Brinsley Schwarz - October 2004

Pub rock, the English roots rock movement of the early '70s, would never have earned a cult following if it wasn't for Brinsley Schwarz. Following a disastrous publicity stunt to promote its debut album, the band went into seclusion outside of London and developed a laid-back, rootsy sound inspired by Eggs Over Easy, an American band that had been playing a mixture of originals and covers in English pubs. Heavily influenced by Crosby Stills & Nash and The Band, the Brinsleys were a down to earth, self-effacing rock & roll band. Between 1971 and 1974, Brinsley Schwarz toured England innumerable times, playing pubs across the country. Along the way, they established a circuit for similar bands like Dr. Feelgood and Ducks Deluxe to follow. Though famous for launching Nick Lowe as an artist, the band was named after its guitarist, Brinsley Schwarz, a hugely underrated guitar player who went on to form the Rumour with Martin Belmont.  Brinsley currently divides his time between being head guitar tech at Chandler Guitars and developing his own range of boutique tube amps.  Brinsley was kind enough to meet up with us at his home in South West London recently to talk guitars…  

So Brinsley, what drew you to the guitar in the first place? 

Definitely hearing “Apache” by the Shadows. As a very young pre-teenager, I was already into Elvis, Fats Domino and all the early beat stuff, but wasn't particularly drawn by the guitar playing. Then I heard “Apache” for the very first time and that was it.

Do you remember your first guitar?

It was a cheap nylon strung classical I got on my 13^th birthday.  My parents said I had to have classical music lessons and show I could play “properly” before I would get an electric guitar. I learnt “Apache”, rhythm and lead, on the first day.  Then I got a 12 string acoustic and dabbled at folk (dreadful), before finally getting a red Hofner Colorama and a Wem Westminster amp.

Who was the big influence?

Obviously, Hank Marvin to begin with, and lots of the English beat groups, the Beatles, Stones, all the Liverpool groups, and the Beach Boys. I always liked the Searchers and the Hollies (both had great rhythm guitar sounds), and also Shane Fenton and the Fentones, that guy had a cool guitar sound, and Johnny Kidd and the Pirates (Mick Green was the guitarist).

Later, I was really influenced by Motown and Stax and early Ska and Reggae – I did the coats and pulled coffee in a mod night club during school holidays for about a year, so I heard “I Heard It Thru The Grapevine”' at least four times a night!

The next really big guitar influence was Robbie Robertson of the Band (and it was Garth Hudson, also of the Band, who influenced my organ and sax playing). The whole thing he seemed to be able to do was playing what was just right - not too much or too little, rhythm stuff with little lead things thrown in, and those short but very “to the point” solos. His guitar playing was very much part of the song and his solos seemed part of the melody - when I sing a band song to myself, I sing the solos as well. That's what I’ve always tried to do, take what I play from the song and make it part of it.

Hearing the Band for the first time coincided more or less with the time that what was known as beat or pop music in the sixties was being separated up into different forms, and rock music was being born and referred to.

It was at this time that I stopped listening to English music for quite a while. I was never really caught up in the Clapton/Hendrix/Page/Beck thing, never much liked any of the English rock giants - Yes, Who and all that - and I can't stand more than 10 seconds of any Led Zeppelin. Early Cream, and Hendrix singles, absolutely. Hendrix on “All Along the Watchtower” and Clapton on “Crossroads” are wonderful, but from, I don't know, around '69, it all went downhill for me and thank God for Crosby Stills and Nash and the Band.

I was also really greatly influenced by Little Feat (Lowell George and Paul Barrere), Steely Dan, (and all of their guitar players), Ry Cooder, Albert King, Dr. John, JJ Cale, Larry Carlton, Randy Newman and Robben Ford.

You're also known for playing the saxophone, did you take that up at the same time as the guitar?

I took up playing sax in '73, I think. I was into Garth Hudson, Junior Walker and King Curtis. When I once went into 'Footes' (major brass and woodwind store in central London) for help, advice, a new beginner friendly mouthpiece and reeds, the guy asked who I was into and when I told him, he said 'they're not sax players' and walked off. Terrifically helpful!  That episode greatly changed my way of thinking and ever since I have always thought to help any players less fortunate than myself.

Strange, though, that I should be known for playing the sax. I only played for a few years and was never very good. I was much more pleased with my Hammond Organ playing and did a lot more of that and for longer!

Name us some other saxophone-playing guitar players...

None that I know of, except maybe Garth Hudson, he plays organ, piano, all the saxes, accordion, lots of woodwind and brass, he's bound to be able to play the guitar and probably better than lots of guitarists.

So tell us how you hooked up with Nick Lowe.

I was in a local Tunbridge Wells band and we fell out with the bass player (the band's founding member) over musical differences. I had played with Nick at boarding school and asked him if he wanted to join, and he did.

In hindsight, it looked like a masterplan to get "back to basics" with Brinsley Schwarz, did it feel like that at the time?

Yeah, we deliberately halted the big country rock thing. Nick was starting to write more intimate songs, and really starting to find his own style a bit.  A lot of the bands we were listening to were like that too, the West Coast kind of thing – it all seemed to require that you listened to each other.  It really started when we played with Van Morrison in New York, which was such an eye-opener.  We’d never seen anyone play like that before.

Up until that point it seemed to be every band’s desire to get bigger and louder equipment, and we were definitely going down that route. It wasn’t until we heard Crosby, Stills & Nash, and the Band, that we started to waver and realised there was something a little better going on.

