Between 1969 and 1974 Keith Christmas recorded five solo LPs, played on David Bowie’s Space Oddity album and the first ever Glastonbury festival. In recent years he has released the critically acclaimed ‘Crazy Dancing Days’ and ‘Life, Life’ albums and embarked on a series of solo shows. Keith speaks to Jason Barnard about his life, key tracks, memories of working with David and his career resurgence.
Firstly, when did you write your latest album ‘Life, Life’ and what was the recording process?
This actually started 2 years earlier when I took some time off in France in 2016 to sit down and see if I could still write songs after years of struggling to find creativity. Completely out of the blue I started writing again but more fluently and of a standard that I could only have dreamed about in previous years, a whole new way of playing and using the guitar, and lyrics almost tumbling out instead of being agonised over.
I came back to the UK with 7 starts and over the next 12 months I finished the album off. “Crazy Dancing Days’ sold well and suddenly I was back in the game. It was political in places so it reached out to some people and turned others off, as these things do, but only 18 months later I had written the whole of ‘Life, Life’ and this was yet another step up in writing and performance.
I recorded it in virtually one go at Sambourne House Studios, home of the rock production wizard Chris Goulstone and friend of many years. He then mixed and mastered it and did an astounding job of making it sound incredibly live, a lot of this done in the mastering, an arcane art if ever there was one
Would you say the title track looks back but also celebrates the present and future?
Most definitely yes. Now I am older I do like to try and assemble the knowledge and understanding of years and make sense of it by looking at it through the lens of time and human behaviour. I guess I am trying to understand my world while celebrating the simple but awesome wonders of being alive.
Did you sequence the songs in a particular way?
That is a really good question and not many people ever ask it. The most important track is the opener. Most writers I know, out of a 12 track album, will say they have weaker and stronger tracks and the weaker ones get put towards the middle but with “Life, Life’ I honestly didn’t think there were any weak ones and if that sounds arrogant believe me it was the first time in my life I ever felt like I could say it.
l still love playing every single one of the tracks so ordering them was a labour of love. I think the strongest track in terms of the craft of writing is ‘Love in the Gold’ but it did not work put at either end of the album so that went third, close enough to the front to make an impact but far enough in to be after the mood of the album had been established. I did not think ‘Round The Stones’ was strong enough to go at the start but the more I gigged it the stronger it felt and in the end I just took a chance on it and glad I did, because ‘Life Life’ then sat perfectly in second. The three slide songs I put in at a point where I wanted to change the mood of the album and finally there was then a decision to be made about putting the dreamy “Book of Magic’ at the end instead of the more conventional ‘set-ender’ ‘Born of God’. In the end I thought it all held together nicely as a complete body of work.
How do you think your songwriting and guitar style developed from your debut LP ‘Stimulus’ to ‘Life, Life’?
To me looking back, my early writing was very obviously that of a young man and I hope and believe I now have, finally, after over a half a century of creating music to be approaching a standard I am happy with. I think you can gather from this that I don’t listen to my old albums but I am very grateful that anybody likes them at all. As for the playing I have developed a style that lets me accommodate the effects of time on my fingers and reflexes. Much of ‘Life’ was written in 4 different variants of my own ‘B’ tuning and I expect that to continue with the next one as it is proving to be a gold mine for complex ideas. I have a YouTube Channel affiliate called How To and I am currently about to make some more videos explaining how I do it all.
Did you have a clear vision for how ‘Stimulus’ would sound before going into the studio?
Not at all. ’Stimulus’ was my first album, I was studying at Bath University so I had to drive up to London to do it and I had never been in a studio before. In those days we just met for the first time and I started playing hoping the other musicians would come up with a backing and that was it. The guys from Mighty Baby were great and far too good a time was had by all, no doubt driving the engineer mad and ensuring I can’t remember a thing about the sessions.
I do remember that it was done on a four-track machine so that meant all sorts of things had to be combined, like the bass and all the drums on one track, my vocal and acoustic guitar mixed on the fly on the another and god knows what else on the remaining two. It meant that all the live mixing in the studio had to be spot on as none of it could be mixed separately afterwards – real old-school stuff but very effective in a vintage analogue sort of way.
