1994 Interview © Dr Jochen Bartsch &  may not be reproduced without permission

Photos © John Humphrey

HM : Yes, it`s really breaking the ice, I think, in the sense of doing something different. I didn`t originally have any intention of doing anything like this. It`s just that the record company, Polygram, came to us and said, "Listen, you should  get

a band together. The albums are selling well, let the public see you." At first I kept saying, "Oh no," but then I finally decided perhaps this year I should do something, but I still wasn`t too enthusiastic about it. I had the idea of asking Brian, when we did the last album. "Look, they`ve asked me to do a tour and  I`m thinking about it. Would you like to be involved?" He was very keen on the idea, so that made me feel a lot better.

HM : There were a number of reasons for that. One was that he wanted to concentrate on writing music, composing, then there

were also personal factors involved within the group that made him say so. But for those personal factors I`m pretty sure he

would have continued touring, but they clinched it for him. But he`s happy to do this now. Then Ben and Warren got involved, and

it was suggested maybe Ben should play guitar on the tour. I had been thinking about it myself and was sure he could handle it.

We talked about it and he was all for it and Warren, too, as Warren had done all the arrangements on the albums. Then we got

Mark. He`s a very nice person and good bass player. So that`s how it basically got together. It seemed the right thing to do

in the sense that I should say to people, "I`m now doing something different, I`m not The Shadows on tour, I`m Hank

Marvin or Hank Marvin & Brian Bennett in this case." And I feel that it is something different, indeed.

HM : I`m glad you liked that. You see, unfortunately, in the past we`ve been unable to do these things. There have been too many personality problems and we got too restricted and too set in little ways and unwilling to be flexible. Now it`s great to be able to do things or suggest things and think: "Does it work like this?" So we work at these ideas, if they don`t work, we`ll do them another way. And if something doesn`t work at all, we`ll take it out, you know? At least we are willing to try, be adventurous. What I didn`t

 want to do, Jochen, was to mess around with the original material. Take `Riders`, this additional part was stuck at the beginning of the tune. And then it becomes `Riders` as we know it. Or in `Shadoogie`or `Flingle Bunt`, there is this extension at the end. It`s just a little extension, and the rest we do pretty much as on the record. We just enlarge or extend. I didn`t want to change the Shadows songs without having established what the public expect. When I see an artist and their material, which I loved,  all changed, I think "Oh well, it`s not the way it should sound." But if you give the audience what they expect and add a little here or there, they think, "What`s this, wow! What are they doing now?" And that`s the way I felt about it and it is what we`ve done so far. Anyway, I think we are on the right track. 

JB : I myself have followed your music and that of The Shadows since 1961, but `Flingle Bunt`, for example, is given a

completely new lease of life the way it was done tonight. It was also nice to see that that was the kind of material that Ben enjoyed playing. To me he seemed much more at ease playing this kind of material than  on tracks like `Nivram`, where every note counts and is audible. As soon as his fingers could fly in his Holdsworth style, he was terrific. It was also wonderful to see `Guitar Tango` featured, as you have only played that on very few tours in the past.

HM : It`s interesting with `Guitar Tango`, as on Shadows tours we nearly always - apart from one time, one tour - did it with

electric guitars. It doesn`t really work on electric guitars, it loses all the character and personality of this piece of music,

and I love this thing now with our three acoustic guitars : it has got the feeling of integrity which it should have. So I

enjoy playing it and, of course, it`s the little bits of harmony that Ben does that give it a little bit of nuance, so I`m

pleased with it. We`re getting a lot out of it. And, of course, it`s a good piece of music.

HM : We enjoyed it, too, on the album and in rehearsal, but I never enjoyed it very much on stage, because there seemed to be too much going on, too much - "noise" on the stage! I didn`t feel comfortable playing it. I couldn`t even hear what I myself was playing on the monitors, there was simply too much noise going on. We also played it early on in the show and always felt the audience were a bit shocked by it. "What`s this, what`s all this raucous noisy music going on, like Hank and Ben Marvin meet Led Zeppelin." Maybe on reflection, if we had put it on later in the first half and even the second, it would have been more acceptable. But  we took it out and put `Dance On` in, just to try to balance out what we were doing.

