“Do you fancy interviewing Bruce?” the message read, and, within moments, I had stopped punching the air and thanking my aged iconic subject finder and was already cramming facts on a bona fide star of the music world; one inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, no less…..

 

Bruce Thomas was the bassist for the Attractions, the band formed around Elvis Costello in 1977. The music they created is as timeless as it is popular, the tensions that followed perhaps not as well known, but certainly as noteworthy. In his new book, ‘Rough Notes’, Bruce gives the full story of his tempestuous times with “The Singer” so there appeared to be no better time than the present to catch up with the legendary bass player to get the lowdown on his written works, his musical career, and Operation Yewtree…..

 

First things first, I have to say that it is an honour to be asked to interview a bona fide star of the music world, who’s been on Top Of The Pops an’ everything!

 

Ah, yes. Top of the Pops — two minutes of miming and two days of hanging about. But I suppose it’s not everyone who gets to within spitting distance of Bucks Fizz and Gary Numan.

 

Readers will no doubt know you as a former member of The Attractions, but may not realise that you have written a number of books….

 

I have indeed written several books, but the only ones you need concern yourself with are my Bruce Lee biography, ‘Fighting Spirit’ (which is now pretty well accepted as the definitive book on its subject), and my recent ‘memoirs’, ‘Rough Notes’.

 

Would you say that ‘Rough Notes’ tells the full story of the boy who took on a paper round so he could afford to buy a guitar and later found himself inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

 

I would say that — because that’s what it says on the cover. But it also includes many of the bits in between. ‘Rough Notes’ is the ‘full story’ in terms of my musical career — and obviously dwells on my time as an Attraction — but is also a memoir of the entire ‘golden age’ of rock and pop. I concentrated on the musical side of things — that is, the rock and roll, without the sex and drugs — because the idea was to write a book not a set of encyclopaedias.

 

How does this memoir differ from your first book, ‘The Big Wheel’, and its sequel, ‘On The Road… Again’?

 

‘The Big Wheel’ was also based around my time with EC and the As, but was written as a tale of any generic band, mainly as therapy for ‘touritis’. But there’s an entire chapter in ‘Rough Notes’ that answers this question more fully. I started writing ‘…Wheel’ on a US tour where there was us and our support band, ironically named Squeeze, along with managers, agents and tour managers all crammed on to the same bus. It was a time when all the endless touring came to a head and the book is pretty much a long whinge …along with a few good jokes. Its release pretty much coincided with the end of the Attractions Mk1. But if you haven’t already read it, then thank the circumstance and leave it to be lost to the mists of time.

 

‘On the Road Again’ coincided with the end of the Attractions v2.0. The only thing it illuminates is that you should never write a book while having a nervous breakdown — or at least, not while you’re feeling exhausted, emotional and confused. So you can thank the circumstances again, and let that book be lost to the mists of time, too. The idea was also to write about all the ‘other stuff’ in my life. As it happens, I’ve just started writing a new ‘memoir’ that interweaves some other experiences with the band with ‘what I did on my holidays’— like spending time with the Hopi Indians and working up at the Findhorn community in Scotland, as well my time learning kung fu, and several what you might call ‘X-Factor’ incidents.

 

‘The Big Wheel’ was a memoir that never mentioned some of the main players by name – a certain Mr. MacManus/Costello referred to as “The Singer” for example. Was writing ‘Rough Notes’ an opportunity to set the record straight regarding the subsequent feud that followed the release of that first book?

 

I’d always been happy to encourage the idea that ‘The Big Wheel’ upset EC so much it led to my sacking, but that was really only a myth to add a bit of notoriety to it and encourage sales. In fact, I made a rod for my own back by doing that, and the myth became accepted as the official version of events — and every know-nothing journo and fan-boy who’d never been within 1,000 miles of the band began repeating the myth in their accounts, or posting it on Wikipedia. The reason for my first split with the band was a lot more subtle, detailed, and quite a bit darker than that, and revolved around something EC did to Steve Nieve, by ‘attacking’ him while he was in a very vulnerable state — as is fully explained in ‘Rough Notes’. As it happened Steve forgave for it long before I did.

 

The song ‘How To Be Dumb’, from Elvis Costello’s 1991 album, ‘Mighty Like A Rose’ was said to be written in retaliation to ‘The Big Wheel’ – do family members ever play it at you after an argument?!

