Jeff was interviewed by Real Music Spotify podcast presenter Gary Stuckey in the lead-up to the HERE & NOW album.

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GS: Hello everybody, it's Gary Stuckey with Real Music. I've got Jeff Christie of the band, Christie. And if you remember back in 1970, they had a number one hit song called Yellow River. It was number one in 26 countries.
    Didn't quite make it there here in the US, but it was number 23 and that's a great song. I've always loved it and I'm going to talk about the song and Jeff's career and what he's been up to. He's got brand new album coming out next month, going to talk about that and a lot more.
  So, Jeff, when did you start writing songs and playing guitar?

JC: The writing didn't come early. I started playing when I was probably about 13 playing guitar and starting in my first groups when I was about 14, around very, very early 60s and I didn't start writing probably till about a few years later. And the reason I started writing was quite simply because we were starting to fail record auditions.
    You know, with the whole scene, it was the 60s … it was a time for original material and songs. We were at one record company audition and the A&R man came up to me and said "it's a good little band, Jeff, but you're not going to get a deal unless you start writing your own songs".
    I was the only one either with the ability or could be bothered to sort of try and start writing the songs to see if we could get a deal and that's how it started. It just kind of fell to me and I discovered that I liked this. I kind of really enjoyed it because when I was a lot smaller, I took piano lessons as a kid when I was probably about 8 or 9 and, you know, would be sitting there reading music and trying to play Beethoven and Mozart. And there came a point when I thought to myself subconsciously, I can't play this stuff like these people, there is reall not much point in me just trying to copy them. And from there I just started doodling around on the piano, making up my own little tunes and then I parked and forgot all about them until, you know, several years later when I started playing in groups.
    I was playing guitar. All I ever wanted really was when I first did Buddy Holly and Elvis and that changed my whole direction because up until that point I kind of figured I wanted to be a musician by about 11. I had it worked out. I think this is a cool job. This is the best job in the world to be a musician.
    I had the dream and kind of was lucky enough in it as much as my parents cut me enough slack for a while to follow that train I was on.
    So I got to the point where suddenly Elvis burst on the scene. Probably when I was about 12-13 and that just changed everything. And I remember really sort of being blown away like half of the rest of the world and then in turn spawned all the other great rock'n'roll acts coming out of the states.
    And we started hearing that on the radio over here. And then the next thing that happened was groups springing up all over the all over the place all over the country and guitars were really back in vogue.
    And I wanted to play a guitar and I got my dad to get me a really cheap old second hand Spanish guitar, second hand guitar and I'd come back from school and I'd practise chords till my fingers got sore and bruised and sometimes even bleeding. But I was kind of like a kid obsessed. I discovered that the time that I spent learning the piano had given me a real leap forward with the guitar because I knew, you know, basic music structure notes and crotchets and quavers and chords.
    That knowledge plus a really good ear for music, helped me sort of kept moving quickly with the guitar, and in no time I could sort of play the intros and the guitar solos to (songs by the like of) Buddy Holly and Gene Vincent Stuff and Eddie Cochran. I could do all that stuff when I was about 14 and so I made a lot of headway quickly.
    The groups I was in were all formed around me, and we would start playing more and more away from home and travelling around the country and got to the point where as I say, when I was about 16-17, those auditions turned me around and I started writing.

GS: So when did you really start realising when you were in these bands that things started coming together and something was really going to take off?

