August 2014: A conversation with Searchers singer-guitarist Mike Pender

To be an American just awakening to music at the beginning of 1964 was to be swept away with the British Invasion. I was a Beatles fan first, of course, and did watch their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show that Feb. 9. But soon I was an avid listener of WLS in Chicago, listening to the Silver Dollar Survey countdown and catching the latest by Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, Peter and Gordon and the Searchers.

The Searchers’ first hit here was “Needles and Pins,” and its catchy guitar part was one of the first things I tried to learn once I knew a few chords. I still crank up the volume when I hear it today. For that matter, the volume goes up for other Searchers hits such as “When You Walk in the Room,” “Don’t Throw Your Love Away” and “Someday We’re Gonna Love Again.”

When I saw Searchers singer-guitarist Mike Pender’s name on the guest list for this year’s Chicago Fest for Beatles Fans, I knew I’d want to interview him for my annual Fest preview in the Chicago Sun-Times. You can find the Sun-Times story here: http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/29243291-421/story.html#.U-9qr6NhfNU

As with other interviews in this blog, space limitations meant I could use only a couple of quotes from a longer interview. But Pender was a great interview, with a lifetime of musical experiences to talk about. Here’s the full interview:

John Grochowski: Mike, thanks for taking the time to talk. We’re looking forward to seeing you here.

Mike Pender: Actually, I’ll be back in America again in September with Mike Pender’s Searchers. We’re touring with some of the other ’60s bands.

JG: That’s great. When’s the last time you were in Chicago?

MP: My memory doesn’t go back that far!

JG: (Laughs) I figured it had probably been a long while …

MP: Early ’60s yeah. When we’ve been in America in the last 40 years, we would have gone to New York, and I was in Springfield, Massachusetts, last year,. I did the Big E Festival, which is the typical sort of American festival they have with lots of musical people around, I was the ’60s segment. So it’s a long time since I’ve been in Chicago.

JG: Have you done other Beatle fests? Were you in New York?

MP: To be honest I’ve not done a lot with Beatles shows or Beatles festivals. The only time I’ve done a gig with the Beatles was in the ’60s. It would have been very early, about 1964, and it would have been put on by Brian Epstein down in London at one of the theaters there. I cannot remember a lot of gigs with the Beatles. Maybe two.

JG: But in the early days, you were playing the same venues in Liverpool, the Cavern and the other clubs

MP: We all played the Cavern, the Iron Door, lots of other gigs like St. John’s Hall Bootle, which is where I come from, Litherland Town Hall. Yeah, we did all the gigs because nobody was famous then, we were all just hanging around playing for beer money if you like, enjoying ourselves.

In fact the first time I ever saw the Beatles was at St. John’s Hall Bootle. I still had my job, and I got home from work and washed and changed to go along to the gig, and when I got to the gig and went to the dressing room, or what we called a dressing room, there were no chairs in those days. There were five guys sitting around on the floor in leather gear and cowboy boots, and they were called the Silver Beatles then. That was the first time I ever saw them. It was their second gig in England after getting back from Hamburg, Germany. And the Searchers were top of the bill that night. When I got to the gig at St. John’s Hall, they had a poster, the Searchers, and underneath, from Hamburg, the Silver Beatles. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen them.

JG: Tell me about what you were playing in those days. I know as American fans, we heard “Some Other Guy” as an album track from you long before we saw the clip of the Beatles playing it at the Cavern. What were you playing in the clubs?

MP: Nearly all American music from Chuck Berry to Little Richard to Jerry Lee Lewis. Hardly any of the groups played English stuff in those days. They only time they did was some of the groups played instrumentals by the Shadows and later by the American group, the Ventures. But yeah, “Johnny B. Goode,” “Rock and Roll Music.” Most groups did all the same songs. We started off like that, and then we tried to be a little bit different. We actually got a lead singer, a guy called Johnny Sandon, and we brought him into the band. We were prompted to do that by a guy called Bob Wooler. Do you remember Bob Wooler?

