Welcome to a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. Hi, thanks for your company today. If you’re into music, no matter where you live, you’re sure to know the band that’s the focus of this episode.
They were an R&B group that only played pop to get on the charts, and they ranked among the most adept British Invasion acts in both styles. Vocalist Paul Jones lent them his voice, and while he was known as one of the strongest and most adaptable singers in rock and blues, it was their keyboardist after whom the band was named, Manfred Mann. Paul Jones went on to have a lengthy career as an actor after the band’s demise.
Here he is to share his story. Thank you for having me. That’s absolutely our pleasure that you’ve been requested by lots of our listeners.
One in particular, Rick, who lives in Ballina, beautiful Ballina in New South Wales here in Australia, has asked to chat with you. So maybe guys just say hi to each other. Hello, Rick.
Hello, Paul. Nice. Paul Jones, we all know you from your Manfred Mann days, because of course you were one of the founding members of that band.
But you’ve done so much more, and I just want you to tell us all about it. Perhaps we start off with how you came to those heady heights in the 60s with Manfred Mann. What were you doing before that? Well, I hadn’t long dropped out of university, actually.
And I decided to do that because I knew already that what I wanted to do was music, and studying English literature wouldn’t do me any good, really, in that chosen profession. So I started to sort of hang out with as many musical people as I could, notably Alexis Corner, who was the sort of hub of blues in Great Britain in the early 60s. I used to, in common with a whole load of other people, including members of the Rolling Stones and the Animals and so on.
We used to stand along the front of the stage when Alexis Corner’s band, Blues Incorporated, was doing a gig. And we would stand there looking sort of hopeful, with eyebrows raised, so that Alexis Corner would point at one of us and say, get up on here. And you would get up on stage and do whatever song you could persuade them to do.
It was very exciting. Anyway, I carried on doing that for a while, and I got an audition for a dance band. And I thought, well, you never know, I might get it.
And I did. Around about the same time, Brian Jones, who obviously came with me, in fact, he lived near me, so we joined forces and would go to Alexis Corner’s gigs. He said, I’m going to form a band, and I want you to be my singer.
And I said, no, I’m not going to do that, Brian. He said, why not? And I said, well, first of all, you are unduly optimistic, you think you’re going to become rich and famous. You don’t get rich and famous playing our music.
Secondly, I’ve just got an audition with a dance band, and they’ve got actual money. They will pay me. So I went with the dance band and he went with Mick Jagger.
I learned a lot from being in that band. So you obviously regretted your decision not joining Brian in a band. But you also… Never regretted that for one moment in my life, not for one moment.
How come? Well, because by the time they got anywhere, I was getting somewhere as well. At that stage, we were sort of more or less level pegging with the Stones. And in subsequent years, there was nothing that made me wish I’d got Mick Jagger’s job.
First of all, if I had joined Brian’s band, it would never have become the Rolling Stones. You had to have Mick Jagger and Keith Richard to be the Rolling Stones. And so that was one thing.
The other thing was, I’ve actually enjoyed my career. I see them doing this and that and more of this and a lot more of that. And I don’t wish I ever was in that situation.
The next time somebody said, we’re forming a band, do you want to be the singer? I said, yes. And that, of course, was Manfred Mann. Just before you get to Manfred Mann, you talk very humbly about attending university, but perhaps not many people know that it was actually Oxford University.
Your parents must have been really upset with you when you decided to drop out and follow music as a career, were they? My father possibly was. He regarded himself, and I suppose he was, a self-made man. He was until a few years ago.
I don’t know whether his record has ever been equaled or broken, but he was the only man in the history of the Royal Navy who worked at every level in the Navy, starting as the lowest of low. And he became a senior captain. He actually finally failed to become an admiral.
But at that point, no one had reached senior captain who had ever started as a… No, some had. Famously, Lord Nelson did. My father was a little bit disappointed.
He said, well, what do you think you’re going to do? And I said, I’m going to make a living as a musician. And he said, well, here’s five pounds. Good luck.
