This interview with Deke was recently conducted by Cherry Red Records...
CR: How important are the first two albums in the Man catalogue, 1969’s ‘Revelation’ and ‘2Ozs of Plastic With A Hole In The Middle’, that you’ve just done the sleeve notes for?
DL: I think they’re crucial – the first album is a strange beast and the second one is strange for different reasons! But it was our first time in the studio, so I found them very interesting and enjoyable. And in doing the sleeve notes I found myself feeling very affectionate about that time, because everybody was firing on all cylinders. It was the first time we’d had 40 minutes of music to write, it was carte blanche. So the first albums of any artist are important because they’re the first flowering. And gradually, as you go through the catalogue, you see more common sense happening. But that takes away from the exhilaration of it.
CR: Had you been on (future label) United Artists at that point, not Pye Records, would they have done any better?
DL: I have no idea at all. They weren’t successful – but they did sell in Germany, which kept us going. We went to work in Germany where we had a reputation whereas we didn’t have any in Britain. So we followed the sales – in Britain we’d be playing Cooksferry Inn to two punters and a slavering dog, while in Germany we’d be playing to two thousand people. Stoned out of their brains, but two thousand people nevertheless!
CR: Was the first album more of its time, with its space countdowns?
DL: I don’t know, really. I know why the space thing is on there because our producer John Schroeder told us that, should we wish it, we had total access to Pye Records’ sound library.
CR: You also had access to Tony Hatch’s harpsichord!
We were recording the second album ‘2Ozs of Plastic With A Hole In The Middle’. We got to the studio one day and there was a harpsichord set up. I jumped on it and started playing, but the only thing that suited it was this rather Gothic piece I had been working on called ‘Parchment And Candles’. Everyone went woooh, it sounds like the Adams Family. Just as we finished the take Tony Hatch suddenly appeared in the control room. He’d been in the studio before us, and he went apeshit. ‘Get off my harpsichord! Respect other people’s property. I hired this for my session and you’re not using it for free.’ He stomped off but we had the track in the can, we didn’t mind.
Later in the album we were recording the original ‘Spunk Rock’. We were sitting round the desk with our eyes closed, nodding along, and when I opened my eyes at the end of the mixing desk was Sid James! I thought ‘This is good dope!’ but it was Sid, no two ways about it. When the song finished, nobody said a word. Then he said ‘Well, that’s music to move your bowels to!’ He was there to interview us, amazingly: he had a radio show he used to tape over here and sent to South Africa. We were on his show, which was brilliant.
CR: Do you think the new Esoteric versions of Man’s albums are definitive?
DL: Maybe they are. What I like is the bonus tracks because when you’re in a band you’re heard the front-line stuff so often and you’ve played it every night there are no surprises. But the ‘Padget Rooms’ album – I’d never heard the whole set before. To hear the band going at it is a snapshot of the time and is illuminating and enjoyable.
CR: It’s hard to listen to these albums without thinking of your guitar partner Micky Jones, who’s now sadly in a nursing home under 24-hour care.
DL: It certainly adds poignancy to it now Jones is out of it, as it were. It’s a finite thing. It’s his legacy and it’s on the Man records, and that legacy is finite – we’ve had it all. There may be tapes we haven't heard but his canon is basically complete. We expected more really, we thought he’d go on for another 20 years like John Lee Hooker, gigging at 85…
CR: Producer John Schroeder went on to work with Status Quo – would you have swopped your experiences with Man for Quo’s riches and Porsches?
DL: Oh yes, of course!
CR: And what are you up to now you are no longer with Man?
DL: I’m writing a book on guitarists, The Twang Dynasty. It’s got me by the throat, I’m up to 210,000 words now and I’m skimming across the water, not diving in. It’s not a technical book, there are no chord charts or anything. It’s anecdotes about guitars and the people who play them. And after I finish it I’ll be getting my band, Iceberg, back on the road.
Man’s albums ‘Revelation’ (ECLEC2127) and ‘2 Ozs Of Plastic With A Hole In The Middle’ (ECLEC2128) are released this June by Esoteric Recordings.
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