Dick Plant Interview  

2003 Interview © Dick Plant & ShadowsFanSite & may not be reproduced without permission  

You are a songwriter of some note yourself, with various instrumental tracks of yours appearing on the recent Vibratos albums as well as Hank and Shads   albums over the years   Firstly, how do you go about writing a song?    What other well-known acts have you written for?   Have you written any vocal tracks for example?

Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, I think! I’ve written a couple of things that Hank decided he’d like to do but that’s all as far as other people using my stuff are concerned. I can’t say that I have any particular method of “writing” – I’m usually just sitting around fiddling about with a guitar on my lap and something will turn up out of the blue. If it looks like it might be worthwhile, I’ll stick with it and develop it for a bit until the ideas stop and then I’ll put it down on a cassette so I don’t forget it and can come back to it later. I have written a few songs rather than just tunes but nothing for any reason other than my own amusement.

As many Shadows fans know you have written tracks for both Hank Marvin and indeed The Shadows which have been included on their albums over the years.  Can you tell us how many of these have there been?

 The two songs I have written were “Hammerhead” for The Shadows and “Steel Wheel” for Hank Marvin which appeared on the The Shadows ‘Guardian Angel’ and Hank’s ‘Into the light’ albums respectively.

Tell us about your time working with ELO?

I did a couple of early albums with them – one was “On the Third Day” and the other was “Eldorado.” Jeff Lynne was a very focussed and driven person – totally in control of the situation at all times. A massive Beatles fan – I imagine he’s been in his element over the last few years working with them on those various projects he’s been involved in. He was very inventive and had an individual way of approaching certain aspects of recording – he bore a strong similarity to Roy Wood in this. There definitely seemed to be a Brummy way of doing things then. I worked with his ELO before I met Roy – in fact Jeff more or less introduced me to him. Then, when Roy decided he wanted to work with me, Jeff sort of disappeared. I met him again some years later and he told me that he had assumed I wouldn’t want to work with him any more on account of my friendship with Roy. Apparently, there had been a bit of professional animosity involved in Roy handing over ELO to Jeff and he seemed to have had the idea that I would have taken sides. Strange. I enjoyed the time I did spend with them though and I learnt quite a lot from it.

How much sway does the Recording Engineer have to ‘persuade’ the Record Company/Artist what to release?

Speaking for myself, none really, unless he also happens to be the producer. And there’s a bone of contention! I bet you most engineers you meet will (sadly) tell you stories about how they feel they’ve sometimes personally had considerably more production input than some of the “producers” they’ve been involved with! I’m not saying that that’s been the case with me by any means but I have, on occasions, had to deal with producers who seemed to have no game plan and no real production ability in the slightest! An effective, confident producer is a joy to work with, however, and it’s great to be able to get on with the job of engineering without having to try and cover all bases. A successful producer is generally, quite rightly, held in high respect by a record company and they’ll usually listen to his advice.

 How and when did you start to engineer The Shadows records?

It was back in the mid seventies when I was working at The Music Centre studios in Wembley. I went up to the bookings office to check out what was coming in and I noticed that The Shadows had booked a couple of days. I freaked out and told the bookings girl, “You HAVE to give me this session!” She obviously sensed I had bags and baggage in this area, took pity on me and stuck my name next to the dates. I can’t remember why they’d booked in there – I think EMI was full or something. But we got on well and the rest is infamy.

What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?

Messing about with guitars – what else?! The electric guitar has always had a magical hold over me. I’m still as intrigued by the concept as I was as a twelve-year-old. 

 My own personal vocal Shadows track of recent years is “Liverpool Days” on the XXV album. I have always wondered why it hasn’t been released as a single - does the Engineer have any say in what is put out by the artist he works with?

I can’t speak for any other engineer I suppose, but I can’t recall ever having any concrete effect upon anything that I ever recorded with regards to how it was released or marketed. Obviously, a good engineer will have an effect upon how something turns out so you might say that he may, by means of his contribution, swing things one way or another. I don’t ever remember any record company being even vaguely interested in my opinion though - I’m not hurt…

Who are your biggest musical influences?

