1: Who were your influences in music?

 

As a guitarist, Jimmy Hendrix and the Cream were my strongest influences.

I was lucky enough to come of age when ‘pop’ music was going through probably it’s most seismic change ever. Guitarists like Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Richie Blackmore and Peter Green were breaking whole new ground on a scale that I don’t think we’ve seen since.

 

2: Was the guitar your first choice of instrument? If not what was your first choice?

 

Yes it was.

 

3: Were you self-taught? What was your first guitar you ever owned?

 

 I had no formal tuition. My parents, who weren’t musical at all and didn’t really encourage me in my endeavors, had an old upright piano in the house, which I banged around on and wrote terrible songs. I begged for and got an acoustic guitar – an Echo I think – for my 10th birthday along with a copy of Bert Weedon’s ‘Play in a Day’ book. It put me right off, and the guitar went straight in the attic. I dusted it off a year later when my older brother started playing drums, and I used to hassle the guitarist in his band to show me stuff. That was a lot of the reason I play right handed (I’m a lefty) – so I could play other guitars that lay around – I’d pick up the odd chord that way, but really I learned by copying Hendrix and Clapton off record.  I always knew I was going to be an electric player. My first was a ‘Futurama II’.

 

4: I heard it was drummer Paul Burgess who got you involved with the group 10cc. How did you meet Paul? And what was the process of you joining 10cc?

 

Paul Burgess, who I still play with to this day, probably effected the most dramatic and fortuitous change of direction in my entire life. I often wonder what I’d be doing now if he hadn’t seen fit to recommend me to 10cc in 1976.

At 21, I left college clutching my Higher National Diploma in Business Studies, with the single thought – the one thing I’d learned in 3 years – that I didn’t want to be a businessman; an ironic and somewhat unfortunate conviction that has probably ill-served me since. So instead, I sold my soul to a local Cambridge prog rock band. We were called ‘Gentlemen’ and for two years – it seems so much longer! – we battled for the Holy Grail, a recording contract, which we never got. The two events that brought us tantalizingly close to this goal was first, a Radio One recording session with Alan (Fluff) Freeman. This recording was the best we ever did and ultimately sold me to the 10cc guys. The second, was our one and only TV appearance on a Manchester show called ‘So It Goes’. For some reason we were never happy with our drummer. We had three in two years and even our third, we tried to replace before the TV. In steps Paul Burgess. For the life of me I can’t remember how we tracked him down. At the time he was a touring member of 10cc but had not yet started to record with the band. We rehearsed with him but for some reason we got the jitters and stuck with the other drummer who knew the song so well. It might amuse you to see this, my first TV performance, on Youtube:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u20ASGazUb4

That’s me in the flared, tassel leather hipsters and stack heels!!

Paul was, and is an awesome drummer and actually could have done it standing on his head, and I think it is to Paul’s eternal credit that, in spite of us taking the gig away from him, when 10cc were looking for a guitarist, he played them the Alan Freeman Show tape and, subject to a cursory meeting and jam, the deed was done. By then the band Gentlemen was on the verge of collapse. This was fortunate for me because I was so committed to the band that, I could easily have been stupid enough to turn the offer down. 10cc were really massive at the time. I was that dumb! At the time of the TV show I was so convinced of our imminent meteoric rise to stardom that I came close to a violent altercation in the Green Room with the Sex Pistols who were also making their début TV appearance on the same show. Punk and Prog Rock were like matter and anti-matter and I was utterly convinced that it was punk that was destined for instant annihilation. How wrong I was. Within a fortnight they were as big as the Beatles while ‘Gentlemen’ and Prog Rock generally, spiraled into a black hole.

 

5: When and where did you first meet Mike Oldfield? And how did you get involved with working with him on the "QE2" tour?