You then continued to work with Mighty Baby on many of your solo records. How did you link-up, did you know them outside the studio?
We met because Sandy Roberton, who was managing and recording a few other acoustic acts got them in to do the session and I had never met them before. I recall that I worked with some of them again on the next album ‘Fable of the Wings’ but by then I was gaining in confidence enough to tell Sandy that I wanted people I had met while gigging, like Keith Tippett and Rod Argent in on the the sessions, so there were some interesting combinations thrown up by that!
Strangely I did not meet up with them again outside of those recordings, they were on a different circuit to me and because I had to keep going back to Bath to study I could not socialise in London or go and see other acts play
You played acoustic guitar on David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ album around the same time as you recorded ‘Stimulus’. When did you first meet David, how did you get involved with the album and what tracks did you play on?
I met David in 1969 when whoever was running an acoustic music gig in the Three Tuns in Beckenham High Street called the Beckenham Arts Lab, (Mary Finnegan maybe?) booked me to play as the featured guest. David was the resident singer there and when he was making the album now known as Space Oddity he asked to play on some fo the tracks. Again, there was no rehearsal, just turn up, get a level, he played me some songs and I made up some parts on the spot. In the end I was on Letter to Hermione, God Knows I’m Good and Occasional Dream.
What are your memories of playing the first Glastonbury festival?
Very few. It was such a nothing gig that it was immediately forgettable and the only significance it holds in my mind is because of what it has become. Apparently I was paid, so thank you Michael.
Your albums in the seventies always featured great musicians who had careers in their own right. Where there any artists who you had the most affinity playing with?
I remember the bass/drums combination of Fuzzy Samuels and Conrad Isidore on Pigmy very well. They had just come to the UK having played for Steve Stills as part of his band ‘Manassas’ so they were hot. In a break everybody else went out to get some air and I stayed behind and listened to them chatting and running up riffs – to say they were good was a major understatement as and as very young player I was seriously impressed.
Another player who made a big impression on me was Steve Cropper while I was making ‘Stories for the Human Zoo’ at the Indigo Ranch studios in Solstice Canyon, Malibu. He was quiet, so laid back he was horizontal but what an amazing electric guitar player. He could pluck a sound out of thin air and it was he that instilled in me that I should ALWAYS tune a guitar from the top string down, something I do to this day.
Why did you typically play solo and not use a band?
I loved listening to bands, especially blues bands. Cream live at the Fillmore, John Mayall and if I wanted something more spiritual the amazing first album from, Crosby Stills and Nash. The trouble was I was crap playing an electric guitar and my only real skill then and now was being a solo artist. I kind of liked being on my own anyway especially on the road, a loner really, but inside I was a rock and roller, wanting to strut the stage and bend strings.
When I started out I would play in folk clubs and universities, go to London where I would be put with a huge array of musicians, make these albums with a big sound and then go straight back to studies in Bath and folk clubs again. That way I managed to disappoint both ends of the spectrum, people who loved my solo work were often disappointed by the albums, and people who loved the albums never ever got to see them recreated live, not the most effective career path looking back
Shelagh McDonald recorded your song ‘Waiting for the Wind to Rise’ and you played on tracks she recorded like the wonderful ‘Dowie Dens Of Yarrow’. When did you first meet and how much did you work with her?
I first saw Shelagh at the Troubadour in Bristol when I was new there and I was astounded at how good she was. I was completely starstruck at this lady who could not only sing like an angel but out-play most of the men. We became friends for many years and I collaborated with her on both her first two recordings but her story took a strange turn when she quite literally disappeared from sight. In the 25 years that followed I was often asked if I knew what had happened her and many strange rumours swirled around the Internet as people tried to find her, but one day I got a phone call from the Scottish Daily Mail to say that she was downstairs in the lobby and wanted to speak to me.
She had been living rough in a tent in the Highlands of Scotland for all those years with her partner Hamish, completely off grid and when he died she came back in. The lovely thing is that she now sends me a beautiful Christmas card every year and we talk on the phone as if no time has ever passed. She is writing poetry and painting and is a treasured friend.
