MARMALADE INTERVIEW WITH GRAHAM KNIGHT & SANDY NEWMAN - 1.8.09

The Scottish band Marmalade was founded in 1961, which was the year I was born. Five years later, they became Marmalade and the rest, as they say, is history. Today, in 2009, the band is still very much in demand, especially for concerts in Europe, but on a quick visit to the Minto Hotel in Edinburgh for a private function. I met two of the band members. Original member Graham Knight and current vocalist Sandy Newman. Look up at me. Look down on me. Rainbow. It was fun having you around. I was dreaming of love. I had to share it without thinking that it wasn't like it always happened overnight, it was because we want to say that we did a lot before we had a major success, I mean, we had played everywhere, we supported all the big bands and we have been on tours we travel on. germany the usual um and when it came it was almost expected because that's how it was, I was just waiting for the right record to come out if you know what I mean and what was the first big breakthrough, the first one was uh we released a song It was called I See The Rain and it was a hit in Holland and Belgium and I raced there.

I didn't do anything in Britain, which is a shame because it was a good record. After that, we recorded a song called "Eternal Love." and uh, our manager had just signed a little band called Love Affair at the time, so he decided that would be a good first record for them and they went to number one. It got number one, but curiously it continued with that theme anyway. The same guy from the same producer actually gave you love things that were almost identical to eternal love. Yes, it was Mike Smith from cbs, he discovered this at base and suggested that where he says you didn't suggest these days, you just did it. like they told you, this is your new song that you're going to record, we recorded it and it was a hit, that was it, I guess it was one of those things at that time in the late '60s, if you got a hit song and formula. what you did was just readjust the chords a little bit, give it new lyrics and post it, that's right, yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right, yeah, well the second one we had, um, wait for me, marianne, um, it was the same with the big orchestra in the back and all the voices and just that one didn't do very well it made the charts, but it wasn't as big as loving things a little bit from the beginning because originally, of course, you were Dean Ford and the Gaylords in 1961.

Nowadays you wouldn't even dream of using that name, we'd have a huge following, Dean Ford and the Gaylords were a bit of a cliff in the shadows and such and such and such and such, you know, and when all these new bands came out, the Beatles Blue Jeans. and tremolos and stuff, that manager decided we should change the name so we were playing one night at a place called corsum in wiltshire and he came over and nicki minaj decided on the new name of the band, which is always that's the

marmalade

and we like who looked at him, said, look at my face while I was having breakfast, said "Golly Walk" and jam, and that's how it all happened.

You had a very good lineup because you had fantastic people like Junior Campbell, who was. You had success on your own after he left the van and you went through quite a few personnel changes, one or two, yeah they seem to come and go, who did we have? Hugh Nicholson, he joined after Junior left and we had quite a few I had success with you and then he got tired of it and the funny thing is that some guitars came to audition for us and Sandy was one of them, but Dean, for some reason or another, wanted to have control of the songwriting and, uh, Sunday.

He was a composer, as well as a musician and vocalist, and he chose another guitarist from Wales, a young, heavy, wild little guitarist, he was, he wanted to change the image of the jam, he didn't play the records, he didn't sing, he didn't sing. I wouldn't do loving things the only thing he said was reflections on my life because he co-wrote um he wanted to go heavy it was really Dean's fault he had this image for the band this vision and it didn't work because you couldn't go from being a pop group to being a heavy band even though Marley had been very heavy before, but no, not in a heavy band with a heavy sound, you know, there was a story, Graham, that you actually got fired from the band, but I suspect the real story was that actually the band just wanted to move in a different direction than what you say, they wanted to move in a different direction and the band broke up, basically that's what happened.

I mean they got another bass player, Joe Bean Brain? I think he played about two gigs with him or something and then they just didn't do anything else and they split up, went back to Scotland and Dean moved in. in America later and that was the end of that section of the jam and the way he was now and Ellen Whitehead, the original drummer that he came back with, it was me through Sandy and there was another singer called Ricky Peebles . He, his name sounds, didn't he say it was just the light? I think it wasn't like that.

You know, the entry of Univision, yes, and their manager was Alan Whitehead. Do you still have any contact with Junior Campbell? He stays in England, yes, yes. so he lives in West Sussex, yes we see Junior, but of course he went on to be a very successful producer producing people like Barbara Dixon, yes he did some things for Barbara, but he made all his money from Thomas the Tank Engine, yes , he wrote the music for Thomas the Tank Engine, yes, it's simple that you know how to become a millionaire, a melody with a children's theme, let's talk to Sandy now because Sandy, you joined the group in like 1972, it was actually November 73, 73, a long time ago cold in Finch Hampstead in Ireland.

