Interview
with Twink, Syd Barrett's bandmate
in Stars
Opel #11, 5 December 1985
By Ivor Trueman
'Long, long
ago... back in the mid-1980's there used to be a Syd fanzine called "Opel" which was put out by a nice guy called Ivor Trueman. Although he's still
alive and kicking about the music scene, his 'zine
isn't. Tragically, copies of the excellent fanzine are now practically
impossible to locate. They contain several exclusive interviews which are
genuinely important to the field of Sydology.Since
I've been blessed with all of the issues (except for one) and a fair amount of
typing time, I sought Mr. Trueman's permission to
provide the interviews to all of you nice Echoesians.
He agreed, provided that no money changes hands.This
interview is of Twink. Twink,
of course, has been long rumoured to have tapes of
all of the Stars rehearsals and gigs.Thanks to bear
for providing this forum, you for reading this, and especially to Ivor Trueman for taking the time
and trouble of conducting the interview and publishing it for future
generations. And now.... TWINK!!!'
-Scott
Frank, Barrett scholar-at-large
Thinking Pink!
Early in
November I met up with Twink in windy East Anglia,
but before we get submerged in all that I thought it would be best to provide a
little information about Twink's career. (We've also
had a few requests to do this.) So here goes:-
In 1963 Twink began playing for an RnB
combo called "Dane Stephens And The Deep
Beats", after a year they changed their name to "The Fairies"
and recorded a single for Decca, "Don't Think Twice It's Alright".In '65 they released two more singles for Hmv, "Don't Mind" and "Get Yourself
Home" and split sometime before '67.
Twink
then joined The In Crowd, shortly before they changed
their name to "Tomorrow" and began playing such gigs as the Ufo.etc. Tomorrow consisted of Keith West-vocals, Steve
Howe-guitar, John "Junior" Wood-bass and
last but not least, Twink on drums. They recorded a
fine psychedelic album called "Tomorrow" and had a minor hit with
that great song- "My White Bicycle". However all good things must end
sometime and as Tomorrow split Twink was enlisted by
the Pretty Things for the first ever concept album "S.F. Sorrow"
whilst he also recorded his own solo LP "Think Pink". This was
another classic album full of swirling vocals, sitars and other psychedelic
fragrances. This album is highly recommended.
During
69/70, Twink played on Mick Farrens
solo album "Mona" and helped form the original Pink Fairies with Mick
Farren and Steve Peregrine Took. It wasn't until
April '70 however that the Pink Fairies got their act together properly (if you
can call it that), and the line up at the time consisted of Twink,
second drummer Russel Hunter, Paul Rudolf-guitar, and
Duncan Sanderson-bass. Hunter, Rudolf and Sanderson had all previously been
members of the Deviants along with Mick Farren and
had also played on Twink's solo LP.The
Pink Fairies landed a deal with Polydor, releasing a
single "The Snake"/"Doing It" and album "Never Never Land". Twink left the
band in the middle of '71 though he does play on the Glastonbury LP. Twink did later re-join the Pink Fairies for six months in
'73 and then for their last gig which was recorded and came out as an LP called
"Live At The Roundhouse '75".
Early in
'72 Twink played live at a one-off gig with Eddie
Guitar Burns, where of course, he was joined on stage by Syd Barrett. They jammed
through a blues tune and went on to form the ill-fated Stars.After
Stars had collapsed Twink went into hibernation,
apart from the already mentioned Pink Fairies re-unions he next surfaced in 77
when he recorded an EP as Twink and The Fairies and
sang lead vocals for "The Rings". (Who had a single titled "I Wanna Be Free" on Chiswick
records). After that... well this is where the
interview began...
Ivor Trueman: I know that you played with Tomorrow and The
Pretty Things and The Pink Fairies but after that it all seemed to stop really.
Twink: That was when things had started
to go really wrong. I had a drink and drug problem.
Ivor Trueman: You did that "Do It '77" EP in 77.
