Southern FM Interviews (Part-I)

Copyright (c) Southern FM / Bonnet Rocks

Mark Copolov (MC): Hello, Graham. This is Mark Copolov. Welcome to 88.3 Southern FM in Melbourne.

Graham Bonnet (GB): Thank you, Mark, it's so good to hear from you.

MC: OK, it's great to have you on my show. Just to give our listeners a bit of a background here. To be honest there are quite a few people I've spoken to over last 5 years or so & we sort of lost track where you were. So it was great that I was able to find you living in America. I thought what we would do was two interviews with you. I will do an interview & we will talk about your non-heavy material & then Ted Kealy is going to do an interview with you in a couple of weeks about your heavy material, so we can cover the whole spectrum.

GB: That'll be cool. That's something I think maybe people who know who I am, would like to hear because I'm not just one guy. There are three or four or five guys in me (laugh).

MC: Exactly. Just to whet the appetite for the people listening, I don't think you would mind me mentioning that you & I have been working pretty hard in the background, to try to get you on a national tour here. I don't want to say any more about that because it's not signed or anything. But it's looking pretty good so we hope to have you out here visiting Australia again before too long.

GB: Yeah, I would love to be out there like tomorrow as I said to you before a few weeks ago. Also it'll be a nice vacation for my wife. She would like to be there to see her mom. I miss Australia because it's a beautiful country & I just loved playing there when I was living there for 4 years. It will be nice to come back. I'm sure a lot of people would like to hear the music that I'm playing right now.

MC: Yeah, you were living in Adelaide?

GB: Yes I was living in Adelaide. As I said I was there for 4 years. I was commuting from Adelaide to the States backwards & forwards. After a while it became a bit tiring and I had to say "OK, I have got to live one place or the other." So eventually I lived in Adelaide & stayed there for 4 years. But I realised that there was only certain amount of work I could do in Australia and my friend in America asked me to come back & start work again in the music business here in Los Angeles.

MC: OK, we will go back to the beginning. Apparently the first thing you did in a band was to play bass?

GB: What year are you talking about?

MC: Right back at the beginning of your career when you started playing around England.

GB: No. Actually I played guitar. I was playing the lead guitar. I've got to go back to 1960 something. I played a lot of blues stuff, playing pubs in England. So I played lead guitar but later on, which was years later, I started playing bass because that was something I couldn't really do & sing. I found I could play guitar & sing but not play bass & sing. I found that a very hard thing to do. But what I first started off doing was actually playing guitar & singing.

MC: So what I want to ask you about your guitar playing is, you've written so many songs. Do you write the songs just on guitar or piano?

GB: No, just guitar. From the guitar, I take it to someone who can arrange the music & make it more interesting than I can make it. I play stuff on acoustic guitar & then somebody else would take it over from there, really good guitar players or whatever and they take it & make it something better than I can probably do. But I also give them an idea of an arrangement or something and then they say "How about this?" & do more of the arrangement.

C: They also wrote the next song "The Walls Fell Down" and it went well too. & you released an album, an LP.
GB: That LP actually was old demos. We never really finished off the things we were doing at the time. The only 2 tracks really completed were "Only One Woman" and "Walls Fell Down", and probably a song called "A House Is Not A Home" which was done with a big orchestra & just with me but the rest of it was like "OK, we'll come back & fix it a little later" kind of a thing. & we'd never really got around to fixing it. But by the time that album came out, my cousin & I & the Bee-Gees had parted ways. So that came out later after we were all defunct.

               (THE WALLS FELL DOWN is played on air)

MC: I think it was around that time, if you would like to tell all the listeners, that I liked the story you told me awhile ago about Paul McCartney phoning into the TV show? I thought it was a great story.

GB: The first song we had was "Only One Woman" in 1968 and we were doing a show (the Simon Dee show I think?). It was kind of like a Top Of The Pops kind of the thing, a typical kind of pop show, which everybody watched in those days. We did that song and Paul McCartney called the studio and my cousin & I had finished the job & we were back in the dressing room. Our road manager at that time came in &  said "You know who just called?" "Who?" "Paul McCartney wants to know who your producer is & etc., bla-bla-bla." So he said to him it was Robert Stigwood and Paul McCartney said "Another good one for Robert."