HM : I like this idea of having basically the sound people expect me to use, but colouring it up with different sounds here

and there, be it a bit of overdrive or acoustic. All of that  is meant to put some colour in it, more variety.

HM : Well, it was something that we thought long and hard about before we did the tour, and I think we have struck a fairly good

balance from the response of fans we talk to after the shows when we sign autographs. No one has complained, everyone has

been very positive, they like the mixture of old and new, they think it`s refreshing and they like the energy. So I think we`ve

probably got the right balance, but we did spend a lot of time wondering. We also had a lot more music than we`re doing in the show. We had another half hour of music which we wanted to do, but it`s too long. In the theatres, if you`re not finished by a

certain time, the promoter`s on a penalty clause, you know, there`s overtime, so you`ve got to finish by a certain time. We

had to cut quite a few things like `Road Train`, `Limited Slip` and `Kon-Tiki`, `My Home Town`more Shadows stuff and tracks from

the albums.

HM : We decided to do the first two a year apart and then give it a year`s break. Polygram wanted to do this compilation album

of Hank Marvin and The Shadows. I was quite happy with that, and the tour has helped to promote and sell it. I`ll do the third

album next year.

HM : The record company chose that, but it was not haphazard. It was very carefully market-researched, and the track-list was the

result of their research. It makes me wonder to a degree, too, I couldn`t really understand the reason for this album, anyway. That sort of album puzzles me a little bit in that as the tracks that are ascribed to me are from my two solo albums over the last two years, whilst the Shadows stuff is from way back. And it has all been available before, and fairly recently, too. That`s what puzzles me, but then I`m not a marketing man, I`m not  a record company man. They think differently, they are people who sell things.They very carefully did their market-research, and this is the response they got. So they said, "These are the strongest tracks." And the album is certainly selling very well, so maybe they`re right. It has done 60,000 in two weeks, which is good. They don`t expect to sell a million, but  they have a figure they look at. They think we can reach this target, whether it is 250,000 or 300,000 or whatever. What they do is, they try to pick their advertising, try to get the right shows in the right areas, get TV coverage and just keep it bubbling along. They don`t try to give it a quick boost up the charts. They like to keep it chugging along so it sells over a three-month period and keeps bubbling along nicely instead of a  good "bang" and  out again. Otherwise they would spend all their advertising money in two weeks. That`s all I can say, Jochen. When I saw the track list,  it was carefully explained to me that it was the result of market-research, that it was what they felt was the strongest track list. What we have to keep in mind is that, no matter however much you like the original, the authentic kind of material, it really only appeals to people like yourself, the die-hard fan who will buy it.  I mean, many fans will buy it, but there is a whole big range of people  out there who  like guitar music, who like what The Shadows or what I`ve been doing, but only if you play the right kind of tunes. When you advertise it on television, they go "Oh, isn`t that a great melody, I`d love to hear him play that, isn`t that brilliant?" They see all the titles they know and love. So they go to the shop and buy the album. They may only buy two or three albums a year, but they will buy that one. They`ve seen it on TV, they now look at the track list. They know the music, they know every track, these are famous tunes - and they will buy the album, take "Reflection" as an example. When they look at the track list of another album, the track list says "Squimby Nurox"  and "Fred Blobs", you know, they will say "Don`t know any of those" and put it back. The real fans will buy it, but those on the fringe want something they know, they are comfortable with, which makes them feel safe. They may like what we do, they are fans in that sense, but they will only buy our albums if they know the tunes.