JG: Yes, I actually met Bob Wooler in Liverpool.

MP: Bob was they guy at all the venues in Liverpool in those days, and he said “Mike, you guys would be better with a lead vocalist,” and we got this guy Johnny Sandon. And he sounded a bit like Jim Reeves, Johnny Cash. And so we were a little bit different from the other groups we when went to Cavern and the Iron Door, where the Beatles and Rory Storm and the Hurricanes and whoever were doing out and out rock and roll things. We were a little bit further afield and did those types of songs. We used to do lunchtime sessions at the Cavern. Everybody did. And I used to find that a lot of people from the local offices would come in their shirts and ties, and they’d come because we were a little bit different, and they could hear something different like maybe a Jim Reeves song. So we were a little bit different in those days.

JG: By the time “Needles and Pins” hit in the U.S., and other hits like “Love Potion No. 9,” Johnny Sandon was gone and you were singing. How did the change happen?

MP: It’s funny how it comes about. There were no meetings, no sort of thrashing out, “Mike you’re going to do this, Mike you’re going to do that.” It happened.

I didn’t sing “Love Potion No. 9.” Tony Jackson – the original band was Tony, Chris Curtis, John McNally and myself – Tony actually sang those types of songs. He had the Little Richard voice, he could get his voice way up high, and he sang “Love Potion No. 9,” and he sang our first record “Sweets for My Sweet.”

We had a bit of a confrontation with the record company after the first two big hits, which were “Sweets for My Sweet” and “Sugar and Spice.” And we felt that we had to change a little beit because the first two songs were very similar, if you recall those two songs.

JG: In Chicago, we heard covers of those first two. The Cryan Shames had a big hit here with “Sugar and Spice.”

MP: Right. The two (“Sweets for My Sweet” and “Sugar and Spice”) were in a very similar vein. And record companies do that, because when they have a big success with one record, they tend to want another record in a similar vein. So we did that in the first two, then we thought the next one has to be something different. We thought “Needles and Pins,” and the people at Pye records weren’t too keen. They said if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it. You have to do another like the first two.

We got our way in the end, but we had to argue with the record company and they finally came around to our way of thinking and we did “Needles and Pins.” And it just so happened that I sang “Needles and Pins” on stage with the band. So it was just kind of Mike sings it on stage with the band, lets put it down and see what happens, and if it isn’t good we can change. But Tony Hatch, our recording manager said. “That’s it.” We even left my “pins-uh” in.

When we were recording that song, people from Liverpool have this knack of putting little things on the ends of words, and I just sang “pins-uh,” and Tony Hatch said, “Hey that sounds good, we’re going to leave it in.” So we left it in. That’s just one of those little quirks that you get now and then.

JG: Another distinctive part of your sound was that 12-string Rickenbacker. Was that you? How did that come about?

MP: That’s The Beatles connection there. We were in the TV studios in England for a show called “Thank Your Lucky Stars” in those early ’60s. “We were in the dressing room and we had the TV on, and the Beatles came on singing their latest No. 1 single, which was “A Hard Day’s Night,” because that movie that they made had just been released. They weren’t there in the studios, they recorded it somewhere.

“I noticed that the guitar in that song, in the solo, it sounded a little bit different. And when I looked up, I looked at the screen, I thought, hey I’d seen Rickenbackers before because John Lennon had one in the early days in the Cavern, that he bought in Hamburg. And I looked and I thought, wow, it’s a 12-string Rickenbacker.

We had a new single coming up. We hadn’t recorded it, but we had it in the grapevine, if you like, we had it planned. That’s the sound for “When You Walk in the Room.” And I went out and got a Rickenbacker 12, it was a 360-12, and that’s the sound you hear on “When You Walk In the Room.”

JG: It’s a great sound. I love that sound.

MP: Yeah, it is, and probably if on that day I hadn’t walked in the dressing room and seen George Harrison play his, who knows, I may never have got one, and we’d have gone some other way like double-tracking or something like that.