Wow. In 1962, you joined the Manhattan Blues Brothers. Blues was your first love, wasn’t it? Yes, blues and gospel, actually.
So what happened when you joined that band? Well, they were jazz musicians. There were six jazz musicians. And they said, well, we need a shouter.
Now, it was a jazz musician’s expression for a guy who sang in front of a big band, actually. That’s what they called Jimmy Rushing and Big Joe Turner and people like that. I said, OK, well, I’ll have a crack at it.
And I was a big jazz fan. So I was actually very happy and really rather made up. My first job really was to teach them some blues because they didn’t really know much.
And obviously, they knew the blues chord sequences because jazz musicians have to. But they didn’t really know much. And I went in there and I taught them Muddy Waters songs and Howling Wolf and T-Bone Walker and people like that.
They call it Stormy Monday, but Tuesday’s just as bad. Yes, they call it Stormy Monday, but Tuesday’s just as bad. Wednesday’s worse, and Thursday’s also sad.
So you were with the Manhug Blues Brothers. How did the renaming come about to be called Manford Man? Well, actually, sometime in early 63, the Manhug part was dropped and we were called the Blues Brothers. I found it hard to convince people that that was the case.
But somebody did actually send me some facsimile photographs of some tickets that he had in his collection from gigs he’d come to. And sure enough, we were called the Blues Brothers, featuring Paul Jones. So that was how we auditioned for EMI Records in 1963.
It was mostly songs of my composition that we did on that audition. But the guy from EMI Records, who was to become our producer for the next three plus years, he said, well, we like the band, but you’re going to have to change the name because no one will ever get anywhere with a stupid name like the Blues Brothers. And of course, we did.
And we said, well, we’ll think up a name. And he said, no, you don’t need to think anything up. You’re called Manford Man from now on.
And we said, hang on a minute, you can’t call the band by one member of it. And they said, yeah, we can. It’s the best name for a band we’ve heard for years.
So we had no choice. We said, OK. And you went with it.
It wasn’t long after that that you scored your first British hit. That’s right. That she was just a walking down the street singing.
Tapping her fingers and shuffling her feet, singing. She looked good. She looked fine.
She looked good. She looked fine. And I nearly lost my mind before I knew it.
She was walking next to me, singing. Holding my hand just as much as I’d like to be singing. We walked on to my door.
We walked on to my door. Then we kissed a little more. We had a couple of things that didn’t make the charts.
But as a result of ready, steady go, liking the band, it suddenly became a really roller coaster thing. The second single that we put out, which wasn’t a success, was a song of mine called Cock a Hoop. And the ready, steady go invited us to come on the program and perform Cock a Hoop live on TV.
And we did that towards the end of November 1963. While we were there, they said, would you guys be interested in writing us a signature tune for the program? Because they were using an ordinary, already released record as their signature tune. And they said, we really would like to have one, you know, especially written for the program.
So we said, yes, OK, we’ll do that for you. We went away. And within a few days, we had written a song called Five, Four, Three, Two, One.
They said they wanted a countdown. They said they wanted the rhythm that we used on the song Cock a Hoop, which was a Bo Diddley rhythm. You know, bam, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, that one.
And we used that and the countdown that they insisted on. And one or two other things that they told us, it was a bit like doing a commercial, actually, a jingle. Anyway, we did it.
And we went in and recorded that. A couple of weeks after that, they had us on the program, opening the program with that piece of music. And a couple of weeks after that, it was in the charts.
Six weeks from sort of being absolutely nobody to having a top five record. Describe the time that that was, because that was obviously the time when the British invasion was really gearing up. So music was just central to every young person’s life at the time, wasn’t it? Yes, but Very Steady Go wasn’t just about music.
It was about, you know, clothes, makeup, dance moves and anything else that might be of interest to a teenager. Ah, popular culture generally. So life changed for you, as you say, in a matter of just a few weeks.