JC: Its like an apprenticeship. The first time was a unit called 3G's Plus One. Because everybody in the band was either called Geoff or Gerry, which I think is an English spelling: G-e-o-f-f. But mine was J-e-double F and so that was I was the plus one.
    These guys were all university students and a bit older than me and I was really nervous. I remember that they used to play at this youth club and there were probably two or three years older than me and I nagged them to let me get up and play with them. At that particular time I had also discovered Duane Eddy and I could play his songs.
    The band was playing a little bit more sophisticated Latin stuff and they let me get on stage with them and I they didn't really know this music, but I kind of showed them and it was fairly simple. And I remember playing and there was some kind of little dance concert.
    And I was just so nervous, I I never looked out at the audience at all. I just stood there on the stage playing. I remember the song was Duane's The Lonely One. I was just a bag and nerves and I just looked down at the floor and just played it.
    That band folded pretty quickly because a couple of these guys then moved out of Leeds but one of the others stayed with me and we became really good pals. And we put together an outfit called the Tremmers. We really started doing a lot of instrumental stuff from the Shadows. The leader, Hank Marvin, was pretty much an icon in the country and very influential guitarist.
    We're all doing all these instrumentals and then eventually times changed and we had to get a vocalist. So we got a white guy and we got a black guy. The black guy did all the Little Richard numbers and the white guy did all the, you know, the Bobby Vee stuff and we kind of plodded along like that for a while.
    What emerged out of that outfit was the band The Outer Limits, the third band that I'd had. And of course by this time I was starting to write in many ways be the engine of the group. The white singer that we had went back to London and the black singer that we had, unfortunately, started having a lot of alcohol problems and started missing rehearsals and missing gigs.
    I used to have to learn all the songs for him. You know, I'd be sitting down with Little Richard records and I'd be with a little record player and I'd be getting all the words for him and giving them to him to learn. So I already knew these songs and one night he didn't turn up for a gig.
    There's a club in Leeds called the Tahiti. And we can just get residency in this place right on Saturday night after we've been doing other gigs, you know? We'd take all our gear up three flights of stairs and we'd do a like three half-hour to 45 minute sets.
    So he didn't turn up one night and there was really the panic in the band because he was very popular. The other guys said somebody's gonna try and sing some of these numbers and again, it fell to me, and I thought, well, what's the worst that can happen: everyone all disappears.
    But they didn't, and we actually got applause. So I didn't do a bad job. It wasn't what I wanted to do. I didn't want to be the lead singer. I just wanted to be a guitarist. That's all I really wanted to do. So fate played a hand and then we had a few more gigs and I was doing these songs.
    We got to be a really well-known band and we travelled the country, had a couple of records. The first record was Just One More Chance which have had quite a few covers, including two American ones.
    And then the next record we had out was The Great Train Robbery and unfortunately the BBC banned it because there had been a Great Train Robbery at the time.
    Then we ended up going on the Jimi Hendrix Pink Floyd Tour, which was amazing.
Unfortunately, there were too many forces pulling us apart. But the main thing of course, is that there just wasn't enough money to carry on. And so we split up. And that's when I really concentrated on writing, I think.
    From 68 to 1970, I just really focused on writing by which time I was really improving a lot and coming up with some good songs. So in a long winded way, The Outer Limits was definitely the best band before I was in before I broke through in 1970 with Yellow River.

GS: OK, so now we're up to that song. Yellow River number one. Hit song. I know it's gonna be a good story behind the song. Can you tell me about it?

JC: With my band, I had supported all the big groups at the time: the Who, the Kinks, Yardbirds, Hollies. And I knew a lot of these people, or at least to say hello to. And it was a time when you could actually get to them. You can't get to big acts and big stars now, with their managers and lawyers and minders.
    But those were different days. And I just took my songs around to a lot of people. I'd written this song for the Tremeloes called Tomorrow Night, which was very much in the style that they were having success recording.
    And I'd written Yellow River as well. And it was, it was really quite prolific at the time. I was pulling in a couple of songs a week for a period of about a year.
    And I went to see The Tremeloes amongst other people, and I played them a bunch of songs and nothing was happening. And then I played them Tomorrow Night, but they said that was exactly the style of material they were trying to get away from.
    Which kind of stunned me. And then I was about to pack up and I had a Grundy reel-to-reel tape recorder and the next song that came on was my demo of Yellow River.
    And they basically went for that, they loved it and they said "Can you give us a copy of that? We'll take it to London, we'll record it and we'll let you know". This kind of dragged on for months. First of all, they were gonna put it out as a single. Then they changed their mind. It's gonna be a B-side. Then they talked about putting it on the album. And in the end, they decided not to put it out at all.
    So they kind of put me on this emotional roller coaster because at the time they were a very popular band and they were having hits. Chances are if it had been a single, it would have been a hit and it would have opened doors to me.
    I mean, things were moving for me. People were aware of me and The Outer Limits did have a really good reputation and I had some sort of muscle, if that's the right word, but obviously not as much as I would have had if I had a hit record under my belt.
    But there was a buzz about the song in London and the music industry over here. The record companies, their personnel and management and agents, they all loved the song and basically said "We've heard your demo, you do it".