So I don’t know about a masterplan, but when we got back from the New York trip and we'd finished the work that had resulted from the trip, we decided it wasn’t really what we wanted – none of us, not even our manager, Dave Robinson.  So we got a house together outside London, started writing and playing together every day, got smaller gear and just learned to listen.

It's very hard doing research on you via the web because the band was named after you!  Who made that decision?

After Bob Andrews and Billy Rankin joined the band, and after we felt it was time to change direction, management etc, we thought we should pick a new name. We were to have a meeting where everyone would put forward their suggestions and then we'd vote. When I arrived at Nick and Bob's flat, Billy was there and they'd decided on the name 'The Brinsley Schwarz Band'. I did what I could to persuade them that this was a bad idea, but they were decided!

Was there ever any resentment that it has increasingly come to be viewed as Nick Lowe's band?

News to me, this wasn't anybody's band, it was a band. We all had functions within the band's life and we all felt that we were all as important as each other. It's no good writing a song if there's no-one to lay down the beat or someone to point out the bit that's no good.  We all shared the proceeds, including the manager and road crew. No resentment, I think we were all 'happy to be doing what we were doing'

The band was very much at the forefront of what became known as the "pub rock" scene.  Was that term accepted at the time, or was it entirely an invention of the press?

'Pub Rock' was an invented term, I don't know who came up with it first, but we stopped playing pubs as soon after we became heralded as pub rock masters as was possible. We were not happy playing big venues and wanted to get closer to the audience, we played intimate little songs and didn't much suit the big rock scene. We saw an American band, 'Eggs Over Easy', playing songs in a pub, and liked them. We talked to them, they were just doing what thousands of bands in the states were doing but no-one was doing it in England. There wasn't a 'bar scene'. We had to practically beg landlords in London to let us play, but it caught on and more and more venues opened up. We started it and found a place to play where we were happy, for a while!

Talking of the press, a key early event for the band was the Fillmore East album launch.  Can you describe what happened?

Well it’s a really long story, and it’s been written about many times (check the liner notes on CD “Surrender to the Rhythm” and the book “No Sleep Till Canvey Island”), from lots of different perspectives.  But the basics of it were that in those days you didn’t have much choice about getting your name out there – you could pay to get on a major tour, or you could try to do something different or one-off, that might elevate you.  That was the beginning of showcases really.  But you had to do something special to get noticed. Dave Robinson (Brinsleys manager, ex Hendrix road manager and head of the Famepushers management company, and later Stiff Records) asked everyone in the Famepushers group to come up with an idea of something we could do. I don’t know who’s idea it was, but the idea was to play the Fillmore in New York and invite the world’s press.  Everyone laughed and then of course it took hold.  We had record company interest, we couldn’t do the trip without record company backing, and they wouldn’t sign us unless we did it, so it was Catch 22.

So we did it, and to us it was an amazing adventure, but of course the story’s nearly unbelievable, if you tried to write it as a book people would think the whole thing was completely unfeasible. Out of the event we got more, and better paid, work, but we also learned that fame, and the media, is very fickle. But we experienced some positive stuff too.  American radio in particular was a revelation – 30 minute batches of uninterrupted music, Dylan, Hendrix, Van Morrison, The Band, Motown, really dynamite music.  Nothing like that in the UK of course.

What exactly caused the press backlash from the gig?

Well it wasn’t their fault really I suppose. Aer Lingus the airline have a lot of responsibility really.  Dave Robinson chose Aer Lingus as the airline to fly the press to New York. When he was confirming the flights someone from the airline said “Oh, is that for real? I thought you were joking”, and this was considerably late in the day. So the plane that finally arrived at Heathrow to pick up the press was not, how shall we say, fully functioning… So it immediately developed a fault at Heathrow that took 3 hours to sort out. The journalists had already gone through customs, so there was only really a bar to pass the time. Quite a lot of them had flown a fair way to get to Heathrow in the first place, so they’d visited a few bars already by that time. When the plane finally took off it developed another fault and had to land in Ireland, where the airport only really had a customs office and a bar.  I think it ended up taking them 17 hours to do the trip, so they must have got drunk and sobered up 3 or 4 times by the time they got to New York!

When they got out of the airport there was a 20 Cadillac Limousine cavalcade with a 16 motorcycle police escort waiting to get them to their hotel. But it was rush hour by this time, so they were really up against it to get to their hotel, and get to the Fillmore, let alone have a relaxing time, which was the original plan.  3 of them crashed and never made it, half of them couldn’t be bothered and stayed in the hotel.  We had bought the front 3 rows of the theatre and got permission from the Fillmore for those rows to use cameras, which wasn’t allowed then.  The Fillmore bouncers, who were pretty New York shall we say, had been told that only the front 3 rows could use cameras, so once those rows were full up that was that for the cameras.  Well naturally, no-one cordoned off the front 3 rows, so when the punters came in they took the seats.  So when the remainder of the press finally arrived people got bounced, cameras got smashed, all the rest of it. So I don’t know how many actually made it through the gig, but we got some pretty hefty hotel bills! 