In the very beginning, Lonnie Donegan and then Hank, of course. I have an indelible memory of lying on the floor with my ear up against the speaker of my friend’s Dansette listening to Apache over and over again, thinking that that guitar was the most amazing thing I’d ever heard in my life. It was a turning point and I have to confess that everything else took second place to the electric guitar at that time. My schoolwork suffered on account of it! After that, influences are more difficult to pin down. I actually didn’t realise how brilliant Elvis was until a lot later. I think I was affected by a whole bunch of different things throughout the sixties – predictably The Beatles, The Who and such but then, later on, people like Jimmy Webb and Joni Mitchell for instance. I absolutely love the blues and I could listen to Duke Robillard play it all day. Ditto Eric Clapton. Funny thing is though that, as you get older, you somehow seem to turn a kind of full circle and I still find that the sound of a clear, clean electric guitar does it for me just like it did back then. Speaking of turning full circle, I’ve even tried to find out if you can still buy those old Kiel-Kraft model aeroplane kits that I used to build when I was a kid! It doesn’t look like you can, unfortunately. I seem to have drifted from the question a bit here! I’ll be looking out for Virol next! Bleugh!

You must have ‘tried out’ a guitar or two over the years, do you have a particular favourite?

No, I honestly can’t say that I have. I love the sound and feel of so many of them that I couldn’t just pin it down to one. Having said that, it has to be said that if there were only one electric guitar in the world, it would HAVE to be a Strat, wouldn’t it? Someone once likened it to the guitar equivalent of a Swiss Army knife: there’s nothing you can’t do with it. But that’s just a practical consideration and I’m not saying that that makes it my absolute favourite although, to be truthful, it might be. But then, I do love Gretsches an awful lot. There again, I have an old Harmony Rocket that sounds amazing. And a big Guild archtop. Not to mention the Kay and the Mosrite. I recently bought a totally rebuilt Burns Vibra Artiste from David Martin and I’m completely over the moon with it. So no cut and dried favourites – I love ‘em all! Don’t like hot-rods, though - Charvels and Jacksons and the like don’t mean a light to me. When Duane Eddy came to do “Pipeline” (the tune, not the show) with Hank he said, “You know these guys who play all this widdly, tapping stuff? Well, I don’t play like that!” I’m with you on that, Duane – neither do I. (Alright…. I CAN’T play like that! Who’d want to? No, that’s not sour grapes.)

Do you play any other instruments other than guitar?

No. Wish I could, but no. Not like Wozzie (Warren)  who can also play keyboards and drums. Nobody likes a smart aleck, though, do they? And that’s not sour grapes either.........Ok….it is.

What are your top 10 albums of all time?

I don’t really have favourite albums as such; more like favourite songs – I don’t know if I could give you ten albums but I’ll have a go. “El Mirage” by Jim Webb,   “Journeyman” by Eric Clapton, “Song to a Seagull” by Joni Mitchell, “The Sun Collection” by Elvis, “Cruisin’ Deuces” by Danny Gatton, “Walk that Walk, Talk that Talk” by The Fabulous Thunderbirds, “Watermark” by Art Garfunkel, anything by Albert Collins, Bob Cray, Mark Knopfler, Duke Robillard, Kid Ramos, Bonnie Raitt and so on. A particular “desert island disc” for me is “The Boys of Summer” by Don Henley. The recent single by BB Mak called “Out of my Heart” is quite brilliant – it’s encouraging to know young guys are still writing great songs and playing them as a real band. And albums by Alison Krauss and Union Station are so precisely beautiful they can bring tears to my eyes! The talent in that band is simply mind-boggling.

Who thought of the name “The Vibratos?”

I did! I was trying to think of a name that sort of harked back to the fifties and sixties bands and it just came into my head. I checked on the net on various band registers to see if anyone else conspicuously had it at the moment and, to my surprise, no one did so I registered it immediately. Funny thing is that a lot of people, especially women, seem to pronounce it wrongly! Can’t think why that might be.  I think sexism is disgraceful, incidentally.

What are the plans for The Vibratos are you planning to do a short tour for example or make any more CDs ?

We certainly plan to continue to make albums for as long as we can when time allows but an actual tour is a little less likely. Who knows? – it could happen but we’d both need a lot more time off work to set it all up than it seems to me that we’re likely to get. It takes time even organising single shows like Shadowmania, for example. We’re going to have our work cut out to do the upcoming Pipeline and Versailles shows. It makes me nervous just to think of it!

Have you any burning ambitions yet to fulfil?

To learn to use my little finger, probably!; and has anyone seen a Kay Barney Kessel artist out there anywhere? I’d love to have knowledge of electronics so I could tinker with my amps as well as my guitars. I’ve always hankered to play in a good blues band. Not a full on distorted Gary Moore job but something subtle and dynamic. I saw Albert Collins live a couple of times – in fact I went with Warren on both occasions. He was just incredible – quite quiet most of the time but then he’d let loose and blow your head off. Dead now, sad to say. Rest in peace, Albert; our loss is heaven’s gain - assuming he’s actually allowed to play the devil’s music up there. We went to see Albert King too and within a few short months he was dead as well! I’d love to go and see BB but I daren’t!