JG: When did you first have an inkling that this was going to take off, that the Searchers were going to become something bigger than the club circuit?

MP: To be honest with you, I didn’t have that feeling until we recorded “Sweets for My Sweet.” When we went to the Star Club in Hamburg, I had a very good job in Liverpool with a big printing firm, and they actually gave me a month’s leave. Can you believe that? They said “Mike, you go do that, we know you want to do it, but your job’s still here when you come back.”

“I couldn’t; believe it really. I thought I was going to be working at Birchall’s for the rst of my life. I had a girlfriend and I thought, “I have a good job, we’re going to save up. And I’m going to earn money working and playing in a band.” I didn’t have any inkling that we were going to be recording stars or anything like that. We came back from the Star Club, and we signed up to go again. We were there for two months that time.

And when we were in the Star Club, our manager in Liverpool at the time, a guy called Ed Napoli, we’d done an acetate of maybe 10 or 12 songs in the Iron Door, and we left it to Ed to sort of hawk around, if you like, and see what he could do with it. And while we were at the Star Club, he got in touch with record companies that turned him down, all except one, and that was Pye Records.

Tony Hatch, their producer, came up to Liverpool when we got back to Hamburg, came to the Iron Door,. We did a session, he liked it, Bam! Bingo. He said “I want to record that song ‘Sweets for My Sweet,’ I want the boys to come to London,” and we did. And then I thought, wow, I can’t believe it, we just made a record. So you could say from about summer 1963 I thought, “It’s going to happen. I had an inkling we may hit the big time.”

JG: You had so many hits, then time passed, you faded from the charts. But you had that great comeback album in 1979 (“The Searchers”) that was so well reviewed. How did that happen? 

MP: The Sire Records thing? That was the early ‘80s wasn’t it? We’d been obviously in and around the music scene since about 1968 when really our popularity had dwindled and the big record hits had gone. So we kept going to the studio and we kept trying to make a good record, but it just didn’t happen.

Seymour Stein had had groups like the Ramones on his record label, and the Ramones seemed to like our kind of music. I think they recorded “Needles and Pins,” and Seymour Stein said, “I wonder what the original Searchers are doing.” He came to England, although we weren’t still the originals because Tony and  Chris had gone. It was just John and myself and a guy called Frank Allen and a guy called Billy Adamson.

We were still performing, we had lots of gigs on the continent. Seymour Stein came to see us. And he actually said, “Mike, your voice still great, we’re going to put you guys back in the charts.” We did a couple of albums, one was released in America, and I think Rolling Stone magazine gave us a great review. Lots of people liked it. But it’s the old story. It doesn’t matter how good your product is, if nobody buys it, it’s no good. It’s a disappointment. After that of course, when they had success with the Pretenders and other groups, they more or less dropped us. We were left to go our own way again and we’ve been in and around music ever since.

In 1985 I decided, if I’m going to play Searchers hits the rest of my life, I think I’ll form my own band. And I formed Mike Pender’s Searchers,. And here I am today.

JG: When you tour, when you come back to America in September, what can we expect?

MP: Obviously we’re going to do all the early hits, because that’s what they booked us for. Nostalgia. Nostalgia is still pretty big around the world today. I find you go to all the continental countries, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany, and there’s lots of people who still want to hear those sounds of the ’60s. Certain songs stick in people’s memories. “When you Walk in the Room” has that certain hook line, “dah-DAH-dah-da-da-da,” and people cotton onto those sorts of things. They remember them and they remember the riff in “Needles and Pins” as well.

So two great songs for us there, plus “Sweets for My Sweet” is always remembered, “Sugar and Spice” is sometimes remembered. One of the great songs I thought we recorded was “Goodbye My Love.” It’s not remembered by a lot of people but I thought it was a really good record.