MC: It was good to have Paul McCartney on your side, wasn't it?! OK, we move onto the 1970-76 period. Apparently you had been involved in various projects including acting & commercials. So did you act in any movies that we would know?

GB: Not really. (laugh) The only movie I did was called "Three For All", which involved my ex-wife & other people who have done very well in the business since then. It was a Dick James production, which was the company I was with at that time. Dick James thought at that time that if you had anybody in the world who was a good singer, comedy actor whatever, it would make a successful movie. So he had Diana Doors, Edward Woodward and everybody in this movie. This was the most awful thing you have ever seen. It was worse than Cliff Richard's "Summer Holiday". But it gave me a chance to make up some tunes & have music in the movie. It wasn't a very successful movie but for me it was a great opportunity to do something different & expand my horizons, so to speak. Unfortunately it didn't go any further than that but it was always something I wanted to do, act as an actor & also write music for movies.

MC: Is it true that you sang in Paul Gallico's "Snow Goose" which was directed by Spike Milligan?

GB: Yes, I remember that I did one tune. It was something about walking down by the sea. & Spike Milligan was there. That was the most amazing thing to meet somebody who I've always laughed with over the years since I was a kid from the Goon Show and there he was, Spike Milligan and he brought his daughter along. I remembered him very well and he showed his daughter around the studio and etc. But it was just a small thing I did. In fact, there weren't any lyrics to that song. Basically I was like la-la-la-ing to this tune because he thought his words weren't good enough. He said "no, no, I think it's better if he sings it without the words." Because Spike wrote the words for this particular song & he said "it's better if he does la-la-la", some kind of a chant thing, over the track. So that was the first & last time I ever met Spike Milligan but I am very proud of that.

GB: No, Pip Williams was the guitar player and he produced people like MUD and,....brain, blank!

MC: It was a huge hit. So I assumed you are an old Bob Dylan fan & that was why you chose that song to cover?

GB: Yes, I mean, very much so. So that song, I'd sung over the years, I was strumming my guitar one day & Pip Williams just said to me "Why don't we record this?", so we did. That was basically it. We put it up a key. We originally did it on E but we took it up to F, which was like just a slight step-up, a little bit more "balls" as I say. I'm glad I did it. I mean a lot of good people were there. Micky Moody was playing guitar and Pip Williams was playing guitar, it's hard to remember who was on the session, to be honest with you.

MC: But what I've noticed throughout your career is that the production on your songs is always top-notch. When you listen to some people's early stuff, their production was really bad but it gets better over the years. I assume you wanted good production from the start. Is that correct?

GB: I want them obviously to feature me to make sure that I sound OK. Because most of the time, a lot of people sink you back in the mix & the band is more overpowering than your vocal. What I found was that the band can't overpower you because you are there. I always wanted, as much as I can, to sound like I am in the room & singing instead of being covered up by effects and whatever else. So I have always worked producers that are very savvy toward vocal styles.

MC: Moving on to "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?", Carol King's song. Another example of where you've really let your voice really come to the fore there and you've got the brass in there, and that was a nice touch, too.

GB: Yeah I mean that's one of my favourite songs for ten billion years and I was always into that kind of.....it's funny I was reading something about The Beatles where they always did girl songs. "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?" is a girl song basically, it's about having sex & "OK, you can't do it right now but how about tomorrow"? You're gonna just get up & go away? Basically that's what the song is about but they never kind of centered on that when the song was around. But I always thought that the girl songs had, for me at least, a better range of notes. That song was one of my favorites since I was a kid at school.

MC: Yeah, The Beatles certainly did do a lot of girl songs.

GB: They did "Boys", which was a girl's song.

(WILL YOU STILL LOVE ME TOMORROW was played on air)

MC: Moving onto "Danny". That's one of my favorite songs that you do. Once again, your voice just goes into the stratosphere. Apparently it's an old favorite of yours that song?