Twink: Yes that was after "The
Rings" who I did vocals for , and after that EP
came out in 78 I went to Belgium and did some sessions over there. I got a
straight job with an American Computer company in Brussels and I stayed with
them for five years in fact. The job that I had was relocated to the U.K. in
1981, so I came back over to here. Although I'd always had the idea of getting
back into music, I still had a problem. And since May this year, when I
admitted to myself that I had a serious drink and drug addiction problem,
things have been getting better. Today I don't have to have a drink or take any
drugs. I'm focussing on a second solo album, which
I've prepared and is ready-although I haven't got a
deal yet. I'm planning to go to America by the end of November as I was there
in January and made some contacts and there seems to be some interest over
there. And I'm also planning an album with Ron Wood, Kim Gardner and Jon Lord,
which is a continuation of an earlier project.
Ivor Trueman: Kim Gardner.
Twink: He was in Ashton Gardner and Dyke.
Ivor Trueman: And the Creation.
Twink: The Creation and also The
Birds-both groups with Ron Wood. It was around that time when I first met them.
I saw The Creation down at Blaises and The Birds at
the 100 Club, I jammed with them down there as well. In
'68 I was sharing a flat with Jon Lord, Ron and Kim used to come over all the
time. That was when Jon took us into Decca studios one Sunday afternoon. And we
had this structured jam on 3 titles which later came out on an
"Immediate" blues album called Blues Anytime Vol
3, just the three tracks which we did.
Ivor Trueman: Who was that credited to?
Twink: The Santa Barbara Machine Head-and
that's the name that we're going to be using for this album, now. I was with
Kim in LA last January and a week after I arrived Jon
Lord was playing the Civic Centre Longbeach with Deep
Purple-on the Perfect Strangers tour. So I went down there and said "I've
spoken to Kim, we think it'd be nice for us all to get together and record an
album." and he said that he'd love to do it, even though we hadn't seen
each other for 15 years. That only left Ron, and when Kim came over to London
in June he managed to get through to him. (They're kind of like brothers). And
there was a meeting and Ron said 'yeah I wanna do it
but I've got to finish the Stones album first'. So that's where we are at the
moment.
Ivor Trueman: That's quite a line-up.
Twink: I've drafted a few ideas and I've
got the amber light from Ron's manager so we're just waiting for us all to get
together.
Ivor Trueman: What about your second
solo album?
Twink: It's called 'The Doves' and I've
got some great musicians for that. But I don't want to mention any names now cause I don't want people to think 'ah this guy's trying to
make a comeback on somebody else's name', but there are some really good people
on it.
Ivor Trueman: What kind of music will
it be?
Twink: Very modern.
Ivor Trueman: So it won't be like the
'Do It '77' EP then.
Twink: No, nothing at all like that. That EP was 50% disastrous from a musical point
of view. The new album is going to be far more "musical" than
anything I've ever done.
Ivor Trueman: I thought the first
solo album was quite melodic and tuneful actually, whereas the EP is more like
the Pink Fairies.
Twink: Yeah that's right,
well that's what I was going for with that EP. Actually, and I haven't told
this to anyone in an interview before, but"Psychedelic
Punkeroo" on the EP...
Ivor Trueman: ...is credited to
"A. Syd" and has lyrics about him.
Twink: Yeah, that song is a song for Syd,
basically. I wrote that song about Syd and I credited it under that pseudonym,
which I used just for that song.
Ivor Trueman: Moving a bit further
into the past, have you any memories about Ufo? You must have been fairly close to Syd at that time.
Twink: We weren't very close actually at
the Ufo, as such...
Ivor Trueman: But you played on the
same bill together.
Twink: Oh yeah, many many
times and in fact the first time that I went down [to] the Ufo the Floyd were playing. I can't say that I
remember them as being fantastically good but I appreciated what they were
doing. I knew that it was 'new' and very experimental and I've always been
looking for new things and I think I latched onto the fact that it was new.
Ivor Trueman: Do you think it was
very different from what came out on the first album?
