Fusion Orchestra
Printed From: Progarchives.com
Category: Progressive Music Lounges
Forum Name: Interviews
Forum Description: Original interviews with Prog artists (which are exclusive to Prog Archives)
URL: http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=76525
Printed Date: December 18 2024 at 21:48
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 11.01 - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: Fusion Orchestra
Posted By: toroddfuglesteg
Subject: Fusion Orchestra
Date Posted: March 08 2011 at 14:25
|
Fusion Orchestra was a highly talented progressive rock ensemble from the UK that did tight but not over-worked heavy prog with an honest, classic but unique sound. Singer/flautist/synthist JILL SAWARD, apparently the axis of the group, leads with a high squall and quite good flute, and paralleled the vocal sound the Wilson sisters would cultivate. Though unlike HEART, JILL SAWARD, DAVE BELL (drums), COLIN DAWSON (guitar), DAVE COWELL (bass), and STEN LAND (synth, guitar, horns) did a very complex and multi-layered music with many roads into jazz-fusion, folk, and Celtic. The band is actually very much alive as Fusion Orchestra2 and is gigging in England and also hopefully further afield too. Their album is also widely available as a digital download through Amazon too and a CD version is perhaps on the cards too. Colin Dawson fills in the blank spaces with his answers to my questions. ##########################################################
Both our own Fusion Orchestra biography and the one on your
homepage are quite extensive so let’s bypass the formalities. But
were you involved in any other bands before you started up Fusion
Orchestra, which bands were you influenced by and why did you choose
that name? I got my first guitar – a beaten up old acoustic – at the age
of 14. At the time, rhythm and blues music, I mean real rhythm
and blues – guys like Sonny Boy Williamson, Elmore James and Muddy
Waters – was pretty popular. A lot of British bands were playing
R&B: for instance, The Rolling Stones, The Bluesbreakers, The
Pretty Things and The Animals, to name a few, all played music
sourced from black blues artists. They were an influence on the early
bands I was in while still at school. And I played in blues bands
that also covered some soul music – Eddie Floyd, Jo Tex and the
like.
Later, came blues-rock – Hendrix, Cream, Ten Years After and
Deep Purple, as well as Pink Floyd and psychedelic music. Later, I
got into Jethro Tull, Yes and Colosseum. Much as I loved the blues, I
knew I wanted to move on to more ambitious material. What those bands
were doing became more appealing. I still remember the point at which
I said to Fusion Orchestra co-founder Stan Land: “Let’s quit what
we’re doing, and form a band to play our own music.”
Stan and I started to write together and what resulted was a
mixture of rock and trippy music with the occasional leaning toward
jazz. It was certainly a fusion of styles; I suppose adding
‘orchestra’ was a little grandiose but as a group of musicians
playing together on a variety of instruments, we loosely fitted the
definition. I think the name was my suggestion. We were able to give
it more credibility when Jill Saward joined and added her
multi-instrumentalist talents to the band. Fusion Orchestra managed to get a huge following, but you also got
banned from many British towns. What was all that about? Well, specifically, we were banned from Swindon Town Hall by
the local authority, which controlled the venue. We stood by our
music but we liked to put on a show as well. Jill was quite raunchy
on stage – and our original closing number ‘Hunchback’ was a
bizarre composition about a sexual encounter in a cave with some kind
of congenitally deformed being. Let’s put it this way, Jill kind of
acted out some of the scenarios suggested in the lyrics.
Some advanced publicity material somehow alluded to this and the
local authority received some complaints that the Town Hall was going
to be used for an ‘obscene’ performance, which was nonsense. It
was suggestive, possibly, but certainly not obscene.
But the story was reported on the front page of the Swindon
Evening Advertiser, which was all good publicity. The local authority
mandarins relented after reassurance about the act from our
management and, if I remember rightly, we played to a packed house! I
don’t think anyone complained.  You were eventually signed on EMI. Let’s move straight to your
one and only album Skeleton In Armour from 1973. Please tell us more
about this album. EMI was the largest record company in the world and being offered
a contract with them seemed a pretty big deal. In hindsight, we might
have been better off signing to EMI Harvest, which was their
rock/prog label. I’m not sure that the record producer assigned to
the band really got what we about. He had produced some albums of
rock music played by orchestras, so perhaps they thought he’d be
right for us as we had we had the word ‘orchestra’ in our name!
Nevertheless, we spent around a month at Abbey Road cutting the
album and recorded tracks in all three of the building’s studios.