GB: Yeah it's something that I remember hearing Cliff Richard do when I was a kid. I was a big fan of The Shadows. When I was 13 I loved all the Shadows stuff. I wasn't so much into Cliff, I left him up to girls at school. They can love Cliff no matter what. I remember hearing his version of this tune and apparently Elvis did it. I never heard his version but it originally was called "Lonely Blue Boy". The only version that I heard of that song was from Cliff and that’s what I covered. I always liked that song because it kind of takes me back to school time and I remember singing that song at school concerts when I was 11 or 12. The original version was called "Lonely Blue Boy". I think there was an instrumental of it too but I'm not sure. I think it was originally an Elvis thing.

MC: We move onto 1978. The No Bad Habits album came out & another huge smash for you was "Warm Ride" written by your mate Barry Gibb. How did that happened? Did he approach you for that song or how did you get hold of that song?

GB: Well actually it was Robin. It wasn't Barry. Robin had the idea and Barry kind of polished it up a bit & straightened out the arrangement & whatever else. Robin wasn't very pleased with my version apparently. (laugh) I don't know why. But I mean, working with the Bee Gees, I remember that Barry was always coming into the studio and if something wasn't quite right, he said "No, this is the way it is supposed to be." Robin always had little ideas and little snippets of songs but he never had a completed song & Barry would always finish up what was missing. That was the same with "Warm Ride". In fact, in America, they gave it to Earth Wind & Fire. They did a version which didn't do anything as far as I know. But I had a mild  success with  that in Australia. As I said, Robin wasn't very pleased with my version. He said "Graham, you should have done this" or whatever. I remember, the demo, it was very hard to decipher because it was like bits of this & bits of that. Eventually when we did "Warm Ride", I think Maurice was there with me, it's hard to remember, as it was so long ago. But it was a very bitty song. It had good bits & bad bits & all those bad bits were taken out to tailor to my taste.

MC: Moving onto 1979. You got involved as a lead singer of the 70's most successful heavy metal band Deep Purple and you replaced Ronnie James Dio. But you got a phone call from the great guitarist Ritchie Blackmore. He approached you. GB: Yes. At that time, Deep Purple had become a band called "Rainbow" because of the club out here in Los Angeles called "The Rainbow Club", which Ritchie loved so much. They make the best pizza in the world & in fact I told my daughter about it today. I said "They make the best pizza", it's like 12 feet across but it's delicious. Ritchie was going through a thing because he was the leader of the band & he wanted to do something different. He wanted to be in the charts so to speak, with Ronnie Dio. Ronnie is one of my friends. He is a great, great singer.

MC: He had a really big hit here with "Butterfly Ball". He was another person who could sing really high up in the notes, can't he?

GB:  Yeah, Ron is a good kid. I mean, me & him, we love each other. (laugh) We like to sing. He's Italian & I'm English, what can I say? To be  in the band after Ron was fantastic? Ritchie had this idea of getting something more so called "modern" because all the "long hair" thing had kind of gone out of date. & there was I with my short hair. He decided that the band Rainbow should have a hit record & under protest, everybody recorded the song called "Since You've Been Gone". We did that and it turned out good.

MC: So how did you go about not getting your voice buried behind such a heavy band? Was that due to the producer like you said before?

GB: Yes. Ritchie was surprisedly a big fan. He just said "This guy's got to be out front. We've got to feature him." We made the video of the song, he didn't want to be in it. He just said "Take Graham and let him do it himself" kind of the thing. But of course the band was in the video at certain points but he thought that this was a good selling point for me to be something, as they say in like Monty Python, "and now for something completely different!"  But it was something that he wanted to do & it turned good.

MC: Talking about Ritchie Blackmore. Whenever I see him being interviewed, to me he comes across, as having a sort of black, brooding type of personality. Was he really like that or is it just an image he created?

GB: That's him being shy. He's a very shy person. That's all I can say and he knows it. He's a shy person & when I was on the road with Rainbow back in the 80's, it was great to see him sitting with my dad at the bar and having a beer. He had more contact with my dad than he did with some of the public, which is the honest truth. He might not admit to that if you asked him personally but he is a very shy person & very private. I got along with him very, very well. He was one of my best friends. But if you read all the crap in the papers on what was happening back then, he was like "I didn't like Graham because his hair was too short".  But we got on really well. Before every show, I'd always go into his dressing room or he'd come to me & we'd talk before we did the show. He is a really, really talented person & a very nice guy. He's not that dark, believe me.