And even songs that were on the Sire album, like “Hearts in Her Eyes,” I thought was a great single. I always thought, when we started in this business, we had a manager called Peter Burns and he was a guy, he took us to America, he could do it. When you have somebody like that, when you’re trying to make it in the charts, if you haven’t; got somebody like that at the helm, you’re pretty much going to miss out. With songs like “Hearts in Her Eyes,”  it was a great song released on the Sire label, it should have been a hit, but it wasn’t.

We still do that song, so it’s going to be a mix of the old hits with newer songs like “Hearts in our Eyes,” “I Don’t Want to Be the One.” We had some great singles later on. I thought “I Don’t Want to Be the One” was a great song. But with no management, no publicity agent, you’re going to be up against it.

JG: At the Beatles fest, will you be singing with the house band, Liverpool?

MP: For the first time in my life, I’m going to do a Beatle song. Because the Beatles were there because they were superstars, a supergroup. I always concentrated on the Searchers and never got into (playing) the Beatles music at all. It was always there, and people would say “Hey Mike, are you going to play a Beatles song?” And I always said no, because byu the time we’d done the Searchers songs there’s no time left to do anyone else’s song. So really it’s going to be the first time doing a Beatles song in my life, and it’s going to be because I got the connection from George Harrison’s Rickenbacker from seeing him play “A Hard Day’s Night.” That’s the song I’m going to do with the house band, because I think it’s a good story.

  

August 2014: An interview with Beatles author Mark Lewisohn

It’s that time of year again, with The Fest for Beatles Fans rolling into the Chicago area, Aug. 15-17 in Rosemont, Ill. Every year – well, almost every year – I preview for the Chicago Sun-Times.

This year I spoke with Searchers singer-guitarist Mike Pender and author Mark Lewisohn, whose “Tune In: The Beatles After All These Years” might be the most amazing Beatle book I’ve ever read. So much has been said and written about the Fab Four that you wouldn’t think there was much we didn’t already know. Yet Lewisohn, through meticulous research and hundreds of new interviews, has come up with a book that’s packed with surprises and revelations – and it takes us only through 1962. Volumes 2 and 3 are coming, but will be years in the making. Lewisohn takes no shortcuts.

 I’d actually met Lewisohn in Liverpool in 1983. I was with a tour group that was spending a day on a mystery tour. We had two buses, I was with the group that rushed straight for the Magical Mystery Tour bus – just had to have that experience. The other bus was bigger, more comfortable and had Lewisohn for a tour guide. After a while, the guides changed places, and he came to our bus. Everyone was just amazed with his knowledge and passion --- and believe me, if you’re impressing a group of knowledgeable, passionate Beatlemaniacs who spent their vacation money on 10 days in the footsteps of the Fabs, you’ve done more than a good day’s work.

I was able to use only one quote from our interview due to space restraints in the Sun-Times, but in this blog I can stretch out. Here is the full transcript of my 15-minute talk with Mark Lewisohn:


John Grochowski: Mark, it’s going to be great to have you in Chicago, and I love your book. Have you done many Fests?

Mark Lewisohn: The one I’ve done the most is the New York Metro one, but I have been to Chicago before, 1990 I was there. Possibly one other time right after, 1992 or 3, but I haven’t been for 20 years or more to the Chicago one.

JG: You would have been talking about “Recording Sessions” then, right? (Reference is to an earlier Lewisohn book that detailed who played, did what and was in what place and when for the recording fo their music.)

ML: Recording Sessions in 1990 I would have been, absolutely, it was in 1988, Possibly I might have come after the Chronicle was published in 1993, but I don’t recall. That’s all a long time ago

JG: “Tune In” is an amazing piece of research, and when it ends, we haven’t even reached Beatlemania. I’ve read that you’re looking at 14 more years to finish the project …

ML: It really is hard to say. People keep asking me if I can come up with an approximation of how long it might take, but until I start writing them, it’s going to be very hard to know. I’m researching volumes 2 and 3 at the moment, but then I’ll write Volume 2, publish it, do some more research for 3 and write that one. But they can’t be done quickly by the nature of what they are.