What did that change mean to you as part of that band? Well, I do remember that I used to go to our regular Monday night gig at the Marquee Club in the centre of London, Soho. And I used to go by bus from Hampstead, where I lived. And on that particular Monday, our manager rang round the band and said it’s coming to the charts, it’s coming to the top 30 at number 29.
And I said, great, I’m a star. And I rang a taxi to take me to the gig. After that, I don’t really remember anything much else.
Obviously, things change. Yes, but as far as what we were doing, it didn’t really change at all. We just turned up at the gig and played.
But you must have had more people turning up to adore you. Yeah, well, yes. But actually, we’d built up a few residences, several towns on the south coast of England where most of us came from, except for Manfred, who was from South Africa.
But we had those residences and we had the residency at the Marquee Club. And those places were packed every time we played. So it wasn’t a sort of major change in our working life.
You just kept on playing. Of course, we got more television programmes as well than recognition. And you’d have to think more money.
Yeah, it wasn’t a great sort of mountain of money in those days. But anyway, of course, more girls chasing you down the street. Some of that.
Did you like that? Why not? Yes. Actually, it could get a bit dangerous. What do you mean? It actually got a bit dangerous one time.
There was a there was a girl trying to cut some of my hair off. She was brandishing scissors. And all these other girls were sort of fighting her out of the way.
And she was sort of going, no, and the scissors were going like this, you know, all over the place. And Tom McGuinness, bless him, grabbed hold of the girl’s wrist and removed the scissors from her hand and said, don’t you might get his eye instead of a lock of his hair. You know, but I mean, those kind of moments like that made you think, hmm, I’m not so quite so sure about this adulation business.
Life was good. Back to Paul in a moment.
This is a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. So did you have to have protection from then on? We never reached that stage.
We had our own guys, actually. We had a road crew. It was important to have those guys because we never had the paid minders that, say, the Stones and the Beatles and people like that would have.
After 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, which launched Manford Man onto the UK scene, it wasn’t very long until you had Do I Diddy Diddy and also saw you break through to the United States, didn’t it? Yes, I went to number one in the States as well. Cracking the US market must have been the goal. Oh, yes.
It was very exciting and yet somehow it didn’t translate into lots of subsequent hits and masses of touring. We did one tour of the States sharing the bill with Peter and Gordon. Please lock me away And don’t allow the day Here inside where I hide With my loneliness I don’t care what they say I won’t stay in a world without love Birds sing out a tune And rain clouds hide at the moon I’m OK Here I’ll stay With my loneliness I don’t care what they say I won’t stay in a world without love When we got to New York, the promoters of the tour said, We haven’t sold many tickets.
What we’re going to have to do is to get a local group added to the bill to put more bottoms on seats. So they booked a very good local group called the Exciters. The Exciters were the people who recorded the original version of Do I Diddy.
Oh. So that shows you just how in touch with the scene the promoters of that tour were. And so there were two bands on the bill, both of whom had one really… No, actually, the Exciters had had a much bigger hit with a song called Tell Him than they did Do I Diddy.
And I heard the Exciters version of Do I Diddy. And I said, goodness, that is a roaring, great, big hit. I did have a tame record shop and I went in there and I ordered a copy of the Exciters’ Do I Diddy.
And I played it to the band and I said, this we have to do. I just was so excited about this song. And I just kept saying, we have to do it, we have to do it, guys.
As we all know, Manfred Mann did record the song and it was huge. It got into the tail end of a recording session. I don’t think anyone else in the band was as enthusiastic as I was.
In fact, I know they weren’t. But I just knew that record was a hit. And John Burgess, our producer, said, have you got any other songs? Because we’ve got another 20 minutes left of the session.
So we came out with this one. It must have felt really strange then to be on the same bill with the guys who’d had the original hit. Yeah, it was a little bit sad in a way because they were people that obviously I looked up to them because I wouldn’t have bought their record if I didn’t.
And yet here were we with the hit version of the song, closing the show with it. So it was kind of embarrassing. It was a girl group.