While all this was going on we’d been having our own adventures. In those days you needed to have an exchange band to get Musicians Union permission to play and get the Visas. Love were our exchange band, and just as we were due to collect our visas, they cancelled and our visas were refused. We had rehearsal time booked at the Fillmore, so Dave said we were going to Canada, where we’d be able to pick up visas no problem.  So we flew to Canada, went to see an extremely officious American visa guy, and started to fill out the forms. Now the forms ask you if you’ve ever been refused a US visa. Dave said “just say no”, so we did and signed up.  After about an hour this guy calls us up to his window and says “I’ve got a million dollar computer back there that says you guys were refused visas, in London, less than 24 hours ago.  You guys wanna go to the USA? No chance” and threw our passports and visa forms back at us! So we got stuck in Canada for 2 days eating burgers and watching Star Trek.  Meanwhile lots of stuff was going on, a senator got paid, and finally it all got cleared on the Friday morning. Of course we were playing Friday evening, and hadn’t got any rehearsal.  So we were told to go back to the visa office under instructions to be truthful, and naturally, it was the same guy. He was clearly really pissed off and kept us waiting another hour while he had lunch. Well, we were a longed haired rock'n'roll band, and back then that was a big deal.

While this was going on the airport ground crew in New York went on strike!  So there were no passenger planes going into New York that day.  We had to charter this little 6-seater, and it was a nightmare flight, up and down through the clouds for 2 hours, horrible.  We landed at Buffalo I think, and when we handed our passports to the pilot to clear customs he just said “don’t worry about that I’ll say you’re American businessmen”. If we’d known about that in the first place we’d have saved ourselves a lot of trouble!  But we were like “no, we want a bloody stamp!”.

So got to New York about 5pm and by 7pm we were on.  That was the three of us though – Billy (Rankin, Brinsleys drummer) was a US citizen, so he’d flown in on Tuesday like we were supposed to, and got his own limousine to the hotel!  He checked in and then took up the limo driver’s offer of a night out.  So he’s outside the hotel waiting for the car, and there’s a bunch of other people, also waiting for cars. And this car pulls up and someone jumps out and stabs the guy standing next to Billy.  Billy naturally freaked out completely at this point and ran back to his room where he stayed for 3 days…

We had 2 shows to do each night, Friday and Saturday.  Friday was a nightmare, we were all terrified and stressed out, I couldn’t hear anything because my ears were blocked from the flight, and of course we were supporting Van Morrison, who completely overawed us. By the last gig on Saturday we actually did ok, we were more relaxed, got a groove going, and the audience were enjoying it. Of course the press were only at the first show on Saturday, so they missed all that.

When we got back to England on the Sunday, some of our parents were there to greet us with the front page of The Sun - “English Band Wastes £100,000 on farcical US trip”.  Half of the press had just written about the chaos, the few that had written about the music were not that favourable.  All understandable under the circumstances, but considering we’d just found out we weren’t as good as we thought we were it was a bit painful…

We realised pretty quick of course that if you say to a journalist “I’ll pay you to come over to the States to review our band” they’re more than likely going to write something negative, as anything glowing will look like you bought the review.

How much did this affect the band's popularity at the time?

Well, we certainly gained considerable notoriety, which enabled us to get a lot more and better paid work.   You know that thing about “all publicity is good publicity” is pretty true.  Richard Williams of the Melody Maker might have slated us, but at the management agency the phone was ringing off the hook. On the Continent in particular we were a supergroup.

But the big thing that we all learnt was that fame is fickle and maybe not what we needed or wanted at that time, We wanted to be a band and good, we'd played with Van Morrison in New York and he and his band were good in a way we didn't really known existed. And so we quit the fame/rock/glam nonsense, moved into a big old house together and started to learn how to play together, seriously. (Going back to the “being good thing”, later on GP and the Rumour did a short tour with Kokomo, we used to watch the bands we supported a lot, and one evening I went to the side stage where I found Steve - Goulding, our drummer- watching with tears streaming down his face. I asked if he was OK, and he told me that Kokomo's drummer was just unbelievable. It was like a religious experience for him. We all had those. I remember seeing Andy Fairweather Lowe after a Ry Cooder concert, the Chicken Skin Music one, he was standing by his seat, unable to leave and completely gobsmacked!)

Looking back, everyone pinpoints Brinsley Schwarz as one of the pivotal bands of that era, you were certainly critically acclaimed (most of the time) and had some powerful advocates (Paul McCartney etc).  Why do you think the band never really achieved their potential?

What WAS the potential? We were certainly out of sync with the rest of the industry and probably with mainstream musical tastes.  I remember, in Germany, people thought we were a 'pop' band because we didn't have hugely loud distorting guitar sounds and most of our songs only lasted 3 or 4 minutes.  “Marketing” wasn't in our vocabulary and we must have been a nightmare for our record companies. But wasn't New Wave a rebellion against all the self indulgences of '70's rock?  We just got it early and only a few fans were ready to hear it then.  Perhaps, we never really did justice to ourselves in the recording studio, although, looking back, the records don't sound bad and some of the recent remasters sound pretty good. We all lasted a pretty long time, though, we all came out of it with our self respect intact and with a lasting respect from the industry. And we've still got fans. Sounds OK to me.

You had some great contemporaries on the guitar and songwriting side, Wilko, Dave Edmunds etc, and you did quite a few sessions in that period.  Was there a lot of collaboration going on?  Who did you rate?