HM : To do an album of originals? Well, what I aim to do is to discuss with Polygram the idea of doing an alternative album to

the TV-advertised type. Now whether that would be released in the same year or give it a break as we`ve done this year, I

don`t know. What they would not do is give it the big promotion. If they agree to it, they would just pay for production costs,

release it, give it minimum advertising to let people know it`s available. They don`t have much faith in this type of album and

quite rightly, too. You see, they don`t sell very much. Unless you`ve got a hit single or two on an album to sell it, you need

TV advertising, or unless you happen to be the kind of person that everyone runs out to buy his albums - and there are very

few of them. Yes, it is something that I`d like to do. I don`t know what format it will take. I`ve got a few ideas, but none of

them are really formulated. There are a few directions to go in or a combination of all of them. I really don`t know what to do

yet. I don`t want to rush it, I need time to think about it. It could take a little time to get it all together. Maybe with

different musicians, instead of Warren or Brian.

HM : Not necessarily other guitarists in that sense, just different musicians to approach the music from a different

angle, which could also be interesting. But I don`t really know when I would record it. At one time I thought I`d love to make a

start next year and began getting some ideas down. Now I suspect it would take longer than a year to do it, because I`ll chiefly

have to do the TV-advertised album plus other commitments, maybe another tour. So if I get two or three tracks down that would b

doing well, maybe a few more next year, you know, gradually building up on it.

HM : Originally it was a one-off. We didn`t look any further than this tour. I certainly didn`t look at it that way, but now

we`re all enjoying it and it`s working very well. The promoter is delighted, the record company are delighted with the

reactions, with the way it`s working and album sales. So we may well do it again, depending on Brian`s availability. Warren

would be happy to do something next year and I`m sure Ben is. So we may do another one next year, but it would be shorter. This

tour is about 45 dates, so we could condense it to about four weeks, keep it very tight, cut some of the smaller towns out. It

would be important to do that, I think, because it would consolidate what we`ve done this year, which is probably

important to get into people`s minds : there is something different going on.

HM : A lot of the dates we do are the same we did with The Shadows. There are some small halls, though. Lincoln is one of

those.

HM : I see what you mean about sound and impressions. I have always wanted to record `Always On My Mind`, it`s a fantastic

song. That, and `Let It Be Me`. They are songs I have always felt sounded so nice. We should have recorded them. But Bruce

didn`t want to do it, he wasn`t keen on doing it.

HM : No, because it`s too expensive!

HM : Thank you. That was just a sequence of chords, nothing much to it, just a bit of improvising. But it seemed to work. That

Guitar Tutor was something I didn`t envisage as being very expensive, but as it developed, with the size of the book plus

the two cassettes, IMP said, "This is the price we`ve  got to sell it at, the  cost of producing this is high." If we could

have gone under twenty pounds, maybe 15.95, it would have sold an awful lot more, I`m sure. But you can imagine someone walking

into a shop, looking for a guitar tutor. They see Bert Weedon`s `Play in a Day` for, say, 5 quid, and then they look at mine and it`s 24.95. You know which one they`re gonna go for. If you`ll buy it for your grandson, 24 or 25 pounds is an awful lot of money, and people haven`t got much money. They may be able to afford a fiver, but not 25 pounds. Mind you, it is still selling, but it`s not enormous. I had a figure about two years ago, it was either 5,000 or 10,000 then. I don`t really think it was expensive in terms of what people were getting with three hours of instruction on the cassette, plus a fairly comprehensive book. When you go into any decent music shop and look how much books are on jazz, American music, whatever, some of them are 25 pounds and there are no cassettes to go with them. I don`t think the Tutor was  poor value, I just think it was pitched too high. If they could have reduced it somehow ... But I don`t know how they could do that and  they reckon how

they couldn`t. Maybe they were being greedy.

HM : I wanted to do just that. I wanted to make it feel very personal, very informal as if you were sitting there in the same

room with me. You see, if you listen to a complete production, every note is perfect, it`s all pristine, the right sound. Here

it was, just a guitar plugged into an amp, trying to show a few notes. It was more personal and I hope that came across.

HM : Fine. It`s a project which became something it was never intended to be. At one stage I simply wanted a place to put all

my equipment in, once I started  working and writing. But as it developed - and the expense developed - it  gradually took on a

new concept. It wasn`t planned like that, it just evolved into what it is now. It is sort of `two studios in one`, really.

