The first people I ever saw were probably Little Richard and Gene Vincent.
From Roy Wood
Well, obviously I wanted it to sound as original as possible. I suppose the influences that we had were probably from the actual power point of view we wanted to be like the Who. Vocally we wanted to be like the Beach Boys, whatever was good at the time.
The best thing I ever heard was in the '60s. I heard Jimi Hendrix play 'I Can Hear The Grass Grow' after a rehearsal, and it was brilliant.
To me, 'Blackberry Way' stands up as a song that could be sung in any era, really. We do it with the new doing all sort of fanfare things in it and it works really well. It goes down great with audiences.
I think it was probably down to the fact that we weren't together personally as a band. We weren't pulling in the same direction. I always feel if you're having a good time in the studio it actually comes across on the tape and that was a bit of a miserable album for us.
I've always been that way. I'm not very good at reading music but I'm pretty quick at picking things up.
I named it that because more or less each person from the band used to play in other bands and when we left respective bands other members from those bands all sort of changed round. It was a big sort of move thing. I got it from that, I suppose.
When we did a lot of that Motown stuff there were four of us on the front line. When we started the evening we'd start from one end of the band and just go along. The lead singer would change all the time. That's the first time that I actually managed to put it into a record.
Of course, the wind sort of swept up and the music was flying around in mid air and they were trying to play off it. You had to be there. It was quite funny.
When we were first started we were doing a lot of Motown stuff, but actually playing it more in a rock way. Everybody in the band sang and we did a lot of harmonies.
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