As I said earlier, I was not really into any English players during the early '70's. I did like and learn from Dave Edmunds (he produced one of our albums in '73/'74, and we supported and backed him on tour in the UK. He showed me how to play Chuck Berry, properly!)  I liked Tim Renwick and we hung out occasionally and  still do, but mostly we just got on with our stuff. Later in the '70's, when the Rumour and Stiff Records started up, I did a little session work with some of the Stiff artists, but the Rumour was so busy that there wasn't really time for anything else. We hung out with some of the bands we were touring with - Ace, Kokomo, Southside Johnny and Thin Lizzy, who were all great bands.

We seemed to tour a lot with Thin Lizzy, probably the only English rock band I liked (well they played songs too) and I got to know Scott Gorham, whom I still see from time to time. I knew Elvis and the Attractions, of course and Ian Dury and the Kilburns, but there wasn't that much collaboration, I think we were all too busy, and my favourites were still Americans, the Band, Little Feat and Steely Dan, Ry Cooder and Randy Newman. Most of what I wrote in the Rumour I wrote on tour, and we helped each other a lot on the three Rumour albums.

Tell us about hooking up with Ducks Deluxe and The Rumour.

When the Brinsleys broke up in early '75, I had nothing, except my wife and two kids, a guitar and amp and my share of the band's PA. After a failed attempt at squatting in Chelsea near some of the guys from Chilli Willi (they were a good band) we ended up moving back in with my folks, who were always very supportive. I didn't know what to do, being in the Brinsleys had been a bit like being married and I'd just got divorced. So I just hung around, practised the sax a lot, sold all of the equipment and bought a '60's Jazzmaster for £85. And a great top boost AC30 for £70. I remember those prices, because I found the receipts not long ago in a box of old stuff. The AC30 had the original blue speakers, which I took out and chucked away, I put EV SRO's in instead!

Martin Belmont had lived with us and roadied for us and he asked me along to jam with Ducks Deluxe, which I did, we got on so when they asked if I'd like to join, I did. Playing with Ducks Deluxe was a bit of an eye opener for me, no laid back, sit in the groove and play the song, it was breakneck speed, hell for leather and raw. But it wasn't long before they broke up too.

Dave Robinson, the Brinsleys manager and eventually a Stiff Records co-founder, had installed an all valve recording studio upstairs at the Hope and Anchor pub in Islington and was learning to use it by inviting groups of players to record something. The first time he invited me along, the six players were Graham Parker, a singer/songwriter Dave had found; Martin Belmont of Ducks Deluxe; Steven Goulding and Andrew Bodnar of Bontemps Roulez; and Bob Andrews and myself from the Brinsleys. We recorded three tracks of Graham's, I think. Afterwards, the five of us got to talking and decided that we'd got on well together, so we arranged to loosely form a sort of “lets do some playing together” band. So we got together weekday afternoons in a pub in Peckham and after some months were getting to be a band. Meanwhile, Dave had taken Graham's recordings around and had eventually secured a deal. Since we were on the original tapes and were virtually a ready-made backing band they asked us along.

We agreed to do the album and tentatively one tour of the UK to promote it. That turned into the five very busy years for what became Graham Parker and the Rumour.

Graham Parker and the Rumour were another "nearly huge" band.  Martin Belmont's given us his perspective on why it didn't really happen for the band, what's your view?

Why Graham never made it, I just don't know. Maybe, like the Brinsleys, we never quite got it down on record. I definitely think we were let down by some producers, (Nick Lowe being one exception on 'Stick to Me'). Maybe we were let down by the record companies, I know Graham thinks that - listen to Mercury Poisoning, it's not about liquid metal!. Who knows, once again, we all emerged intact and better off. The Rumour's reputation is as good or better than the Brinsley's and we all had a pretty good time most of the time and did some great stuff. “Making it” isn't really that important, that you're alive and happy is.

That whole period, from late 60's to mid 70's is regarded as transitional between the big bands of the 60's and the advent of Punk.  The pub rock thing has been pinpointed by many as one of the primary influences on the early Punk bands, is that true?  Did you like Punk when it was happening?

I'd disagree with that, there was plenty of good music around between 1969 and punk. I didn't really see punk as a musical thing at all, rather a social rebellion, and there were some pretty canny people around in the music and fashion industries taking full advantage and making their fortunes.

The only way pub rock had anything to do with punk was that because of pub rock there were places for punk bands to play. Pub rock, apart from being music played in pubs, was definitely r'n'b based - real r'n'b, I mean, not what masquerades as r'n'b now. 

No, couldn't stand Punk, worse than Led Zeppelin, if that's possible, and every bit as appalling as House was! Sorry. I'm glad to say, I was too busy playing to take much notice of it.

So The Rumour split up in what, 80? 81?  Why?

We split up in '81. Graham had called a temporary but lengthy halt, we had carried on without him and Bob Andrews, made another album and done some touring work and I guess it just became time to do something else.

And what came next for you?

For me, it was the same as before when the Brinsley's broke up, except my kids were older and we had a house, but the same removed feeling. So I just hung around. Rod Stewart's people phoned and said Rod would like me to join the band, but then Rod went walkabout and I never heard from them again.

I had bought some guitar parts when I'd been in the States last (from Rudi’s in New York). They were to build a Schecter Strat (when Schecter just made replacement parts). I took them along to Chandler Guitars in Kew and asked them to build it for me, but I also asked them if I could do the final setup work in their workshop. When it was done, they all had a look and Charlie Chandler asked me if I'd like a job repairing guitars. I started doing a couple of days a week on the understanding that if I got called to play, I would go, and that was fine.