Trevor Spencer and Gary Taylor have a small office, voice booth, control room. We share the reception area.  and then I have a big control room, office and live playing area with a floating floor. As the expenditure went up,  I had a guy called Rick Curtin in who was involved at the designing stage. Rick is an engineer who also works with Kevin Peek and Trevor.

He was available and he wanted to be involved. He is very experienced in running a studio and in engineering. I thought it

would be a good idea to get him involved, but I didn`t really want to get to the stage where I was paying him a wage, so we

came to an agreement whereby he would use the studio, look after things, manage it. And it seemed to me as we got the thing

rolling that a lot of the work that was coming in was commercial work, to do with commercials, TV documentaries, radio,

soundtracks for TV films and such things. We were  a little afraid of aiming the studio at live bands. You see, a lot of those bands coming in  are not very kind to other people`s studios. They can be a little careless, pouring beer in the console, you know. So as the commercial work began coming in, I thought, "It is silly  for me to use the studio as a place for writing only. Now that the work is coming in, we might as well use it the right way. As long as I sit there, working on music for a documentary, the studio can`t work. I`m sitting there, taking the studio space and time." So I began to look at it differently, saying "Look, I`ll do my work at home." I`ve got a music room there, in fact it`s a garage, a big room where I store my guitars. And I have equipment there that I use to write with, you know. I keep an 8-track cassette machine, computers, synthesizers, plenty of guitars and I can sit up there, writing to my heart`s content, take all these ideas down without costing the studio time. So now the studio is basically doing all this commercial work. But I can obviously go in whenever I want to, if I have something I need to record. Martin Jenner and I didthis TV documentary a couple of months back, we wrote most of it and recorded it there. So that will be the way it is going to be in the future. I go there whenever I need it to record something, whether it be an album or a TV commercial, I will book the studio time and go in and virtually only have to pay Rick for his time.

HM : Maybe. For example, with this documentary it may be possible to find out when it will be shown. I know it`s been

sold to quite a few countries. I suppose it will be shown here in the UK some time between September and Christmas. It may have

been shown, but I don`t know as we have been traveling.  It`s called `On the Brink of Eternity` or `From the Brink of

Eternity`. What I could do is to find out from the producer once he`s organized his negotiations and has sold it to other

countries. I don`t know at what stage he gets told when it will be shown. But as long as people know what it`s called, they can

look out and find it in the papers. I`m supposed to be doing a couple more this year. I hope it comes off. It`s interesting

work, although the money`s not great. It`s just a relatively small fee, but it`s enjoyable to do it, because it`s a different

kind of music, it`s a change and a challenge. If it gets played around the world,  fine, you do reasonably well out of

royalties. They`ve got a lot of footage on dolphins and beluga whales but  have not used yet. They had a request from people in

America who wanted to do this video. They did it about a year ago and then told me. They had a definite requirement and said

to me, "We`d like you to do this." What they do is they sell it to television and make it available on a video, because a lot of

people like dolphin videos and that kind of thing. There is onepiece of music that we wrote for `From the Brink of Eternity`,

which is very sparse, just a bit of synthesizer on it and I`m very pleased with it. I started to write it `cause we needed a

piece for one scene. Unfortunately Martin wasn`t available, because he was away with his band, so I had to start on it.

They want to use it again in this dolphin film as its basic theme. The idea is to extend the piece with the same kind of

atmosphere. 

HM : It`s like all these things. If you don`t write, nothing will happen. In the first place you see the need for a

particular piece of music and not necessarily the financial side of things. You look at the challenge. Something that, if it

works with the pictures, makes you think "Ah, that`s good." If later on something happens like you say and someone says, "I

like that piece of music and I`m going to use it for this or that", that`s lovely, it`s a bonus, a financial bonus. But

initially you`ve got to look at things in a more spiritual sense, without looking for material gain. Yes, you want some

kind of return for what you`re doing, even if it`s just to cover your expenses, but there is always the enjoyment of writing

something and the satisfaction of seeing it work with the pictures. If it does happen,  it`s nice, the sort of icing on

the cake as in the case of Deep Purple. When they wrote it, they probably didn`t envisage it being used that way. But now, I`m

sure they`re very happy as it is.

