The Return of Spencer Davis

The Return of Spencer Davis

Spencer Davis suffers from a peculiar affliction — his name is tied inextricably to that of Stevie Winwood, it’s almost certain that, first time around at least, he’s in bad shape. Even if Winwood hadn’t split the Davis Group after their two smashes, (their only two, aside from a minor jam called “Time Seller” that flitted in and out of the charts [with equal rapidity] in ’68 somewhere), Davis would probably still be a non-entity.

Though “Gimme Some Lovin’ ” and “I’m A Man” were truly incredible records, a dynamic introduction to the basics of Winwood’s popularity and the final edge of the British R&B boom, about to retreat to “purer” forms, a la May all and the Bluesbreakers and methedrine/psychedelia, a la Cream and Winwood’s new gang, Traffic, Spencer never seemed the primary focus of them.

It didn’t help any that the Davis Group was never really anything more than competent after Stevie left, either. All sorts of post-pop-star impressions could be gathered, of course* and a re-listening at this point might be deserved. For Winwood never blossomed, or even turned in the high-energy direction the Davis singles and the first Traffic albums pointed to; rather he descended into the unmitigated muck, the slushy S*T*A*R excess of Blind Faith — surprise, surprise . . . it’s Stevie’s group, they all said. Amazed that Ginger and Eric hadn’t fully dominated the youngest of the British super-cult(ure?)-heros.

All the while, what’s Spencer Davis doing? Grubbing it out that’s what. Left a shade bitter by the knowledge that it was, by and large, the press who’d created the Winwood-is-the-SpencerDavis-Group myth. But grubbing it out, none-the-less.

“Before the hits, Stevie was around. Like 1963 and so ... it wasn’t just an eighteen month sort of thing and ’Isn’t he great’ and ‘He ought to be on his own’ and ‘It should be called the Stevie Winwood group’, “Spencer begins. Sadly, he shakes a head that’s seen more of a pop scene designed to propagate that sort of thing than he’d care to remember “I mean, that was the sort of thing that damaged me mentally. A lot of the papers, a lot of the fan (an almost predictable semi-sneer) sort of took that attitude. Things like Fabulous an A Rave and that sort of thing. They got around, they have some of the biggest circulation outside of the U.K.

“They sort of latched onto Steve Winwood from two points, one of them more right than the other. First there was the pretty boy thing and then there was the musician. I think the musician was the most important. He was really a good rrtusician... he is still a good musician. But he lacked direction, he always seemed to lack direction. I don’t want to bask in old glory but I like some of the things that we did with the old band much better than some of the things that ended up being done by Traffic.

Well you know, Traffic have split

again. It’s all over.”

For Spencer, perhaps, the Lennonesque dream is not quite over. Certainly, the nightmarish pop travels of the journeyman musician may be in the past but at 31, that’s fine, about time and ain’t it right to settle down?

Spencer Davis could never have been a Rolling Stone but he might have made a fine Beatle. Even now, he’s clean-shaven, like he cares, you understand? Hair neat, shirt white, trousers pressed. Very, very much the gentleman; not at all the outlaw.

His new partner, Peter Jameson, a fine bottleneck player, though that isn’t much exhibited on their first album, is younger and more tousled. Pretty, not unlike Winwood. And extremely talented. A flashback here, to earlier times, seems not at all paranoid.

“The psychology of that . . . when Steve split, from the group, remember, Chris Blackwell was manager of the group then. And also with Island. He called us for a meeting and said, ‘We know what this is about, Steve’s gonna leave’. Sort of with dramatic overtones, like ‘What we gonna do next?’ The idea, his idea, was that Muff (Stevie’s brother), Peter Yorke and myself stayed together and we got maybe two other guys. That was what Blackwell went on. I didn’t see making it into a five piece, so I disagreed for a start.

“When a group splits, very often not only does the band split but the agency, the management splits. People sort of dive out. One of the guys who dived out at the same time I did was John Martin. I formed a thing called Spencer Davis Management with him in 1967. The idea was that if I was gonna quit playing, I’ve got this management thing to fall back on, The idea, to me, was to try to get people into the agency who I thought were creative, artistic, talented or whatever. And that didn’t work. I should have really not bothered about that side and continued on the management side. That period of my life was just one of trying to be like .. . five people. You know what a schizo is, imagine five times removed, you know? It’s even worse!”

Not unlike the rest of us, Spencer Davis had come face-to-face with his own personal demons. A decision was in order — to be the Spencer Davis of lore or to (on the other hand) become the Spencer Davis that might be.

“That’s sort of really what happened to me. I was advised to keep the name going. What I really didn’t know was how to capitalize on my own name for my own sake. It got to the stage where one guy offered me 10,000 pounds for my name. So he could stick it on a group, and send it over here. Now we knew what’d happened before with the Animals, the so-called Animals, the so-called Guess Who — the So-Called. But I couldn’t go along with that, I just quit. That was it for me.”_

Prior to the ultimate dissolution, though, the Davis group had been a sort of mini-Mayall pop training ground for young musicians. “There was the group, if you want a rough rundown after Steve split, the guy from Shotgun Express, Phil Sawyer and another guy called Eddie Hardin Joined.

