LEO SAYER: Nobody’s Clown

Trenton, New Jersey is not the likeliest place to go hunting for good vibes. Situated precariously close to Philadelphia, the city is a unique mixture of the very dull and the very, very dull. Yet, backstage at Trenton’s War Memorial arena, the atmosphere is decidedly “up.” Gaggles of lobotomized groupies stand in hallways not quite knowing what to do as various British rock munchkins dart in and out of dressing room doorways, completely ignoring the nubile emissaries from Mary Quant Inc. Alex Harvey^is there, complete with white-faced band members and he finds the scene fu,nny as hell. He laughs boisterously.

Leo Sayer finds the experience humorous too, but he just giggles. With two hit LP’s (Siluerbird and Just A Boy) and a smash single (“Long Tall Glasses”) under his belt, the daffy, diminutive singer-songwriter genuinely enjoys wowing a crowd and loves to be wowed back—which is ' just what happened bare moments before. “The kids out there are amazing tonight,” he beams, wiping ,his face on the way back to his dressing room. “When we first came here a year ago, we played mostly clubs, you know. It was an older crowd since yomhad to be old enough to drink. I thought This is fantastic! I can’t believe it!’ But this is really IT: to play bigger halls with younger fans. Wow! This is fantastic!” He is wearing a smile that looks like the front grille of a Cadillac. “Sometimes I just get so happy about all this,” he laughs, “piy head hits the ceiling when I walk. It’s like walking on clouds.”

Within the^span of~two years, Leo and songwriting partner Dave Courtney have gone from writing hit tunes for Roger Daltrey to topping the charts themselves. Hitting American shores in early ’74 dressed in clown make-up and touting a potential top tenner, “The Show Must Go On,” Leo won over some enthusiastic fans but lost his footing in the hit single area when Three Dog Night copped his single and his stage act.

“The whole first American tour was a bit of a.struggle,” Leo recalls. “It was great fun but both the clown approach and the single caused me a few problems. To begin with, the tour came just at the’ end of my Pierrot period. Originally, I dressed in clown make-up for two reasons. The album, Silverbird, was thqmatic. It was about the loner, the clown-loser character in me, in everyone. It also was a pretty good way to get the audience’s attention. I really don’t think it was a gimmick but, looking back 6n it now, it was a pretty good gimmick wasn’t it?”

Leo scrunches his face into a stew of wrinkles. “But then the clo\X/n began to get painful. My wife made the suit and put on the make-up and in the beginning it was all fine. It was a way for me to hide from the audience, to keep a barrier between us. I was a bit shy, really. But as I began to get into performing more, the clown got in ,my way. I couldn’t keep up the pose, keep up the barrier. I’d do a couple of numbers and theri start walking up to the audience and say things like ‘Hi. Howya doin’. Enjoyin’ the show?’ Completely destroyed the act. There was also the problem of not being able to touch my face for five or six hours at a stretch that got to be annoying.”

Leo then lost his single to Three Dog Night which miffed him, until the bowwow burglars showed up at one of his West Coast performances. “I couldn’t stay mad at them, they were such nice guys. Besides, I guess it was a compliment that they did that song. I mean, I’m telling my life in my songs. They’re all very autobiographical. They’re slices of my life. So when someone says to me ‘Hey, I like that song,’ they’re really saying, ‘I like that part of your life.’ ”

“ ‘The Bells of St. Mary’s’ is about me when I first startedPlaying blues harmonica and then throwing it away to become a pop star. It was like throwing away my roots, the saddest part of my life. Now I’M me. I have a responsibility to them, to their dreams not to become big headed and snobbish. It’s a bit of a problem, though. Half of me wants to be a star, the other half wants to keep my feet screwed on the ground. I suffer from being ambitious and still wanting to be quite human. I’ll probably wind up being quite miserable,” he pouts in Emmett Kelly fashion.

While succes&certainly hasn’t caused Leo Sayer any earth-shattering setbacks, it has made some aspects of life difficult, like ^ongwriting with partner Dave Courtney “I’ll be getting together with Dave when I get back home and we’ll write the third album. I have the lyrics and he has the tunes. I haven’t seen. him since Just A Boy was recorded. We were great buddies in the beginning, always hanging out on each others doorsteps. Now we just see each other once irj a blue moon and write ten or twerity songs in a day. It’s not really a social relationship. We just real. ized that the music had to come first. When we were together a lot; we didn’t create as much. Now he’s going to do a solo album, too.

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“It’s funny. If you listen to my songs you can hear both Dave’s and my own influences. He’s into the Beatles, The Beach Boys, the Eagles...He’s the ballad man. I was always into soul, blues and gospel-folk. I’m the bouncey one, the ‘Ldng Tall Glasses’ guy,” he laughs. “I guess you could narrow down my influences as being ‘from Dylan to Womack.’ ”

A thin, somewhat frail member of Leo’s band leaves the room and Leo points with pride to the retreating rock ‘n’ roller. “He’s ^really changed my_ music,” Leo beams referring to keyboardist Chris Stainton (better known as Joe Cocker’s alter-rigo). “The songs are much rockier now. The bands funkier, the energy level is explosive!”

“I always wanted to play with Chris. He’s one of my all time favorite pianists.

I was all ready to leave for the states this time* around when my old piano player decides to quit. My manager, Adam Faith, asked me who I wanted to contact. I told him I always wanted to play with Chris. So I call Chris and say: ‘Hello.. .GULP.. .GULP.. .would you like to be inna band? Then I collapse. Chris calls back. I get up off the floor. He tells me he has a group already together and we start rehearsing. It was...how embarassing...magic. We all played together. There was none of ,this snobbery . You know, ‘Ere now! I can’t play this. It’s only got four chords!’ Or, ‘Well, I’m really into Mahavishnu but I’ll play your stuff coz I need the money.’ We’re a band. They get off on the music as much as I do.”

Not noticing the time, Leo sits and chatters away for almost an hour, revealing little known facets of his career (“Did you know that I was Andy Fraser’s first choice for lead singer in Sharks?”), his early life (“I really wanted to be a portrait painter until I ran away from home. When you’re old enough to run away, ^ou’re old enough to listen to de blooze”) and his ambitions (“My favorite people are Dylan and Chaplin and my dream is to be as important to people as those two were to me.”j.

Finally, it’s time for Leo and Chris’ crew to hit the road. Leo cuts up a bit, playing the clumsy bumpkin for anyone who is watching and theri tries to remember anything he might have left out of the interview. “I guess I’ve said it all,” he muses. “Tell everyone thanks for everything,” he says dashing out the door, referring to his fans.

What’s Leo Sayer’s secreti, both on and off stage? Maybe Leo sums it up best. “I’m like a reporter singer-songwriter. I just write down what I feel and what everyone feels. You can’t argue with your heart and you let your heart write the sbngs.”