Clouds

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Starting life in Edinburgh, Scotland,
as The Premiers, then, following a few personnel changes, enjoying
some critical acclaim as innovative organ-led rock trio 1-2-3, The
Clouds were at the epicenter of the thriving progressive rock scene
from its inception in the mid-late 1960s. They remained there until
1971 but never really hit the big time and remain one of Prog's great
unsung. 

A 2 CD compilation of their three
albums + a gig was released at the end of last year which caused
renewed interest in Clouds. 

I got in touch with the band through
their website and this is their story.
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When, where and by whom was Clouds started ?
Did any of you, past and present Clouds members, play in any other
bands before joining up in Clouds ? Why did you choose that name ?

In
1964, Ian (Ellis) and Harry (Hughes) were playing together in a group
called ‘The Premiers’. The line-up of the band was two guitars,
bass, drums (Harry), and vocalist (Ian). The band decided to recruit
an organist, and Billy (Ritchie) joined (1965). Billy had been
playing in a band called ‘The Satelites’. The organ was so
obviously the leading instrument, it changed the dynamic of the band,
the lead guitarist left, the band fragmented, leaving just Ian,
Billy, and Harry, and we decided to start a new band together. We
wanted to do something different, and as there were only three of us,
we decided to call the band 1-2-3, it seemed a hip name, and
something different, like the band itself. It was only much later
(the winter of 1967) that we became Clouds. The name was chosen by
our new manager, Terry Ellis. He felt we needed a fresh start and a
new name. We never liked the name, we preferred 1-2-3.

How was the music scene in Edinburgh when you
started ? 

It
was vibrant, lots of bands, but mainly all playing the same sort of
music, Tamla Motown, including us (The Premiers). The club scene in
Edinburgh was really good, the best club was called ‘The Place’,
which used to have several groups on at the same time, bands like
Nazareth, Lulu and the Lovers, The Stoics, The Dream Police, The
Boston Dexters, all the Scottish scene from Edinburgh and Glasgow.
The Premiers were one of the middle-order bands, not first-ranking in
people’s minds.

Not many people know this, but Clouds was one
of the first bands who combined rock and classic music. If not the
first band, that is. Other bands like The Nice, Genesis, Procol
Harum, Yes and ELP followed suit. How did you get this idea and how
did this idea really take off in Clouds ? 

1-2-3
was the earliest band to play that form of music. It was only later
that this style became part of what would be called progressive rock.
We were certainly the only band around the Marquee and London scene
playing that form of music, though experimentation was beginning to
take place in other ways, Cream, and Pink Floyd, are the other names
that spring to mind, though all three of us were trying new music
from different directions. It just so happens that our music seemed
to find a branch of its own in progressive channels. The basic idea
was rewritten versions of pop music songs, and it all sprang from
Billy, who had a very radical approach to the arrangements. He took
the view that anything was possible, and there were no barriers. The
blueprint he used was the exact model that Yes used a year or so
later.

It
is said you directly influenced Keith Emerson to take up the same
idea and the rest is music history (and our website ProgArchives).
Please tell us more about how much you
influenced him or the background for this claim (which does not
originates from Clouds). 

People
like Keith Emerson, David Bowie, Jon Anderson, Ian Anderson, Robert
Fripp, were in the Marquee audience many times when we played there
in early 1967. The influence was in the concept of the music rather
than the playing, though the playing was certainly adventurous too.
1-2-3 was the first rock group to use organ as a lead instrument with
no lead guitar. That encouraged Keith Emerson to follow that concept.
Also, Billy was standing, not sitting down as was normal for a
keyboard player in those days. As far as the music itself was
concerned,  in several of the songs 1-2-3 played, Billy had inserted
Classical pieces (in Bowie’s song ‘I Dig Everything’ for
instance, where he played the Bach fugue in C minor, and Simon &
Garfunkel’s ‘America’ where he inserted a piece of Mozart). I
think this encouraged The Nice to take that route. The band that
followed our ideas most closely was ‘Yes’. The whole idea of that
band was born out of hearing 1-2-3, though of course, none of these
people directly admit it even now. The clues are in their own music,
and if you look at the press and publicity comments for the time,
from the Marquee club, David Bowie, Brian Hogg etc, you’ll find the
proof all right. It was two years ahead of anyone else.

Over to your albums. Your debut album was
Scrapbook from 1968. Please tell us more about this album.

Terry
Ellis decided the format and title of the album, choosing the songs
from our demos. The problem we had right from the beginning of our
recordings was that Billy was the main song-writer, and he had lots
of songs, but they didn’t necessarily suit the band. Ian also wrote
songs that were easier for the band to do, and had the advantage of
Billy’s arrangements but there just wasn’t enough of them. It was
more difficult for Billy to rearrange his own songs, having already
written them, and his songs were from the song-writing tradition,
whereas the band was basically a unit that sought to play with great
invention and improvisation. That gave us a problem. The Clouds
Scrapbook (the proper title of the album) solved that by containing
both elements separately in the same album. It makes for a very
eclectic mix, the pop songs sitting alongside the progressive
elements that we’d been playing on stage, and which were a portent
of the change to come in rock styles. Really, the 1-2-3 concept
worked so well because it was other people’s songs, not our own. We
struggled with using original material, even though there were
hundreds of songs to use. It was ironic to say the least. Yes began
like 1-2-3, but seemed to slip into their own material much easier
than we did.