The stunning ‘Forest And The Shore’ from ‘Pigmy’ was arranged by Robert Kirby. Whose idea was it to ask Robert to arrange and what are your memories of that session?
That was all arranged by Sandy Roberton and I just turned up on the day and sang my songs. Robert had arranged the parts beforehand from some earlier solo sessions and it was my first experience of being close up to some of the best string players in the world, a five-member section from the London Symphony Orchestra. This fusion of classic and contemporary was all still new then and there were no hard and fast rules of conduct other than union breaks which were generally ignored. Those LSO and Royal Philharmonic types were all gods of the classical world but this was a new source of income so mostly they were pretty keen.
On one of the Pigmy sessions I have a vague memory of the lead violin, who was a very posh sort, deciding to sit in the studio and read the Times in the break while the rest of the string section listened back to the takes. The next day the lead violin wasn’t there and when I asked where he was Robert Kirby told me he had fired him off the session. I asked Robert why and he said that if he couldn’t be bothered to listen back to the takes then fuck him.
He really did have some balls did Robert Kirby, such a shame he is gone and I bet the lead violin got a a personality update he hadn’t been used to
You toured with many great bands from the era like The Who, King Crimson and Roxy Music. Do you have any favourite moments from those tours?
Oh yes, my first tour. Straight out of university and on the road with King Crimson, the second incarnation. The bass player was Boz Burrell later to join Bad Company and early on he fell out with Robert Fripp and asked me if he could travel in my car, an open top Triumph Herald for the rest of the tour. For the next month he sat there with his feet up on the dashboard and rolled one blindingly strong joint after another. In the course of this he taught me much of what I know about blues, jazz, music, life, more life and how to have a great time with no money. I don’t know if I have ever laughed as much and every T shirt I owned was riddled with burn holes by the end of it.
I had a strange dream a few years ago where he appeared at my door dressed in those tour clothes and I was overjoyed to see him, but even as I hugged him in the dream I realised he had died in Spain and this could not be real. That was the trigger memory to write a song on ‘Crazy Dancing Days’ called ‘Talking to the Dead (Again)’ a song I still play live.
What was your involvement with The Esperanto Rock Orchestra?
Peter Sinfield was a friend of mine at the time from the Crimson tour and he had the job of producing the album Danse Macabre. The previous band had made their first album but it was a very large and adventurous ensemble which had shrunk, including all the female singers, by the time I got involved. I sang the vocals and was asked to play some incredibly complicated electric guitar parts which were sadly way beyond my abilities but I gave it a go. I honestly cannot remember if I did a tour then or not. It seems seriously brain-damaged not to remember such an important thing as a tour but life was really hard at the time and having been dropped by Sandy Roberton in 1972 because B&C Records went bust owing all the royalties I was homeless and sofa-sleeping. Also the UK was in utter meltdown economically and it was only us joining the EU that later saved it.
‘Brighter Day’ and ‘Stories From the Human Zoo’ were released on Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s Manticore label. What led you to being signed by ELP and how involved were they with these records?
I was living in Somerset at a commune near Frome and Pete Sinfield had moved down nearby and bought a cottage. He had some lyrics and asked me to put them to music. I can’t remember the song now but I know he was very pleased with the result and we recorded it in London. Unbeknownst to me played it to Greg Lake who loved it. At the time a lot of big bands, and ELP was one of the biggest, were putting money into recording lesser-known artists as a tax relief and they had just formed the label Manticore. Greg asked me to sign with them for two albums and I jumped at the chance.
We went into Command Studios and laid down 4 tracks with Greg producing, which was an experience like no other. With Greg it was all or nothing and it was alway all, excess was a given so the sessions were lavish to say the least. He got the harmonica player Tommy Reilly from the ‘Dixon of Dock Green’ theme tune (well known to anybody now over 70) and Skaila Kanga the harpist at that time from the BBC Concert Orchestra for example. The delightful Miss Kanga was a tiny figure with a harp that must have weighed over half a ton and it was bought in by two enormous roadies with BBC on the backs of their coats. “Where do you want it, Miss Kanga?” one of them asked in a broad cockney accent
Greg then had to go back on the road so Pete Sinfield took over for the rest of it and Greg and I became drinking buddies for the next 2 years and many a half-memory I have of that as well.