JG: I’m reading about Stu Sutcliffe and the aftermath of his death, and you mention that on one ever asked John Lennon about Stu. To be able to say that, you have to hav gone through everything written and broadcast about them.

ML: I have. As far as I know I have. That’s my job, to make sure that I do so. I can do these books any way I like, but I choose to be as thorough as possible, and I would be remiss in my professional duties if I didn’t endeavor to look for and see and hear everything and I am aware of no interviews when John was explicitly asked about Stuart, which is why there are no quotes. The absence of quotes may indicate he was callous about it, but simply he wasn’t asked. He answered questions candidly, and I’m sure he would have spoken about Stuart, of course he would have done if he asked, but he wasn’t

JG: Besides the review of earlier material, how much original interviewing did you do?

ML: I’m not actually sure of the number but several hundred, maybe 300 new interviews done for Tune In, with a great many people who have not been interviewed before. It’s like anything in life, you know, there are witnesses to events and there are some people who witness events who put their hand up immediately when anybody asks if they were there. And they get themselves interviewed many times over as time goes by. But then there are others who are more reluctant to stick their hand up, and you have to go and find them and persuade them that now is the time. Quite often I was tracking people who had never been interviewed before and who told stories much more convincing and more colorful and more authentic than the stories that have been told too many times by the same people.

JG: Can you name a few who haven’t been interviewed before?

ML: Quite a few of the people who went to art school with John, including this guy called Derek Hodkin, who actually managed John, Paul and George when they were a trio, the Japage 3. He was a good one. Many of the girls who used to go and hang around the Beatles in the Cavern and at their houses and so on. Like the two girls Lou Steen and Lindy Ness, who had a particularly good relationshop with John and Paul in ’62. John and Paul took care of them, and made sure they got to gigs and let them hang around them, so they were there when John and Paul were working on “Please Please Me” on the piano in Paul’s house in Liverpool, and they kept diaries.

Knowing when it was and how they described it, and because they haven’t told it before, it was fresh. It wasn’t something they told too often which they’d embroidered, which happens a lot. And it enabled me to tale the reader right into that private moment with John and Paul in Paul’s house,.writing a song, which would become their first No. 1.

And then there was the girl Bobby Brown, who was their first fan club secretary before Freda Kelly, who went to the “Please Please Me” session, and John asked her to play on it. No one has ever mentioned that there was a girl at that session alone, the fact that John wanted this girl to play piano on the track. These people had a lot of close proximity to the Beatles at a time when they were not yet famous but were clearly going to become so because of the talent that they had. It was great to find these people.

Two girls who actually really started the fan club in ’61 who for a brief while actually managed them before Brian Epstein. It never really got off the ground, but there was this brief period when these two girls were actually managing the Beatles. I tracked down people knowing they quite likely could have something to tell me, but very often I wouldn’t know exactly what. So I’d be sitting here floored by what I was hearing

JG: What’s the one biggest surprise, something that really shocked you as someone who has lived with the Beatles story for decades?

ML: The book is actually full of them, it’s hard to pin down, because it’s a combination of new material that no one has ever discovered before, and information that if you’d read all the books that were written before AND you retained all the information you read, maybe you might know bits of this, but you won’t know it in context, you won’t see how it all weaves together to form this complete picture.

As far as I’m concerned, as people who’ve read the book all tell me unanimously it’s just like reading like you’ve never read about them before. It’s hard to pick out these particular bits. I wrote an entire chapter, short chapter, about John and Paul’s trip to Paris in 1961 which was a real turning point in all their lives. To actually look at what happened there, and to make it real, to actually put the reader on the streets of Paris, so they can almost smell it is strong.

The fact that John and Paul went to Paris is know to some people, but they won’t really have known what happened there. The fact that John and Paul tried to play there, for example, and were rebuffed by this club owner, and that they got their hair cut on the little hotel by the Left Banke in Paris, which I went to visit because I always go and look at places I write about.