For some reason I got our songs from girl groups or girl singers. So were you writing very much at the time or you were really pulling in stuff from elsewhere that you thought would be hits? I was writing a lot in the early days of the Manfreds. However, after 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, which was actually written by Manfred, me and Mike Hug, the drummer, and then the whole group wrote the next one.
And that one stalled just outside the top 10. So at that point, the record company said, right, we’re not going to put out any more songs that you guys have written as singles. If you want to write songs, we’ll put them on the albums and the B-sides of the singles.
But the singles will have to be written by proper songwriters. So from that point onwards, I was the person who kind of brought the songs out of my record collection and said, why don’t we do this one or try this one? That happened with the follow-up, which was Sha La La, which was by the Shirelles before us. Then we did Come Tomorrow, which was a lady called Marie Knight.
If the song of the sunbird could replace my wrong word, then my dear, that’s the song I would borrow. And tonight, you would hear the saddest song of the year. And you’d be mine once again.
Come tomorrow. We did Oh No, Not My Baby, which was a lovely, wonderful singer. That was a song by Carole King and Gerry Goffin.
And wow, you know, for some reason, those were the records I seemed to be getting most excited about. And we put them all out, and they were all hits for us. What about songs like Pretty Flamingo? Where’d that come from? Pretty Flamingo was my last hit with the Manfreds before I left.
And I did not find that song. John Burgess found that song. And I have to tell you, he played it to us in the studio.
I said, oh, John, oh, John, you’re losing your grip, man. I mean, you’re such a great producer, but that song is terrible. That’ll never get anywhere.
And he said, do me a favor, Paul, sing it. So, of course, I did. And it went to number one.
Not in America. On a flood of flamingos, like the sun, the skies. When she walks, she moves so fine, like a flamingo.
When it clings so tight, she’s out of reach and out of sight. When she walks fast, if she just would. And what about Go Now? That was not my idea either.
That was a Bob Dylan song. And I was not a Bob Dylan enthusiast at that point, really. But that one was, you know, the guys convinced me of that one.
And, of course, that went to number two in the charts. It’s still in the repertoire now. I love to sing it now.
So you were sailing really high as part of Man For Man. What happened then that you decided to leave the band in 1966? I know people said, why do you want to leave? You just had a number one. And I said, well, nobody asked me why I wanted to join the band in the first place.
And I left for exactly the same reason, which was, it’s the next thing to do. I just knew I had to be out. And actually, because my songwriting had been sort of suppressed, I thought, I’m going to go out of this band and I’m going to do what I want to do.
I’m not going to be pushed into any. Because they were getting more sort of poppy. All the music that I had brought to the band, apart from what I wrote, was music of black origin, as we call it nowadays.
You know, they were all black singers and vocal groups. And that was my kind of music. I loved that kind of music.
Always had, still do. I thought, well, I’m going to do all that sort of stuff. Instead of having four other people, you know, sort of putting in what they want to do and all that sort of thing.
Well, you know, pretty soon I had four other people. Only in this case, it was the record producer, the agent, the publicist, the musical director. All telling you what to do anyway.
They were all channeling me in the direction they thought I ought to go. Listen to me, baby I’m trying to make you see That I want to be with you, girl If you want to be with me But if you’ve got to go It’s all right But if you’ve got to go Go now Or else you’ve got to stay all night Almost the first thing I did when I left the band was to get a movie called Privilege, which I did with Gene Shrimpton. Well, that altered my career quite extensively.
So you say you got a movie as an actor? Yes, well, I was playing a pop star, so it wasn’t a heavy acting job. I’ve often said in the past that my acting career actually didn’t start until after that film. But nonetheless, it did result in some other stuff.
Certainly for the next 10 years or so after that, I was doing nothing but acting. Well, just the occasional bit of music and quite a lot of sessions because having pushed my harmonica to the fore while I was in the Manfreds, I started to get sessions on harmonica. So I played with any number of people, from David Essex to the London Symphony Orchestra.
