Tuesday 7 June 2011

Interview with Paul Dean of legendary 70's rock band Jerusalem by Sebastian Żwan


1. I know that John Mayall was your inspiration to start the band. Do you still listen to his music?
Yes, especially all the early music up until he went acoustic for a period. In fact I saw him live in Dublin about 8 years ago when he was supporting Van Morrison. As in the old days, his band was made up of great young blues musicians, who as with his past musicians will I'm sure go on to become substantial artists in their own right.....
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2. You were not professional musicians. You just decided to play. Do you repent of choosing bass guitar?

No, not at all. Really enjoyed it especially live - all that power belting you in the back, a real spine tingler. I also think playing bass or drums gives you a better overall understanding of the sound of a band as opposed to the players of the lead instruments or vocals. Some of the best Producers in the World were originally bass players or drummers.....
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3. At the start you were responsible for vocals. Could you tell me more about this period?

Basically, someone had to do it and as I did most of the writing it seemed logical that I should be the one singing my own lyrics etc. I was quite reserved and quiet in those days, so I really had to push myself to take the lead. Surprising what you can do if you really want to do something badly enough. Even though I did eventually turn it over to someone else I think it gave me a better understanding of putting everything together. For example, I'm amazed sometimes when producing bands, the lack of thought about keys. Quite often the person(s) writing the songs (especially guitarists) do not take into consideration the right keys or vocal range of their vocalist. I did return to vocals with Pussy but I had no pretensions of becoming a great rock singer, I knew my own limitations, it was the overall sound that was more important. I stopped singing permanently shortly after the Gillan/Dean album 'Rocks On' on the advice of doctors; I had done too much damage to my vocal chords. I now have a very quiet voice and cannot raise the volume otherwise nothing comes out. If I'm ever in trouble I cannot shout, just have to wave a lot haha....
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4. You decided to name the band Jerusalem. Why?

Absolutely nothing to do with religion. It was actually the only piece of music I liked during compulsory school assemblies, it had a bit of balls and passion about it (poem written by William Blake and Hubert Parry the music) plus it is an incredibly strong sounding word with many connotations outside of religion. Think the music was first performed in 1916 to support the Votes for Women campaign. There is a line in the piece of music 'Till we have built Jerusalem on England's green and pleasant land'. It kind of sums up the ideals of those people throughout the World who continue to fight for freedom, democracy and human rights for everyone everywhere in the World. To me Jerusalem stands for the vision and hope of the millions who are still oppressed throughout the World by those dictators who use politics, cultism, religion and fear to subjugate and fool the people. E.g. Iran, N.Korea, Zimbabwe, Burma and Tibet to name only a few.....
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5. In some opinions you've made a new genre releasing Jerusalem. Do you agree?

Looking back it would now seem so, yes, but don't ask me to put a label on it! We were very different in the sense that we were raw and at times crude (quote Ian) at a time when most others were using new technology to make everything cleaner and more sophisticated, which was totally not what Ray and I wanted. We were constantly derided by some of the media and music business as rubbish. It now appears that we had the last laugh as within a few years the kind of sound we were creating in '72' became huge worldwide through a new generation of bands. We have been likened to what has become Metal, Stoner, Doom, Punk etc., but to us at the time we were just a dirty rock band. To be honest I don't actually even think that Bill, Bob and Lynden understood what Ray and I were after, but thankfully we did achieve it briefly. By the way this genre thing does become quite amusing at times, I have to laugh when I read bits by people who have not done their research e.g. 'Jerusalem were obviously influenced by Metallica' – that would be pretty amazing considering J were years before M.
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6. You were writing music with your bass. That's quite unusual. Could you tell me more about the writing process?

To be honest it started by accident. I was always a bit nocturnal so making a noise in the family home late at night was a problem. Therefore my unplugged bass gave me the answer. I have always been turned on by riffs, which you will notice exist in virtually all the Jerusalem songs. I would therefore build a song by creating one significant riff plus a few subsidiary ones, then a vocal melody to run over it, a few breaks and middle eight maybe and finally the lyrics (sometimes much later on except for the title). I would then present it to the band and we would gradually build everyone's parts. Funnily enough, when we hired Lynden I had to change the order around. Lynden already had the lyrics for Hooded Eagle, Midnight Steamer and When The Wolf Sits which out of his stuff I liked the most. So, I then came up with the riffs, melody, breaks etc., except for Kamikaze Moth which I built and then he had to write lyrics for. All the other Jerusalem songs were pre-Lynden.....
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7. Describe your first meeting with Ian Gillan. I know that you were playing some Sabbs stuff when he came in.

