Martin Turner's Wishbone Ash

Martin Turner and Keith Buck - photo FlyGuitars.com

FlyGuitars You've gigged with, recorded on and produced the Blue Bishops last record was that you getting back in to the live scene, playing out again?

Martin Turner I guess you could say that yeah. I mean not the recording. I got to know Simon the guitar player through a friend of mine Keith Chapman (the creator of Bob the Builder no less) and we used to see each other at parties and dinners and stuff, they'd existed for quite a long time. When their bass player did a walkies or fell over they called me up and said we've got these gigs could you fill in for us you know it would be a doddle for you. So I had a listen to their music and it seemed pretty straight forward really.

FlyGuitars I remember seeing in my local newspaper when you guys were playing at the Wavendon Stables and that was I suppose putting you back on my radar again having been well aware of Wishbone Ash.

Martin Turner Well yeah, one of the dangers is when you become a studio animal that you do develop tunnel vision sound wise. Everything becomes more and more kind of mainline you know direct inject and all that and you can lose the feel for live stuff a bit which I think I was in danger of doing. So it was appropriate timing and it certainly got me back in to the whole live thing because they''re quite a scruffy edged band and because they all had jobs it wasn't heavy gigging, it's like now and again and we could all turn up not having rehearsed count 1, 2, 3, 4 and just plough in to it and if it was out of tune and loose it didn't actually matter because of the kind of music it was. That made it very, very enjoyable for me to keep going, it certainly got me back playing on stage.

Martin Turners Wishbone Ash - promo shot, 2006. Left to right, Rob Hewins, Keith Buck, Martin Turner, Ray Hatfield (courtesy wishboneash.co.uk)

FlyGuitars Did that get your mind back in to thinking about putting together the current band and to start doing the Wishbone material again?

Martin Turner No, not really. I had this kind of gnawing guilt feeling, various people that loved Wishbone asked me when I was going to get up and do it again. Gary Carter who'd run the fan club and helped me run the wishboneash.co.uk site was constantly on to me that I must get a band together. I had always I think like most people involved with the band thought that Wishbone Ash has to get back together eventually you know in some form either with Ted or with Laurie or who knows with both of them and Steve of course. Bearing in mind I'd been constantly putting together albums, every year I did at least one sometimes more, three or four. I was always involved in the background you know keeping the thing alive remixes, re-masterings and odds and sods like the Lost Pearls thing was probably the last one I did which was reject songs some of which were really, really enjoyable. At that stage which was what the beginning of 2004 Andy had had those tapes (I had most of them) and he'd obviously run in to deep water trying to sort them out. They had various different noise reductions on the tapes and they didn't know how to deal with it so I took the project over and sorted it out. It was really difficult to get it done in time to coincide with Andy's Wishbone Ash latest tour, I was working flat out on it for weeks. At that point Andy hit me with a lawyers letter. He must of thought after that album I guess well there's not a lot more Martin can do in terms of albums now because it's all been done already so alright I'll see if I can shut his website down and he had a pop at me, you know sent a lawyers letter saying that they would like me to surrender the domain name wishboneash.co.uk and secondly undertake never to use the name again and thirdly pay their, his reasonable costs in this matter. To which I sent a nice legal lawyers letter back telling him to fuck off basically, to put it simply.

I was very upset and outraged by it, I mean it was the same old stab in the back routine you know and it really, really pissed me off big time. Then low and behold I told him to get lost and they then put in a formal complaint to Nominet who are the kind of UK domain name police. There was a whole dispute procedure that you go through which ended up being found kind of in my favour, that Andy's complaint against me to try and get my website shutdown because it caused confusion with his was found not to be the case and I was allowed to continue to exist. Through that whole nasty little affair instigated by Mr Powell I obviously needed help and it put me in contact with a few people like Martin Darvill who's studio we're sitting in right now. He was just fantastic, I'd only just met the bloke and I think it really offended his sensibilities the injustice of it. He offered to help in any way he could and we've since got real friendly and we're working together and it was like if ever there was a time to get a band together it's now. It really had reached the point where it was perfectly obvious that Andy was making too much money in his own right with just replacing musicians whenever he needed to and there was no possibility really that any original Wishbone Ash was going to reform and so therefore the logical next step for me was to put together my own version of Wishbone Ash.

FlyGuitars Had you seen Andy's Wishbone Ash play?

Martin Turner I'd been along to his gigs like we all had and I stood there and listened to these pretty much complete strangers some of them, guys in his band playing music that I'd written and to me the notes were there but it just had no bloody spirit. It was missing the whole content, it used to do my head in. Most times I'd kind of head for the bar and get some alcohol down my neck and then kind of go up, it was nice to say hi to the guys after the show you know, Andy included until things got rather ugly. It made complete sense to say to myself well I've been doing this Blue Bishops thing it's not really a career it was an occasional thing and Wishbone Ash is what my life has been about as a musician and I finally started to listen to some of the people around me who were telling me to get my bloody finger out.

New Live Dates Volume 1

Then low and behold I was doing a Lucy Diamond session and I met Keith (Buck) the guy who's become one of my guitar players and we hit it off. He knew a couple of guys he said would be ideal for the band and I'm like woah wait a minute you know one guy at a time I'm really fussy about drummers and all the rest of it but when we finally got together it was just bang. It was obvious that there was a basis there for a band and it's only been what a year/eighteen months since we first put it together but we've done maybe 25 gigs or something. It's early days but there's some momentum and it's going along great. The band sounds good, I'm thrilled to bits with it.

FlyGuitars And you've got the new live album (New Live Dates) obviously.

Martin Turner Yeah, that actually gives us something tangible that we can say ok this is my version of Wishbone Ash and people can listen to it and like it or not. I would have to admit that probably Andy's treatment of me, which I think was pretty unpleasant, certainly seemed to have an effect of stinging me in to action. Partly because it became so obvious that this little thing at the back of my head which was 'well I just know the band will get back together again one day, you know Steve will pop out of the woodwork and Laurie will be up for it, Ted will and well all get back together and it will be wonderful' at that point you know when I realised what I was dealing with it wasn't going to happen. It took me to the next stage.

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