Meanwhile Graham had recorded his 6th album “Steady Nerves” in New York with some heavy duty US session guys and was putting a touring band together. I had gone over for a few months, trying to get into something, and had stayed with our old US manager Allen Fry (you still out there Fry? give me a call). I made a New York loft space into his new office virtually single handed - built partition walls, a suspended ceiling, renewed all the electrics, the lot. He was managing Graham and they needed the one right guitar player for the tour and luckily I got the job.

So from then until late 1989, I played on Graham's albums and toured with him - it took up about 7 months a year - and the rest of the time I was doing more and more guitar repairs at Chandlers.

As well as playing with Graham, I produced two albums with him, “Mona Lisa's Sister” and “Human Soul”, both in the late '80's. We toured every year, the rest of the band were American for most of that time and it was an eye opener to play with American guys, they do have a different approach.

Saying that, those last two albums were with English players, - Andrew Bodnar from the Rumour, and Pete Thomas from the Attractions (my favourite drummer I ever played with). During the eighties I practically became Graham's live music director.  I remember one time strangely finding myself in the position of trying to show Carlos Alomar how to play reggae rhythm guitar! He just couldn't get it and we swapped roles in the end on that track - “Don't Ask Me Questions”.

Then in 1990, Graham wanted to do a record by himself and started using an American backing band and so I stopped playing. I'd had enough of it by then anyway, finding it increasingly impossible to set foot on an airplane and wanting to be at home with my family, although my kids were about grown up. I started working full time at Chandler Guitars and threw myself into trying to make other people's guitars better than what I'd used.

In the mid '90's I became intensely interested in guitar amp design and now offer mods and rebuilds to old Fender amps. I am trying to get my own amp designs off the ground and into the market place. They're tentatively called 'Road Runner' Amplifiers. I have a workshop at home, where I do that and some guitar repairs and I still do two days a week as head repairer at Chandler Guitars.

My problem is I don’t have a lot of time, and I seem to change my mind a lot! 

Are you doing anything musically these days?

Since I stopped playing professionally, I have played occasionally with friends, often on bass, which I enjoy.

I also have enough material to record at least one album and I hope to start that later this year - I'm excited and pretty apprehensive at the same time.

Otherwise, I love to just play. I have a couple of great acoustic guitars, an old Martin and a Baby Taylor, or I take one of my electrics out to my workshop and bash away through my “converted to complete tweed specs” silverface Fender Champ (sounds terrific).

I also have a Princeton, a Vibrolux, a Bandmaster, a Bassman 50 and a Twin Reverb, all silverface, all modified. And I have a Marshall PA20 and a Groove Tubes recording amp.

Still in touch with Nick Lowe?

I occasionally speak to Nick and Bob, although he's been in New Orleans for years now. I keep in touch with Andrew, Martin and Steve from the Rumour, but I haven't spoken to Graham for a while.

The twin Rumour guitars of you and Martin produced some memorable moments live, did you develop a complementary style, or was it just there?

Martin and I didn't have to work at it too hard, we just seemed to naturally want to play in a different place. We got on real well most of the time.  Check out us playing on the track “Empty Lives” on “The Up Escalator” if you want to hear what I mean.

Martin mentioned the time with Thin Lizzy in New York when everyone left after you guys finished.  Did that ruin a beautiful friendship?

No they just rehearsed a bit harder before the next gig! I still see Scott Gorham and he still remembers that one. You have to bear in mind we’d just been through the Midwest with them, where it was really hard work for us, so it was nice to see some fans and go down really well with an audience..

(Pics in this section © copyright Ian Glendenning with thanks)

How has your style developed over the years?

I think there was a definite time sometime around '77/'78, where a lot of the influences started to come together and I reached my own style. Since then I guess I've absorbed more and I've learnt quite a lot more about music, gotten into Steely Dan chords and voicings, listened to an awful lot of blues playing during the '90's and hardly any since. I suppose I just hear the one thing that seems to be right to me in a song and then try to play it. I hope I'm more melodic and more able.

You had a deal with Hamer for a while didn't you?

Yup, I did. One of the head guys, Jol Dantzig, came down to a soundcheck in Chicago and showed us some guitars.  I really liked one of them and said I'd have it. Turned out it was his own and not for sale. He said they'd make me one and I said no thanks, I just wanted that one, so he sold it to me and I became an endorsed artist. Later they made a black Explorer for me, one of the first all black guitars made, I was into black then. And that was a great guitar.

As a guitar builder yourself, do you have any particular loyalties to a particular guitar, or are you always in "I can improve it" mode?

Ah, the loaded question!  I'd say that, in general, guitar players have limited knowledge of guitar construction and build quality and are quite often biased by hearsay and legend. I know that this applied to me for a lot of my playing life, but I got by for 15 years. I remember in 1978, I was playing a Gibson Flying V, I loved it and it inspired me. One night one the crew bashed it and broke a couple of the controls. We were in Boston and it got taken to the big store there to be repaired. I went to pick it up the next day, and it came out, fixed, but with a note from the repair guy that it really needed a fret stone and a set up. Slightly miffed, I airily dismissed this and went on my way. 10 years later, I had become an experienced repairman myself and understood only too well what that guy had
been saying. So, from the average guitar player's point of view, most guitars, if they're working OK, are OK. But from a repairman's point of view, they almost all need working on!

Taking individual areas on guitars, and let's name names, I haven't seen a new Gibson guitar since the early 80's that didn't need a fretdress or at least a fret reprofile - why do they put square frets in their guitars? They feel awful and can't play cleanly!

