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ElectraGate????

Jerry Van Kooten of Planet NL interviews the mystery that is Electra Macleod... and asks numerous pesky questions about life with Twelfth Night and the making of 'The Electra Tape':

JERRY: "So how did you happen to join Twelfth Night?"

ELECTRA: "I'd arrived in London in May 1980.. fresh from New York, never done anything in music except study and never been in a band.  On the flight over I met a guy who told me I'd look great on Top Of The Pops, a music manager who handled some incumbent songwriting star. I met him the next day at his Antiques Shop in Marlebone Road and he gave me the number of a woman who ran an Indi  record label with offices in this BIG recording studio in Bayswater.  I went over there and from the outside it looks very inconspicuous, then you get inside and it's LUXURIOUS.. huge studio spaces for orchestras etc.. I believe the Beatles produced part of their White Album there.. Anyway.. I met this woman Paula and we went for a drink and she connected me with 2 songwriters and the next week I was in this massive glorious studio recording two of their kind of country-pop tracks.. lots of lush orchestration behind a really pretty vocal.  I still don't know what happened to those tracks or remember their names.  Don't even have a copy of the music.  Next she hooked me up with producer Wally Brill, another exiled New Yorker living in London, who later went on to produce and marry some pop artist called Anabella or Arabella.. funny thing.. I sat next to his kid about 10 years ago on a flight to San Francico (where Wally now lives).  Life is strange.

Anyway... Wally had the idea that I would sing these tracks by another songwriter and got me into yet another studio the next weekend (it was all happening pretty fast) and, I remember when I started to sing (just learned the tracks on the spot and delivered them) his face was so shocked.  He took me aside later and said, 'you have an incredible voice.  You won't even have to SLEEP with anybody to make it."  I thought that was pretty funny, but what I thought was less funny was when he came over to my flat and showed me the photographs of my 'new' image.  Pink and orange tight micro mini rubber dresses and stilletto pink and orange heels, wacky bird of paradise coloured hair and make-up.  My stomach turned and I thought 'no'.. but just said, 'I'd really like a band.. you know, the integrity of writing the music with other musicians.'  He told me, you don't want a band.. bands are trouble and record labels only sign the lead singer and principle song-writer."  He then lay himself across my bed.  It was an offer I could easily refuse.

So... ignoring his concepts and suggestions, the very next day I put an add in Melody Maker.. this was now June... The ad came out a week later.. and when I read my ad, either directly above, or directly below it was an ad by a band called TWELFTH NIGHT looking for a Vocalist/frontman.  We both kind of crossed phone calls checking each other out and I took the trainride out to Reading to meet them and really, the rest is kinda history.. or not history.. whatever.  I liked the cut of their jib.. what they were projecting.. classic intelligent arty prog-rock.. real musicianship.  They gave me an instrumental cassette of their first album.. eponomously entitled TWELFTH NIGHT and I listened to it alot.  It was hard to deal with as it was VERY VERY BUSY instrumentally.  There was no space for vocals and this was the challenge:  Writing lyrics and melody lines over something that was not going to budge an inch.

As you can see from the 'Electra Tape' and "The Cunning Man" single, I failed miserably in my mission.  It was just too hard to fit significant or even listenable words and melodies over something that was already complete in and of itself.  But I don't regret the challenge or the work we all put in or the days spent in that wonderful rehearsal space they had.. an old mill somewhere along a waterway miles out of town.. We went there for whole days in the English countryside and I loved Andy Revell's guitar playing and often, yes, I have to admit it.. I felt like we were Led Zeppelin, living some musical dream of creativity and conjuring... the mood, the music, the space.. the lack of any pedestrian realities anywhere around.. until we got back to the house they all shared and the cupboard was bare.  I remember being hungry once or twice and there was NOTHING to eat.  Maybe that's why they were all so slim.  Anyway, that's when reality would clank down like a .. well.. like a LEAD Ballooon!!!  Music is a hard, arduous vocation.  A labour of love that usually costs you a lot more than you'll get out of it, unless you're absolutely tenacious and smart about it all.

JERRY: "You talk about The Cunning Man single and the Electra tape... how were they recorded and where???"

ELECTRA: "The entire recording process happened in a small studio down in Bournemouth near to Andy Revell's parents' house.. a place called Arnie's Shack. All I remember of the process was the mix-down and ALL of the band members riding their own instrument faders like eagles.  Insisting that their bit should be louder.  I don't 'know who won in that battle. The rest of it is just a haze, as is much of the month spent on the subsequent tour around the south of England.  I always felt embarrassed at the level of my contribution as I never felt I'd done a good enough job lyrically or melodically, but also.. as I said it was an uphill struggle working with that particularly overloaded and BUSY instrumental backing music without a shred of it being changed to accommodate vocals.

Recently I found a reel-to-reel tape of my initial vocal ideas I'd put down in a friend's studio when I was just starting to work with the band.  Possibly the 'Sequences' vocals were the better part of my efforts, but they were never put down in the studio.  Though some may exist on live tapes taken from the sound desk at gigs.  Actually, the CD you sent me of my first ever gig with TWELFTH NIGHT at the Reading University.... I listened to it, waiting to feel absolutely AWFUL and really, it wasn't that bad.  Better sounding than the Electra Tape and of course, I like East Meets West and Afghan Red as instrumental numbers.

JERRY: "So who do you like writing with now?"

ELECTRA: "I like writing with MYSELF thanks!  Actually, probably my best partnership to date was with IAN JONES on the DEAD EASY project.  That was a real shame that just died in the studio.  Never got past the actual recording process.  So much debt attached to it, bad management and horrific lack of foresight with our publishers... added to our own stupidity and gullibility.  Heavy cocktails before 5.

Also, currently, apart from writing solo, I'm working in fits and starts and dribs and drabs and enlightened turned on moments with a band called ALTRES.  They began playing in the mid 80's as an experimental proggish psychaedelic band and have reformed and just play whatever the hell they want, when they want.  No rules, no hard and fast rehearsals.. it all just happens and they invite me to be as free, which I love.  Did a gig with them in Dundee at the Mills Observatory last October and another in April 2006, which an audience member suggested was reminiscent of Hawkwind gigs.  I take that as a complement.. power and madness and freedom and sound... a light show too on the trees and all under the stars and the deep blue of the heavens.. I like it.

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JERRY: "But you know the band now in 2006 is only about the music.. they just want their fans to get a chance to hear the music?"

Photo of Electra taken by Brian Devoil

""Yes... I did it all.. and I'd do it ALL again! except for anything 'pedestrian'...  ""

photos of Electra & Twelfth Night © Giles Mulholldand 1980-81

photo of Brian Devoil © Electra 1980