Roger Zee: I put Wishbone Ash in the same league as The Allman Brothers and The Grateful Dead. These groups mixed
the Blues with a potpourri of other influences to create something spontaneous, flowing, unique, yet structured. Some say The Allman
Brothers got the idea of twin leads from you! Talk about how your band came up with it's sound.
Andy Powell: You're right. Those bands, as well as ourselves, were the natural summation, or culmination, of the huge
output of musical styles we heard in the 1960's. That era divided music into specific genres -- Soul, R&B, Blues, Country,
Jazz, etc. The Rock bands of the next decade felt they wanted to meld or break down those delineations. Drugs played a part. So did
freedom, the new FM radio. And of course, this was the biggest generation of all, the post WWII generation Baby Boomers. The audience
wanted their peers to play music the way they wanted to hear it. No elitism. Music for the people by the people! The Allmans come up with their sound
based on Country and Blues. Sometimes we got put on the same live bills with them. They played more American roots-based music than us.
Fantastic to watch with the two drummers and those sweet, melodic twin-leads. We were more rooted in English and European folk with some
Blues and Jazz thrown in for good measure, rather like a jam band of today! Our sound was also melodic, perhaps more
so, because we incorporated the bass in with the guitar lines, making for a fuller sound. We experimented with
our guitar and vocal harmonies as well, not merely sticking to thirds and fifths.
Roger Zee: Wishbone Ash experienced a few personnel changes since the early Seventies. Who's in it now?
Andy Powell: Bob Skeat on bass has been in the band for twenty years. Joe Crabtree's a ten year member, and our newest member,
Yorkshireman Mark Abrahams, plays guitar alongside me, pushing the twin lead concept ever forward.
Roger Zee: Talk about your transition from one of the two lead guitarists to the lead vocalist.
Andy Powell: That was huge for me. As a lead guitarist, your instrument becomes the voice you develop to stand out from the crowd.
But in many ways, the human voice's the ultimate instrument. I’d always sung but not so much as a "lead" singer. When it came time for me
to seriously split my attention between guitar and vocals, it took a fair amount of adjustment. But it was totally worth it! I highly
recommend singing. Physicially speaking, it’s incredibly healthy and rewarding. It’s also a fantastic emotional release. In
our band, it also means that I can conduct the music in directions, stylistically speaking, more in tune with our original concept. We’re a band
that ended up going down a lot of strange rabbit holes during the mid-point of our career. So in that regard, it’s been rewarding as well.
Roger Zee: Why has your band and brand endured for almost 50 years?
Andy Powell: I believe that a lot of our longevity stems from the social impact of being part of the Baby Boomer generation and
Youth Movement at a time which involved no direct wars on our homelands. The end of the WWII spawned a huge upsurge in musical
creativity in Britain, my home country. The Beatles, Stones, Bowie, Cream, you name it, all resulted from, to quote John Lennon,
"War is over" -- at least at our own doorstep. It freed our generation to explore everything culturally again. Bands like ours laid down
deep, musically stylistic roots during that time. It was a kind of musical and social recalibration.
Another reason. Back in the day, aside from being well-represented on FM radio and the BBC, we were never really a singles band. Hit singles tend to root you in one decade or another because people en masse remember only that. No matter how creative before or after that point in time, it’s only the hits they remember! I’m actually kind of thankful that it panned out this way because I’ve had a simply wonderful life in music. I've been able to enjoy, on a professional level, almost five decades of serious work in the music industry.
Roger Zee: What's the strategy of the group moving forward?
Andy Powell: Gig, gig and gig again! A group of musicians has to work almost constantly in order to be a band. I’m talking as a
player and keeping things sharp. On the recording front, we’re going through an interesting phase of compiling a huge, archival box-set of
our early years entitled "The Vintage Years." All this leads up to our celebrating fifty years as a group. We’ll undoubtedly produce a new
studio album, possibly this year. But I'm also thinking about doing a solo record. I wrote my biography a
couple of years ago, "Eyes Wide Open - True Tales of a Wishbone Ash Warrior." And that was also part of this reflective process.
Roger Zee: Describe your favorite and/or most unusual performance.
Andy Powell: Back in the day, I loved playing a venue in New Orleans called The Warehouse. Returning to the city on
our recent US tour, my memories of the place got jogged back by die hard fans at our show at The House of Blues. The
Warehouse was a steamy, grimy place on the wrong side of the tracks. But literally everyone played there -- ZZ Top, The Who, Joe Walsh, etc.
It wasn’t as big as Madison Square Garden or some of the giant festivals we’ve played. But it really epitomized the essence of Rock 'n Roll
and the Seventies in general.
Roger Zee: Give me your take on the current state of the music business?
Andy Powell: Well, it’s all about streaming -- YouTube and Spotify, etc. The record labels don’t nurture and get involved in
developing artists anymore. Overall, I suppose things have become more pop oriented. However, great niche bands and writers remain in many
fragmented genres which all command their own specialist audiences. So that’s refreshing. What I see all over in clubs and theaters
is an over-reliance on Blues as the go-to music. Of course there's some great Blues-based acts out there. Guitar remains as popular
as ever which works great for us! Sadly no one's making money from recordings, particularly because the revenue from streaming's minimal.
Roger Zee: What advice do you give young, up-and-coming Rockers?
Andy Powell: Get out there and play in every situation you can -- a street corner, open-mic, private party, a local radio station.
Live is where it's at! Just get noticed and then control your own PR, social media, and so on because the competition's fierce and no one
else can or will do it as well as you can.
©2018 Roger Zee