An awful lot of guitar necks (and Fenders are prime examples) seem to like to bend around the 15th fret, we call it a kick-up, it can cause bad fretting out if you want to bend strings and have a lowish action. They need fretdressing but half of Fender's guitars are made with little vintage style fretwire, one fretdress and you've got very small frets and so it's even harder to bend strings and more uncomfortable to play.

Ibanez are real good at 'kickups' but at least they have big frets, so you've got something left after a fretdress.

Can't understand why Fender make so many Strat and Tele models, when really we all just want the one... it  looks and sounds like a 50's or 60's guitar but suits modern playing.  After all, no one was bending their top string across the board in 1960.

Vintage reissues sound right but don't play right and the modern models, like the Strat Plus, can play right but don't sound right.

I could go on, but I'll just say that after 23 years of guitar repairing, I'm not that impressed with most of the major companies and have seen some pretty dire excuses for an instrument and quite often from the expensive “custom shops”.

The big companies have become OK at producing lots of OK guitars at OK prices.

But there are people out there making guitars under the “I'll make it as good as I can and it costs what it costs” banner instead of the “there's a hole in the market for a Strat or whatever at $499, what can we make?”  I've hardly ever seen a poorly made PRS, Tom Anderson or Taylor guitar, never heard a pickup made by Lindy Fralin or Van Zandt that didn't sound really toneful - there's lots of good people out there making good things, just don't go by the name on the headstock, it doesn't mean much, except for maybe the resale value.

I know quality costs and also that high cost doesn't necessarily mean quality, but, in general, I'd buy a PRS over a Gibson and a Japanese reissue strat over a US one every time.

Does that go for amps too?

I'll be in trouble over this as well, but it's just my opinion.

Fender used to make dynamite amps back in the 50's and 60's and even their 70's mess-ups can be made to sound great, and they're all built like tanks.

Nowadays it's all tiny components on crowded printed circuit boards, too many channels and too much switching, too many LED's inside and little scratchy sounds and questionable reliability. Amps with circuitboard mounted pots and jacks are just a breakdown at a gig waiting to happen.

For tone, it needs to be as simple as possible, components as big and good as possible and the old circuits. I build an overdrive circuit based on the tweed Deluxe, it has a gain, a tone and a master volume and it oozes fat silky overdrive tone. Think of all those great old amps, the Deluxe, AC30, Marshall PA20, AC15 etc. they all had one tone control!

Rob Bohner and I have proved to ourselves, and to others, that the actual physical size of components makes a difference in tone. We've changed out little stuff in newer amps and put in old style, but same type and value, bigger components and heard big tone improvements. And it's not like they knew better in the old days, back then big components were the norm, so they were cheaper than the small ones. Nowadays, with miniaturisation so important for computers, it's the smaller components which are the cheapest. So that's what people are using. Printed circuit boards with small components bring manufacturing costs down. But for components, we're talking a few pence, maybe a dollar or two per amp. I don't see the point, wouldn't most players pay a touch more for good tone?

I'm still modifying old silverface Fenders and my friend Rob Bohner still does his great serious rocking mods to old Marshalls. We've done quite a few over the years now and some for some not insignificant names as well. So if you're wondering, at some time, how come that amp sounds so good, it just might be one we've had our hands in!!

The vintage guitar market shows no signs of slowing down, but values for "the usual suspects" seem almost crazy these days.  Where do you stand?

It depends how you look at the vintage guitar market. I was watching one of those bargain hunt auction programmes on TV recently and somebody paid over £300 for two one inch high porcelain figures of Noddy and Big Ears - crazy! (Childrens story book characters for those not into Noddy).

So as collectable items, some guitars, amps and pedals are definitely worth considering, although I'd say that returns on some, like a '50's Strat, might not be too much anymore as the prices are now so high.

As playing instruments, well for a start, would you take one out to a pub gig or let an airline handle it for you on tour? Secondly, this whole idea that every guitar made before 1965 is fantastic is just fantasy. True, there are some great old guitars, but I've seen some pretty naff ones as well. They're all made from wood and no two pieces of wood sound the same and handwound pickups are not all wound the same, so it stands to reason that they made some duff guitars then, just as they do now.

The really silly thing about all of this is that the cause of it all was down to a big drop in quality from Fender and Gibson in the '70's, people started to see that the earlier instruments were better and so their second hand prices started to rise.

Now, the '50's and '60's stuff has become so expensive people have been paying higher prices for those '70's guitars, whose poor quality caused the start of the vintage guitar market. Now where's the sense in that?

The only reason to pay house deposit prices for a vintage guitar is because it's more than likely that it'll go up in value. I've got a '58 Les Paul Junior which I bought a few years ago (part of my pension) and it has almost tripled in value, it's a good guitar but I don't really like it that much.

For me, guitars are made to play and if they play well and give you joy, then that's it, no matter what the name on the headstock is, when it was made or what colour it is.

Buying a vintage guitar is so fraught with dangers nowadays as well, there are some very good fakes around and I find it increasingly difficult to tell them apart.

Gibson and Fender spotted the market a while back with the now standard reissue and custom shop offerings, do you think their success is down to guitar players being a backward facing bunch?

I don't think we're necessarily backward facing, I think vintage guitars have an inflated reputation and it's become accepted and unquestioned.