MC: I'm an old guitar player like yourself but I can't sing. I can imagine that if I was in a band with Ritchie & he was playing some amazing lead work like in "Lazy", I'd just stand there with my jaw dropped going "Wow, I wish I could play like that!"

GB: So what can I tell you!?

MC: I don't believe that there are many people around who can play with the feeling of Ritchie Blackmore. He has his own unique style I think.

GB : Yes he does. His big hero was Jimi Hendrix in later years but Ritchie had a blues & pop background. Ritchie played in pop bands. He played in my home town of Skegness, Lincolnshire. He played in bands that you would never of heard of & I think Ritchie has the experience of playing very kind of pop stuff & that's where his style comes from. He is a unique guitar player, there's no doubt about it. I thank him very much for having me in his band.

MC: Moving onto another song off this "Down To Earth" album by Rainbow is a song written by Ritchie Blackmore & Roger Glover & that's "All Night Long". What do you remember about that song? Is that another one that he brought to you & said "Hey, give this one a try"? GB: Yeah, I remember Ritchie & I were in Long Island on the east coast of the States, not far from New York City. He had this idea of an old song that the Stones did called "Out of Time", which a guy called Chris Farlowe did. He said to me "Can you come with a melody that is like Out Of Time?" & I said "Sure". That's where that song came from. It originally had some stupid title (BonnetRocks Note: "Once More With Feeling").  & Roger Glover took it from there and he wrote the great words to it, I mean it was kind of funny but I think Roger did a great job on the song because I had no influence on which way the lyrics went at that time. I just sang the tune. We used to record one song probably four or five times over with different melodies then pick the best one. I was very pleased with the melody that came up in that song "All Night Long".

(ALL NIGHT LONG was played on air)

MC: "I Am A Lover", that was written by Andrew Locke & David Kerr Climpson whom I believe was from Humble Pie? That's a good song too, isn't it?

GB: Yes, in fact I was thinking about including that in my new tour. I am going to England in a couple of months to play with Don Airey from the Rainbow era. It's a great song & I love it. Cozy was a big fan of that song too. My dear friend Cozy, I miss him so much.

MC: Yeah, sad about him because he passed away in a car crash.

MC: "Be My Baby" by Phil Spector. So you're a bit of a Spector fan?

GB: Yes & so was Russ Ballard. Russ Ballard came along to the studio on that day & we were doing something else. I think it was a song called "S.O.S."? Russ came into the studio & said "How about doing something by The Ronettes?" So I said "What do you mean? 'Be My Baby'?" and he said "Oh, yeah." Russ sad down at piano & he played piano on that. That's how that happened. It was like an off-the-cuff thing. I think Russ Ballard played guitar on that, not quite sure. But we sat down that afternoon at Mickey Moods' studio and "Be My Baby" developed.

MC: Talking about Russ Ballard, he also wrote "Liar" off the album. That's a pretty full on song. GB: Yes, I think Three Dog Night did it too. I remember my parents said to me "Ooh, I don't like 'Liar', Graham." That was released in England as a single sometime after "Night Games" and they said "We don't like it because it sounds so violent & aggressive...about a liar..it doesn't sound good." They were right. It did nothing. But I love the track.

MC: Another track from the third album was "Anthony Boy". That's written by Chuck Berry. I have to admit that I was surprised about that because I'm an old Chuck Berry fan & I really thought that I knew just about all his material but I didn't know that he wrote that one. Is that a really obscure one that you heard growing up or was that was a hit for him & I  missed it or what?

GB: Well originally it was in 6/8 time which is like a fast waltz, almost like "oom-pa-pa" music. So I changed it to be in 4/4, to be more  like a straight rock'n'roll song. I recorded it again in Rick Parfitt's house and he said to me "we're coming in at the wrong place", & I said "no we're not". I tried to explain it to him & after we recorded the damn thing, he said that it was incorrect  the way the music was. It was a kind of obscure song that Chuck Berry did but I loved the words to it. So I thought that no one was going to want to hear "um-cha-cha" at that time & so  it had to be a straight rock'n' roll kind of thing. So I changed it around to straight forward rock'n'roll and there you have it.