“Phil happened to be a little on the insane side. The only thing he lacked was a certificate. He disappeared. The last I saw of him was about a year ago, sitting in the passenger seat of a W.H. Smith (paper delivery) van in London.

“So I replaced him with a guy from a group called After Tea, a guy named Ray Fenwick. He used to write with a guy named Hans Von Eichman. They had a big hit here with ‘Ma Bell Amie’ .. . that’s the Tea Set or After Tea. Which is where our Dutch influence came in; we had big hits there.

“Ironically enough, from a recording point of view, we had less success in England after Steve left, because everybody was wired up that he was the Spencer Davis Group. So if we’d have put out a blockbuster, you know .. .'it wouldn’t have gone. Because it would have been ‘The Spencer Davis Group Without Winwood’. That’s what happened with ‘Time-Seller’. It went to Holland, like to No. 2, a big seller and in Germany and all the rest of Europe. I think it even sold well here in the States, in fact. But a lot of people thought that was still with Stevie.

“Then Peter Yorke, and Eddie and myself, went on. Basically I tried to accomodate Eddie. He wanted to get a heavier drummer, so we were gonna get Eddie’s friend in, from Andwella’s Dream. But all this shuffling of personnel! It was getting me down. I regretted it with Pete. After that there were Dave Hines and Dee Murray, of Mirage, and then I replaced Dave Hines with Nigel Olsen of Plastic Penny.”

At this point, Hardin/Yorke are quite successful in England, Olsen and Murray are doing a bang-up job with Elton John and Muff Winwood is an executive with Island. Fenwick did an album (as the Spencer Davis Group, so it won’t be

released) for Columbia. The rest have disappeared. Still, pretty impressive for a virtual nobody.

Apparently, more than just Davis’ accumen for picking up good sidement was recognized in Britain. He also did a few sessions, out of which came the idea for his present group.

“I went over to Essen, Germany, in October of ‘69. It was all over, I was gonna split, you know, just go off. So I went to Germany, and I just played on my own. I used to go to university there so I have friends.

“When I came back, I was asked to do some sessions for Immediate, by Paul Williams, who’s now lead singer with Juicy Lucy. On the session were Alan Davis, Cat Stevens, Jon Mark, myself, another bassist, just on those sessions, cutting a lot of Robert Johnson

material. This is all acoustic stuff, guitars and things.

“I really liked what Jon Mark and Alan were playing. Then we decided that we might form a band, a soft band. With the bassist and drummer from Georgie Fame — I didn’t really see it working cause this wasn’t the direction I quite wanted to go. It seemed to me that joining a group with Alan Davis, Jon Mark and myself was virtually like me joining a group called Sweet Thursday. Which I wouldn’t have minded blit ... it didn’t have any direction. Jon wanted to do all his own songs . .. but anyway, I just worked with Alan.. We worked around Europe and Germany, then Alan did a session for Island, on a Cat Stevens album. And he was also playing guitar with another guy, a South African. So I found Peter,

running the Bottleneck Blues Club in the East End.”

One looks towards Jameson, for confirmation — a light smile, a soft tip of the head and that’s it. No animation, just watery blue eyes and curly blonde hair. Deja vu.

“We just went off to Germany and we haven’t been back since. But still hardly anything in England! The place where I like to play most, the place where . . . Well, anyway, we’ve been doing it, you know, writing and living here, in Los Angeles.”

In August of last year, Spencer met Jay Senter, head of Nix-Nox Productions and producer of the first James on/Davis album. The record is soft, almost like a folk-rock album . . . not like Phil Ochs, or Eric Anderson as much as say, the folky things the Kinks u£ed to do, or those of Tom Paxton. Strange. The first side is for elevators, the second goes down much better with lukewarm beer. It’s appeal is elusive but on the second side, it’s there. The second one could be much better.

Still, where the fuck does Spencer Davis get off playing all this quiet shit? I always envisioned it as 3 raucous sort of sound. Well, it is true that Spencer has passed the magic mark of age, that he has learned and mellowed (towards what end is unclear) and it is also true, surprisingly, that he has deep roots in folk music.

“I used to play folk clubs in ’56, ’57, just on my own, acoustic folk clubs, doing Leadbelly, Broonzy songs. I was doing this in Swansey, in south Wales, where I was born. This was the art-school bunch, so here we go it’s history repeated again.” And here we go, destroying the brief illusion of the story of escape from the killercoal mine and Black Lung disease or whatever the fuck miners catch.

“There was a club called the Gyre and Gimbel which was then the place where Stuttering Chris from Becksley used to play twelve-string. Used to play a lot of rag-time guitar. That’s really my background.

“But when I got into Birmingham, that’s what started the whole Winwood sort of thing. Inside that time I also found time to busk around Europe, playing in France, Germany.”

Still, that shadow looming over your right shoulder is Stevie Winwood’s, Spencer. It’s a shame in a way but that’s the way the pop biz goes these days. More’s the pity.

Dave Marsh