Hey dear, rock and roll, rock my soul Hey dear, voodoo, DJ Hey, shout summertime blues Jump up and down in the blue suede shoes Hey dear, rock and roll, rock on And where do we go from here Which is a way that’s clear Still looking for that blue jean, baby queen Prettiest girl I ever seen See you shake on movie screen, Jimmy Bean James Dean Then I was in all kinds of stuff. A couple of films, a fair bit of television, episodes of series with guest villains every week. Mostly, though, theatre.
And your solo career kept going simultaneously, didn’t it? You kept writing songs and putting out albums because you did have a few major hits on your own. Yes, that’s true. Actually, my first hit was a song, which I think was a chuck-out from somebody else’s session.
The second one, actually, both my top ten hits were written by Mike Leander, who was the guy who wrote the music for the film Privilege. Obviously, Patti Smith liked the film Privilege because she did a song called Free Me from it. I think she liked me because she also did a version of 5-4-3-2-1.
But because the song was actually about the Manfreds, she didn’t sing any of the words except 5-4-3-2-1. Hey little girl, I’m in a whirl I’ve been a bad, bad boy I’m on my knees, forgive me please I’ve been a bad, bad boy I’m not the man you think I am I give you warning You wake up and find me gone Some sunny morning Things that I said run through my head I’ve been a bad, bad boy My past is black, I’m coming back I’ve been a bad, bad boy In my time I’ve done a lot of things I’d better not remember But you see such a change in me I’m making you forget your resolution I’ve been a bad, bad boy was probably my most successful song and that came from the film Privilege. But I checked myself there when I said my most successful song.
My most successful song in New Zealand, and I know you don’t care about this, but it was a song called Poor Jenny, which was an Everly Brothers song, which I really liked. I like the Everly Brothers, and I liked that song because it was funny, witty, and well-written by Felice and Boudlow Bryant, another great songwriting team. For some reason in New Zealand, they picked it off the album as a single.
It was never a single anywhere else in the world, and it was actually the biggest hit I had in New Zealand. I took my little Jenny to a party last night After a rocket ended in a hell of a fight When someone hit my Jenny she went out like a light Poor Jenny And then some joker went and called the cops on the phone So everybody scattered out to places unknown I couldn’t carry Jenny so I left her alone Oh, poor Jenny Well, Jenny had a picture in the paper this morning She made it with a bang According to the story in the paper this morning Jenny is the leader of a teenage gang Jenny has a brother and he’s hot on my trail Her daddy wants to ride me out of town on a rail I hope I’m still around when Jenny gets out of jail Oh, my poor Jenny I went downtown to see her She was locked in her cell She wasn’t very glad to see that I could tell In fact, to tell the truth She wasn’t looking too well Oh, my poor Jenny Her eye was black, her face was red, her hair was a fright She looked as though she’d been a-crying half of the night I told her I was sorry She said, get out of sight Oh, poor Jenny It seems a shame that Jenny had to go get apprehended That’s a heck of a fate With Mike Darbo replacing him in Manford Man Paul concentrated on acting and on his solo work In 1978, he cut a novelty single produced by Tim Rice in which he sang covers of the Sex Pistols’ Pretty Vacant and the Ramones’ Sheena Is A Punk Rocker Why would he do such a crazy thing? Keep listening to find out
This is a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. I think it was the result of a slightly boozy lunch.
I had said to Tim, you know, over the pudding, that I thought that the brouhaha about the Sex Pistols, I wasn’t criticising them in any way as a band, but I said the brouhaha about them is extreme, and undeservedly so, because actually, if you took one of their songs and recorded it by Matt Monroe, you would see that it was actually a relatively conventional song. And Tim said, you mean you could sing Pretty Vacant in the manner of Matt Monroe? And I said, of course I could. So he went and booked the session immediately.
I said, I don’t mind doing this with you, Tim. I think it’s really a funny thing to do. I said, but I don’t want it coming out under the name Paul Jones.
He said, what name do you want to put it out under? I said, John Holson, H-O-L-S-O-N. It’s the opposite of Johnny Rotten. There’s no point in asking, you’ll get no reply Just remember that you’ll decide I got no reason, it’s all too much You’ll always find us Out to lunch We’re so pretty, oh so pretty Vacant We’re so pretty, oh so pretty Vacant You’re kind of the epitome of that blue-eyed blues, aren’t you? And as the years went on, that’s exactly what you started to do.