Twink: Oh yeah, It was much more raw and
unstructured and just kind ofjamming-cosmic jamming.
Ivor Trueman: What was Ufo like?
Twink: It wasn't very big but it had a
great atmosphere; light shows, incense burning, theatre groups, people just
doing things. People in costume and obviously the glittering
sparkling things in their faces-the make up. It was fantastic-it was
really great and as soon as I saw it I wanted the band that I was with to play
there and it affected me immediately, I started to get new ideas myself-things
like mime, more free form playing, using light shows and things like that.
Ivor Trueman: Was the music of Tomorrow more free form live than on record?
Twink: We used to play very free live,
there was a lot more energy live- the album is more or less a condensed version
of what we did live. It's more structured on the album-like a three minute song
on the album may have been 20 minutes live.
Ivor Trueman: There's a story about
one of the Ufo gigs just
after the Rolling Stones had been busted. Everyone cleared out of the club to
picket The News Of The World and Tomorrow waited until
5am to perform their set.
Twink: Yeah, that's right, and I think we
had a lot of daffodils 'n' stuff to throw out into the audience that night as
well. And I also think that was the planting of the seed for
"Revolution" on the album.
Ivor Trueman: When you were crawling through the audience
shouting "Revolution" while Steve played a heavy feedback riff on
guitar...
Twink: Yeah, it's amazing. And there were
a lot of people going 'No no no' and I was going 'Yes yes yes'... but that was
all just youth, rebelling from me.
Ivor Trueman: What about the 14 Hour Technicolour
Dream?
Twink: I remember that, we weren't booked
to play, we just drove up and played. We just said
"We're Tomorrow and we're playing"-bluffed
our way onto the stage; and did a really good set, I think. We enjoyed it
anyway. But that was the kind of thing you had to do at the time, if you were
trying to get into something which had already started, you had to push your
way in. The people who were organising the gigs had
probably been thinking along those lines for years and then it suddenly became
a movement. And the movement had already begun by the time we arrived. It was
still early days for the movement though. As soon as I'd heard about Ufo I went down there, it had been
going for 2-3 weeks and I went down there one Friday night.
Ivor Trueman: Was that before Tomorrow formed?
Twink: I think we were still called 'The In Crowd'.
Ivor Trueman: So you joined them when they were still
called 'The In Crowd'?
Twink: Yes, and a few months after I'd
joined them we changed the name.
Ivor Trueman: What happened to Tomorrow
in the end? It all seemed to disintegrate.
Twink: Well, that's what happened.
Ivor Trueman: Keith West having his solo hit.
Twink: Yes, that created a bad feeling. It
appeared to me that we'd agreed that Keith's record was going to come out as
Keith Tomorrow, and Steve was going to make a record as Steve Tomorrow and
likewise Junior and myself, cause we were trying to push the band. And then of
course Keith's record came out as Keith Tomorrow and there was immediately a
feeling of "What's going on?". And then it
was a hit. We started getting all these strange gigs that we couldn't really
play the way that we wanted to because they wanted "Grocer Jack"
Keith's single.
Ivor Trueman: That also happened with the Floyd after
Emily.
Twink: And the next thing that happened
was Keith, myself, Steve and Junior met one day round at Steve's and Keith said
that he wanted to go solo but wanted to keep the group together and produce the
group. And it was really up to us to decide if we wanted to do that. I think
Steve wanted to go on but both myself and Junior were pissed off with what was
happening-we really didn't know what was happening-we just didn't like being
pushed left, right and centre, so our immediate reaction was 'no we'll go our
own separate ways'.
Ivor Trueman: Junior did play on your solo album though.