HM : Oh, I had three actually. I had two on the right eye, one on the left, because of retina detachment. At the moment it`s

fine actually. I have to get checked about every four months. I had one just before I came away and it`s stable now, which is

good. But it`s one of those things you`ve got to be conscious of all the time. Now that I know what the symptoms are, I think I`d

be ready to act pretty quickly. Unfortunately, when I first had retina detachment I didn`t quite know what  the symptoms were. I

thought I was having migraine attacks or something. By the time I sought medical assistance, it wasn`t too late because they

managed to fix it, but too late to avoid damage to the part of the retina I see through. By the time I saw the surgeon in the

late afternoon, I was actually looking through a small slit only. By the time he finished looking at it, the retina was

completely detached. I was totally blind, had no vision at all. If I shut my left eye, everything was black. I couldn`t see any

light at all. I was fortunate insofar as we have a very good eye clinic in Perth, in fact it`s one of the top ten in world, so I

was in good hands. But the MD told me there was only an 80% chance of having it fixed, as it was a total detachment. When it

happened again on the right side  and again when the left eye went, I recognized the symptoms very quickly and got it done.

What often happens inside your pupil is that the retina becomes detached in a part you don`t see with, so it doesn`t initially

affect your vision. If  they can get to work on it early enough, they can fix that. What happened with me is that the detachment

started in a part of the pupil I didn`t see with. It started  to peel off without me realizing what was happening. Eventually the

whole thing peeled off  and I completely lost the retina. That means that all my nerves in this part were damaged. And once the

retina is back in place, the damage to the nerves remains. Fortunately nature has designed it so that in the long run they

renew themselves or most of them do. But the vision in my right eye is not as good as it was before it happened. I can see with

it, but if I look at small print or straight lines, it looks as if the printer had had one too many. The letters or lines are

slightly off,  don`t look completely straight. It doesn`t really affect me, I can still drive a car or play tennis. It`s quite

good tonight, but sometimes when I`m tired or the lights are dim it becomes noticable.

HM : Yes, I had it legally changed in 1959, so all my children are really called Marvin, not Rankin.

HM : She enjoys singing, she`s always singing around the house and I`d have liked her to do more. But as much as she enjoys

singing, I think she doesn`t seem to want to do much about it. She prefers acting, does a bit of drama as a hobby. But she

doesn`t want to be an actress either. She`s always been good at school, too.

HM : Oh yes, `Thalia, Take Your Time`!

HM : For fathers they do grow up a little too quickly, don`t they? Not just daughters, of course, boys as well. But there is

that lovely period with daughters when they`re little children growing up and it seems such a shame when they want to grow up

too quickly and we as parents see that. We know they have to grow up, but we don`t want them to rush it. You see girls 12 or

13 years old acting like 19-year-olds with their make-up and we think, "Ah, wait, you`re just a little girl, enjoy your

childhood, you`re not an adult yet." But she was never like that, she was always a precocious girl, in the sense of being a

very composed young lady, very intelligent, with a very strong personality -  and she`s  still the same. (Chuckles) Actually,

it`s a pity : she used to write lovely poetry when she was at school. She used to win quite a lot of prizes in these

inter-school competitions. I keep asking her, "Maybe we`ll write some songs together." But she says, "Oh no, I can`t write

songs." I try to tell her that it`s quite easy and basically the same principle, expressing ideas  through rhyming words, really.