MC: You also played on that album with Jan Ackerman whom I had the pleasure of seeing when he came out here with Focus. They had a huge hit here with "Hocus Pocus". I just remember sitting close to the stage & watching this guy light up the whole stage with his guitar playing. So you have really played with some of the best players on earth haven't you?

GB: Well I'm lucky to have played with them but I have never actually met them because with a lot of this stuff, it was done by phone. You know what I mean. It was like this guy records something over in his country, like Jan. He did stuff in England & I did my stuff over there in Australia at that time. We never actually met. So it was all done by phone almost. But at the same time, yes I am very lucky to play with people that are the best in the trade.

MC: Moving onto 1991, you released your 4th. solo album "Here Comes The Night" and you do a song "Don't" which Elvis covered. I think it's an excellent version because it's what I would like to hear certainly with your music, being a big  fan of yours, & that's where your voice is once again  just allowed to be right upfront & you've got the piano in the background & your voice is not being buried. So was it bit daunting doing an Elvis song? I assume as a singer if you'’re going to do Elvis or The Beatles, you've got to do it well don't you, otherwise it doesn't look too good. GB: Yeah, you do. Again it was something that I grew up with, being a kid listening to my brother's records. He had all the Elvis stuff & "Don't" always stuck in my mind & it was something I always wanted to do but the clincher was with David Kassner, who was the owner of the record company at the time. He said to me, "Can you please do this for my girlfriend?" I said "What?" He said "Can you record a song called 'Don't'? I said "Why?" he said "Can you do it?" I said "Yeah, OK." So I did that for that one basic reason, for the guy who was giving me money (laugh) but I loved the song the same time. I didn't like the later Elvis stuff but I love that era when Elvis was with Sun Records. Anyway he said "Can you do that for me?" & I said "OK." That's why that happened.

MC: You've got Slash on guitar from Guns N Roses.

GB: Yes. When I put down the rough vocal in the studio with the drummer, bass player, the other guitar player & keyboard player, he said "What's the matter with Graham's voice?" I said "Why?" & he said "He's just whispering."(laugh) because I had to do the vocal really low as a guide,  so that the other guys could hear where we were at, with the verse & the chorus or whatever. So he said "That doesn't sound like Graham". But when I did the real vocal, he called back & said "Holy crap!". & I appreciate that from you & from him.

MC: Yeah, I'm sure people who are going to hear it in a second will be knocked out by it. Before we finish, I want to mention to people about your website. Graham's got a terrific website that you should log on at www.bonnetrocks.com  Before you go, what's the next project as far as recordings go? Are you going to record any CDs in the near future? Any ideas or plans?

GB: Well I hope so. (laugh) The main thing I'd to do, is to come back to Australia to see my family & parents-in-law and come & say hello to my Australian friends again. I will probably do something with Don Airey who's now playing with Deep Purple as a keyboard player. We're going to do an album but there is other stuff in the works. There's nothing that I can say which is solid right now but hey, we'll see what happens!

MC: If you get to Melbourne, I'll get to meet you of course but I hope you'll put enough time aside to come into 88.3 & do a live interview with me face to face here.

GB: Oh absolutely. I'll bring my guitar too!

MC: That'll be great. We have people coming in here with their guitars & performing live on air, so we would certainly love it if you could do that.

GB: There you go Mark. I mean I would love to do. I mean, I'm really serious. I would love to get over there to play as I have told you ten thousand million times. If I could, I'd be there tomorrow.

MC: If there are any promoters listening who would like to bring Graham Bonnet out to Australia, please call me at 88.3 Southern FM on 9553-5444 & I'll contact Graham. Let's see if we can get you here on a tour! Thank you very much Graham for the interview & you time, I really appreciate it.

GB: OK, Mark.

MC: All the best.

(OH! DARLING is played on air)

TO BE CONTINUED TO PART-II BY TED KEALY