 

Here’s the long answer. In 1978/79 10cc could apparently do no wrong. With Dreadlock Holiday topping the charts everywhere, we were on fire and then, in Jan’79 tragedy struck. We were just about to start another massive tour, starting in Australia, when Eric Stewart (10cc’s principle lead singer) had a car crash that put him out of action for about a year. For the band it was like being tripped up at a flat sprint. We lost all momentum and because we wanted to stay musically active while Eric recovered, we all made ourselves available for other ventures. I had got to know Pierre Moerlen’s manager who gave me Mike Oldfield’s home number. It was a bit cheeky of me to call him, but 10cc’s status was such that you could take those sort of liberties. He seemed genuinely pleased that I offered my services, took my number and gave me a sort of ‘we’ll let you know’ that I assumed meant he wouldn’t. But several months later, August 1980, he did. And within four weeks I was flying off to Barcelona with him to play in front of the biggest audience of my life.

Mike is a unique man. I suppose we all are, but in the tradition of geniuses generally, he would do everything differently from anyone else. I think this isolated him. And he could swing pendulously from one extreme to another. When he first toured, he segregated himself from the other musicians with a musical director as the single point of contact and later, went back to that format, but when he called me in, he had swung completely the other way. He wanted to be a band – share the risks and the profits – while he managed and tour managed himself. The ensemble that I started with, was I think the smallest he’s ever used. Mike, Tim Cross, Maggie Reilly, Mike Fry, Morris Pert and myself and we probably got to know him better than most musicians who have passed through his bands.

 

6: How long were the rehearsals for the tour? Where did the band rehearse?

 

We started rehearsing at Mike’s place, an exquisite house in Denham, on the 1st September 1980. We only put in a few days and on the 18th we flew in a small private plane to Barcelona. That plane and the hurricane we flew into on the way up to San Sebastian (Spanish air traffic control gave us the ‘wrong’ weather report!) later became the subject of the song ‘Five Miles Out’.

 

7: On the tours with Mike, you played bass guitar as well, had you played some bass before this?

 

I played a lot of bass on tour with Mike. I had been used to playing bass on about three songs in the 10cc show. I don’t think I’m very good. I play it like a guitarist but then so does Mike, so I suppose that’s why he was happy with it. Mike generally likes things to sound exactly the way they do when he plays them, which he usually did on the records. This is an almost insurmountable challenge for a guitarist because no one sounds like him. All the guitarists he has chosen to play with that I know – this includes Tim Renwick, Ant Glynne, Mickey Moody, Nico Ramsden, Alan Limbrick – are all to some extent blues based guitars, and fabulous players to a man. And like me, I suspect they were all magnanimously tossed a solo in one of Mike’s spontaneous gestures, which we delivered with Bluesy gusto, only to have it taken away a couple of gigs later. And rightly so, because it never sounded like Mike Oldfield music, and that’s what people had paid to see. So we end up playing bass!!

 

8: When did you know that Mike wanted you to stay with the band and record on the album "Five Miles Out"? What was 10cc doing at this time?

 

The Spanish tour went well and the band format seemed to be working for Mike. I think it was pretty much understood that it was on-going but we didn’t start recording a new album for almost another year. In fact the next thing we did as I recall, was a TV show in Edinburg in Dec’80.

This was a busy time for me. 10cc recorded the ‘10 out of 10’ album, I did an Old Grey Whistle Test and album with Sniff and the Tears, and a wide variety of other guitar sessions before Mike convened the same band to tour Germany in March’81. This was a sellout arena tour. We then did a TV in Barcelona with Paddy Maloney before a more extensive Europe tour from the middle of June to the end of July’81. It included the Montreux Jazz Festival. This was the tour that Jeremy Parker joined, starting on the merchandising, and ending pretty much as Mike’s P.A.-  a position he held right up until Mike moved to Bristol a few years ago. Jeremy remains a good friend of mine. We had so much fun on that tour. Back in the UK we did two gigs. One at the Guild Hall Yard where Mike got the key to the city! And one at the Rainbow in London. Then in September we gathered to record the Five Miles Out album together. I don’t think Mike had even come close to recording an album in this way. Of course he did large chunks of work on his own but we were all very involved in the recording from early Sept right through till the end of Jan’82.

 

9: I read that the band co-wrote two songs, "Family Man" and "Orabidoo" on the album 'Five Miles Out'. What parts did you contribute to in the writing on both songs? And do you know what the meaning of the word "Orabidoo" is?