One of the things that has surprised many people is the true story of how the Beatles got their recording contract and how incredibly lucky they were they way that it happened. And the way that it happened is thanks to the efforts of a many whose name is not written in any books. A man who called himself Kim Bennett, without whom we wouldn’t be talking about the Beatles. They had the talent, but he had the tenacity to push for something on their behalf that actually got them their recording contract with George Martin in a roundabout way,

JG: The music publisher? (Bennett pushed for EMI to sign the Beatles because he thought he could do something with the publishing for “Like Dreamers Do,” and later pushed for “Love Me Do” to be the Beatles’ first A-side rather than “How Do You Do It?” because he wanted to maximize publishing value of a Lennon-McCartney song.)

ML: That’s right.

What it’s mostly about is putting flesh on the bones of who these people are. Not so much a Beatles biography, but a complete biography of John Lennon, of Paul McCartney, of George Harrison, of Ringo Starr, of Pete Best, of Brian Epstein, of George Martin, of all of these people, all woven together so you get a much, much greater sense of the characters and the drive particularly of the four Beatles. How tenacious they were, how they would say no to things very readily, as well as yes. The tough job that Brian Epstein had managring them but the brilliant job he had getting them out of Liverpool and before the nation and before the world. That much is known, but how he did it and what it says about him as a person is what’s new. So you end up feeling like you know these people and that you were there while it was happening. And that is possible through the research

JG: One thing that really hit me, which maybe as Americans we knew but never internalized, was what a tough environment Liverpool was, that Ringo couldn’t always carry a full drum kit because it made him too much of a target.

ML: It was tough, no doubt about it. Liverpool wasn’t the only tough place in Britain and Britain wasn’t the only tough place in the world. But nevertheless on a day to day basis, this is what they had to deal with. But in a sense, such experiences weeded out who really wanted to do it from those who quite wanted to do it. Because the Beatles -- all four of them – were very, very determined young men.

 All four of them, ambitious, determined and intent on disregarding all the advice they were getting from parents and other adults about this stupid thing they’re doing, this playing the guitar, this rock and roll and all of that, and why did they stick at it? Because of the personalities of who they were, rather like because the kind of music they liked was not everywhere around them like it is these days. You can’t move from hearing rock and roll music, you hear it everywhere, on television, on the radio, while you’re out shopping, wherever you might be, it’s around. But this was greatly frowned upon in the later 1950s. If you wanted it, you really had to go looking for it. And that eliminated the casually interested and kept only the passionate involved, and that is a very good process for making sure the people who are in it are in it for the right reasons.

JG: One of the other Fest guests is Mike Pender of the Searchers. At different points in the book, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes are the top band in Liverpool, and later the Beatles look at Gerry and the Pacemakers as their main competition. Where do the Searchers fit in all this?

ML: I always preface this kind of answer with I wasn’t there, but having done the deep level research, and particularly reading contemporaneous news items, letters, contracts, and all of that,. It’s clear that the Searchers were always a good band, or group, to use the correct word. Always a good group, but they somehow … in those days they were the backing group for a lead singer. Johnny Sandon and the Searchers is what they were through most of the period in “Tune In.” Johnny Sandon by all accounts was a good singer, and I’ve heard recordings that were made, but somehow or other they gelled better without him.

So really the Searchers story will rise in my trilogy in book 2 rather than in book 1, They’re around the scene in book 1, but not tearing up any trees. It’s in book 2 I will write about the Searchers becoming a No. 1 group on the charts. Never the biggest group from Liverpool, of course, but they were very well liked and respected. The Beatles liked and respected them, Brian Epstein would express the wish that he was their manager but it was too late, they had signed with somebody else. Brian clearly reckoned they were good and indeed they were.

