The Band
JON FIELD GLYN HAVARD DAVE STURT
JON FIELD Flutes, Percussion, Keys.
I was born in the forties so my schooling was a strange one because all my teachers were too weird to be allowed into the army, or were so old that they could remember Trafalgar, first hand. All I learned was to keep clear of weird people and old people and most of all, weird old people.
Typically, however, I managed to ignore even this wisdom as I failed to avoid Tony Duhig. Not that he was old but he certainly wasn't normal. We hit it off as mates that first day and the rest of his life a very special friendship was forged. I was a lowly conga drum player (you know.. those sad people who follow musicians around) and Tony the guitar (tuned to an open C maj because he thought that's how it should be, and was too shy to ask anyone).
Pat Lyons asked Tone and me to join a band he was starting called the "Second Thoughts". The Second Thoughts fell to bits at the same time as the Tomcats (another Ealing band) and a few members of each merged into the "Tomcats" because Tom Newman was our singer. We went to Spain for a while, came back and morphed into "July". Tony had a posh tape recorder by then and Tone and I were beavering away making instrumental tracks that nobody got to hear. It was quite "J.W." like.. It wasn't an attempt at popular music but more ....? I can hear Tony's ghost interjecting "Unpopular".
Made a record with "July".. broke up.. I bought a flute or two. Tony and I wrote and recorded the music for two dance dramas (one being called "Jade Warrior"). Glyn was in a band with Tony and got to hear this stuff and put some words on bits of it, with the result that we got a deal with Vertigo and made three albums for them. I don't know about you but I'm losing the will to live... Made several albums for Island records (without Glyn because...??). Then Tom got me to play on "Tubular Bells" for Mike Oldfield and some other sessions.
When Tony died it was a huge shock... it seemed it had to be the end of something.. an era.. a way of going on.. certainly. The way I saw it, though, was that I wasn't going to stop writing music and what ever I wrote was Jade Warrior stuff anyway.
Then I met Dave Sturt and found, not only the first real musician I had ever worked with but one who already had the JW approach. Dave's grown up sound, musical finesse, and experimentation, meant I could see a whole new creative future for the band. Then Agent Sturt (as he insists on being addressed) and Agent Colin Henson and I worked on two more albums.
Meeting up with Glyn after all this time is the most fantastic fun, and the music has gone in a very different and exciting direction for me but not, it seems, for Agent Henson who threw his gun and his badge on my desk and said he had his own case to work on... sad but..
If you got this far in one sitting you must be my mum.
BUT NOW!! As I become old and weird myself... IT'S "NOW" And I'm loving it.
JON FIELD DAVE STURT
GLYN HAVARD Vocals, Lyrics, Guitar.
In the autumn of 1966 I quit my job as a journalist and moved to London with the intention of becoming a writer. However, starving in a flea-ridden flat in Earl's Court, which I shared with an artist, an Australian con-man and the occasional junkie, soon lost it's appeal, and I turned to bass-playing and singing (at the same time!) to keep the wolf from gnawing at my ass (American for arse!).
After playing in a jazz trio with my old chum, drummer Allan Price, we eventually got a gig in a band called "Unit Four Plus Two", where we met guitarist Tony Duhig. Tony introduced me to Jon Field, with whom he was writing some pretty interesting and dare I say 'daring' stuff.
I teamed up with them and began writing lyrics for the material, all of which resulted in us getting a recording deal with Vertigo Records, who then went on to do their best to make sure no-one would ever hear of us. However their sister company in the U.S.A., Mercury Records, got behind Jade Warrior (Oooer!), and before you could say "Barazinbar!", our second album crept into the bottom half of the American charts.
A tour of the States followed with Allan Price and Dave Duhig (Tony's Bro') joining the band. The tour was fraught with personality clashes and differences of opinion as to what future route the band should take musically (tastes were changing and glam-rock was beginning to assert itself) and eventually we returned home somewhat disgruntled.
A few months later the band broke up on board a ferry coming home from an abortive tour of Holland. We were criminally under-rehearsed and, I suspect, the break-up came as something of a relief to everyone.
Shortly afterwards I went to Canada where I joined a band called 'Butler' which toured extensively and, on a few occasions, supported Prog rock stars Rush.