Your second album was Up Above Our Heads from
1969. Please tell us more about this album.

We
were uneasy with the first album, as we didn’t feel it had
reflected enough of our playing ability and live stage show, so we
tried to address that in the second album, but I think it swung too
far away from song-writing quality at times. There are a couple of
new good songs on there, including some that were also on the
Scrapbook album, but a lot of the album is about showing off musical
technique. The solos seem too long now, but that was a feature of the
times, especially on stage.

Your third album was Watercolour Days from
1971. Please tell us more about this album.

We
realised that the first two albums swung one way then the other, so
we thought it would be good to combine the two styles in the songs.
Some of it worked quite well, and some of it didn’t. It was Billy’s
first real attempt to write songs for the band rather than for
himself, and Ian and Billy collaborated a lot more writing-wise on
this album than the others, though Billy still had fully-composed
songs too, such as the title song, which worked fantastically well,
and the last song on there, ‘I Am The Melody’. Ian also directly
contributed songs like ‘Cold Sweat’(with a bridge by Billy) and
‘Lighthouse’, but Billy was annoyed that Terry wouldn’t let him
put some of his other songs on the album. Terry said they were too
gloomy or too esoteric. You can hear some of them now on the new CD.

Clouds broke up after that album. Please tell
us why, when, where and what the band members has been up to since
the break up.

We
recorded the album in 1970, but it didn’t come out till early 1971,
by which time we had parted company from Chrysalis, mainly because
Terry was spending all his time with Jethro Tull instead of us. We
were still on the road, but the UK reviews of the album weren’t
great, and it all seemed a struggle, we couldn’t see where we were
going, so we decided to call it a day. What we didn’t know was that
the USA reviews were glowing, or we might have persevered a bit
longer. 

Ian
Ellis is still on the road, and has played and recorded with many
front-line bands, including Savoy Brown; Steamhammer; Alex Harvey
Band; Jack Green; Steve Hackett Band; Mick Clarke; Paul Samson; The
Breakers (including Ric Lee of Ten Years After); he’s also toured
with Pete Townshend and worked with our old friend Bev Bevan (ELO). 

Harry
(Hughes) formed a band called Mahatma, who were managed by the
Marquee club. After that, he formed a band called Caledonia and
recorded an album with them. He subsequently left the music business
and became a successful Occupational Hygienist, though he has
recently taken up playing drums again. 

Billy
(Ritchie) was so disillusioned with music, he left the business after
the Clouds era, and became a successful Property Management Investor
for a while. He does still play, albeit he doesn’t consider any of
that ‘real’ playing. He hasn’t found anything to replace music
in his life. He did help his friend Jona Lewie record ‘Rearranging
the Deckchairs on the Titanic’, the follow-up single to ‘Kitchen
at Parties’, which Billy had suggested to Jona as his first hit
single release.

A retrospective Clouds homepage has now been
launched and a compilation CD called Up Above Our Heads [Clouds
1966-71] with your three albums has been released (available from Amazon etc etc). Please tell us
more about this double CD album and the new website. 

The
website has actually been around for at least 15 years, since the big
Mojo article of 1994 and the CD release in 1996. The new double CD is
a chance to hear the albums re-mastered and the sound quality
dramatically improved, especially ‘Up Above Our Heads’, the
second Clouds album, which has never been on CD before. One of the
important things for us is the bonus tracks, which contain a lot of
missing pieces of the music that have never seen light of day before,
especially the 1-2-3 tape from the Marquee, and a couple of demos of
Billy’s which are obviously ages before their time, like most
things he does. Even now, those tracks sound revolutionary, like
1-2-3 truly was itself. 

I guess there are no plans for any Clouds
reunion. But is there any plans for the website and other Clouds
related activities ? 

The
new CD seems to be the end of it, unless there was some kind of
demand for more out-takes. There are more demos still around which
could be used, but we’ll just have to see if there’s any further
interest. The main thing about the internet, the website, the new
records, is that it reveals the important history of the band, the
influence the band had. It’s heartening to see the history being
rewritten to accommodate all that, especially in important music
business publications like ‘The Encyclopaedia of Popular Music’
and ‘All Music Guide’. It doesn’t make up for what we lost or
didn’t get in the first place, but it is at least some consolation
for the contribution we made to rock music.

To wrap up this interview, is there anything
you want to add to this interview ? 

We’d
just like to say that we’re glad to see it acknowledged that we had
a crucial influence on progressive music and bands, and it’s a
shame that many of the bands themselves who took from us are
reluctant to publicly admit where the ideas came from, but we would
be the first to say that bands like Yes, The Nice/ELP, King Crimson,
still deserve all the accolades going for what they made of that
influence. We probably couldn’t have taken it where they did, it’s
unlikely we would ever have been commercially popular enough. Our
band line-up was original for the time, but ultimately limited,
though it’s good to know that people are beginning to understand
what our contribution was.
Thank you to Clouds for this interview
Also a big thank you to James Alexander for making this interview possible 
Their PA profile is here and homepage's here
(and I am really looking forward to receiving Up Above Our Heads [Clouds
1966-71] from Amazon) 

Edited by toroddfuglesteg - January 04 2011 at 14:42

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