A 2008 conversation with Elisabeth Sladen

When the Chicago TARDIS convention announced in 2008 that Elisabeth Sladen would be one of the special guests that November, my first thought was that she was the absolutely perfect choice. She’d played Sarah Jane Smith for one “Doctor Who” season with Third Doctor Jon Pertwee, then for two full seasons and part of a third with Doctor No. 4 Tom Baker. Sarah Jane, a journalist with a nose for stories that often got her into trouble, was one of the most popular characters in series history.

In the 1980s, she came back to star in a special, “K-9 and Company,” meant as a pilot for a series that was never picked up. No matter. When the revived “Doctor Who” series wanted a touchstone with  the original series, they brought Sarah Jane back in “School Reunion” with Tenth Doctor David Tennant in 2007. By the time of the 2008 Chicago TARDIS, she’d appeared in two more “Doctor Who” episodes and been spun off into her own series, “The Sarah Jane Adventures.”

She was the ideal bridge between old series and new, appealing to young and old fans alike. I sold the Weekend editor of the Chicago Sun-Times on featuring Lis Sladen in a preview of the convention. Lis was a great interview, gracious with her time on the phone, and equally gracious when I met her backstage at the convention.

Sadly, Elisabeth Sladen passed on in 2011, and she is sorely missed.

As with the Beatles-related interviews I’ve posted on this blog, I was able to use three or four short quotes in the Sun-Times story, pulled from a much longer interview. Here’s a transcript.

JG: Lis, this is a real pleasure for me. I loved your era in “Doctor Who” with Tom Baker. And they keep bringing you back, with “K-9 and Company,” appearances in the revived Doctor Who series and now “The Sarah Jane Adventures.” Why do you think the producers keep returning to Sarah Jane Smith?

ES: We were bloody good, for one thing. And people just seemed to like her. I do.

JG: There’s a core to Sarah Jane who’s the same character we knew in the 1970s, but she’s evolved.

ES: Just as you evolve yourself. Just as you evolve yourself.  I bring things to it now, I think of doing “The Stolen Earth” [with 10th Doctor David Tennant] and meeting Davros again, and I have so much to scavenge from in reality in the past that’s tangible. You go on a journey in your life, Act One, Act Two, Act Three.

I remember coming back with David for the first time  [in “School Reunion]. I would get letters from people who had never seen the show before but had bought the videos or the DVDs. Although it was a dead program to television at the time, it was never dead to the public, because people would buy it and see something that had been on before they were born. So I would still get letters from youngsters who’d never seen the character or Doctor Who as a television program, and quite a lot of the questions would be where would she be now, and especially from the older fans. Where do you think she would be? And Toby [Whithouse’s] story tied up so perfectly with where I thought she would be that it wasn’t exactly a stretch. It was a gift.

JG: In “The Sarah Jane Adventures,” you essentially have the Doctor’s role …

ES: Yes.

JG: … with companions of your own to look after. How does that change your approach?

ES: Whereas before the character could leap before she thought, now she has to think before she leaps. Because you are responsible for these little people. I thought I might get a lot of stick actually over the sonic lipstick, which I think is wonderful. It’s difficult to use, actually. David is so lucky. All he does with the sonic screwdriver is point it and light it. With the lipstick I have to take the top off and swivel it up, and then light it. I thought the fans watching might think “Who does she think she is?” But I haven’t heard any of that. I was quite prepared for it because you know fans of any series, especially sci-fi, are quite proprietorial in their likes and dislikes, but they’ve been very kind.

We never talk down to them. Russell T. Davies started his career writing for children’s television, and to actually go back and write for it now, because this is his baby, I think is just great.

JG: In the ’70s, you were companion to two Doctors, Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker, and now you’ve appeared with David Tennant. How do the Doctors differ?

