Les Holroyd Interviews, October 1990
Transcript of an interview Les gave to the Middle Bavarian Daily newspaper in October 1990:
"Welcome To The Show" – is this just a normal LP like the other ones or is it a new start for the nineties?
I’d never even thought of that: I think probably a new start. We tried to get back to the days of "Gone To Earth", but bringing it into line with the nineties from a technical point of view.
Why did you use new producers?
We thought it was time for a change, to use different people. It’s always good to keep changing; otherwise you get a little bit stale.
The world is getting more and more peaceful (Les – oh really?) but in songs like "Cheap The Bullet" you describe the world as a world of power and bullets and so on. Do you think that is relevant any more?
I wouldn’t exactly call the world peaceful at this point in time, with situations as they are in the Middle East. That’s just a prime example of how cheap the bullet is – life doesn’t mean anything, it’s all to do with power and at this point in time it’s to do with oil. It’s nothing to do with saving the Arabs or saving the country, it’s to do with saving oil and that’s all, so life is still cheap.
What do you think of the divisions of the British (Conservative) party, with the Chancellor resigning?
I try not to think about Mrs Thatcher: it always spoils my day!
What do you mean by "the blind lead the blind" on "Welcome To The Show"? Is it a description of the state of show business?
Yes. There are so many people in this business that don’t know what they’re doing, but think they know what they’re doing – the blind leading the blind.
About the song title – do you know who is Lady Macbeth?
I do, but I’m not telling you! You want to ask John about that one…
All your songs on this album are more about stories than former songs like "Echoes and Shadows" that are more abstract.
That’s right, those are more abstract; you can read what you like into those type of songs. It’s just an accident actually that there aren’t those songs on this album. We never said, oh well, we’ll do a retrospective view of the last twenty years – it just happened.
Are you persons like workers, working class, that you write songs like persons who are not so rich and you always see victims?
That’s a difficult one (!) We did actually come from working class backgrounds. You can’t really call us working class any more: a working class person doesn’t fly around the world and get to see all these cities, so although you try to take their perspective on these situations you can’t always do it.
Do you think musicians are something special or do you feel special?
No. Some people are: very, very few people are. Specifically songwriters like Paul Simon spring to mind – he is something special. I think he’s a poet more than a musician. I class rock musicians and musicians in general as part of the whole thing of entertainment. We are entertainers like circus people are entertainers and TV personalities and street buskers – nothing special.
Do you still like doing concerts?
Yes of course, after all these years (twenty years?). Oh yes, I still get a buzz from doing it, otherwise we wouldn’t do it.
Early in your career you played with an orchestra; are you interested in playing with this orchestra again sometime?
It’s very difficult, it’s very expensive to do. A one-off situation would be quite nice, but then you have to have special songs that you can perform with an orchestra. It would be rather nice for example to play with the Berlin Philharmonic or the Vienna Philharmonic, but to actually go on the road with an orchestra like we did is financial suicide and it limits you. For just one concert it would be great: it would have to be the right concert – Berlin would be brilliant but it would have to be the Brandenburg Gate right in the centre of Berlin!
Do you think you get good publicity for your music and your LPs because the promotion is not so big like Gary Moore or someone like that?
I don’t know why, it’s nothing to do with me, that. If you try to get involved in everything then you’d never play music. I leave all that side to other people.
Barclay James Harvest have no front man like Queen, for example.
We’ve never felt the need to have someone, because we all started out on the same level and we all wrote the songs and we all played the songs and produced them, and it didn’t seem right. We’re not that kind of band – no one’s ever been involved with the band like Freddy Mercury or people like that.
You make no scandals or anything like this in the press.
We’re songwriters and entertainers, we’re not big movie stars that we feel the need to be in the papers every week. If people were around at the right time then they’d find out there were a few scandals – it’s just that people aren’t around at the right time. Fortunately…
Is your butterfly still a symbol for you after all these years.
Yeah, it is. It started with the first album and just continued; it’s a great image carried through the whole spectrum of things from the albums through merchandise, badges, T-shirts, whatever. I think it’s just a nice thing.
Are there any other artists who will carry on your style?
I don’t know of any, but I think this style of music will actually come round again. There are kids in England getting influences from bands like the Doors and Jefferson Airplane, so I think it will come round again like the early seventies, which is when we really started.
David Bowie says he has no real relation to his old stuff after all these years; is that the same with you? Why do you still play "Mockingbird", for example?
