lot of the bass parts in London
when John Sykes came over to do overdubs. I was
based in London and David was based in Los Angeles.
Four or five months after Ansley and I had finished
our parts, the album was still not completed and
they told us that they were not going to pay us
anymore. From that point on, I was not in the band
anymore. I was still treated as if I was in the
band. Ansley said, "See ya later." A year later, I
was redoing bass parts, which wouldn’t have happened
if I wasn’t still in Whitesnake.
David
had created a situation where he had total control
of the mix of the album. He had gone back to using
Keith Olsen, who we used for the American version of
Slide It In. David didn’t want John Sykes
around for the mixing. John and David had a huge
fight over this and John found himself out of the
band. Remember that for eight or nine months I
didn’t have any income coming in. I had to start
working with other people. I was supposed to be
completely committed to Whitesnake but living on
thin air. By 1987, it was also very easy for David
to put a band together and do a video for "Still of
the Night." Apart from him, it is hard to tell who
else is in the band. The long blonde haired guy you
might think is John Sykes but it is in fact Adrian
Vandenberg.
I
didn’t leave. I never said, "I am off." I was also
never fired. When I tell it, it sounds like I am
whining. David probably has a completely different
take on it. I was kind of caught between the rivalry
between him and John Sykes, who wanted to be an
equal part with David. If that meant if I was
sidelined then he would be fine with that. John
desperately wanted Tommy Aldridge to be in the band.
When we were auditioning drummers in LA, he set up a
meeting between David and Tommy. David decided that
he would not be told what to do by John Sykes and,
from what I hear, was fairly obnoxious to Tommy
Aldridge. Obviously, Tommy said a swear word and
said that he was not interested in playing with
David. It is interesting that eight months later,
when John is out of the picture, David is on the
phone to Tommy saying, "Come and play with me." That
is the music business for you.
Jeb:
Did you ever get the money that was coming to you
for 1987? That album sold millions.
Neil:
It depends what you think is fair. If you think that
a band should be equal—the songwriters always make a
huge amount of money. I was not a songwriter on that
album. I had a few bits that were my ideas but that
is neither here nor there. In early 1985, we had
band meeting on this. We were trying to decide how
to proceed with the split of the profits. The split
was not very equitable. The percentage I was going
to get was rather small and was certainly not an
even four-way split.
After
the album had sold a lot, I approached them via
Ansley Dunbar’s attorney, as he was looking for an
agreement as well. They offered us some money and we
said no. A year later, I settled for two thirds of
my low percentage, which I then had to pay a third
to the attorney. I got some nice chunks of money for
a couple of years and I get a little bit now. You
have to remember that the album was really expensive
to make. We had to pay huge amounts of money back
before any of us got a penny. We also had two big
name producers on it who got big points paid from
record one. We have to wait until the album went
into profit where they were making money from the
word go.
Money
was advanced against the recording budget for the
whole period of the recording, which I wasn’t
benefitting from. Remember, my weekly stipend was
stopped. For another nine months there would be
record company advances and things which would be
put against our record sales. The money then goes to
the touring version of Whitesnake, who made loads of
money. It is a shame that I am not rich but you will
get other people who will say "Neil Murray is not
important. David should have all the money because
he is the important one." The music business is like
the movie business in the fact that it is hard to
get paid what you are actually owed. It is not fair.
It is particularly annoying when you hear of other
bands who split all the money equally between the
band members and everyone makes loads of money. In
the band situations I have been in, however, that
has not been the case.
Jeb:
You were in a band called Gomagog that, on paper,
looked like it would be a great band.
Neil:
Oh, I don’t want to focus on that very much. There
was a media guy, who is rather disgraced now, as he
went to prison for very unpleasant things, named
Jonathan King. He had various novelty hit records
back in the sixties and seventies. He was a mover
and shaker on the British music scene. He had an
idea to create his own supergroup. He wanted Cozy
and John Entwistle of the Who and really top names
to get together. Perhaps because it was him, who had
a very cheesy image of trying to get into the charts
with any old crap, made it impossible to get anyone
with any credibility to follow him. He was really
the lowest common denominator. He ended up with a
lot of second division people—I am putting myself
into that category when compared with John Entwistle.
We
ended up with two ex-Iron Maiden guys, both of whom
had been fired by Maiden. We also had the guitar
player who had been fired by Def Leppard. Nobody was
really a songwriter in the band. Jonathan had a few
ideas so he put us into the studio for three hours.
He approached it like he would one of his cheesy hit
singles. It was destined to fail. It was not a band
where we got together first and then found
management. It was just a tiny blip on the radar. We
never did any shows and we hardly even saw each
other really. In situations before I would have to
struggle to get my opinions across but in this band
there was no leader. I was having to come forward
and say, "I have this crappy old riff that I wrote
three years ago" and people were going, "Well, then
lets do that." I was having to tell people what to
do in the studio. I wouldn’t rush out to get a hold
of a copy. It is not one of my finest moments.
Jeb:
Wasn’t your first Sabbath album Headless Cross?
Neil: I
didn’t play on Headless Cross. They didn’t
have a bass player for quite some time. They used a
session bass player to do the album. Partly because
of the way he played, which was really difficult and
technical, I had to play things that were the
opposite of what Geezer Butler would do. When we
played live, I had to play really delicate things
one moment and then slam it out like Geezer the
next. After Whitesnake, I was playing in a band with
Bernie and Mel. I was also playing in a Japanese
band called Vowow. I did two albums with them. I was
not really a firm member of either band. It came to
the point where it was time to move on.