 

…And of course we also got involved in the writing. I can’t remember exactly when we wrote ‘Family Man’ but it must have been before Orabidoo which I know was recorded right towards the end of those five months. There’s a rhythmic guitar riff that occurs a few times in ‘Family Man’. Four of us were in the studio at the time. It was a riff of mine, and we were jamming on it – me, Mike, Tim Cross and Mike Fry on drums. There are only two chords in the song and we established a form around them. The lyrical theme did not come exactly from me (though the chorus lyrics were mine), but because of me. I was that family man that the song was about, with all attendant weaknesses. I’d used the expression and it became a topic of amusement between us. Tim Cross wrote most of the verse lyrics (Maggie pitched in some later) and soon the formidable Oldfield stamp was all over the song. Curiously, the original verse melody (which I tried to sing) was the same but 7 semi-tones down. We experimented with an electronic harmonizer on my voice and a much better melody appeared, which Maggie of course came in later and sang magnificently. As I write, there are probably only about a dozen people who know that bit of trivia.

 

Orabidoo was a strange one. I have no idea what it means (if it means anything). Only a week before the whole album was finished, Mike recorded me and Maggie playing a song that she and I had written together called ‘Ireland’s Eye’. He then incorporated it into Orabidoo and it sort of lost its individual identity. And then, like Family Man, it was credited to the whole band.

 

Mike and I did collaborate again. Years later a group of us – I remember it included Phil Spalding – spend a few days in his studio writing and recording a big rock ballad. I thought it was really good, but it never surfaced. I’ve still got a copy of it somewhere.

I also spent a week with him in his studio in Megeve. He was sort of trying me out as a co-producer, but I don’t think it really clicked for him.

 

And in 1991, he came and wrote a song with myself and Pete Howarth. Pete is my dearest friend and an awesome singer who’s toured with Cliff Richard and the Who and is now the lead singer of the Hollies. He was my writing partner in what was the most satisfying project I’ve ever done. This was a stage musical called ‘Robin Prince of Sherwood’ and Mike came in one day and helped us finish the last big ballad in the show. It was on stage for about a year including time in London’s West End.

 

10: On the 'Five Miles Out' world tour, did you play on the entire tour? I heard that Tim Renwick also played on part of that tour.

 

Another long answer I’m afraid. I was a bit shocked to read in Tim Renwick’s interview that he understood my decision to leave the band to be rather casual. It was anything but. Like I said, this was a busy time for me, and it is always a rare treat when things time out perfectly. At the beginning of 1982 the Mike Oldfield Band was by far the most important and stable aspect of my working life. The future looked good – fun and lucrative. By then, any work I did with 10cc was on a session basis and it was uncertain whether the band would continue at all. Things had soured somewhat since Eric’s car accident. However, it remained a pivotal part of my history and when 10cc wanted to come together for a UK tour that dropped perfectly into the gap between Oldfield commitments, I couldn’t say no. Why would I? Best of both worlds! The problem was, I had a wife, and two kids under the age of five. Having a touring musician for a husband is always tough but this was apparently too much. I was given a choice… the Oldfield World Tour was due to start just days after this 10cc tour and was going to take me away for months. If I wanted my family, I had to give up the tour. It was too late to give up the 10cc tour – I was half way through it. But Oldfield was my living, and a damn good one that I was lucky to have. Keeping a family and paying a mortgage on jobbing, guitar session work was hazardous to say the least. I’d not yet established myself (or confidence in myself) as a composer. It seemed like professional suicide. But on the 12th March 1982, from a hotel room in Poole near the end of the 10cc tour, that’s what I did.  I called and told Mike I couldn’t do the tour and left him little over a week to replace me. I felt absolutely terrible about this, but I’d kept putting off the decision. It poleaxed me. That night I left the stage after the 10cc gig on a stretcher with a temperature of 103. Really! Blowing out Mike was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I’d so, so wanted to do that tour. And it is to Mike eternal credit (as far as I’m concerned) that in late September, he called me and asked me to re-join the tour a few days later in Oslo. At the time I was part of an attempt by Raff Ravenscroft to form a ‘super’ group, which also included Mike Fry, ‘Fashion’ singer Dee Harris, and Pink Floyd’s Rick Wright. It wasn’t feeling good to me and I jumped at Mike’s offer, flew to Oslo and played my first gig in Stockholm, staying with the tour till it ended on the 2nd November’82. Curiously, I joined not to fill the gap I’d left, which Tim Renwick now did with aplomb, but that of a second girl singer/keyboard player who I never met and whose name I don’t recall, who obviously wasn’t working out. So now I was a keyboard playing backing singer! As the rest of the tour progressed, I also played guitar and bass. Pierre Moerlen was now the other drums/percussionist along with Morris Pert. It’s terrible to think that they are both now dead.