What led ‘Stories from the Human Zoo’ to be recorded in LA?
In 1974 I was doing OK with a tidy band, some well-received gigs in London but I was still homeless and had no money other than what I could scratch from playing live. To spend the Manticore money wisely Greg suggested I signed with a management company called BKM which in effect was Barry Krost. living in LA and managing Cat Stevens and his younger brother Jack who was in charge of my onward progress having done a stint managing Colin Blunstone. We did a lot of clubbing and not much else then Jack suggested we up sticks and move to LA. As I said earlier the UK economy was in free-fall so I said goodbye to a rather pissed-off band and flew out to LAX. Barry paid for me to stay in a rather run down residential hotel on Sunset Boulevard and gave me a small living allowance. The good thing about LA then was it was ridiculously easy to live on virtually nothing and for the next nearly 2 years that is what I did.
I can’t say I made the most of my time there, mostly sitting by the pool stoned off my head and getting a tan but somewhere in there I managed to write Stories From the Human Zoo’. It became obvious fairly quickly that Jack Krost, my erstwhile manager didn’t have a clue what to do with me and we hardly spoke for most of my time there. Luckily I’ve always had the ability to get to know people easily and as a result of that I met Michael Boshears who had been the engineer on Little Feat’s Dixie Chicken, one of my all time favourite records and who was looking to get his first production job. The management didn’t have any ideas other than to get me to go to San Francisco and record with Creedence Cleerwater Revival, which in hindsight might have been a REALLY cool thing to do but something felt off and I turned it down
I’ve just looked them up in Wikipedia and it says they disbanded acrimoniously in late 1972 so I can’t have got that right as it was 1976 at the time. Actually, it might have been Quicksilver Messenger Service which would have been even MORE cool but I will never know now…
Anyway, Michael Boshears found us some cheap recording time at a studio in the hills north of LA at the now-legendary Indigo Ranch Studio co-run by Mike Pinder of the Moody Blues and every day for weeks I made the trek up the long winding dirt road into the hills. The musicians were wonderful, the sessions were arduous and the bill for cocaine was over $1000 which was a lot in those days. My time was up visa-wise, the management were looking to unload me now the album was done and I flew back to England on a DC10 with the master ¼ inch reels in the overhead locker. I arrived to a country in an even worse state than when I had left 2 years earlier, which I had thought impossible, and punk had completely wiped out my kind of music so the album completely bombed as did my career
What followed were the worst years of my life but I am still here so somehow I survived with a lot of help from my friends, as the song almost goes…
I’ve heard that you recorded again in LA with David Bowie in 1975. This would seem to be a good fit given your sound and his were in a similar place (like ‘The Astronaut (who wouldn’t come down)’ from ‘Stories From the Human Zoo’). What led you to working with David again and how did it compare?
Well I sort of did. Bowie had heard that I was playing electric guitar because of the Esperanto connection and flew me out to New York to try out for the ‘Diamond Dogs’ tour. All very exciting but for one thing, as I said earlier I play electric guitar like a chimp does brain surgery so that very quickly unravelled. I did however play some riffs in RCA’s studio on the Avenue of the Americas as part of the audition so maybe some of that was used later on another of his projects, I have no idea.
It was all a bit intimidating to be honest, Tony Defries didn’t exactly make me welcome but apparently things were getting tense between him and David at that time so maybe I just walked into the middle of it. What had changed though, was that the folk singer I left in 1969 had morphed into a global superstar and that was a lot to deal with as well. I have met a lot of stars in my life and I never know what to say to them and out there it was no exception.
Do you recall the material you played on?