 

Of course ‘Dumb’ was a riposte to my book, but the only person who’s ever actually played it to me was the producer, Mitchell Froom. So yeah, what can I say about it? It’s a bit of Dylanesque bluster based around the customary lyrical pun. What nobody seems to have picked up on is the song that precedes it — ‘Hurry Down Doomsday’, is far more direct. For your consideration here’s part of the first verse. (Copyright of course remains with the artist formerly known as…)

 

“He’s planting a trashy paperback book for accidental purchase.
Containing all the secrets of life and other useless things.
But I can’t bring myself to look.
Wake up Zombie write yourself another book.
You want to scream and shout my little flaxen lout.
Hurry down Doomsday the bugs are taking over.”

 

So, in fact, I got two songs out of him!

 

Despite your differences you rejoined the Attractions, playing on ‘Brutal Youth’ and ‘All This Useless Beauty’ and taking part in a World Tour – how did this happen, and how tense was your relationship with “The Singer”?

 

The reconciliation between EC and me was brokered by Mitchell Froom who I used to do a lot of session work for. He was Suzanne Vega’s producer (and later, her husband) and he’d been booked in to produce EC’s new album. He did a kind of ‘what would you say if he rang you?’ routine with both of us in turn. As it happened, I was in Los Angeles, staying at Mitchell’s house, while he was in New York, the precise moment I got a call from EC about getting back together. And at that moment there was a substantial aftershock from a recent earthquake. The ground shook!

 

The reformed band was actually a joy for a year or so. EC gave me gifts of classical CDs. We talked about painters we liked. I even travelled in his car with him on occasion. In fact, we were enjoying touring ‘Brutal Youth’ so much we elected to extend the tour of the US and Europe into Japan, followed by a further UK tour and then decided to record a further album the following year. And all went along swimmingly, until the next question…

 

Didn’t he claim that you sabotaged songs onstage after the Attractions disbanded for the final time, before regrouping as The Imposters with the bass player from Cracker replacing you?

 

Cracker?! — That was Robbie Coltrane, surely — unless he was an imposter too.

 

I can’t put my finger on the exact moment that the dysfunction set back in, but there was certainly a ‘tipping point’. One night, at a gig in Spain, we were playing ‘I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down’. But unlike the up-tempo version of the hit single, we were doing like the original Sam and Dave soul ballad. At one point, EC did one of his best Joss Stone impressions to which I added a blues lick high up the neck — a guitar part if you like. The following day on the way to the airport, he looked at me and told me, ‘And I don’t want you camping it up on stage again like last night.’ And then added (and I don’t think he was joking) ‘There’s only room for one star on stage’.

 

Unfortunately, at the following gig, my faux pas was compounded. We were playing one of his new songs — a vaguely feminist ditty that I suspect “Mrs” C had had more than a hand in — when I played a bum note. He whirled round and glared at me because it was my first mistake in the best part of 20 years and probably came about because I was wondering why I was there. Obviously, from what he later said about being ‘sabotaged’, it was enough to convince him that I was now attacking musically, on stage. Or at least, that was the spin he decided to put on it.

 

 

You did appear alongside Elvis Costello when you were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2003, though….

 

I got a call from Elvis’ office, to say the band had been voted in to the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But over the course of the call, it became clear that if I was going to be involved there’d be no reconciliation. So I suggested that we treat the occasion like the German and English soldiers who famously put down their weapons on Christmas Day to have a game of football between the barbed wire and the trenches, before they returned to sniping at each other on Boxing Day. I added that if it would make life easier I needn’t be seated at the same table and would just go on stage at the required time to collect my gong. Come the evening of the award ceremony, I’d been taken at my word about separate tables, and so I found myself seated with representatives of various other musicians there to be honoured — the other Elvis’s piano player, Floyd Cramer; the late Benny Benjamin, the drummer who played on Motown hits with the great Mr Jamerson; and Steve Douglas (the sax player in Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound). It was company I was more than happy to be included in.

 

When it was ‘our’ turn to go to the side of the stage — it was the first time we’d been together for seven years. I shook hands with everyone, including Elvis, who slapped me on the back. But the bonhomie was superficial — no more than the truce described. Elton John was to present our awards. He took to the mic saying he didn’t know much about the Attractions, so he would only talk about Elvis. I’d suspected they would airbrush the picture a little. But in order to ignore me, they had to ignore us all.

 

Elvis told the audience, ‘This isn’t a time to air old grievances.’ …In other words, ‘I’m not going to mention what I’ve just mentioned.’ When it was my turn to speak, I contented myself with, ‘Thanks for the memories …that’s it.’ And so it was.