 

11: Are there any memorable moments you remember from touring with Mike? What was it like touring and recording with Mike Oldfield and the other musicians in the band?

 

I have some of the best memories with Mike. Some on tour, but many more on the various social events that we subsequently shared. Like I said, I believe I entered Mike’s world at a fortunate time. All the touring we did had a sense of adventure about it.

The trip to, and around Spain in that tiny plane set the bar. It was an unorthodox way to undertake a tour like that anyway, but when, after only our second take off, we flew straight through the eye of a hurricane, the Mike Oldfield band came within a whisker of joining the Buddy Holly, Jim Reeves and Stevie Ray Vaughan Club. Definitely a journey none of us will forget. Total sensory overload. Jesus, the noise! All you could see was white, stricken faces under the strobe flashing of lightning, and all you could smell was vomit, while your arse was thrown around inside a tin can that was dropping and rising hundreds of feet every couple of seconds. It was miraculous the thing held together. The young pilot stayed impressively calm. It was only his second flight (as a captain) though he confessed later he thought it was his last. It’s the hairiest switchback ride I’ve been on – that is, till I went wing walking a decade later!

 

We went on to have a couple of great helicopter moments during the summer of ’81 tour. Mike could fly one himself and once hired a chopper to fly into Cologne and land on the top of our skyscraper hotel. But the best was when we were in Athens with a few days off. We drew straws and I got to go by helicopter to the island Hydra, where we partied hard for a couple of days before flying back for the Athens gig. Seriously rock and roll.

 

That was an eventful tour. We drove much of it ourselves in two Mercs. I usually drove one, often following the tour manager at 130mph plus (oh, the headaches I used to get!!) – it was the time of no speed limits in most of Germany and Italy – but we didn’t always time it right and it was in the days before Sat Navs. Somehow, coming into Rome, my car had fallen behind, and half of the band literally ran out of the car onto the stage. Literally! Mike had been working out how to entertain 10,000 people without us. There were a few moments like that but that was the hairiest. I seem to remember our drive through Paris was like something out of ‘The Italian Job’. Speaking of which, our first gig in Italy was at a football stadium in Milan. We parked the two cars inside the stadium and after sound check discovered them gone with all our bags. Yes, we’d arrived in Italy! Unquestionably an ‘inside job’.

 

But I think one of the funniest touring moments I’ve ever known was in Munich. The arena there is a big one and Mike thought it would be nice to include a couple of ‘specials’ in the show. He arranged for a troupe of Bavarian lederhosen folk dancers and one of those muscle-bound, buxom, beer-flagon wielding wenches to come onto the stage during the ‘Hornpipe’. The dancers came down to sound check intending to get the measure of the piece and choreograph something for the evening performance. Well it transpired that lederhosen dancing all happened in 3/4 (um pa pa!) and the hornpipe was in 4/4. After some shambolic attempts at dealing with this, they got very flustered. So Mike says ‘no problem, we’ll do the hornpipe in 3/4’. A rather bizarre idea but it kind of worked. By then though, these poor guys had gotten their lederhosen in a right twist. Come the gig, as the dancers paraded onto the stage, we dutifully broke into a ludicrous, um-pa-pa rendition of the hornpipe and were treated to the spectacle of our stranded lederhosened chums’ panicked expressions while their choreography disintegrated into something resembling five Pinocchios doing the Eric Morecambe dance at a fancy dress party. All the while, our ten-ton Fraulein wobbled and weaved around the stage with about four gallons of beer in each arm trying to avoid a catastrophic collision. My heart went out to these poor folk who had probably never performed in front of more than a hundred or so people. It was all the band could do to keep um-pa-pa-ing. I was doubled in half with laughter. Thank God ‘the Hornpipe’ is instrumental. Singing would have been impossible. It took the rest of the show to recover.

