Verden Allen Interview Oct. 5, 2009 How Does It Feel
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Verden Allen interview Oct. 5, 2009 How does it feel to be back in front of an audience with this band? It’s been very natural. It’s how it was before, it feels exactly the same…better, in fact, than it was before for some reason. We’re more mature now. I’m really enjoying it, it’s great up there, the Apollo and the crowd is so great. Are you aware how loyal your fans are? They waited a long time to see this? Yes. Well, Ian kept doing his bookings with his bands and I know that he had quite a following coming but there’s a lot more people who have come to this reunion obviously. There’s sons and daughters and people who have never seen us before. They’re amazing because they’ve come from all over the world. Did you realize that people were going to travel from so far to see you? We’d done the Mott The Hoople convention a few years back and the same thing happened then so I expected people to come from certain paths, you know. They certainly turned out this time. What do you think it is about the band that attracts such loyal fans? I think it’s that we go out to the audience and get them to participate with us. It’s like one big thing.. We’re playing for ourselves and the crowd and it’s always been that way. That’s what it’s always been about for us. There’s a looseness about the band as well, we sort of change things as we go along from night to night. I think that’s what it is, something’s coming off that stage and it’s certainly getting to them. It always was the way. The crowd was a part of the band in a way. Was it that way in the early days of the band? Yes, it always was. Was that something that you guys talked about? No, that came natural to us. It’s through playing in the smaller venues, starting off like we did years ago. You’d be doing large pubs and clubs, cause there was clubs all over the place then, right throughout the year and maybe only go back to the same one twice, three times maximum. There were that many clubs before the disco scene came in. And of course playing close to the crowd you get…it sort of sends you off to the bigger gigs. So it came natural to us, a progression. A lot of bands go through the same thing but don’t have that connection. How much do you think it has to do with Ian’s songs? Yes, a lot of the songs he wrote were about “you are one of us” and numbers like that. It was about the people, about the crowd, about our fans. I think that probably has a lot to do with it, they could relate to the songs in that way. I don’t know, we just had a good name for being a live act to go and see and people could get involved with. Have you met many fans while you’re here in London for the reunion? Yes, there’s quite a few people who’ve been coming around. It’s difficult to see everybody. Things are moving all the time with us, they’re changing things around and we’ve got things to sign and all this sort of thing. It’s quite a busy time. It must be strange to see your audience has grown older and are now mostly men in their fifties. Well, I don’t know, people are still looking good to me. Of course there’s a lot of younger people around too. It’s very surprising, a lot of younger people have come up and said that they like the band. I think there’s a turnaround, people are going against the contrived bands that are being put together now. People are going more for this loose sound and it seems to be coming back in again. I know you had rehearsals in Wales a few weeks ago. Can you tell me what it was like when you first got back together again? We had two weeks in Rockfield, but prior to that, I wanted us to rehearse with the four of us…Mick, Buff, Pete and myself, like we did in the old days before Ian came…because we were a band before...for us to get ready for when he came from The States to Rockfield. I thought we would be leaving it a bit late if we’d just done the two weeks in Rockfield, which we would have done. So we rehearsed in Ask, in Wales, a town called Ask, the people were great there. When we first got together it was getting a few songs. Once you’ve done two or three songs, you start playing. There was an awful lot of talking, catching up to be done. What did you talk about? All sorts of things. It never stopped for about a month. Of course Mick has been touring, our guitarists, with Bad Company, so he had to learn the chords again, learn the songs again, because it had been so long. It took a bit of time. Without that groundwork, by the time we got to Rockfield we could play. Ian had been doing his homework, he’s been getting together his side in America. So, from the word go in Rockfield we could just play. We only had to sort out things like the endings, beginnings and endings and breaks in the middle. I think it’s worked perfectly. It sounds like it and I’ve been to all three shows so far. The first show was a bit…the sound on stage wasn’t all that good. I couldn’t hear a thing that was going on. I couldn’t hear anything I was playing at all most of the time. I saw Ian gesturing to Overend to try and get some monitors working from the soundmen. There was an awful lot of bass coming through my side. Overend was sort of protecting himself and he laced into his bass playing and he’s quite loud. Martin, who was subbing in for Buffin, he couldn’t hear what he was doing either on the first night because there was so much bass coming over. We pulled it off, rather amazing. I know Overend hadn’t played in quite a while. No, he hasn’t. That’s the first time he’s done a gig for thirty years, maybe. Was there any time when you thought, this isn’t gonna happen? This isn’t gonna work, we might as well throw in the towel. Well, sometimes you do think about it, you think, “what’s it going to be like?” I wake up in the middle of the night sometimes and think, “Ah, have we done the right thing here?’ Cause I sort of pioneered to get it going. I kept at it for a year or more trying to get back together. Because people have tried to do it before. It’s never quite happened, but this time we were all ready to do it. People had the time to do it and it’s worked out right. But there were times when I thought, “well, is it going to be OK?” You mentioned Martin Chambers, who’s idea was it to select him to fill in for Buffin? Well, we knew Buffin wasn’t quite…he hasn’t played for years and it takes a lot out of a drummer and we knew he wasn’t well. We weren’t sure if he could pull it all off, you know. He’s proven now that he can’t. He just comes out on the encores. So Ian said, “Why don’t you get your friend? Call your friend up, Martin.” Because after I left Mott The Hoople the first time, back in 1972, I went back to Hereford and teamed up with Martin and James Honeyman-Scott and formed a band called The Cheeks, who then became The Pretenders. We didn’t get a secure deal after three years together and I had a deal then with Ariel Bender. Jet records put a single out on the rebound for us. And then all of a sudden Chrissie Hynde turns up and The Pretenders were born. But I worked with Martin for quite awhile, three years, I knew him really well. He always said, “I’d love to play for Mott The Hoople”. So Ian suggested that and I though that’s great. So I rang Martin up and straightaway he was into it. It all sort of went from there. That was before Overend had even said he’d do it. I had to keep on to him for quite awhile. What was Overend’s reluctance? Well he never wanted to do it. He always goes, “I don’t want to play”. But all of a sudden he gets into it. He looks like he’s having a great time. That’s what happens, you see. He says he’s not going to do it and then he does. I didn’t ask him, I asked his mother. I waited for the right time. I went up to his house with him. He said, “My mother would like to meet you”.