I`m hoping to persuade her to try and come up with some ideas. I`m sure she`d be able to do it if she got down to it. She was

very prolific when she was younger. She used to go to these competitions where the youngsters are given, like, two words and

have to make a story out of these two words in five or six minutes. And they stand up in front of 500 people and  tell the

story, which  must have a beginning, a middle and an end and, of course, it must have these two words, say `grandfather clock and

red carpet`. And when you hear these kids and their stories, it`s incredible, it`s brilliant. Some of these stories are quite

convincing. Thalia was always very good at that. It was as if she`d memorized a story she`d known for years. I have always

thought that is a wonderful gift to have to be able to improvise a story. So I`d love her to come out with some of those ideas.

She listens to a wide choice of music, too, has got a wide taste, listens to all kinds of stuff, pop, jazz, classical, you

name it.

HM : They`re good kids. They`ve gone through the usual growing-up pains that all children go through. Thalia is a

lovely girl, fun to be with, a delightful daughter, a very good conversationalist, got strong opinions and an interest in people

and what`s going on, good company, good sense of humour, you know. And Ben`s the same. He`s growing up nicely.

HM : Haha, I don`t know. He`s enjoying the tour. You mentioned something before, saying you felt he was uncomfortable with some

of the older things he was playing. I think he`s quite comfortable on anything at the moment. He is very conscious of

wanting  to get everything right, e.g.  on `Nivram`and such songs,  doesn`t want to mess it up. If he`s got the opportunity

to go roaring around, he will do so. He does something different every night. A few nights ago he suddenly threw his guitar on

his back during `Flingle Bunt`and played it behind his back.

HM : Quite so. The audience loved it. I don`t think he`s uncomfortable with these songs, he just wants to get them right,

has respect for them - I think that`s the difference.

HM : That would be a slight exaggeration. I have heard Ben talk to these people and what he said was that he didn`t really know

these tunes. When Ben was smaller, and that would be before we went to Australia, he had seen a few Shadows shows - but not

many. Obviously I don`t play my own records or The Shadows` records at home, unless for a specific reason I need to listen

to something. So it was new music to him, really, when he had to learn all the rhythm parts. He didn`t know `Wonderful Land` from

`Apache` or `Nivram`, he wouldn`t have known the difference in terms of what title goes with what tune and what it sounds like.

So I had to write the chords out for him, and what he did  was put on the CD and play along with it. Once he`d got a rough

idea, he put the chord sheet away to get it into his head. He found that if he kept relying on the chord chart, he wasn`t

learning it, he was relying on it. And I suppose as regards understanding the job or the career, ours have never been

showbusiness children. It has just been a fairly normal situation. We`ve tried to give them as normal a life as possible

without making it seem very showbizzy. We`ve never fed them cocaine or marijuana. And I think that`s been  better for them,

because they have grown up in a more normal, almost innocent situation. There have been times when we have been out somewhere

and people came up to me for an autograph. And they were looking at me, saying, "Why would anybody want your autograph?" I told

them, "Ah, well, they`d bought our records or something." The children would just say, "Oh", as if it were very weird. Surely

there was nothing about their dad or his autograph? And I think that`s the nice thing about it.

So Ben was not really exposed to the music. Some showbiz kids are always in the theatre, they see audiences respond to their parents on stage on a regular basis and get used to that situation. They may grow up fully comprehending their parents`situation or being very close to their music. Not so in Ben`s case.

HM : It`s a lovely feeling.  It`s not only him playing The Shadows`  tunes, I think it`s even more impressive when he`s

playing the lead lines that are obviously essential to songs like `Jessica` or `Live and Let Die` and  he can freak out a

bit. 

What I like about Ben`s playing is that he`s uninhibited, he`s quite fearless. He tries different things different night,

sometimes he`s a bit wild, but at least he`s willing to try something rather than say, "Oh, this  has worked before, so I`ll

stick with it." He`ll press another button on his effects-panel, go wild on this, do a bit of  finger-tapping and I think it`s

good. It gives the performance spontaneity, and I think an audience feel that, I don`t know why. Do you see what I mean,

Jochen? The audience don`t always know why they are responding to something, but they feel the energy, feel that someone is

really going for something. Maybe it`s the nervous side of it.