Whitehead's house, yes, and I mean, here we are. I said 36 years later, in 2009, you shouldn't have thought it was going to last this long because, for most musicians, a band is often a short-lived thing. I think when you were the age I was when you made the move it was a bit like you shouted about it, that coming from Dean Ford and Gaylords, what was it like? You never thought that way, you never fully planned for it. things, there was the goal of doing what you were doing, the natural draw of it, you know, getting oh, I've got another 25 quid for that kick, you know there was, oh, that kind of thing building the circuit like Graham said, you get the record. try and just move on, but when I joined all that it was very, it was a little strange, it was really very strange because you still had Dean there with Joe Breen doing that and a lot of people from my neighborhood teacher.

He was saying what are you doing this for? This is a disaster. I said well, I don't think it's a disaster. I think we can make this work, so that was really strange. That was the head when I entered, but I was 23 years old. but you got into a band that had a very big catalog, a lot of hits internationally at 23, it was a big shock to the system, not at all because, in fact, I was well versed in it since I was between 18 and 20 years old. I had more hero worship than I ever did when I was the young blood with the long hair in the lighter section, so none of that was a phase out because even these days we used to play with Chris McClure played at the Bobby Jones Ballroom and they would literally have to put up protective barriers and I hated all that.

Actually, oh, I thought I was being cool, but you know, nothing on the scale, you mean on the scale, really not at all, no. You know, for a few years after you joined the band, you hadn't had any hits, but then in '76, when you signed with Target Records, lo and behold, this Tony McCauley song came out that was falling apart at the seams and you know, I was listening to it in the car while driving here today and it's still a fabulous little three minute pop song, but Tony McCauley could write it, couldn't he, but then again someone stole a successful hit from Tony Burroughs. song Tony did the demo and on Tony Boris Tony Burrows did the demo for that because Tony did all these things for Tony McCauley Roger Greenway he was he was on everything he was at the top of pop three times in one night If he's famous, well, fall apart, the seams are going to be a Tony Burris single and I'm just assuming that somewhere in Macaulay's head I don't think it suited him and he was looking to do the same thing. the loud voice thing and he walked into peter walsh's office, he was a manager again, the manager and he said peter, every vacuum i could do this and the doorbell rang, i was upstairs on sunday, i came down for a minute so you know you did it, so you did it.

I would talk about the schoolteacher, uh, when I was in the office, Tony had this song when he played the song, the Tony Burra demo, I said and he said he wanted to talk to you about it, I mean, we went up to the accountant's office. Remembering your beating, okay, Tara? and I said: do you think you could sing it here? and I said: could you sing this? and friends, so we did it. We tried. The answer was yes. He gave us the demonstration. We went to see Raf Reinde Allen and sat around a piano and arranged the vocals.

I came back the next week and recorded it and that's how quickly something can change because there was nothing months before, you know, and you know again, it's an incredible vocal range and I have to congratulate him because you know, those falsetto notes. It goes from pretty low to very high, that must have expanded your vocal ability in a studio, it did because you do stuff live, there's a lot of getting away with it, like when you're in a studio in The Cold Light of Day at Sometimes it's not the time of day that you like or want to sing, that's when it stretches, but we worked a lot with Tony after that, Graham, I want to ask you about, you know, a song like Reflections of My Life is one one of my all-time favorites and I think a lot of people can really relate to the lyrics and we're actually chatting beforehand and you and I come from Springbourne so we have that connection. but the reflections of my life just seem to hit, hit a nerve with so many people, doesn't it?

Yes, it certainly does. It is this. I don't know what it was, I mean, I can't explain it. Junior um walked into the studio. The day he says I wrote this song last night, I just put reflections on my life. See the idea is that he was driving home and put on his little Phillips cassette that we used to have in cars these days, you know, and uh. we played the reflection so we just went and recorded it naturally we went over his ideas on how it should go dean wrote a couple of lines in it um and it became so massive you know he was a sleeper because it was for a long time before he actually came in to church, but once it hit the charts it went global, but actually I think it's fair to say that Reflections of My Life was a very different style of song at the time than what Marmalade had been playing in reality.

Yeah well what happened was we had been with cbs records and the contract ended and Peter Walshard's manager was assigned to Decca and they basically gave us free studio time to do whatever we wanted and I mean we used to have to go into music editors. Asking about songs, you know, because we didn't write songs at the time and I think you're inspired by the fact that you didn't have a three- and four-hour schedule to finish three songs like you used to. on cbs when you had your record producer, you meet mike smith and everything was executed, everything was done very quickly, but you know, the funny thing about the song, I think is that 40 years later, it's probably even more relevant because people moves. much further away from home now exactly for work, so when they come home and see what their life was like, yeah, I think that means that they can, actually, they can associate with the lyrics, of course they can, I mean, the lyrics are esoteric. that's a good one, a big word, um, everything that everyone can relate to, you can relate to the way the world is today just from the lyrics of the song, you know it's a bad place, right?

Yes, it's a terrible place for Live Liam Knight Sandy Newman. Thank you so much. In fact, thank you very much.