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   CLUB SANDWICH 72

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Club Sandwich 72

            What was the first song that turned you on to guitar and vocal harmony?
            from David Gauthier, Montreal, Canada

            'That'll Be The Day' by Buddy Holly and the Crickets.

            I've read about your forthcoming authorised biography of the 1965-68 London "avant-garde" period, written by Miles, but have you given any thought to writing a life-long autobiography, or a series of autobiographies?
            from Sammy Oakey, Roanoke, VA, USA; Barbara Potter, San Diego, CA, USA; Sylvain Villeneuve, Hawkesbury, Ontario, Canada; Valerie Despre, St Nicolas de Redon, France

            I always thought that you needed to be at least 70 before you considered writing your memoirs. It always seemed to be the province of old generals, sitting in their houses after they had retired. Now I'm not so sure.
            The Miles book 'was occasioned by my realisation that I don't always remember things as crystal-clear as I used to believe. You cannot remember everything. Stuff goes. I liken the human mind to a computer, where a message will appear saying "You have used 99 per cent of the available memory, I cannot proceed unless you wipe something". And I always feel like I've wiped certain bits in order to leave space for new events. Club Sandwich 72

            Any chance of you re-recording the song 'Tomorrow' from the Wild Life LP? It's such a great song and yet it's been buried.
            from Amy Benbow, Stroud, England

            Another good question. Linda's Dad, who is no longer alive, was a great fan of this song, and he was always saying to me "You should do it again. You've thrown it away and it deserves re-making." I asked him how he thought I should do it and he said "Slow, really slow". It got to be a joke in the end, how slow he thought it ought to be. I haven't yet got around to doing it, though.

            Elvis Costello once invited fans to come on stage and spin the hand of a giant clock, and he would then perform whatever song title the hand ended up pointing to. You have an even stronger repertoire than Elvis to do this - would you consider it? The excitement in the audience and the unpredictability of the show would be fantastic.
            from Margaret Rata, Swindon, England

            I've actually talked to Elvis about this, because it sounds like a great idea and maybe the kind of thing I could do, because, yes, I definitely do have the repertoire. But Elvis said "You know what? I don't even do it anymore because the fans caught on. I used to get people showing up simply to get on the stage, and they wouldn't only spin the wheel, they'd take the microphone off you and do anything to hold up the show."
            So while I know that you'd get the Valeries, Chrises, Toms and Marks, the fans who would behave themselves, you're also going to get the Big Robbos and the Big Nortons coming on stage!
            Alright, I know there are other ways of doing it, but just ask yourself this: why doesn't Elvis do it anymore? Yes, I agree that it's a great idea, but it's one that I won't do.

            You often seem to dismiss, or at least gloss over, the Wings period of your post-Beatles career. How do you really assess the music of the 1971-79 period? Club Sandwich 72
            from Tom Frangione, New Jersey, USA; Maura J Wood, Beverly Hills, FLA, USA

            It's very difficult for me to assess Wings because they came after the Beatles. So, to me, there was always a feeling of let-down because the Beatles had been so big that anything I did had to compare directly with them. And I was still in shock anyway, after the Beatles broke up.
            But I remember, years later, being with David Bowie and looking through one of those chart facts books. First we looked up James Brown and then somebody else until, finally, we admitted that, really, we wanted to look up our own entries. And when we looked at mine I saw that the albums I thought had died a death, like Wild Life and Back To The Egg, had got to something like number eight in the States. And I thought, "My God, people would give their right arm to have that sort of'failure'!" That's a very successful failure.
            But I must admit that the whole period was always mixed with the feeling of comparison to the Beatles. I would have felt much better about Wings if it had just happened on its own, either before the Beatles or with a decent interval afterwards. But it happened straight after the Beatles, which was unfortunate. I know why though - I needed to continue in music. I didn't want to retire or do anything else.
            Wings did have a lot of success, but also an awful lot of criticism. And you can't help it: it always gets through. Even Van Gogh, with all his criticism, was bound to conclude that he never painted a good picture.