Guitar manufacturers are just promoting and exploiting that. I've seen so many guitarists (myself included) buy the wrong guitar because of the name on the headstock or the colour. I'm just amazed that people haven't sussed it yet. And there are things I just can't comprehend. Why would anyone spend over the odds on a guitar that has been deliberately made to look old? Do you see anyone popping into town to buy a new toaster and then asking for it to have some burn marks and scratches added? Or would anyone buy a new car and ask for it to be keyed, maybe break a headlight and put some cigarette burns in the seat?  And then you have people who fuss over the smallest dent in their baby or spend hundreds converting to gold parts, why? So that the gold plating, which is nowhere near as long lasting as chrome or nickel, can become tarnished, pitted and wear off.

I've seen people refuse a really good guitar and pick the next naff one because of the colour. You can't see it when you're playing it! And worse of all, I don't understand why people buy via mail order just to save a few quid. All guitars are different from one another, one Strat will suit you and the next 50 won't. I'd never buy an electric guitar without first trying it through at least two different amps and in at least two different rooms. Buy strings or a packet of biscuits mail order, yes, but never a guitar.

Can guitars evolve?

I can't see it happening. Have any of the recent more radical designs taken off? PRS was the last manufacturer to come up with something new that has lasted and become successful, and that was partly because he reintroduced quality into a stagnating poor quality industry. But Strats, Teles, Les Pauls, 335's, SGs, Martin acoustics, I don't see any of them ever going away. It's astounding really, Leo got it right, the right body shape, the right pickups, the right bridge, back in the 50's and despite years of technical advances, it's still our favourite. And those early designs have also survived years of mucking around with and bad manufacturing decisions. No, Strats are here to stay, just like valve amplifiers!

Will guitar players evolve?

I'm sure they will, although I can't see where it might go. But then, I remember when the guitar industry was getting scared of the “keyboard uprising” and that nobody would need to play guitars anymore. Guitar heroes were a dying breed, then Van Halen came along! There's still new stuff being done, for instance the guys in Linkin Park sound pretty different to me.

But maybe, it has all been done now, technically, and all that's left is for guitars to be used towards the song, just back to where it started!

So what's next for you?

Well I hope to get my Road Runner amps out there. They'll be point to point, hand wired and hand built. I use 'chosen for tone' quality parts and there'll be three or four different circuits to choose from in three or four power amp and amp type configurations. And I hope to be able to sell for around half the price of a typical US made boutique amp. You can’t really get one of those for less than £2,000. I'm working on three Roadrunner models which are tentatively called 'Recording', 'Club' and 'Stage'.  'Recording' will be a single channel small combo, about 20 watts, one ten inch speaker. 'Club' is about 40 watts one ten and one twelve, and 'Stage' 50 watts and maybe in head and cab form. I have 4 preamp designs, two clean and two overdrive, one of each with treble, middle and bass controls and the others with a Tweed style single tone control, which is definitely my favourite way. The two smaller amps will be valve rectified with the resulting softer feel and less headroom. The two bigger amps will come with any two of the four channels.There’s no switching inside at all, all the channel switching is done via an A/B box, which allows you to use loops on the A/B box as well. I think internal switching is damaging to tone.  It's been a long and sometimes painful process, but I'm just about ready to order transformers and start speaking to people about building me chassis and cabinets, so maybe I'll actually start producing soon. That'd be nice

I shall carry on repairing, I specialise in refretting, setting up, custom innovative wirings and in fretdressing, by hand - no German made computerised fretdressing machines around me, it’s more vorsprung durch knowing what I'm doing and what guitarists want!

I hope to record an album and get it released, and I'll see where The Beautiful Losers take me.

What’s your current setup?

Main guitar is my Strat, and my Thinline Tele as backup.

The Strat has a lightweight alder body from Warmoth with a neck from a Fender Japanese '62 Reissue. The fingerboard is recambered to a 12 inch radius for a better action, although I don't set up my guitars that low, - around 1.75mm treble side to 2.25mm bass side -  and refretted with Stewart McDonald 149 fretwire, which is very similar to PRS wire. (this slightly chunkier fretwire is what allows a guitar to feel comfortable to play but with a slightly higher than average action, I think it's the difference between fret height and action that's important, when that difference gets too big, you have an uncomfortable guitar.) It has two PRS McCarty humbuckers and the Deluxe 5 way switch allows some good wiring tricks.

How does the wiring work?

The 5 positions are:

• Neck humbucker
• Neck humbucker partially coiltapped - to give a slightly hot neck
  Strat pickup sound (very realistic).
• Both pickups partially coiltapped - gives a cross between a Tele
  middle position and a Strat position.
• Bridge humbucker partially coiltaped - more like a hot Tele bridge
  than a Strat bridge sound. (Don't you just love Tele Bridge pickups, when they're a touch hot and have a nice warmth in the bottom end, fantastic!)
• Bridge humbucker.

It’s got partial coiltaps, which I sussed out (maybe invented) about five years ago. They’re achieved by using a resistor to ground from the junction of the two coils, instead of a wire. The ordinary coiltapping wire dumps one
coil to ground, turning the pickup into a weak single coil, but the resistor turns down the second coil (always do this to the inside coil) instead, leaving part of it in circuit. This keeps the the pickup pretty well hum cancelling, so no sudden single coil noise, and gives a fatter much more realistic single coil sound. And you can tune your pickups to the type of single coil you're trying to emulate by varying the resistor value.

