A
LOOSE transcript of a Radio Leeds show which Jeff did with
host Roger Day in May 2008 to promote the Outer Limits/Jeff
Christie double album.
RD:
We’re talking to you, Jeff, because there’s a
reissue of a band I didn’t realise you were part of
.. The Outer Limits.
JC: Yes, the Outer Limits
.. more than just a TV show!
RD: I must have played
it in my pirate radio days, because on Radio Caroline there
was a thing called Caroline Sure Shot … new records
… and I seem to remember that Just
One More Chance was on the playlist. But it didn’t
actually make it, did it?
JC: In a way it did make
it. There was a top 50 and it was in a section called Bubbling
Under. I presume that would mean somewhere between 50 and
60, so technically speaking, it was a small hit. It got
to number 1 in Berlin also, by the way. It also spawned
more than a few cover versions across the world .. it was
covered by two American bands, one on the east coast and
one on the west coast. The west coast band was called the
Hondells, who had Glen Campbell playing one time, which
is very strange, because it was Glen Campbell’s recording
of a Jimmy Webb song, Galveston,
which was the inspiration for Yellow
River. It’s funny how things come around. I
had the pleasure of meeting Jimmy Webb a couple of years
back and I said to him “I gotta tell you one of your
songs inspired me to write a song which eventually became
an absolute smash hit all round the world, reached no 1
in 26 countries, and sold zillions of records”. He
was well pleased with that. He’s an extraordinary man,
great talent. A modern day genius.
RD: Who were your other
influences?
JC: Well, songwriting influences
and obviously guitarists. I started off playing classical
piano and gone from there and was influenced by rock and
roll of course after seeing Elvis Presley. Of course Buddy
Holly was an inspiration because not only was he a frontman,
he was a writer, and a great writer. And of course people
like Jimmy Webb, who I mentioned, and people like Burt Bacharach
and classic American songwriters, like Cole Porter, Irving
Berlin, people like that. Also Lennon/McCartney, and Becker
and Fagan of Steely Dan. Some of the West Coast musicians,
the Eagles, Link Wray …
RD: We were talking about
the Outer Limits reissue on the Angel Air label. You toured
with Hendrix ..
JC: Yeh, what was his name
.. Jimi. It was the last of the great package tours. There
was Pink Floyd, the Move, who were massive at the time,
there was Amen Corner .. There was a review recently in
Classic Rock which did a four page spread on the tour and
if you want to know what the tour was like, find a copy
of the magazine .. the review was just accurate. It was
an amazing tour from November to December. Royal Albert
Hall was one of the gigs .. first time I had played there
.. I had been playing for years and years with the Outer
Limits and I was never nervous about playing live. But I
remember playing Royal Albert Hall, which was so overwhelming
.. it was very exciting .. I remember opening up the first
number, my mouth dried up so badly I thought I was going
to swallow my tongue .. but we went into auto pilot somehow
.. I really was nervous on that gig. It wasn’t the
cast we were playing with, we’d played with most of
the big names by then .. the Outer Limits were a very hardworking
band, touring up and down the country.
RD: One of my favourite
stories is how you wrote Yellow River,
offered it to my old freinds the Trems and they foolishly
turned it down.
JC: We just couldn’t
make any money so I went into a writing hibernation .. I
was trying to make my way forward as a writer after the
tour because I had no band anymore .. in those days, you
could still reach the other bands, the big acts .. it was
helpful also because I had worked with so many of them,
I’d turn up at the gigs, and I had my reel to reels
with me and I tried to get them to listen to them. The Trems
were appearing locally .. I’d actually written a song
specifically for them, Tomorrow Night
… in those days I was writing three songs a week …
they listened, it was getting time to go, and I was in danger
of overstaying my welcome, so I played them Tomorrow
Night, but they said that was the type of song they
wanted to get away from. I was on target but they changed
their target, so to speak! The last song they got to was
my demo of Yellow River, which
was done in this very studio I’m talking to you now.
They started to get into that, they started harmonising,
asked if I could leave them a copy, and they’d get
back to me, so that’s what I did … it went on
for months and months, and at this stage I was like a yo
yo .. one minute Yellow River
was going to be a single, then on an album, then it was
going to be a B-side, in the end they decided to go on with
their own songs. They wanted a change of direction from
the revamped Italian ballads they used to do. To this day,
the Trems say it’s one of their biggest mistakes to
have turned it down. Alan Blakley told me that before he
died, and I’ve worked with Chip Hawkes who said the
same thing. Yellow River was
just one of those songs which took off and caught everyone’s
imagination.
RD: We used to play Yellow
River all that summer. Earlier on you mentioned the
Eagles. It’s interesting there’s a Malaysian band
called the Eagles who
have done a cover version of Yellow
River.
JC: There are so many
covers of that song. There some amazing versions. I’m
more proud of covers by people like Elton John, Doyle
Lawson, REM did it a few years ago .. and then there’s
the French Tom Jones Joe Dassin, he had a massive hit with
that called L’Amerique .. it’s a funny thing,
so many great artists have done that, but nine times out
of 10, people say it’s not the same as the original.
The original artist knows it’s their baby, it’s
so special, you may not be the greatest singer or guitar
player, but you put something special into your own song.
RD: I want to talk to you
about a very underrated band, old chums of mine, who used
to be Harmony Grass, and turned into Capability
Brown, and a couple of them joined you in a reformed
Christie.
JC: That’s true, in
fact the last time I saw them was at a Steely Dan concert
a few years ago. They were with us for the last eight months
of the life of Christie. They came to Mexico, South America,
Roger was the drummer, Tony Ferguson was on guitar. It was
kind of getting towards the end of the shelf life, personnel
were coming and going, I had it for five years and was getting
tired. It’s like being married .. you’re in the
same hotel, on the road with them, so wrapped in each other’s
lives, you don’t really have a life outside of that,
it’s very difficult.
RD: You’re still gigging?
JC: Yes, I did a TV show
in Hamburg a few months ago, I still gig, most important
part is I’m still writing, that’s the point of
this interview. The double CD is representative of the Outer
Limits and there’s a solo disc called Floored Masters
which I did in the late 70s and early 80s … it’s
good to have these out .. it’s also had
fantastic reviews in the states .. whether it makes
any money or not, it’s kind of a nice feeling to have
it out there.