A vinyl album needed to be around 45 minutes and because our
numbers were typically quite long we needed only four main tracks. We
drew most of the titles from the music we were playing live. As well
as the four main numbers, the album has a version of our single
release – the more commercial When My Mama’s Not at Home – and
some short filler tracks which were not intended to be taken
seriously. Sonata in Z was the obvious choice for the first track –
we usually opened our stage performance with it and it showcased much
of the band’s style in one number, with some tight ensemble
playing, and rocky and jazzy sections, too. Guitar, piano, flute and
harmonica all take solos – there’s even a 16-bar drum solo
towards the end. We were packing everything in, that’s for sure! It
was the first major thing we recorded at Abbey Road, but I can’t
remember how many takes it took.
Track 2 is Have I Left The Gas On? At 8 mins and 41 secs it’s
shorter than Sonata but still has about four different sections to
it. The intro, which is reprised at the end of the number – that
was almost a Fusion Orchestra ‘trade mark’ by the way –
includes saxophones playing the riff. To this day, I’m not sure if
this enhances the number but it was the record producer’s idea.
One of the things I like most about this track is the rather
unsettling celeste section in the middle. It suggests to me derelict
funfairs or haunted playgrounds with something sinister going on. But
the song is most remarkable for Jill’s clever lyrics and how she
fits them into the melody.
The title track was work in progress when we began recording the
album. I’d written the intro theme and come up with a chord
sequence for the main verses. Jill took these away and days later
arrived at a recording session with the lyrics for ‘Skeleton In
Armour’. The song was immediately adopted as the album title track.
Dave Cowell added bass lines for the middle instrumental section,
over which Jill played Hammond organ. Choosing this as the title
track led to the idea of using the Hans Holbein ‘Dance of Death’
woodcuts for the album sleeve.
Talk to the Man in the Sky – the other major composition on the
album – closes side two. It’s another 11-minute-plus epic, which
I co-wrote with Jill and Dave Cowell. It’s probably my favourite
track on the album; I like the way the moods shift throughout.
The thing I dislike most about the Skeleton in Armour album are
the trumpet fanfares at the beginning and end. Not our idea and
something added by the producer.
EMI didn’t really get behind the band in perhaps the way a
specialist rock label would have done. An old friend from those days,
with whom I recently made contact again after 35 years, had worked
for Phonogram. He told me that he’d brought Brian Shepherd, the A&R
man from Vertigo, to see Fusion Orchestra at the Marquee. He was
pretty positive about the band. He had signed Black Sabbath, Black
Widow and The Sensational Alex Harvey Band and really got behind the
acts he’d taken on. He was introduced to our management while we
were on stage but our manager apparently found the idea of Abbey Road
more appealing and we promptly signed the deal with EMI.
I can’t help wonder what might have happened had we taken a
different route and signed with Vertigo, Island or Charisma. Physical versions of this album are pretty hard to find these days
(although the likes of Amazon offers it as MP3 download). Are there
any plans to re-release Skeleton In Armour on CD and/or LP? EMI re-released the album for digital download in 2009 and it’s
available from most online digital music stores. EMI made and earlier
release on CD in Korea and Japan a few years ago, and there was also
an unauthorised CD on sale from Legendary Progressives, a German
record company for some time.
As for a new release, I know of a company that is in negotiation
with EMI’s licensing department for the rights to re-issue the
album. And Italian specialist label Black Widow Records was keen to
put out the album as a limited-edition vinyl pressing. I’m not sure
if that’s going any further.
I’ve also just been contacted by a Greek record label asking
whether they can get a licence to produce a vinyl version, so who
knows?
A new compilation of obscure prog rock recordings from Audio
Archives called Heavy Prog Fallout contains one previously un-issued
live recording of the band made a few months before Skeleton In
Armour was recorded has been released. It was a ‘bootleg’ so the
sound quality isn’t brilliant; but it’s interesting, to say the
least. The catalogue number is AACD058.
Who were the creative forces in Fusion Orchestra?
In the early line-up, I co-wrote with Stan Land and Mick Sluman.
After Jill joined, she, Mick and I began to produce the band’s
material. When Dave Cowell replaced Mick, he soon began to contribute
and helped take Fusion Orchestra into more ambitious territory
musically. Likewise, Paul Jennings co-wrote with Jill and me when he
replaced Dave on bass.
