Tales of Sticks and Bastards

When I first started playing with Weather Report, a lot of people thought I sounded like Stanley Clarke. It wasn't because we sounded like each other, it was just because I was tall, I was black and I was a popular bass player.' So says Alphonso Johnson of the music-consuming public's passion for parallelism. 'We used to do gigs together and laugh about that,' he says, 'you know, we don't even think alike! It's amazing.'

Alphonso was in London recently to perform as part of Rod Argent's band at a few selected gigs, having played on Argent's recently released LP, Moving Home. It seemed a good opportunity to find out what's on Johnson's plate at the moment. He looks up from his scrambled eggs and mushrooms, smiling. The answer turns out to be a new label, a new project and a new band, just for starters.

'My managers are negotiating with Elektra/Asylum,' he explains. 'It's very far removed from what I guess I'm known for doing. We've done some demo tapes for the company — I came to them with essentially the same concept that I talked to Epic about when I wanted to do Spellbound (1977 solo album, EPC82197). Basically, Epic said to me: Well, go in and do it and we'll see what happens. No encouragement whatsoever, and also there were the usual limitations of time and money. But the thing with Asylum, when I went to them with the same type of idea, was: Well, let's see how much time, how much money and how much of a commitment we'll have to make to have the thing work. They're really interested. If a record company is going to work in conjunction with an artist you have to have that happening.'

The demo tapes were completed in October of 1978, at Lyon Recorders in Newport Beach, Los Angeles. It seems that Alphonso and his band virtually 'rebuilt' the studio during the session — Lyon, a small studio, had never had such a large band come in to record all at one time. 'We worked out all the bugs, though,' says Johnson. 'We had a week to record in.'

The new band is called Tomorrow, and is to be a permanent recording and touring unit. So far it consists of Alphonso on bass guitar, Stick, 'some guitar' and backing vocals, lead vocalist Bill Bas, Jesse Harms playing keyboards, and 'an amazing guitar player', Bob Robles. Alphonso describes further: 'Jesse's basically a rock'n'roller from the Bay area in San Francisco. Bob has spent intensive hours with the guitar, he knows everything from Bartok to Charlie Christian to... you name it. And he's self-taught.' At the time of the interview Tomorrow were still looking for a drummer and a second lead vocalist. Titles of the demo tracks include Hopelessly In Love, A Flower Has Just Arose and Change Your Mind; the theme of the record will be, as Alphonso describes it, 'the conquest of human emotions over the advance of technology — songs dealing with everyday conflicts that we have now, that we had 80 years ago, 1000 years ago, and that we'll still have in 3000 years.'

Johnson is, of course, no stranger to technology where it relates to musicians. Firstly, there's his aforementioned Stick, invented by Emmett Chapman. 'It's like playing a typewriter,' Alphonso reckons, imitating 100 words a minute on the table-top. 'It's a combination: you're playing a stringed instrument like a guitarist would, but you're applying the percussive attack of the piano.' The instrument has ten strings (five bass and five treble), and is without conventional 'body' or 'neck', being one continuous object — hence the name. 'It's very economical because you don't have the normal excess weight.'

He also uses two (more conventional) electric basses, made specially for him by Rex Bogue (c/ John McLaughlin's double-neck and Frank Zappa's Bogue-built guitar) and Charles Lobue. 'Charles I bumped into in New York in about 1972,' remembers Alphonso. 'He used to work for a company called Guitar Lab then and I stayed in touch with him. Later I found out he had opened his own shop and I went by, and he told me that he was into building instruments. We just took it from there — I told him all the things that I hated about the instrument that I had, things that I wanted done, and he had some ideas that he injected. I must say that his instrument (a fretless bass) enabled me to establish a sound.'

For his fretted bass, Alphonso went to Rex Bogue in 1976. 'The thing about Rex's instruments is that they are meticulously done. Charles' method of building is a bit more... "crude". There are a lot of reasons why: Rex has access to machinery, whereas Charlie is a very "poor" guy, barely surviving, he does everything by hand and tries to meet deadlines and stuff. Totally different. When Charles builds an instrument, if it's a little off it doesn't matter, so long as it sounds right and feels good.'

Literally coupled to these is Johnson's custom amplification rack, affectionately referred to as the BASTARD (an acronym of Bass Amplification System Through Added Regenerated Devices). 'It's a system that was built so that when I go and perform, whether it be in a studio or live, I can plug in, set everything, leave it, and come back and play. Normally, if I wanted to play the bass, I'd have to plug it in, set the bass and treble, and then if I go to play my Stick I'd have to pull the bass out, put the Stick in, re-eq... if you want to play a song right out,' he says, snapping his fingers, 'you can't do it. The BASTARD, however, is really amazing because it allows me to sub-divide effects — it's like a miniature recording studio on wheels. I'm using a bi-amp system. For the delay I'm using a unit that Ibanez built, a Delay/Flanger, where you can get delay on one side, flange on the other, preset each, then you have a footswitch to go back and forth. The thing is, when you go from one to the other it abruptly cuts it off, which is a drag. Plus there are other things in the rack — I'm using the Eventide Harmonizer mainly on the voice, sometimes I use it on the bass. There's a distortion unit, Allison Gain Brains, and Kepexes. I think that's pretty much it... I use 15s, 12s and horns with it.'