 

Some readers may be surprised to learn that you wrote a Bruce Lee biography, ‘Bruce Lee: Fighting Spirit’, which has been reissued in a revised and updated issue. What was the, erm, attraction with the iconic martial artist?

 

Most people who saw a Bruce Lee movie were inspired to take up kung fu; I did it the other way round. One evening I was mugged near my own house, which pissed me off so much that I decided to seek out a martial arts instructor. As luck would have it, I ended up being directed to the very best, a guy called Derek Jones who had a school in Shepherds Bush. After I’d been with Derek for a while he came round to my house one day with a video in which he’d compiled the fight scenes from all of Bruce Lee’s movies. He explained what was actually happening in them, which was basically the same as he was teaching me.

 

It was the first time I’d ever studied Bruce Lee in action — at the time of Bruce Lee’s rise I was on tour all the time and so never got caught up in it. Now, I was as dumbfounded as I was the first time I saw Jimi Hendrix, or George Best …or the Who. It’s only a few times in a lifetime that you ever see someone who’s so supreme and innovative in what they do there’s just nothing to compare it with. I realized I had to understand what Bruce Lee’s art was all about, so I decided to write a book about it — not to teach anyone, but to learn. I wanted to explain him to someone who knew nothing about him — me! And reckoned that by the time I’d understood it all, I would’ve explained it to everyone else. And that’s pretty much how it turned out. I’ve recently finished a new Bruce Lee book which goes much deeper into understanding what he was about; I’m very pleased and excited about it.

 

On the subject of books, I can’t leave the topic without mentioning your inclusion in Derek Philpott’s ‘Dear Mr. Kershaw: A Pensioner Writes’. Your reply to Derek’s letter about Oliver’s Army is a highlight of the book!

 

You’re very kind. Derek Philpott, for those who don’t know, is an old buffer who writes to songwriters to point out anomalies in their lyrics. And so, in writing to EC, he says that ‘Oliver’s Army’ can’t be ‘on their way’ and ‘here to stay’ at one and the same time. My reply was written on behalf of ‘the Songwriter’ himself, who declined to take up the challenge. I point out that John Lennon made a similar statement in ‘War Is Over’ — in which he writes: ‘And so this is Christmas. And what have you done. Another year over.  And a new one just begun.’ Lennon is similarly saying that it’s Christmas and New Year at one and the same time.

 

My longer reply cites the work of Edwin Abbott, a Victorian mathematician who wrote a novel called ‘Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions’, which is a clever analogy that shows how the nature of time is dependent on our personal perception of it — and explains perfectly how events seemingly separated by time can co-exist. There’s also a good explanation of this in the movie ‘What the Bleep Do We Know’.

 

The short explanation is that we are used to perceiving time as an endless line coming out of the distant past, going on towards an equally distant future. We think of eternity like this, as an endless length of time, going on ‘for ever and ever, Amen’. But eternity isn’t an endless length of time; it’s the third dimension of time — like a cube or sphere of time — where all possible timelines are contained, all at the same time.

 

Looking back to your music career before and after The Attractions, you worked with future rock legends Micky Moody and Paul Rodgers in The Roadrunners, right?

 

Of course, we now understand that they weren’t ‘future’ rock legends and that that time-line was one among an infinite number of possible time-lines that already existed, waiting to be actualized. But speaking from the conventional, sense-based perception of passing time, you are quite correct.

 

It was only because Paul Rodgers wanted to concentrate on singing that the job of bass player with the Roadrunners came up. A local entrepreneur, John McCoy, recognized that, even at the age of 15, Paul Rodgers would go on to be ‘one of the great voices of rock’. After we turned pro and moved to London, PR used to go out on to Hampstead Heath and scream himself hoarse to break his voice down a further register. He must’ve known what he was doing, because it worked.

 

You’ve also worked with the likes of Al Stewart, Billy Bragg, and Suzanne Vega…..

 

The enduring memories of the Al Stewart sessions are the antics of the piano player who was also on them — one Rick Wakeman, who was forever clowning around, doing his impressions of pub pianists playing Led Zeppelin melodies and such like. Approaching the climax of recording an epic ballad about Napoleon’s armies marching on Moscow, that was about 10 minutes long, Rick sneaked up behind Al and jabbed him in the ribs, wrecking the entire take. Jeez, I’d love to have seen Steve Nieve do that with Elvis!

 

I enjoyed the Suzanne Vega sessions a lot. She’s a great songwriter and a lovely person. Mitchell Froom built the arrangements around the bass parts. Though I often went back and redid the master bass part as the last track to go on the recording, so that I could musically tie everything together. It became my preferred way of working.