Twink: He made a brief appearance on the
solo album but he did co-write a couple of the songs. We were working as
"The Aquarian Age" after Tomorrow and we had a single out called
"10,000 Words In A Cardboard Box" which we
later re-recorded on the album. But after that single Junior decided that he'd
had enough and decided to go into Casino's. He became a croupier-got married and
went to Greece. And he made a lot of money and now he's got a yacht, he's taken
a long vacation and he's sailing around the world. Junior had had a nervous
breakdown and cirrhosis of the liver-and all that gave him a very deep insight
into where his life was, cause he nearly died, and he started thinking about
what he was doing and saw through the falseness in the music business and he
decided to get out. And of course at that point I'd just joined The Pretty
Things. I was asked to join and I said that I'd help out for a month. That was
my intention because I believed in what I was doing with the Aquarian Age.
Ivor Trueman: Well, the version of "1,000
Words..." on your solo album is great ifthat's
anything to go by...
Twink: It's similar to the Aquarian Age's
version but it's a bit different. The Aquarian Age's has a violin solo on it and
it was also produced by Mark Wirtz. So, I joined The
Pretty Things for a month but ended up with them for a couple of years. I only
did "S.F. Sorrow" with them, except for a couple of tracks on that
which they'd already started to record. "S.F. Sorrow" is quite a good
album-I wrote the stage-play for S.F. Sorrow.
Ivor Trueman: What was that???
Twink: We performed it at the Roundhouse
twice-it was mime, I took the lead part, the main character-S.F. Sorrow, and
the rest of the group and their girlfriends took part; all miming to the tape
with dialogue in between the songs..spoken
by Phil May.
Ivor Trueman: Pete Townshend
wasn't in the audience was he?
Twink: Well he listened to S.F. Sorrow
while they were recording Tommy cause they phoned Phil May up and said 'hey
Phil, we think it's great and we're working on something very similar'.. But I
think it's gone on record now that S.F. Sorrow was actually the first concept
album.
Ivor Trueman: Yeah but Tommy got all the critical acclaim.
Twink: I think Phil May was very
disappointed with that-still, that's life.
Ivor Trueman: What about your solo
LP.
Twink: That was done while I was with The
Pretty Things and some of them appear on the record: Wally Allen, John Povey, Victor Unit, and Phil May, I think in retrospect
that album could have been a lot better than it was content/material wise. It
was experimental.
Ivor Trueman: It's got a lot of nice sounds on it-voices,
sitars etc.
Twink: Yeah, in fact when I put a band
together and do some gigs I'm actually going to put some of those ideas into
the live show-some of the actual vocal things. There's a track called "The
Dawn of Magic" which I want to do getting the audience to participate in
the vocals. At the time of that album I was really influenced by what the
"Living Theatre" were doing. They were a
theatre group which used a lot of audience participation, very free and relaxed
kind of shows. I remember them opening their act with the stage pitch black and
there'd be fifty people on stage all with incense sticks held in their hands,
and you'd just see all these little coloured dots
which they kept moving around for 10 minutes-for me, it was great. I was really
influenced by them-Dawn Of Magic was influenced by
them and some of that carried on into the Pink Fairies. A track called
"Thor" which consists of a vacuum cleaner just going backwards and
forwards, with a guitar folded over backwards. If you listen carefully you can
hear the hoover...
Ivor Trueman: Some of the other people who played on your
solo LP were from The Deviants and later on The Pink Fairies. How did you form
The Pink Fairies?
Twink: I didn't form original Pink
Fairies. We just used to go out together and found ourselves doing gigs
together-we just found ourselves being together and I think Mick Farren put the name together after Tony Wiggins (who was
the Deviants road manager) sort of threw in Pink Fairies at some point and then
Mick Farren said yeah, 'We're the Pink Fairies
Motorcycle Club and All Star Rock N Roll Band, that's who we are.' and that's
how it started.
Ivor Trueman: cause you were in a
band called The Fairies before.
Twink: Yeah, I don't know if that was in
Tony's mind when he actually threw the Pink Fairies in...
Ivor Trueman: What about Mick Farrens solo album, Mona?
Twink: I play drums on that.
Ivor Trueman: After the Pink Fairies
you next played in Stars. How did that all happen?
Twink: I was living in Cambridge,
after I'd left the Pink Fairies I went back to London for a while and then
moved to Cambridge. And while in Cambridge I met Jack Monck
and some local musicians, though we didn't do anything serious.