All eq is built into each of Alphonso's instruments, although for the Stick he uses Walter Woods preamps. 'There's no room in the Stick to add a pre-amp as it's so slim. Woods' pre-amps are amazingly broad in the amount of eq you can get out, it's ridiculous, and they only weigh 5½lbs each. What he's doing is so revolutionary that by the time it catches on I don't know what'll happen to it — some big company like CBS or Norlin will pick it up. Walter used to work for Marantz and he introduced the idea there, they weren't even interested. So he's really not interested in dealing with the big companies. He works out of his house, he's always back-ordered.'

Johnson's efforts are now positively directed into the new project and his band; his enthusiasm is total. 'I must say it's the first time I've done something on that basis,' he says of the demos, 'where everything worked. Even with the breakdowns in the studio we got what we wanted in the end result, which is most important. I think the thing most people say about the tape is: Oh, it's rock'n'roll! But first of all, when you do a demo tape, it's foolish to do an esoteric tape or you won't get a record deal! The thing about this new band is that it is a progressive group, in the sense that the players are all from different backgrounds.'

Johnson is busy, too, resharpening his vocal talents (he stopped singing in 1968 when he began to get interested in the bass, and started again around 1974 when he left Chuck Mangione's band), and is also writing some articles comparing and criticising production basses for the fine US Guitar Player magazine. The recording of the new album should be starting this month and be finished by June, with an August/September release scheduled. 'Which probably means August or September 1985!' he laughs. Either way, look out for it.

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Linguistic Loonies

I think one of the reasons that England is interested in Gruppo Sportivo,' says their beshaded main-man Hans Vandenburg, 'is that we check the lyrics. It's important that there are not ten mistakes in one song.' The Dutch band are at the start of a British tour. Vandenburg smiles at his own reference to their first album, 10 Mistakes. Jose Van Iersel, one of Gruppo's two singers, backs him up.

'There really are faulty lyrics on records sometimes,' she says of Dutch bands generally. 'Lots of them say things that you just can't say.' In English, that is. 99% of Dutch groups sing English lyrics — hence the discussion on linguistic juggling. Gruppo were lucky enough to have a handy English engineer, Robin Freeman, at Hilvarenbeek's Relight Studio sessions, for both their first, and second (Back To 78) albums.

'English is the language of rock 'n' roll,' says Hans; this and similar reasons are given for the overwhelming anglicised onslaught on European band's lyrics. But in Holland, it seems, the reasons go even deeper. The group explain further in their excellent English.

'They all understand it,' says Hans of Dutch audiences' knowledge of English, 'they sing along with the lyrics.' Not surprising, really, in a country where all schools teach English among two or three compulsory 'foreign' languages, where nearly everyone understands English. And most rock musicians in Holland have musical roots in English language music: 'The Yardbirds, Cream, The Kinks, I grew up with those,' says Hans.

There are some Dutch groups who sing in Dutch, of course. Mainly of a political nature, these groups are described by Gruppo's keyboardist Peter Calicher as 'trying to educate with their songs. They try to sing for the working class.' He mentions a group called Bots as an example. Another is Normal: 'Farmers-rock,' explains Jose. 'I think Normal is a very good group,' says Hans, 'they are singing in their own dialect, rock 'n' roll, and it's OK. But it's small, you know?'

Jose complains that Normal's vernacular isn't real Dutch. 'We can't even understand it very well!' The dialect in which Normal sing is of the central eastern region of Holland, but Jose reckons that a lot of it's to do with people from this area being more chauvinist about dialect. 'Some people who speak vernacular are more chauvinist than people who just speak Dutch,' she clarifies, 'because they are a minority. That's probably the reason — they want to stick to their own language because it's something that's being suppressed.'

For Gruppo Sportivo (and most of the other bands in Holland), singing in English would seem to make it much easier for record companies to sell them, in the bigger and more lucrative English-speaking markets of Britain and, more importantly, the US. But I'm not allowed to make quite so rapid an assumption. 'But that's not the reason,' objects Jose. 'It's just because rock 'n' roll isn't Dutch.' Peter goes on to point out that going to Britain, and to the States, involves two very big steps for Dutch groups. 'But there are only three groups in Holland who ever made it over in the States, and that's for the last fifty years, I think. Golden Earring, Focus and, long time ago, Shocking Blue.' And of those three Focus was, of course, largely an instrumental group.

Hans picks up the language thread once more: 'In Holland when you sing in Dutch you have to do it better than when you're singing in English. Everybody listens to English songs and says: Ah, good song. But when you sing in Dutch they say: What is he singing? You can sing "I love you" in a song, but when you sing "Ik hou van jou" it sounds silly, you know? When I am translating my songs into Dutch... difficult, looking for problems.'

Jose argues that Dutch doesn't fit in well with the rhythm of rock 'n' roll, either. 'English is far more descriptive,' she says. 'You can use less words to say the same thing — if you want to say it in Dutch you have to use 20 words for a simple sentence.'

After a little more discussion in this vein I leave to let the band prepare for the next leg of their tour. Hans suddenly remembers I'm supposed to be from a 'musicians magazine' — you know, the sort that always talk about what gauge strings you use, and all that. 'But you didn't talk about the equipment,' he protests. 'Well, play on Vox, that's the best!' he laughs.

But the very last words to some well-checked Sportivo lyrics: 'Think we better stop now/Wish I had the know-how to tell Folk from Disco/Let's go Hohohoho' Right-o.