Because people want it, that’s why we play it. In an ideal world we could go on stage tonight and play the whole new album, but I don’t think that’s fair. If I go to see a band, for example I’ve seen Queen maybe ten times now. I still like to see them play "Bohemian Rhapsody". That’s what people go to see a band for – whatever people want us to play we’ll play it. We do listen to people: the Fan Club suggested songs and we listened. They weren’t all feasible to do, after all we wanted to some modern songs as well, otherwise we’d be playing four hours a night.
What do you think now about the backing vocals on "Victims of Circumstance", which caused a lot of controversy?
A mistake! No, that’s not really fair, it wasn’t a mistake. It was something that we should have really thought about before we went in. We started with one track in the studio, thought of getting the girls to come in and do backing vocals and from that it progressed to quite a few tracks on the album, then touring. It would be all right if you could tell the girl backing vocalists to wear black and to just stand still and sing, but they don’t, and of course when you’re on the road it’s too late to realise that.
On "Once Again" you played with Alan Parsons: is he something for you because in Germany he’s world famous?
We didn’t play with him: he was the tape operator. I only know of his work with the Project, which I quite like. When we knew him he’d just started in the business and we’d already been on the road for six or seven years, and at EMI he was just the tape operator.
Would it be very interesting to work again with a mellotron?
No! definitely not! The sound was good, but the instrument itself was a pain in the a**e! It was too heavy; it’s like a huge tape machine with reels of recorded tape. When you need a different sound you press the cycle button and the cycle moves the whole of the reel onto the next sound, which is maybe ten foot of tape, so you can imagine carrying this and then you switch it on and it starts the cycle and the tape falls!
How do you educate your children with religion, etc?
He’s a little bit too young: he’s only three! He’s more interested in his teddy bears at the moment!
Why does nobody hear of him?
I didn’t think it was relevant. One of the reasons was that at that particular point in time the band were still quite big in Germany and in Switzerland and a certain Swiss magazine wanted to do a article on us. This particular magazine is like newspapers in England like "The People" and the "News Of The World", and they wanted to make more out of it. Why should I talk about my personal background? I’m a musician, I’m an entertainer; my life is private and I like to keep it private.
Which is your favourite album that you’ve produced?
Probably "Glasnost", because I think it’s probably one of the best live albums. It’s live sound, although people didn’t appreciate it: they thought we’d overdubbed it in the studio.
Have you contact with other very famous popular musicians in London like Phil Collins?
We work out of the same office as Status Quo – we come across them occasionally; apart from that, no, not really. I know Deep Purple, I know Ian Gillen quite well. Brian May I know quite well, because we go back years and years when he was at University and we were actually a band playing at universities. That’s when he started a band called Smile, and we’ve been friends ever since.
One last question: what do you think of Burgundy?
It’s a very nice drink! You mean To Hell With Burgundy? They’re great: refreshing. They haven’t got any inhibitions or anything, they just do whatever they want: they’re a good band as well.
Written Interview with Les by Italian progressive rock fanzine Paperlate, October 1990:
Q: Are you satisfied with "Welcome To the Show" and its sales?
A: You can never be totally satisfied as a songwriter with the end product, because you start off with a song going in one direction, and it usually ends up going in a completely different way. Having said that, this album is a vast improvement on the last, as far as the public are concerned, from comments received by members of the fan club etc, so who knows? Sales of albums are an ongoing situation as far BJH is concerned. Each time we tour, we sell more of our back catalogue, so it really doesn’t mean that much if the initial sales aren’t as high as some of the other albums that we have recorded.
Q: "Paperlate" is a progressive rock fanzine – do you like this kind of music? Some people also place your music in that category: do you agree?
A: BJH have always been labelled as "progressive", and in the early days "underground", and I’m still unsure of what that is supposed to mean. I think anything that is original could be labelled "progressive", and because we have had "major" success for a limited time both in Germany and France, I really don’t know where the crossover point from "progressive rock" to out and out "pop" is.
Q: What sort of bands/artists do you like at the moment?
A: I listen to anything and everything, but mostly "older" rock bands, and in particular American bands.
Q: Not long ago "Paperlate" took a poll: the readers were asked to name the best five albums of the 80s (except live and compilation albums). Which records would you choose?
A: There have been so many bands in the ‘80s, it would take a long time to really choose the best albums from this era. It is, for me, significant that a lot of the more established bands are returning to the stage, not only live concerts, but TV and video also, and I personally feel that the very early ‘80s gave us the best albums of the decade. I still listen to a lot from that period because I had some very good times around that time. (I must be getting old!!!)