As a person wanting to get into the field of music have you any advice for people how to go about it?

Nothing that would be useful, I don’t think. I wouldn’t know what to say that wasn’t cliché-ridden – things like “keep practising” and all that stuff. Pretty well anything that happened to me happened because I was somewhere at the right (or wrong!) time and events just slotted together – I became an Engineer because I happened to know someone who was already working at Pye Studios and they got me a job there. The music business is pretty odd nowadays and I don’t have a handle on it at all. Sometimes in the spring, my wife and I go to Florida to stay for a couple of weeks with Alan Hawkshaw. Some of the guys you see playing in the bars and restaurants there are so gifted it almost makes you want to give up! And they’re just guys playing in bars and restaurants! If I was as good as they are, I wouldn’t be able to figure out how come I hadn’t hit the big-time. Which, I suppose is a fair indication that it’s not necessarily talent and practice that does it. But, looking back, maybe that was always the case. Mind you, if someone has the talent and the looks of Elvis how can they fail? Were kids more talented back then? I’ve got a feeling maybe they were. Certainly more inventive, anyway. But maybe that’s just because things were new and there was so much more to invent than there is nowadays.

In recent years of course you have been working very closely with Brian Bennett and indeed Warren Bennett with their composing work for television and film.  For the benefit of people who perhaps don’t know can you give us a ‘flavour’ of your job here?

To be frank, I’m still just the guy who twiddles the knobs and offers a bit of advice if it’s asked for. I think I’ve developed a reasonably keen ear for what does and what doesn’t work to picture and I’ll chip in my penny-worth if need be but in the main I try and help them to do what they have a mind to do as efficiently as possible within the time allowed, which usually isn’t very much. It seems to be that the music budget often comes right down at the end of the list. By the time the production company have got to that stage, they’ve usually run out of time and money! The funny thing is that producers and directors sometimes seem to think that the music can totally save the day when they’ve made a pig’s ear of the filming and editing. Of course the music can’t do that. The idea of music to picture is that it should add to or complement the mood of what is being seen on the screen, or to give a few clues as to the direction in which the story might be heading, but if I had a quid for the number of times a director has come into the studio and announced, “We need a bit of help!” I’d be rolling in it. If, for example, you’ve got a bunch of actors on the screen just aimlessly wandering about, then fast, exciting music isn’t going to make it look as if they’re involved in some thrilling chase scene. A lot of TV people seem to think that it can though. It’s actually quite surprising how a large percentage of directors simply do not have an inkling about the way that incidental music is supposed to work. In my humble opinion, the Americans are generally better at it all than we are. They tend to approach the filming, editing and scoring situation as a whole rather than as a bunch of separate, disconnected operations. I suppose it’s probably down to money in the end but talent and foresight must come into it as well. And I don’t mean the composers here. My heart goes out to Brian and Warren sometimes when they have to deal with such incompetence. Sorry – that’s not really an answer to the question, is it? Just me on my soapbox. If I’m working with Brian, he will have usually spent a week or so writing the music cues to the show. When he’s done, I’ll go in with him and we’ll start to record it. We normally mix each cue immediately it’s been recorded, looking at the picture as we go so as to keep the feel right. As for Warren, he will frequently get a considerable amount of the recording done himself before I come in – quite often all I’ll do is be involved in the mixing. Sometimes, if time allows and he’s keen enough, the director will come in and check what’s been done so that he’s happy with everything before the music goes off to the dubbing suite. Then at the dubbing suite, an enthusiastic editor will chuck deafening sound effects over everything so you can’t hear the music anyway! Reading back, it looks as if a lot of what I’ve said probably gives the impression that it’s a fruitless task, but far from it. It’s one of the most rewarding aspects of the job when you’ve got a good product to deal with and the music is really working well – even though many viewers may not even notice it. The thing that no one ever gets to see is the difference that the music actually makes – take it away and the vibe just goes with it. Henry Mancini wrote a book about his experiences writing music to picture. It was called, “Did They Mention the Music?” The title says it all.

I’m interested in your work with Warren Bennett - I know you have worked closely together on several projects - e.g.  the “London’s Burning”, what else have you worked with Warren on and when was the first time you worked with Warren?