Coincidentally, it was the same time Sabbath was
looking for a bass player. We did some touring but
the record company was not very powerful in the
States and we had to cancel most of an American tour
during the summer of 1989. Next, we did an album
called Tyr. The band was just not very
successful in America at this point. Ozzy was huge
but Sabbath were forgotten about at that time.
Jeb:
Tony Martin sang on that album and I thought it was
interesting.
Neil:
He was on quite a few albums over a ten-year period
with them. They were looking to regain success in
America and that is why the reunited with Dio. Cozy
was in the band at the beginning of that but he had
an accident and was out of the picture. Ronnie James
Dio got Vinny Appice back in. They did one album and
tour and then Tony came back. There have been a lot
of changes in Sabbath over the years.
When
people like Cozy and myself go from band to band,
even when it is over a period of time, we get the
reputation of being guns for hire. In reality, it
was nothing like that at all. I might be sitting
around doing nothing for a year and then I get the
opportunity to do something more high profile and
Cozy is involved as well. From the mid eighties
onward, Cozy was very responsible for bringing me
into situations that he was involved with. Believe
it or not, Sabbath, at that point, was Brain May’s
favorite band and that is why he got Cozy and me for
his solo band.
Jeb: I
find it fascinating how these things just happen.
Neil: I
think people would rather work with someone that
they know they can get along with and who will do
the job without being drunk or being a prima dona.
There are people who are better musicians than I am
and who are more creative than me but I am easier to
cope with. I am a nice friendly guy, I suppose, but
I have high standards about professionalism.
Jeb:
You don’t get enough credit for getting together
with Peter Green. You and Cozy helped bring him
back. Peter is a guy who had been to hell and back.
Neil: I
don’t think he ever really came all the way back. In
the early days of that project, Peter was extremely
fragile and was hardly giving anything of himself
either vocally or musically. I am not a true, dyed
in the wool, blues bass player and Cozy was not a
true blues drummer. If Peter had been playing with
people who were like that then it would have
collapsed onto itself. But, later on, we got
criticized for being too heavy handed. They said you
can’t have heavy metal players in the blues. If you
came to see the band in a theater then I would say
that the bass and drums were quite heavy. We had
Peter Green up at the microphone and he is virtually
inaudible because he is not producing any sounds
from his mouth. The same was true with his guitar
playing. He was so delicate. To be honest, the
audience was really hoping for 1967 Fleetwood Mac,
which they were never going to get.
I do
have to admit that Peter Green is amazing as a blues
man. He can do things light years beyond what I can
do in terms of sensitivity and feel; he has huge
amounts of feel. That part never went away but his
powerful and charismatic side of him has gone away.
It was a frustrating period. Cozy lasted longer than
he probably thought he was going to. Brian May
decided to go back on the road, this is shortly
after Cozy died, so I left. We really didn’t get
much credit for helping Peter out. There were also
business problems as well, which I won’t go into
here. It was never going to be a very successful
venture, I am afraid.
Jeb: My
last one goes back to 1981. You got to play with
Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Sting.
Neil:
Around that period, Bernie Marsden and John Lord
were doing solo albums. The hot drummer of the time
was Simon Phillips and they used him on a couple of
tracks. I got to play a bit with Simon. Simon was
also the drummer for Jeff Beck. Jeff’s bass player
was Mo Foster. For whatever reason, Jeff Beck and
Eric Clapton had been asked to do a series of four
charity concerts for Amnesty International called
The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball. Mo Foster was
going to be the bass player for those shows.
However, Mo could not make it for the first two
days. Simon recommended me. I did two songs on each
of the first two nights with Jeff and Eric, one of
which is on the album.
I also
played a song with Sting on the first night. It was
only Sting on guitar and me on bass. It didn’t last
past the first night. Most likely I was in the way
[laughter]. Sting and the guitar is really all you
need. The third night, Eric had gone out and gotten
smashed the night before and wasn’t allowed out by
his wife, so Jeff and Eric didn’t play. The last
night they played with Mo Foster. I got to join them
on the finale the last night, just jumping around on
stage. I loved playing with Jeff.
Jeb:
Have you seen Jeff’s new DVD?
Neil: I
was at the show for two nights, in the audience. The
first night, in the audience, was Tony Iommi, Brian
May, Albert Lee, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. Eric
Clapton played on the encore. They did a television
show where the sound quality was terrible and that
is what delayed the DVD. They fixed the sound on the
DVD and that is why it came out later than the CD.
Somebody said they saw me on the television show
sitting in the audience.
Jeb:
Out of all the guitar players you have played with,
who is the best?
Neil: I
would say Jeff Beck. All of the other guitar players
I have played with would also agree. I would like to
play with guys like Jeff and Eric Johnson but I am
not good enough to play with them all the time. If
you put me in that situation, I would flounder. I
have been very fortunate to play with the guys I
have played with like Tony Iommi. Tony is very
creative and unique. Brian May is amazing. He is not
just a guitarist. He is a composer, an arranger and
a singer. Most of the people I have worked with have
been down to earth and very fun to be around. My bad
experience in the music business have been mostly
financial but you can’t have everything.
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