You formed a blues band and you mentioned earlier that you’d kept that going for a number of years. Well, actually, I did start the blues band because I’d been making my career as an actor for 10 solid years. I decided to start the blues band because I was actually so missing playing the blues.
So I got the guys together and that was that. But playing blues wasn’t going to elicit any major radio hits, was it? Yeah, we had a very small hit with a version of Bob Dylan’s Maggie’s Farm. That was partly because we had a prime minister called Maggie at the time.
We weren’t there for hit records. We were there to play the blues and satisfy anybody else who wanted to hear the blues. And we found that there were masses and masses of people.
I’m still meeting people who say, oh, what a sad thing. Blues band is no more. Stuff happens.
43 years. A band can stay together for 43 years. It must be doing something right.
But on the other hand, it’s also time to do something else. That band ran from 1980. I know that in 1982, former Human League members Martin Ware and Ian Craig Marsh invited you to lend vocals and harmonica to cover a song called There’s a Ghost in My House.
Their album that they were putting together was electronic reworkings of the hits of the 60s. You were obviously very happy to lend your voice and name to that. Well, it was just like all the other sessions that I got offered, actually, at the time.
Actually, they hired me to play harmonica behind Tina Turner on Ball of Confusion, which, if I’m not mistaken, was a Temptations hit. And they said, while you’re here, we need somebody to sing There’s a Ghost in My House. So I said, OK, I’ll have a crack at that, too.
So out came those two. The album was called Music of Quality and Distinction. They actually put out the Tina Turner track as a single.
It was a different mix from the one on the album. So during that period also, you’re playing with the blues band. You are doing a whole lot of sessions.
And then in 1991, all of a sudden, a new band emerges for you called The Manfreds. Tell us about the genesis of that. Tom McGuinness, whom I dragged into The Manfreds in 1963, and actually who was the first person I telephoned when I decided to form a blues band in 1979.
He was celebrating his 50th birthday. And he thought, I’m going to have a really good celebration. I’m going to assemble every band I’ve ever played in in one place, and that’s a gig.
He actually didn’t get all the bands. The very first band that he played in in any kind of professional or semi-professional capacity was a band called The Roosters. There were two guitar players in The Roosters, Tom McGuinness and Eric Clapton.
Tom could not get Eric Clapton or he couldn’t get The Roosters back together. They were all over the world. But he did get The Manfreds, the blues band, McGuinness Flint, which was a successful thing after the end of Manfred Mann in 1969.
And because McGuinness Flint were there, the chief songwriting team within McGuinness Flint was Gallagher and Lyle, and they did that gig instead of The Roosters. So we had all four of those bands all featuring Tom McGuinness, and it was a cracker of an evening. ♪ Baby, I love you, and I don’t want to leave you, baby, no.
Don’t you act all once upon a tune. And don’t believe me, I want you beside my grave. Whatever happened to Manfred himself? Manfred’s actually still very successful.
They married a Norwegian lady, and that’s where he now lives. And that’s why people think he’s not doing much. But every so often he puts a tour together and goes on the road and he’s got a cracker of a band.
Manfred Mann’s Earth band has had a whole variety of other people in it. Yes, that’s right. But the current line-up is absolutely spiffing, and he goes out all across Europe and sometimes further abroad as well.
But he’s still very, very successful. Manfred Mann was born Manfred Seppsi-Lubovitz in South Africa. Originally influenced by jazz music, he formed the Earth band in 1971.
The band’s US breakthrough came in 77 when they charted at number one with a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s Blinded by the Light. Blinded by a Caduceus, another runner in the night Blinded by a Caduceus, another runner in the night Blinded by a Caduceus Madman drove his brother’s engines in the summer With a teenage diplomat In the dark for the months Had the adolescent punch his way into his head With a boulder on his shoulder Peeling cattle where I tripped And merry-go-round With a crowd to declare I’d like to bring in Rick from Ballina, one of our listeners now, because I know that Rick had a couple of questions for you, Paul, if that’s OK. Rick? You had a brief association with Jack Bruce, with Manfred Mann.