GS: So when the song hit Number One, can you tell me about how excited you were?

JC: It was a very exciting time and it was Number One here for three weeks and nothing was getting anywhere near us until Mungo Jerry came along with In The Summertime. The group's Ray Dorset and me are friends, and we often joke about it. Had he not come along, we'd have probably had another week or so at Number One, but that's how it is, you know? But Number One in 26 countries isn't bad. It was massive in the states as well. It was in the charts for just months and months.
We toured all over the world for the next five years.

GS: What I always love about that song is how it keeps kind of rolling along and reminds me of Creedence Clearwater Revival.

JC: This is this is quite interesting because, speaking of CCR, I love Bad Moon Rising, which was a similar time.
    But the inspiration for Yellow River was the Jimmy Webb song called Galveston, which had been done by Glenn Campbell.
    I was a massive Jimmy Webb fan and I was also a big fan of Glen Campbell and especially the period when Glen Campbell was recording a lot of Jimmy's songs.
    I just love the songs and I love the way Jimmy arranged them, but prior to that, for some time I'd taken a fascination in the American Civil War, and not only that, about all the Native American tribes.
    So when I heard Galveston, I knew it was about a soldier dreaming of home. It seemed to spark my imagination and that really was the inspiration for writing Yellow River.
    I remember one of the lines in Galveston was "I still watch the cannons flashing". I used a very similar line, "Cannon fire lingers in my mind".
    The follow-up was the song called San Bernadino, which didn't make a great impact in the States. It got into the top under the lower, lower levels, but it was a big hit all through Europe and the UK as well. It was number one in Germany, got to about Number Five here and it was a pretty big hit. And then there was another song I had called Iron Horse, which was a small hit in this country and also successful in Europe.
    And then the band basically broke up. I moved to the states in Los Angeles and I was looking at just pursuing writing.
    I was living over there for probably about 16-17 months and then I had to come back to the UK because my father was very, very ill and I came back and then I kind of got stuck back here and that's life.
    And I didn't do anything for a couple of years. And then I got called down by an independent label in London who arranged doing an album with me and I did it, did some recording and those albums came out eventually, but not till I think 2007, 2008 and 2012.
    And then I put lots of stuff out, things like demos and outtakes and things, as there was a certain amount of interest for doing that and so we got to this last phase.
    I don't sort of churn it out. I reject a lot of things. It's a bit like, you can write a song and think it's great. And then six months later, you may think maybe it's not so great, and so I just don't let them out. I don't really want people to hear them. It's a quirky thing I guess, but I don't feel obligated to just saturate the market like some people do it. It's never been something that's appealed to me. I try and put something out when I've got something that I feel happy to put out and that can be sometimes quite a few years!
    I'm just happy to write songs and put them out at my own leisure, and of course the industry has changed so much now and so much is online: and that's where this new album is going, to be coming out online on September 13.

GS: So can you talk a little bit more about that album?

JC: It's a little enigmatic, but it's got it's got a bit of attitude. Here & Now is the title and in some ways it's saying, well, that was then and this is now, but really nothing's ever changed. The cover (means) I'm still a kid and I'm still wanting to, you know, play my little guitar. It's also difficult sometimes to get really nice pictures of yourself. And I thought, how can I do this a little bit different? Well, maybe I use this little kid photo and I work it around and everybody just fell in love with that picture of me as a kid that doubled up, sort of duelling with each other.

GS: Looking back over your career, you know in the music industry, there's all kinds of ups and downs. Do you have any regrets or anything that you would change about it?

JC: I suppose I've been very fortunate in many ways. The main thing I try and carry with me is that I've survived very rough, tough business. I've lost a lot of friends in this business through substance abuse over the years. And I'm still here and I don't really have a great deal of time for regrets. It's life, you know, it's the ups and downs.
    Everybody has bad stuff going on in their lives and you take the rough with the smooth, as it were, and try and be philosophic. Yeah, as much as you can try and do that.