 

There were some real characters in that band and we used to laugh a lot. Maggie and I were great friends and we used to enjoy a theatrical squabble. It was sport and nearly always good-natured. In fact people used to try and sit next to us when we all sat down to eat somewhere, to enjoy the fiery banter.

 

It was a gregarious group too – we did things together – though that had soured a bit by the end of the ’82 world tour. Mike became more detached. He had a bit of a personnel shake up after that. I don’t think Morris Pert was involved again till a TV we did in Stockholm in ’86. That was the last time I saw Morris. I don’t think Tim Cross was involved again either.

 

Some of the most remarkable times with Mike were not on tour. Apart from recording on ‘Crisis’, I didn’t see much of Mike in ’83 or ’84. But in March 1985 Mike organized a reunion in Switzerland. This was the first time I met Mickey Simmonds or Ant, and was the beginning of a series of sport based social gatherings hosted by Mike. He could be a very generous man and he took his friends on several ski holidays. On one of the long skiing weekends, Mike had booked himself a tandem hang-glide from the top of the mountain. We all came up to watch the take off. The instructor was all set up and ready to go when Mike bottled out. “Anyone want to take my place?” he says. I, apparently, was the only one sufficiently lacking in a sense of self-preservation, and within seconds was launched into the alpine skies. I survived!

 

We would also get together to play cricket, and even archery and clay pigeon shooting. In ’85 and again in ’86, Mike assembled a cricket team to play another motley crew put together by Richard Branson. I am terrible at cricket, but it remains a feather in my cap that I caught Richard out!

And there was always squash. I think even through ’83 and ’84 I played squash with Mike.

 

People came and went from this ‘boys club’ but I remained a pretty regular part of it and my social relationship with Mike took a fresh turn in ’91 when I introduced him to a girl friend of my new partner, later to be wife, Heather. This was Rosa, who he stayed with for three years. Around that time he took a small group of us on some amazing trips. We had so much fun. Not many people get to fly to Paris for dinner in a Lear Jet!

 

This is an anecdote you’ll like. We were on holiday together in Portugal and it turned out that Virgin Records were having their annual convention just up the road. So Mike took an acoustic guitar and sat outside the door through which every Virgin employee had to walk, and unostentatiously played like he was busking. He was of course roundly ignored by one and all, until someone finally recognized him, after which a large, enthusiastic crowd gathered and regaled him with praise and adulation. 

 

 Unfortunately some of the most memorable touring moments will have to remain untold.

 

12: I heard that drummer Simon Phillips recorded on the 10cc album "Windows in the Jungle" in 1983. Simon, of course, played on Mike's 1983 album "Crises" where you also recorded on. Was this a coincidence that Simon also played with you on the 10cc album?

 

There were a number of years when Paul Burgess was not involved with 10cc (though he’s back with us now) and Eric and Graham chose to record with some serious ringers, including Steve Gadd, Jeff Porcaro and Simon Philips. Ironically (and very regrettably) though I played on all these albums I never got to play with these giants. We came in at different times. I recorded my bits on ‘Windows in the Jungle’ in April and May’83 but just three months before, I had played with Simon on the Crisis album. It was a religious experience. I’ve been lucky enough to play with some mighty drummer (including Gary Wallis who toured with 10cc in the spring of ’93) but playing with Simon was something else. Of course I gushed about Simon to the guys but they didn’t need me to tell them how good he was. For the record though, in my view, nobody can play 10cc like Paul Burgess.

 

13: How did you get involved with working with Mike again on the album "Islands"?

 

Like I said, from early ’85, I was regularly engaged in social/sport stuff with Mike, but it wasn’t until Jan’86 when he asked me to do a couple of TV shows in Germany. Then in March we did a TV in Stockholm, which I think was Anita Hegerland’s first performance with Mike. So in April ’86 he invited me in for a session on ‘Islands’. It was the first time I’d met and played with Mickey Moody.