I’ve worked with him on his music for “The Knock,” “The Ambassador,” “Wuthering Heights” and “Staying Alive” for example and on countless library albums. I started working with him years ago when he was in The Glass Ties.

If you had the choice to work with any Recording Artist you would really like to work with?

Top of the list would probably be Eric. Bonnie Raitt would be another choice – I love her slide playing. There’s nothing more enjoyable recording–wise than working with a whole band where everything’s going down at the same time rather than just doing a bunch of overdubs. So my dream-team would probably be Eric, Nathan East, Greg Phillingaines, Jerry Portnoy and Steve Gadd (or B.B!). With Bonnie Raitt on slide perhaps. Mind you, thinking again, doing a Fabulous Thunderbirds session with Duke Robillard on lead would be great, too. There’d also be a chance to see some fab guitars and amps! Too bad Cliff Gallup’s not around any more - best Rock’n’Roll solos ever - Hank’s excepted, of course. One of the most amazing things I ever saw was a session at The Music Centre where Jim Webb was recording some tracks for Anthony Newley.

I wasn’t on the session because I was up the corridor with Roy Wood but I stuck my head in now and again. During a break, I stayed in the studio Jim was in for some time and watched while he strolled around a full orchestra including a rhythm section and choir, just talking to the musicians, running through the parts he’d written for them. They finally went for a take and it sounded incredible – all those gorgeous soaring string parts that were so typical of his style. When it finished, something happened that I’ve never seen before or since: the whole orchestra stood up and applauded! Jim was by then up in the control room with a big spliff on the go and Tony Newley said to him, “Nice writing, Jim!” Jim said, “Thanks! It’s so nice to have an orchestra on hand and just walk around it and figure out what to do with it!” Blasé, or what? We are not worthy.                  

Do you read music?

Er..no. I can read the title and the chord shapes but that’s about it…..

Who is the most unusual person you have worked with and why?!

See the next question!

I see you have worked with Roy Wood...Perhaps you could tell us a bit about your time with Roy..? 

I worked on and off with Roy for about ten years in the seventies and eighties. I did a number of singles and albums with him including “Are You Ready to Rock?” during which I went on Top of the Pops with Wizzard in a gorilla outfit! He is a truly great guy and although I’ve not seen him for a couple of years now, I’m proud to call him a chum. He is an absolute mine of imagination and he would consider it a compliment if I were to tell you that he is quite irrevocably insane. And an amazing guitarist, too! We worked many, many long hours into the night until daybreak and came out of it with a close relationship. Despite his mental appearance he’s actually a very quiet, polite, introspective person and would be the first to admit that he used the make-up to hide behind. He’s very warm, honest and has a great sense of humour. His management mercilessly stitched him up as far as I could make out. Trouble was that he was gullible and trusting and certain people took advantage of it. Shame on them.

I believe you worked extensively with the band "Renaissance." Could you give our readers a flavour of your work with this band?

I did quite a number of albums with them. The first one was called “Ashes Are Burning” and was a monstrous hit in the States. They were very big for quite a while and their albums were great fun to make. They were good musicians and made a very distinctive sound and they wrote beautiful songs. We became firm friends but it’s been years and years since I’ve seen them and we’ve lost contact. Annie Haslam and I had a good working relationship and we got on extremely well although nothing occurred in a biblical sense! I introduced her to Roy Wood and they were together for a couple of years as I recall. I think she’s in America now. I believe they’ve had a few goes at making a comeback and every now and again I get a call to ask me if I’d be interested in working with them again but nothing has ever materialised. I’d be up for it.

What is your favourite Shadows track?

“Man of Mystery” – absolutely no contest. That solo was the wildest thing in the world when it came out. It still is! And I don’t wish to state the obvious but when you listen closely to FBI, it’s an incredible performance by the band and just about impossible to replicate. Mind you, “Hammerhead” is pretty damn good!! I’m not biased, I tell you.

Would you consider a classical theme for a future Vibratos album perhaps?

I don’t really think so, although I can’t speak for Woz (Warren).  I think a classical theme, unless of course you’re alluding to the “Grieg’s Piano Concerto” type of thing like on “The Cappuccino Kid,” would be a bit highbrow. It depends what you mean, I suppose. My first schoolboy band, The Sabres, used to play “The Sabre Dance” long before Dave Edmunds did it! If that’s the sort of thing then, yes, no problem. It would have to have some oomph and a bit of go and not be too serious. I don’t know about a whole album, though. 

What are your memories of the sixties?