Yes, that's right. It was actually the very first Sabbath album. My sister was an old friend of Ian's from his Episode 6 days. Deep Purple had just made number one with Black Night and In Rock was a monster album. They were playing in Bournemouth or Southampton and my sister brought Ian back to our house for the night. He's a great guy; very down to earth so we just started chatting about music after he had asked whom the album was by. Funny how he would end up with them eventually for a short time. Anyway we really hit it off and over the years we used to do a lot of stuff together outside of music e.g. motorbike scrambling, football, horseriding, golf, cards, darts, drinking!! etc.....
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8. Nowadays, what is your opinion about the production of the LP?

Personally, I always found it a bit too top end but that's my taste and Ian has always tended to go that way with all his stuff. Even though it was Ian's first Production I think he really did manage to capture the essence of the band, which was the main object. His courage and vision in doing it in the first place has now been confirmed and justified, as it is now a legendary album which still continues to find new followers. In fact the Jerusalem album is now huge compared to 1972 and continues to grow. Well done Mr Gillan....
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9. Very often recording another LPs is detrimental to a band's 'myth'. You disbanded after the first LP. And now you're a legend. Do you think that it might have been different if you had recorded the second and then the third LP?

No, not really. I think this album captured a one off moment in time when a particular vision was realised because of the circumstances i.e. Ray and I knew what we wanted, we had no major influences, we were still pretty naive, there were no rules or outside guidance and Bill, Bob and eventually Lynden (Phil was original singer) went along with our decisions. As things eventually evolved it became obvious that the others were moving in different directions, so it was time to close this book otherwise a second album would have meant compromise, which would not have been what Jerusalem was all about. To be honest the signs were already there as even though I wrote the lyrics for Beyond The Grave & some of Murderers Lament, both these songs were a compromise to Bill and Bob's taste. Generally speaking many of the most successful artists have one or two monster albums, quite often the first or second one and then they go off at tangents only to return to their original 'magic' sound years later.....
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10. Do you think that the fact that you were inexperienced musicians affected the true heaviness and the depth of your debut?

Yes and no. What does heavy actually mean? Many different things to different people. Some people say Jerusalem were one of the heaviest bands ever and Primitive Man one of the heaviest songs, others disagree. I think we get bogged down with labels these days. If you ask most of the major bands of the 60's, 70's to describe their music they would simply say Rock. Yes, inexperience played its part, Jerusalem was a Rock band with no rules and no major outside influences, which is why it is very difficult to find many other bands of that era playing something similar, maybe a handful at most.....
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11. I want to ask you about your favourite song from Jerusalem. I heard that Primitive Man is your choice. Why? What inspired you to write this one?

Very simply an angry 18 year old looking at the World thinking we are really 'fucking everything up'. Here we are 40 years later and it's even worse, no lessons learnt which doesn't bode well for the survival of the human race, but maybe that would be a good thing for the Universe?....
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12. In the booklet of the re-issued CD (2009) I found a story from the concert in Frankfurt where Lynden Williams was shocked by electricity during the performance. Tell me more about that accident?

As you say this has already been covered in the Jerusalem Story in the CD booklet, so nothing really to add. ....
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13. I've read that Lynden was rather a showman than a vocalist. What does it mean?

It basically means someone who uses everything physically and emotionally to entertain an audience e.g. Mick Jagger is a brilliant showman, but not necessarily a brilliant vocalist. At the vocalist auditions it was a toss up between Lynden and another guy with a great voice. Lynden was all action the other guy was focused on his vocals. Ray and I went for Lynden, Bill and Bob preferred the other guy. Lynden fitted the vision Ray and I had for the band, so we chose him. Once we hired him and started rehearsing, it became obvious that the song keys were wrong for Lynden as he really had to stretch and strain, but Ray and I thought this fitted exactly with the sound we wanted, so we didn't change the keys and it also complimented Lynden's over the top showmanship. Ian also agreed with and fully supported our decision. ....
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14. After disbanding you recorded a single under the name Pussy. The whole LP is going to be released in next couple of weeks. Why did we have to wait so long for it? What can one find in this music? Are there any songs which might or should have appeared on Jerusalem?