I do not but there is an odd memory I have from about 1978 or 1979 when I was in the middle of my BAD TIME. I got a phone call to my bedsit in the middle of the night and it was a person unknown representing David asking me to come to a studio in north London and play some guitar. I drove up there in the dark, can’t remember where and he was alone with an engineer. I always have had this ability to come up with guitar parts off the top of my head so the engineer set me up and that is what I did for an hour. At some point in the proceedings I got the impression that I was not wanted any more and as I walked out I saw him practising one of my riffs on an electric guitar. I don’t think we said more than two words throughout the whole thing and it was all very strange and unsettling.
You took a break from recording solo material until the early 90s.
I decided to get a job and that is what I did, on a building site. I was fed up with not having any money and later I retrained as a teacher in Bristol as I wanted to make sure I had some kind of steady income and a pension however small at the end of it.
The album ‘Weatherman’ in 1992 had more of a blues sound. Was this a conscious decision to change your sound?
Not really. I had always loved the blues and learned a lot of early Big Bill Broonzy stuff so it was a short ride over to having a blues band. We had a lot of fun and my best friend Martin Vinson was the bass player so that came in handy when we did Stonehenge with two of us on acid and other jolly japes. Back in a more normal world we did pubs in and around Bristol but when you see your audience not getting any bigger after 2 years of playing the writing is usually on the wall and eventually I packed it in. Weatherman was fun to do with Andy Allen engineering it at the Coach House Studios in Bristol and the wonderful and utterly irresponsible Fred Underhill’s company Run River Records just about to go bust but did we know that? Of course not.
1996’s ‘Love Beyond Deals’ was produced by Ashley Hutchings. What are your recollections of working with him?
I don’t remember him being a warm and fuzzy sort of person but he was a very good organiser and producer. His ideas on LBD were excellent and inventive and I was very grateful for what he did. I was also grateful for the late Barry Riddington who came up to me at Dartford Folk Club and said, “I run a record label and I’m interested in old farts who have still got it” That was HTD Records and he paid for the album to be made up in Manchester.
About three years ago you released your album ‘Crazy Dancing Days’ which featured ‘Cross the Water’ about the plight of refugees. Would you say there’s a thread of highlighting injustice in some of your songs?
‘Crazy Dancing Days’ was where the breakthrough in writing started for me. Why I got to 70 and suddenly found inspiration is a total mystery to me but I am very happy it has happened, especially as it seems to fly in the face of common belief that we get less creative as we get older, another myth totally debunked…
Several of the songs had a political dimension – ‘If the Young Don’t March’ (fracking), King of the Ruined Castle (Brexit) and ‘Cross the Water’ (immigration) which was the second song I wrote back in 2016 and one I never thought would still be relevant today. It was played thousands of times on SoundCloud and was helpful to motivate me to start writing again but when I wrote the songs for ‘Life, Life’ I left the political theme behind as I wanted to reach out to a wider audience.
What are your highlights from all the musical projects?
‘Life, Life’ most definitely. I have always been critical of my past work while at the same time trying to keep perspective of where I and my music fit in the grand order of things but this current album has set a completely new bar for me and is now the standard of writing I want to achieve going forward. This is the first time I believe I have written an album that can be considered as a single body of work and that is both satisfying and exciting. I want to mention here the contribution of friend and production wizard Chris Goulstone, who mixed and mastered ‘Life, Life’ using skills I can only guess at. How you get a three-dimensional sound from a stereo mix is a thing of wonder.
What projects are you currently working on and what are your plans for the next year?
My ball and chain right now is finishing off this monster renovation project on our Torquay house. I am sitting here typing this with a big fat plaster on my thumb where I sliced a piece out of it with a nice new Stanley blade this morning but it will heal soon enough and I can then get back to playing.
I have a major record company wanting to sign me for the next album (long story and I can’t say who at this time) so that is where I am headed, all I have to worry about is writing 12 more songs better or as good as the last lot! That and doing all the gigs I have lined up this year and enjoying the next year of making music.
For more information on Keith Christmas visit becn.co.uk
Copyright © Keith Christmas and Jason Barnard, 2020. All Rights Reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced or transmitted in any from or by any means, without prior permission from the author.