 

Easy one this: what is the highlight of your musical career?

 

In terms of recording, probably being asked to play bass for Paul McCartney …or turning up to a session in LA and finding that Booker T was the organ player …or maybe the day we cut seven tracks for ‘This Year’s Model’ in one session. In terms of being in the audience that would be The Who’s show in Glasgow in 1971. I’ve never seen another live show that’s come anywhere near it. You never know, the musical highlight of my career may yet be to happen — but in terms of the past I’m going to answer this by quoting a passage from ‘Rough Notes’…

 

“Not long after I first arrived in London, I discovered how I could go round the back of the Marquee Club, hide in the toilets, and then sneak in and see some great musicians for free. Two years later, one of those musicians was about to make a guest appearance with my band at the time, Village. This particular week, our organist Pete Bardens called in a favour from the guitar player of his previous band, Peter Green. By now, Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac were not only the preeminent blues band in Britain but were outselling the Beatles with hits like the evocative instrumental Albatross, classics like Need Your Love So Bad, haunting songs like Man of the World, and innovative ones like Oh Well.

 

Greeny came on to the stage and stood alongside me. ‘Shuffle in A,’ he said to everyone — and then leaning his head towards me, he whispered in my ear ‘…nothing fancy. ’ And then…

 

Neither before, nor since, have I heard anyone play with such tenderness, passion, purpose, precision, intelligence, lyricism, tone, taste, soul and power — with such fire in his belly and authority under his fingers.

 

Immediately afterwards I tried to tell him — and many times later, to tell others about it — always at a loss to express it …just as I am now. But to hear someone reaching into the sheer depth of feeling it’s possible to find in notes of music is both a humbling and elevating experience. How could one single note give so much, let alone the clusters of stunning lucidity? Peter replied that half the time he didn’t know what he was playing. If that’s so, then it’s only because the gods were playing it for him.

 

Of course, Peter Green didn’t invent the blues! But as my kung fu teacher Derek Jones once told me, as he’d gone on to become better than the people he’d learned from, he was able to ‘stand on the shoulders of the masters’. Of course you could still hear Freddy King and Otis Rush and others in Greeny’s playing — but he’d also surpassed them. Even BB, the King, said that Peter Green was the only guitar player who could make the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

 

By contrast, I’ve heard many, many, many bad guitarists over the years, and some truly awful ones — the widdly-widdly-widdly ‘more is less’ guys — fat guys in Hawaiian shirts, skinny guys in leather pants — never mind the feeling, count the notes! Some have even tried to copy Peter Green, covering his songs, gritting their teeth, narrowing their eyes, trying to look soulful, over-bending the strings, over-sustaining the notes, overdoing it all, kidding themselves (and quite a few others), but not even scratching the surface.

 

Greeny didn’t just play notes — he would finesse them and let them breathe. Every note had its own quality, got its own due attention and told its own story. But he no more played guitar note by note than I can describe it word by word. What it amounted to was listening to the blues …and finding sheer joy.  As I said, it’s unusual and unexpected to have such an experience so early in a long career in music. But hand on heart, and on the record, the young Peter Green wasn’t simply the best guitarist I ever heard, but the most gloriously inspiring musician.”

 

One last thing; ‘Rough Notes’ features details of an encounter with Jimmy Savile – as a veteran of Top Of The Pops appearances, was the inner sanctum of the BBC as blatantly awash with sexual scandal as the tabloids would have us believe?

 

Who knew what was going on? Well pretty much everyone — the rumours were universally known. Who spoke out? Well for a start, the punk comedian Jerry Sadowicz did. On a routine on an album he plainly stated, ‘Savile is a child bender; he only does all that charity work for when his case comes up.’ He was quickly forced to withdraw the album for ‘legal reasons’. John Lydon also went on record about Savile, and the BBC banned him for 10 years for his trouble. And there’s even the ‘conspiracy theory’ that the presenter Jill Dando had compiled a dossier on the sexual abuse within the organization and was banned from living for her trouble. But who would’ve suspected Rolf Harris and his extra leg?

 

Breaking News: Two more have now come forward! Sooty and Sweep say the abuse went on for years. They claim they had fingers shoved up their backsides — and the BBC knew all along!

 

http://www.brucethomas.co.uk/

 

Get ‘Rough Notes’ from: Amazon UK – Amazon US

 

Get ‘Fighting Spirit’ from: Amazon UK – Amazon US