I once did this to my PRS 22 fret Custom and got a pretty good Strat neck pickup sound, this guitar and my current Strat often beat real and sometimes '60's Strats in backs turned tests, so I think the idea works very well and especially if you get into trying different resistor values.

Both tone controls are masters, working on both pickups, but one has a small value cap, a .0047uf, which rolls of just a little high end, producing a 'woody' sound instead of a muffled one.

The tremolo bridge was custom made, it's just like a vintage Strat bridge but with Gibson string spacing (which matches the pickup spacing and also keeps the strings in from the edges of the fingerboard a bit better), PRS saddles and an aluminium block. Very important thing the trem block, the different materials available do alter the sound and I prefer the less dense aluminium, like on the PRS McCarty bridge and those old Gibson 'featherweight' stop tailpiece bridges. I think the lighter material gives a less hard sound and produces more dynamics.

Lastly, I've recently discovered 'Easy Mute', a company which produces an offset tremolo arm, as used by Hank Marvin, which is much easier to use. They also have a block insert and arm tensioning system which completely eliminates trem arm wobble and rattle (for life) while leaving it as loose or tight as you want. I sent my trem off to be done, it came back really quickly, completely set up as it was, and with a great trouble free trem arm, very impressive!

What about your amp setup?

My amp is my first Roadrunner prototype. It has two independent channels.

Clean is my version of Fenders '60's preamp. I've just made it a little more open sounding tonally, and a bit more giving.

Overdrive is my own design. All I can say is that I've aimed for Robben Ford and Larry Carlton, so smoother than the high gain amps, and I've tried to keep control of the bottom end, which I find is a failing in so many modern amps. But it'll do blues and more traditional rock too.

Both channels have their own valve driven parallel effects loops, mine are instrument level, but line level is easy.

The amp is valve rectified, has two 5881's giving just over 40 watts, five 12AX7's and one 12AT7. I use Sovtek or Svetlana valves.

What’s your view on NOS valves?

Don't believe in the new old stock stuff, I've been burned too many times and so have some of my friends. I
think Sovteks are just fine and you can always easily and exactly replace them.

What speakers does the Roadrunner use?

It has one ten inch and one twelve inch speaker. The ten is a Celestion G10L35, which is surely one of the best 10" guitar speakers ever made. Of course Celestion have discontinued it and now produce something that isn't one of the best, in China!  You should keep accountants out of product decisions!

I'm trying a Celestion Century Vintage 30 at the moment, not too sure about that yet.  I really like Celestion Classic Lead 80's (one of Eric Johnson's favourites) but I do appreciate the weight (or lack of it) with the Centuries.

And effects?

My Effects board utilises the fact that my amp has two independent channels and a loop for each. I change channels via an AB box. But this also has two loops, one for each amp channel.

On the clean channel loop I have an MXR phase 45, which I use as a sort of chorus. I don't like mono chorus and the phase 45 is a bit like a univibe.  There’s also a Boss VB2 vibrato, a Demeter Tremulator and a Fulltone Fulldrive 2.

The overdrive channel loop just has a Fulltone Fatboost, which I use to reduce gain to the overdrive channel, cleaning it up a bit.

Each of the amp's effects loops have a Boss DD2 and an SIB Echodrive mixed together, I use the DD2's for a one hit short delay, a la Robbie Robertson's guitar or John Lennons' vocal, and the Echodrives for longer multiple echoes. The Echodrives are real valve driven echo machines and are truly marvellous, the best I've heard, and, apart from anything else, sound very Hank marvin! You can get them at Chandler Guitars.

So this is all set up so that as I change channels on the amp with the one AB box switch, the pre-amplifier loops and the echo loops change as well. This allows me to preselect what effects I'm going to use on different parts of a song and switch back and forth between them all with one footswitch. Sort of like a midi set up, but without midi!

I use one of the new Peterson pedal tuners and everything gets power from a Voodoo Lab Pedal Power, which is very versatile and quiet.

Finally Brinsley, if you could only own one guitar, what would it be?

Ah, that would depend on what I was going to be doing.

The best guitar I have and my favourite is my PRS Hollowbody II. My Thinline Telecaster I made myself from Warmoth parts with Van Zandt pickups and some special wirings. It has my wife's name inlaid in pearl on the fingerboard, so I have to keep that.

The Strat is my “do all” guitar, so I'd have to keep that too.

We all need an acoustic, so I'd keep my 66 Martin, and the baby Taylor for holidays.

So I couldn't choose just one, it would have to be five, but if you push me, then I'd keep my Thinline Tele. If I had to go out and buy one from scratch, it would be a PRS Hollowbody 11.

Brinsley Discography

We asked Brinsley to pick his own discography based on what he was proud of from his career to date.

Brinsley Schwarz.

• Nervous On The Road.  (United Artists 1973)
• New Favourites.  (United Artists 1974)
• What Is So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding?  (Hux Records 2002)

The Rumour.

• Max.  (Vertigo 1977.  Hopefully to be re-released soon with some live radio tracks on Hux)
• Frogs, Sprouts, Clogs and Krauts.  (Stiff Records 1978)

Graham Parker and The Rumour.

• Stick To Me.  (Vertigo 1978)
• Squeezing Out Sparks.  (Vertigo 1979)
• The Up Escalator.  (Vertigo 1980)

Graham Parker.

• The Mona Lisa's Sister.  (1988)
• Human Soul.  (Demon Records 1989)