Ivor Trueman: You hadn't known Jack Monck before then?
Twink: No. I met him through Jenny, Jenny
Spires who was an ex-girlfriend of mine, and she was also an ex-girlfriend of Syd's. It was Jenny and Jack who brought Syd down to the
Eddie Guitar Burns gig at Kings College Cellar. And Syd had a jam that night.
And I think, I'm not sure if it's the next day, but within the next day or two
Jenny and Jack came round to my house in Cambridge and we were talking and
someone said "wouldn't it be great to get Syd playing again." It
wasn't just me who said that, it was everyone. So Jenny said
'Oh I'll fix up a meeting with him, we'll go and see Syd and ask him if he
wants to play with you and Jack.' So that's what we did. We went round
to his house and I think his Mum answered the door and then Syd came to the
door and Jenny said, 'This is Twink and Jack, they
want to know if you want to form a band, just the three of you.' So he said 'yeah,
alright, come in'. And that was that. We started rehearsing down in the
basement of his house, that's how it started. I think I'm right.
Ivor Trueman: Did you do much rehearsal?
Twink: Not really, we did about two weeks
and then we had this gig come up at the Corn Exchange.
Ivor Trueman: Who arranged those gigs?
Twink: A guy called Steve Brink. And I'm
sure Steve's intentions were good but he was just as crazy as everybody else, y'know. If we'd had some sort of management direction then
we wouldn't have done any gigs for six months or maybe a year or something, but
we went straight into it. He came in and said 'I've got this gig with MC5, I'm going to put you top of the bill.' We said yes and
he printed the tickets. This is very important to me actually, the tickets said
"Stars-Twink's new band", and it looks as
though, from that, that people think that I actually got the bands name on the
ticket like that because I was more 'together' than Syd. But that's not true and
I'd like it to go on record that it wasn't anything to do with me-it was the
promoter trying to be overhelpful to me and I'd never
seen the tickets before they came out or anything.
Ivor Trueman: I think the gigs attracted more attention
than they should've done, as Syd hadn't been in the limelight for quite some
time.
Twink: Yeah.
Ivor Trueman: But you did some gigs in Cambridge apart from
the Corn Exchange.
Twink: Yeah well some of the gigs were
great, some of them were really good but the Corn Exchange gigs were awful. The
one that I remember best of all was the one that I enjoyed-the one in the
Market Square in Cambridge, in the open air, that was
great. And we did as few in the Dandelion Coffee Bar, I think we did two there and
they were also good.
Ivor Trueman: That was all around the same time.
Twink: Yes, all around the same time, cause
the band didn't stay together very long. Straight after that gig the bad press
that we got, I think it was Roy Hollingworth-Melody
Maker, he did a piece and he killed the band in fact, with that review. cause Syd came round with it in his hand the next day, he
saw it and says 'I don't want to play anymore'. So that was it. I mean I
expected that, I thought that that was a possibility that something like that
might happen, but it was a shame that it did.
Ivor Trueman: What about the recording of the earlier gigs?
Twink: Well I don't know where the tapes
are.
Ivor Trueman: Which gigs were recorded?
Twink: I think all of them were.
Ivor Trueman: And the rehearsals?
Twink: Syd recorded the rehearsals.
Ivor Trueman: On a portable cassette?
Twink: As far as I remember, yes, just on
a cassette. And the other one's were recorded on a really professional set up
by a guy from America that was based in Cambridge. He was related in someway to
Leonard Bernstein and his name's Victor but I can't remember anything else.
Ivor Trueman: Did you realise
that the Eddie Guitar Burns gig was also recorded - a guy in Cambridge has a
professional quality tape.
Twink: No, I did have once one of the
Stars gigs, between me and Jolly, who was a friend I was working with at the
time. He used to make badges. He had a tape but I don't know what happened to
it. The tapes were good-they were all Syd's songs,
Floyd material. I don't think we had any new stuff, but I can't remember.