I was just wondering if you could comment on where he took music. It was briefer than I would have liked it to be, but he joined Manfred Mann in order to replace Tom McGuinness on bass. Tom had joined the band on bass, but Tom is actually a guitarist.
Tom had been sort of three years in the band on bass. And Mike Vickers, who at that time was playing saxophone and guitar, but not simultaneously, left the band. So we had no guitarist.
So Tom said, I’ll replace Mike Vickers, because I am, after all, a guitarist, so replace me with a bass player. And it was Manfred who actually persuaded Jack Bruce to leave John Mayall and join Manfred Mann. My name is Jack and I live in the back of the Greta Garbo home With friends I will remember wherever I may roam My name is Jack and I live in the back of the Greta Garbo home For wayward boys and girls My name is Jack and I live in the back of the Greta Garbo home For wayward boys and girls There goes Fred with his hands on his head Cos he thinks he’s heard the bomb And here comes Superman who really puts it on It’s lots of fun and I love to run up and down the stairs I make as much noise as I want and no one ever cares And my name’s Jack and I live in the back of the Greta Garbo home For wayward boys and girls We all love Jack and we live in the back of the Greta Garbo home For wayward boys and girls I stayed friends with Jack because I was already friends with Eric and vaguely knew Ginger Baker, so I kind of stayed friends with them.
I was actually responsible for Jack Bruce recording with Eric Clapton. They put the record out as Eric Clapton’s powerhouse, but to be absolutely honest it was a band that I put together and I actually got Eric and I got Jack and I tried to get Ginger and Ginger said, I’m not doing it and I’m not going to tell you why. Later on I found out why, it was because Cream were already rehearsing.
Paul Jones is now in his mid-eighties, but you’d never guess that either looking or listening to him. I eat sensibly. I warm up my voice before gigs.
I’m not a fanatical exerciser. I don’t go to a gym or anything. I do look after myself.
I mean, I do take a multivitamin and things like that, yeah. Is there anything left on your bucket list? I think you’ve had about 37 solo albums. You’ve played with the most incredible artists from, as you mentioned, Eric Clapton to Percy Sledge to Joe Bonamassa.
Is there anything left that you still want to accomplish? Yeah. I’m still moving into sort of areas of music that I haven’t really done much. One is big bands.
Somebody approached me about three years ago now and asked me if I would like to do a gig with a big band. Eventually I thought, yeah, okay. And this guy said, right, I’ll write all the arrangements and we did this big band gig and it was great.
I’ve got some more coming up. I’m also working with smaller groups with a kind of jazz influence. So we’re having sort of evenings of jazz and blues mixed.
That’s good fun as well. Jools Holland books me every so often to work with his big band as well. I love it.
Of all your songs in your back catalogue, is there one that you particularly like that we should go out on now? Wow. Do you want a hit? I want whatever’s closest to your heart. I’ve got an album out which is called Paul Jones’ The Blues.
It’s a compilation of previously issued material. There’s a song on it and that was produced by a lady in California called Carla Olsen. I got Eric Clapton to play on the title track of the album but also on one other track, and that is a song called Choose or Cop Out.
And I always say when we do it live, ladies and gentlemen, please pay attention to the words because they are why I wrote this song. I would love you to play that. Okay then do what you gotta do Be who you gotta be Well yeah but when you say gotta Do know what you really mean Nobody gonna make you be anything at all I know some things you don’t change much Like how old and how tall But it’s your decision baby What you do with what you receive Paul Jones, thank you so very much for sharing your time with us.
Thank you, Sandy. It’s been a great pleasure. Thank you.
Cos it’s a beautiful day You’ve been listening to A Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kaye Beautiful day Oh baby any day that you’re gone away It’s a beautiful day