In terms of the band’s stage act, every member contributed
ideas. Fusion Orchestra split up and a long silence followed. Then a
website and Fusion Orchestra 2 pops up. Please tell us more about
when why and with whom you set up Fusion Orchestra 2 and what you
have been up to. Well, the first thing I have to say is that Fusion Orchestra
2 wasn’t my idea. In fact, I almost had to be talked into it! I’d
been playing in bands with Ben Bell, an outstanding keyboard player,
for around eight years. Despite the fact that he wasn’t born when
the original album was made, he had a copy on CD and surprised me one
day by saying how much he liked it. Then, I discovered that Skeleton
In Armour was still much in demand. I even heard from some people who
were much too young to have seen or heard the original band that they
loved the music.
And it did appear that, in general, prog was making a comeback.
After years of rap, dance and manufactured X-Factor type music, some
people were seeking out something more interesting and less
predictable. If there was going to be a good time to form FO2, it had
probably arrived.
Ben Bell and I faced two major tasks. We needed to set up a Fusion
Orchestra website before we could make sense of progressing with FO2.
And we needed to learn or, in my case, re-learn the album material. I
hadn’t played it for years; with some of the parts, I needed Ben’s
help – he has a very good ear – and I’d completely forgotten
some of them.
Once we were pretty competent with the album material, we
recruited bassist Nick Daniel and drummer Dan Shooter, both of whom
either Ben or I had played with before. They had other commitments,
so it was on the basis of getting things moving and so we could
perhaps deal with the most difficult task of all – auditioning for
a female singer who could do justice to Jill Saward’s remarkable
vocals.
As you might imagine, this wasn’t the easiest of tasks. I can’t
remember how many vocalists we heard but I know that after hearing Jo
Hollands sing only a few bars we knew that she was the right singer
for FO2. Not only was she incredibly enthusiastic about the music,
she had Jill’s phrasing off and was able to reach the notes that
Jill hit. Aside from that, she is a talented singer, musician and
songwriter in her own right and Ben and I have co-written with Jo on
all the band’s new material. http://www.jillsaward.com" rel="nofollow - was a big part of the success Fusion Orchestra
had. She became quite a big name in the 1980s as a member of
http://www.shakatak.com" rel="nofollow - , a band that is still very much alive and hence she is not
involved in Fusion Orchestra 2. Do you have any contact with her and
the other original members not involved in Fusion Orchestra 2? Yes, we keep in touch. Jill and I exchange emails from time to
time. She now lives in Sardinia when not touring with Shakatak. I got
together with her, Mick Sluman, Stan Land and Dave Bell a couple of
years ago (there are some reunion pictures on the Fusion Orchestra
website gallery). We are planning to all meet up again this year and
it’s always great fun to spend time together. As you’d imagine,
there’s never a shortage of things to talk about! And they all want
to see FO2 perform.
Dave Cowell joined FO2 towards the end of 2009. He hadn’t played
bass for years, so we spent a good deal of time rehearsing with him
while he honed his playing skills. But after about a year, some
differences had emerged, and he chose not to continue with the band.
As Fusion Orchestra 2, how is the gigs scene in your area these
days and do you have any problems getting gigs? There’s no question that the UK music scene is very different
from the early ’70s when Fusion Orchestra was active. There was an
abundance of pubs and clubs that featured rock music and nothing
else. In addition, colleges and universities offered fantastic venues
for rock and progressive bands to perform in.
And festivals, even the major events such as Glastonbury and The
Isle of Wight, were solidly rock music festivals. There’s no way
you’d get artists like Shirley Bassey, pop groups, hip-hop or
rappers on the bill! You knew exactly what to expect. And almost all
bands were playing original music.
At time of writing, because of the line-up changes and other
delays we have experienced, we are still to play our debut gig. But
we have to choose our venues carefully. It has to be a certain size
for FO2. Many of the pub-rock venues are too small and many of the
audiences expect a diet of rock covers anyway, which is clearly not
what we’re about.
We’ll be looking for promoters who understand what we’re
doing, as well as festivals that feature prog rock. It is possible
that we could promote out own shows. What are your plans for this year and beyond? This year, playing as many live gigs as possible. We’ll most
likely be seeking some representation; and we need to recruit
sound/lighting crew. We are also keen to record an album of the new
material.
Beyond, we aim to keep writing, recording and playing live. A big thank you to Colin Dawson for this interview Their PA profile is http://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=3355" rel="nofollow - and their homepage's http://www.fusionorchestra.com" rel="nofollow - & http://www.fusionorchestra2.com" rel="nofollow -
|