It nearly got released a couple of times in the 70's but through various circumstances never happened. I discovered the masters in my mothers loft around the time Rockadrome approached me about a remastered reissue of Jerusalem. Rockadrome decided they would also like to release the Pussy album after the Jerusalem project. At the time of recording the Pussy songs the music business was mainly being run by lawyers and accountants interested in making fast money. They were not interested in creativity, new ideas or long term projects. Before this period many of the record companies were full of ex-musicians with vision and willing to take gambles. Without them, there would have been no Beatles, Stones, Hendrix, Sabbaths, Zeppelins, Purples etc. Pussy was basically a mini revolt against this new rigidity. We did exactly what we wanted which at times was opposite to what the business was dictating. Pussy is nothing like Jerusalem other than I also did most of the writing and it was formed once again by Ray and I along with Bob (replaced by Brian Goff later on). ....
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15. I have to ask you about Escalator. It was released in 2009 by the band called Jerusalem which consisted of Lynden Williams and Bob Cooke. You don't play on it. Why? They used four of Jerusalem's classic. They turned them into much softer songs (for ex. by adding keyboards into Hooded Eagle). What's your note for that album?

I haven't previously commented on this publicly but I was extremely disappointed and sad that Lynden and Mausoleum had put this out as Jerusalem, which it most definitely is not and sounds nothing like Jerusalem. The only connection is that Lynden and Bob were both in Jerusalem and they have done 4 cover versions of Jerusalem songs. I was fully aware of Lynden's intention to release this as Jerusalem and over a period of a year and half appealed to him not to do it (he wasn't even a founding member of Jerusalem). I even suggested New Jerusalem, Jerusalem II or even the Lynden Williams Band (which is basically what it was). I also talked to Bob many times about it and he agreed it shouldn't go out as Jerusalem, but obviously he didn't hold out. Escalator under the name Jerusalem was basically about opportunism. Lynden has spent 30+ years trying to get a record deal and I think Mausoleum just said to him, ok we'll release the album but it has to go out as Jerusalem and ride on the wave that the Rockadrome reissue has created. Bob probably agreed in the end because maybe there would be a few quid out of it. The notes Lynden wrote also made me angry. He is somewhat derogatory about the original album and it's full of stuff which is not at all true. I did laugh when he said he was a founding member, seems to forget that Jerusalem already existed and he was hired at an audition plus he was only creatively involved in three of the album tracks plus the single KM. I did warn him and Bob that I didn't think it would go down well with Jerusalem followers and since then I have been inundated with communications from Jerusalem fans decrying the abuse of the name for something that bares no relationship to the original band or sound. If they truly believed in this album they should have had the nerve, courage and conviction to put it out under a different name, not try and sell it on the back of something that was very special to many people. People may say that bands do change line up over the years e.g. Purple, Sabbath etc., but one has to remember these bands never actually really stopped completely. For a 60 year old to resurrect a band name 38 years after it ceased to exist and use it for a sound that has no connection with the original is I believe a joke and pure opportunism. I am also disappointed with Mausoleum, they used to have a good reputation, but obviously no longer have any interest in integrity. Please remember, we could have easily called Pussy, Jerusalem, but Ray and I didn't out of respect for something that turned out to be very, very special.....
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16. What do you do now? What are your plans for future?

I've never really left the business in so much as trying to help and advise other young artists wherever I have lived. I am now beginning to concentrate on Production, which I really enjoy.....
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17. What are your relations with the band members?

I will only deal with Ray from now on after the Escalator episode, as I have lost all respect for Lynden and Bob for the time being. People have asked about a reunion, but the thought of a bunch of nearly 60 year olds trying to recreate a sound that was all about youth and rebellion seems absurd and would purely be about money. This isn't the same as all the other bands that continue to play whatever their age. These bands have always continued to play most of the time and their music has evolved along with their age.....
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18. Do you still play football? =)

Would love to, but not much call for 59 year old wingers! Still follow 3 teams, Tottenham Hotspurs (Spurs), Plymouth Argyle and Hearts. I actually got to know many pro footballers over the years, as there is a great affinity between them and musicians. Funnily, many footballers would like to have been musicians and many musicians would like to have been footballers!....
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19. Is there anything you want to say to your Polish fans?
Yes, as I've always felt an affinity with Poland and have known many Poles over the years. My father was an RAF fighter pilot during World War II and had many friends in the Polish squadrons. He was a great admirer. Next to the village where Ian and I both lived for a few years called Pangbourne is another village called Whitchurch where there was whole community of Polish exiles, some going back to the War, many were friends and drinking buddies. Because of my beliefs in freedom and democracy I was a big follower of Lech Walesa and the Solidarity movement. I don't think that many people realise how much the Poles influenced the rest of the World, it was these courageous people who proved that the people could overturn a dictatorship if they had the courage of their convictions. The Poles were the inventors of successful 'People Power'. I salute you.....
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