 

14: How did you get involved with working with Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason? What was Nick like working with him?

 

I met Nick at a party of Eric Stewart’s in late ’83. Nick’s great passion was motor racing. I believe he still has one of the finest private collections of performance cars in the world. Someone was making a short film about him and his ‘hobby’, and Eric introduced him to me as a possible composer to help him provide an original score for the film. We got on well, and soon the director, Mike Shackleton got me a rough edit of the film for me to work on. To my very good fortune, he and Nick really liked my approach to the music and when the film, which was called ‘Life Could be a Dream’, was finished, Nick asked me if I’d like to continue writing and do an album together. It was the most amazing opportunity to indulge musically. We could do whatever we fancied and lucky for me, Nick really fancied whatever I wrote, so it was a blast from beginning to end. The album was called ‘Profiles’.

 

Nick is a very interesting drummer. He is from that era when drummers were often truly unique and brought much to the identity of a band. Ginger Baker, Mitch Mitchell, Keith Moon, John Bonham, Ringo Starr, Charlie Watts… these were great examples of this and Nick was another. He might have been a little rusty when we started together but he had that magic. We later toured and recorded together with a profoundly avant-garde jazz ensemble led by trumpeter Mike Mantler which featured Jack Bruce on vocals as well as Zappa’s Don Preston on keys.

 

Nick is a really lovely guy with a fabulous, dry sense of humour. This is very evident in the book he recently brought out called ‘A Personal History of the Pink Floyd’, which I think is a fine Floyd biography and a very entertaining read. He actually describes me as 10cc keyboard player but then, so much of the work I did on our album was on keyboards and I guess that’s how he saw me. That came as a surprise.

 

15: Explain the Bamboo Music company that you and Nick started together.

 

After finishing ‘Profiles’, we were keen to find other reasons to continue the writing partnership. We wanted a business umbrella under which to do this and through which to present ourselves. The Floyd/10cc name opened doors and we were offered some nice scores. Some of these were for commercials – we did a one-minute ‘Superbowl’ ad for Timex. I think at the time, it was the most expensive ad ever made and, in the tradition of Superbowl commercials, was shown once! We went on to score a couple of feature films. The first, ‘White of the Eye’, directed by Donald Cammell of ‘Performance’ fame, still enjoys some cult status. The second, ‘Tank Malling’ which featured Amanda Donahue and Ray Winstone disappeared without a trace. The films taught me a great deal about the art form of under-scoring. When the Floyd started up again in ’87, Nick and I sort of dissolved our working relationship. He was busy and I was well set up; in fact I went on to earn most of my living scoring for TV and film through the 90s. Bamboo Music just faded out. It was totally amicable and we still see each other. I put a band together last year for his daughter’s wedding.

 

16: I saw the video for the song "Lie for a Lie" that featured David Gilmour and Maggie Reilly on vocals. It is a brilliant song and video. Where was this video shot? How long did it take? How did David and Maggie get involved with this song?

 

The moment perhaps more than any other in my professional life, when I felt… ‘Well, I’ve arrived!’ was in March’85 when I stood around a microphone in the Floyd studio singing BV’s on my own song with Dave Gilmour and Maggie Reilly who had both recently sung chart topping singles. I remember Eric Stewart once describing it something like that when he stood around a mic’ with Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney. OK, he wins, but it was a sweet moment. And like I said,  though I’d had some help with the lyrics, it was my song which I’d built and played from the ground up. Maggie had sung a few things for me and we were good pals, but to have Dave sing the song for us was a real treat and Nick and I were both really chuffed that he’d agreed to do it. Dave doesn’t do things he doesn’t want to do and he liked the song and was prepared to put his voice and face on it. That felt good. We shot the video in Air Studios on Oxford Street, and it was directed by Donald Cammell. It took a couple of days.

 

17: When did you start playing the keyboards?

 

At the same time I started playing the guitar, and like the guitar, I had to find my own way. So I have no formal training but I know my chords, and I’m a tolerably good boogie-woogie/blues pianist.

 

18: How did you get involved with working with the great vocalist Agnetha Faltskog from ABBA? What was she like?