Ivor Trueman: So Syd wasn't still writing anything at the
time?
Twink: I can't remember. I know he was
painting at the time, he was a beautiful artist, he
did oil paintings, fantastic abstract paintings. I guess most of those are
still at his house, Jenny's got one of them.
Ivor Trueman: Are you still in touch with Jenny?
Twink: No. I don't know if Jack is. They
were married but I think they'redivorced or separated
now.
Ivor Trueman: Have you seen Syd recently?
Twink: No. Well yeah-I bumped into him a
few years ago in Harrods. I was going down the escalator and he was going up. But
I haven't seen him for a while.
Ivor Trueman: One of the guys writing a book on the Floyd
has been to see him recently - Mike Watkinson. [Note, this is my mistake, Mike
hasn't been to see Syd yet.]
Twink: Yeah, he's been in touch with me
but we haven't got together yet.
Ivor Trueman: How long were the sets that STARS performed? The
gig list for the Corn Exchange gig was supposed to have been: Octopus, Dark
Globe, Gigolo Aunt, Baby Lemonade, Waving My Arms In The Air, Lucifer Sam and a
couple of 12- bar blues
Twink: I can't remember exactly, how long
the sets were but I think it was about 40-45 minutes. It's quite amazing
actually, when you think about it, that he was keen at the time to do this and y'know he was really 'there'. He's a great guitarist and a
great musician.
Ivor Trueman: Did Fred Frith ever
play in the Stars line-up? We got a letter from him in New York saying that he
played once on stage with Syd.
Twink: He didn't play in Stars but I
don't know whether he did play with Syd, it might have even been the Eddie
Guitar Burns gig.
Ivor Trueman: Was there somebody else there then?
Twink: I honestly can't remember. It
could well have been that though.
Ivor Trueman: There's a rumour that
Stars also did See Emily Play in rehearsal.
Twink: Yeah, I think that's right, but
I'm not sure.
Ivor Trueman: What happened to the proposed gig at Essex
University?
Twink: We tried to do that without Syd,
because Syd had said that he didn't want to play anymore-but we had that booked
so we all went down there with the intention of playing, I'd brought another
couple of musicians in to cover for Syd. But in fact the promoter didn't want
us to play cause Syd wasn't there-so it was a bit of
a disaster.
Ivor Trueman: Were you still going to play Syd's material?
Twink: No. It was going to be other
stuff. But it was the wrong thing to do we should've pulled out. But we decided
to go down there and it didn't work out.
Ivor Trueman: What do you think of all this new psychedelic
stuff?
Twink: I don't know much about them all
really. I don't focus on them when they come, I know
the Rain's Parade's management very well. Malibu Management-they're real nice
people-but I have no idea about their music. I've heard the Church, have you
heard of them?
Ivor Trueman: Yeah, a bit poppy.
Twink: Then there was something the other
day, I heard one track by The Fall on 'The Tube' and
what I heard was like something out of the Ufo. It's
all a bit dated, but I understand that the kids have got to draw their
inspiration from somewhere-so that's where they're coming from and they'll
obviously go onto better things.That just about
concludes the interview, I'd like to say a big thanx
to Twink for the interview and to Allan Thompson for
putting me in touch. Also I'd like to wish Twink all
the best in '86 and look forward to The Doves with immense interest.If
you're into other psychedelia/hippy stuff you won't
be disappointed in the self named Tomorrow LP or Twink's
solo album "Think Pink"; both are rated highly by most people I know
with copies. There's also a cheapish compilation of Pink Fairies stuff called
Pink Fairies (what else) which is ok and the Glastonbury album is worth hearing
for "Uncle Harry's Last Freakout". Stamp
collectors are probably more at home with "Do It '77", the EP which
came out in 78 and features "Psychedelic Punkeroo".Ivan
the Terrible That's just how it appeared in Opel #11 on 5 December 1985. If you enjoyed reading this,
please seek out the Malcolm Jones interview and Mr. Jones' amazing book
"The Making Of The Madcap Laughs".