When I got back from Canada, I re-invented myself as a punk and joined an up-and-coming New Wave band called 'The Edge'. This, let me tell you folks, was FUN! We gigged a lot, and linked up with Kirsty McColl to record a couple of hit singles, and with an American singer called Jayne Aire as her backing band, 'The Belvederes' (this name was taken from a very popular toilet bowl). The Edge had a short but hysterical life after which the individual players went their own ways (Jon Moss became drummer for Culture Club, Gavin Povey wound up playing piano for Shaking Stevens and Lu Edmonds, guitarist extraordinaire, joined Johnny Rotten's band, P.I.L.), I found myself playing bass with another New Wave band, 'The Yachts' and within a matter of weeks we were supporting 'The Who' on a European tour.
Then, just before we were due to leave for America, I received some bad news from home which necessitated my leaving the band and going back to Wales.
The years passed, and after a couple of half-hearted attempts to re-enter the London music scene (this was the eighties, and not a very inspiring time musically), I sold my guitar, took up stone-masonry, studied an assortment of martial arts, got married and "settled down".
However, I was haunted by the nagging feeling that the original line-up of Jade Warrior had never fulfilled their real potential, and when Dave Sturt rang me up last year and offered me the chance to rejoin the band as vocalist/lyricist, I didn't hesitate.
The new album NOW is everything I hoped it would be, and, 36 years on, signifies another stage of renewal and regeneration in the band's history.
JON FIELD GLYN HAVARD
DAVE STURT Basses: Fretless, Upright, Acoustic, Fretted. Sound Shaping, Samples, Keys, Heavy Breathing, Production.
I hail from the industrial heartland of the North East of England (where men are men and sheep are worried) - and I had a comfortable career mapped out for myself as an electrician in the chemical industry. But somehow I never really fitted in.
My brother Alan was a guitarist and was part of the local music scene which seemed really glamorous - this was in the early seventies and long hair, fancy boots and cloaks were all the rage - and they were way more appealing than overalls and hard hats. Then a friend of his - David Coverdale, got the gig with Deep Purple (I remember buying a pair of brown flares from him when he worked in a clothes shop in Redcar).
This really made music look like an achievable way of making a living - so I built a bass and started practicing. I played in many bands - playing different kinds of music - got inspired by Colin Hodgkinson, John Giblin, Jaco and Eberhard Weber. Finally took the plunge, packed in the day job and moved to London.
Derek Graham - a fab sax player from the North introduced me to many musicians - so I was busy straight away. Then I discovered that my neighbour in the flat above was Andy Jackson - sound engineer to a beat combo called Pink Floyd. So I moved in! We shared flats and houses for a few years and I also sat in on many sessions with many different artists and also got to play with Dave Gilmour, film composer Michael Kamen, Roxy Music drummer Andy Newmark, and David Bowie sideman Earl Slick. I also learned a lot about recording and producing and how tough it is to be a sound engineer.
I then decided I needed to learn more about what I was doing and signed up for a music degree at Middlesex Poly - which was fabulous and incredibly stressful in equal measure - I was still gigging and recording and not getting a lot of sleep. Then I was called to play on a jazz session.
The studio turned out to be in a house in North London owned by a Mr J. Field Esq. Jon and I hit it off immediately and the session went well. He soon called me with the offer of joining Jade Warrior.
Tony died just as we were beginning to work on Breathing The Storm - so we continued as a three piece - with Colin Henson on guitar. Distant Echoes followed the year after. I was really proud of these albums - there is a lot of great playing and writing on them. I was still really busy with other session work, developing projects with Theo Travis and writing music for film and TV.
We began work on a third album - but the tide was turning - technical problems caused stress and my personal circumstances changed (as did Colin's) and I moved away from London, got married, had a child and began a very different, but completely fulfilling life in the midlands. Live work, recordings and tours with Cipher (alongside Theo) continued, as did many other projects including Isaac Guillory, Andy Sheppard, Bosco D'Olivera and Bill Nelson.
I was always sure that we would get Jade Warrior back into a creative arena and realised (while working with Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree on Cipher's 'No Ordinary Man') that technology had moved on to the point where the sonic ambitions of Jade Warrior could be realised. I then set about trying to convince Jon. It was a slow process! But he eventually realised that it was really possible.
Glyn had recorded the Dogstar Poets album - and I had really liked his voice - so we asked him on board - and I was also able to call on some of the fabulous musicians I've worked with over the years - and it has gradually snowballed into one of the most exciting projects I've been involved with.
'NOW is the time'