 

Back before Eric’s accident, 10cc and ABBA occupied a pretty similar rung of the ladder. In fact we were poised to do a global TV special with them just before the fateful car crash. It is rather sobering to think that only a month ago, we played a festival with an ABBA tribute band.  Bjorn Again. And we were below them on the bill! It would seem that time has spiraled that generic sound of ABBA up into the realm of the Gods. Personally (and of course I’m biased) I think 10cc songs have stood the test of time better, but they lack a generic identity and people often don’t realize that a song they know well, is by 10cc.

But back in September 1984 it was very different, and Eric enjoyed (and deserved) a fine reputation as a producer and was admired and respected as such by the members of ABBA. So when Agnetha asked Eric to produce her album, he invited me over to Polar studios in Stockholm to play guitar on it. And what a treat it was. Agnetha herself was both gorgeous and delightful. She was like royalty over there. It wasn’t easy for her to go out and about. I remember she used to have her ‘people’ bring racks of clothes to the studio for her to choose from.

I taught her to play chess. Interestingly, Bjorn and Benny were next door recording ‘Chess’ the musical. I wonder if she still plays.

 

19: You have worked with so many great artists like Jack Bruce and Rick Wakeman. What artist and/or band that you haven't worked with before would you like to work with in the future?

 

Like I said, the Cream were one of my most powerful early musical influences. As an adolescent, I was actually obsessed with them, so it was quite something when, in Jan ’87 I found myself sharing the stage with Jack Bruce, even though the music we were playing could hardly have been less like the Cream.

It had happened before. I was after all, a big fan of 10cc and Oldfield for that matter, long before playing with them. And in ’78 I’d spent a week recording with another hero, (by then, sadly, a very unstable) Peter Green. In the early 70’s I was besotted with ‘Yes’ and in 1983 I end up touring and recording with Rick Wakeman. Then there was the guys in Pink Floyd. People I admired for years – watched on TV – like Tears for Fears, Andrew Gold, Kim Wilde, Paul Carrack, Zal Cleminson, (the Alex Harvey Band guitarist who was in the line up when I toured briefly in ’87 with Elkie Brookes) a brother Gibb and even Mick Jagger, I end up on stage with. I couldn’t have made it up. So I don’t! I could muse about playing with icons like Steely Dan, the Eagles, Bonny Raitt or Prince – (how cool would that be!) – but really, it would be a waste of energy. Best let life unfold, and if the wonders stop now, I’ve had a good run. No complaints.

 

20: You continue to work with Graham Gouldman and 10cc, including on tour. I saw a promo video, (thank you to you Rick for telling me about it) of 10cc performing their hits for a DVD called "Clever Clogs". Is there anything in the future for 10cc, like a new album in the works? Anymore upcoming tours?

 

For all the wonders, 10cc has been the thread through my professional life. 34 years, and I hold my head up high, when I tell people that that’s my gig. I’m very proud to be a part of it and very thankful for the many opportunities that have flowed from it. The current incarnation of 10cc, which you can see on Youtube….:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hemqiZiiuio

…for my money is the tightest line up we’ve had, and even though we no longer have Eric Stewart with us, there are still three of us that date back to ’76, and I believe we represent the essence of 10cc very well. At the moment we don’t have plans to record new product, but we’re still flying the flag loud and proud. As a matter of fact, I’m writing this from an Oslo hotel room in Norway where we’re now on tour!

 

It’s been great fun delving into my musical past to do this interview. This morning at 6.30, I was standing on the deck of a ferry watching the sun rise across a breathtaking view of the Norwegian fjords contemplating the last time I did this (and I mean exactly this!), in 1983 when I re-joined the Mike Oldfield Band. Half a lifetime ago. Not much has changed - except they were different fjords and of course it was a different sunrise and I was nursing a different hangover. And back then, I was clutching a Walkman, rather indulgently listening to the first short film score I’d recently finished. This time I was clutching a book of SuDoku puzzles! Oh well, I suppose one should try to age gracefully, though I’m not sure I’m quite ready for that. In this business, being a bit disgraceful is kind of expected of us. Suits me.