4.52am Issue: 008 13th November 2016

“Half the problem was that there wasn’t
any money. Chris Blackwell had managed
us and was also the owner of the record
company, and we never seemed to see a
penny which is hard enough, but there was
nobody to complain to. To make it worse,
Island sold the worldwide rights to the
albums to MCA for a load of money, which
again we never saw anything of. So it
wasn’t a lot of fun, and of course when we
delivered the album to Island they refused
to sign off on it, and effectively pulled the
plug on the band. We had nowhere to go. I
think that once Island sold the U.S rights,
they lost interest in us and of course MCA
didn’t know us at all. Oddly, listening to the
album now it is really good, but there we
are.”
We have a special on Chris Spedding in a
few weeks time, and of course he went on
to have a fantastic session career, playing
with just about everybody , and Steve went
to play with Ginger Baker in the Baker
Gurvitz Army before spreading his wings
and moving into Film and TV composing,
running his own studio.
Moving forward to 1993, you decided to do
the classic “Get The Band Back Together,”
how did that happen?
“I had been working in film and TV and
was running a studio, and had started to
work with a lot of U.S advert agencies, so I
started working long-distance with Chris
again, hiring him as a guitar player really.
This was until 1983 and then in 1989 he
moved to the U.S and we hooked up
properly. I don’t know why, but meeting up
with Chris again I started to write songs,
and we talked about it until we thought –
why not make another Sharks album?
So, it was really for fun, no big plan, it just
seemed a good idea and we got Pete
Thomas on drums and my missus played
the bass. We did the recording in a week
and decided to do one show.
That was Like a Black Van Parked on a Dark
Curve and it came out in 1995.
It’s funny but watching the film we made of
the gig, at the end somebody says ‘See you
in 20 years’ and that is exactly what has
happened now.”
Which of course brings us to 2016 and the
third incarnation of the Sharks, with the
band looking to see whether they can
pickup where they left off forty years ago
(with a mid-period oddity).
And I have to say having listened to the
new album, it is seriously raw sounding and
vibrant, a quite awesome performance from
a band of any age.
Can you tell us about the album’s recording,
how did it go?
“We really wanted to first of all see whether
we still had it. Whether we could produce
the goods, I mean, let’s be honest I’m 65
and Chris is 72 and we aren’t going to be
doing this forever so there was always
something to be proved. Other than that
though we just wanted it to be five guys
playing together, so we decided that the
recording had to be as live as possible, we
wanted the absolute minimum of overdubs,
we didn’t want to take forever over
everything and lose that freshness.
That is how it went too, none of the tracks
had more than four takes with the first
being a ‘sighter’, two and three all about
getting focussed and then the fourth would
be the one, the devil. It was brilliant really, I