ES: Jon’s Doctor, he was thought of as  protective, even with his uniform as the Doctor, his cloak, protective around the little chicks. That was Jon as well. He very much wanted to be the one who would be the protector. Tom’s Doctor was very much more do it on your own come back and report. And going from Jon to Tom was really lovely because you can only see what the Doctor gives you. So if you get different things from each Doctor it enlarges you as a character, different facets come into play, how you handle people in reality, in real life. And all the Doctors are so different that I’ve worked with that that was actually a bonus. And David being a younger Doctor you just look at him … “Oh, THAT’s the Doctor now.:

JG: Do you think you and Tom both being from Liverpool had anything to do with you working so well together?

ES: I wonder you know. I think maybe there’s something in the sense of humor. We got on so well. It just was so easy with Tom. For me anyway.

JG: Not everyone got along quite so well with Tom. But you enjoyed working with him?

ES: Oh, he was an absolute love, and still is. I suppose, you see, I was with him at the beginning. Tom says, “Oh, Elizabeth and I got on so well because she always laughed at my jokes.” That’s just Tom, that’s what he’s like. He always stands back a little bit and not give the real reasons sometimes. I think just it worked well with Tom and I. When he went on after me, he played the Doctor for a long time. When I was working with him you’d still get things in the script and go, ‘Has that happened before? How can we make that different?’ And that was the challenge. When it stopped being a challenge for me, I left. I suppose people change as time goes on, you know. But he was never difficult with me. He was great fun. He wanted it right, but don’t we all.

JG: How did your return to the new series come to pass?

ES: My agent phoned up asked me they wanted to take me for a meal, Phil Collinson  and Russell T. Davies, and it was about Doctor Who, and I thought, it must be Sarah Jane. And I’d seen some of the early episodes that they’d done with David and with Christopher Eccleston. I knew that that they were fans of the time that I was in the series. So I thought that’s a lovely little homage to Sarah Jane, uniting the two factions, the old and the new.

But I left it on such a high [when she left at the end of the Tom Baker story “The Hand of Fear”] I thought, “Do I really want to do something? I’d rather leave her where she was.” I thought, “By the time I finish this meal I won’t have an agent.” And we went along and they immediately put forth the story. And they said if you don’t want to do it, we won’t do this story, but this is what we would like. But they went into detail and it was just so lovely. It was kind of done deal and we just ordered more wine and had a lovely evening. And I thought what a lovely place to leave her. How really special. It went down well, and after it had gone out that New Year, the agent said they’d like to take you out for another meal, Julie and Russell, and talk about something else. And I thought, “Is Sarah Jane going to grow up at last and be in Torchwood?” And then Russell put it forth and said he had absolute faith in it. I don’t know that I did. I thought, “My God, can this work?” I think I said that to him. He said “Yep. We’re going to call it the Sarah Jane Adventures.” He knew right from the start exactly what he wanted.

JG: Now that you’re into “The Sarah Jane Adventures,” are you happy you said yes?

ES: It is an absolute joy to do. When I was in Doctor Who, the actors who’d come to join us as guest stars, they’d say, you have such a wonderful time. How lovely. What a gorgeous job. And it is just a joy. That’s due to the people behind the cameras as well. The crew are great, they really are. We have the same production values as Doctor Who because we have the same crew. We’re very lucky, because Sarah Jane’s a five-day week and I think Doctor Who’s a six-day week.

JG: I was looking at your bio on IMDB, and being an old fan of ‘60s music, it jumped out at me that you were in “Ferry Cross the Mersey” with Gerry and the Pacemakers.

ES: Oh I was at drama school. I was doing a play in the evening, a Shakespeare, so it was a full day, and I don’t know how long we were on it actually. It was just literally to be there for Gerry, and I remember the boat going back and forth to Birkenhead or wherever it was and turn around and come back. That was my first pay packet, a pound a day or something.

JG: You were the right age, growing up in Liverpool, to have this fantastic music scene all around you. Did you go to the clubs, experience all that?

ES: Oh yes, because when I was in school the Beatles were all up and coming. Although I actually preferred Elvis, but you support your home team. I did, and was great. They really took the heart out of Liverpool when they took the docks away. City of Culture, fifth year, I haven’t been back for about four years now. If I went back today, it’s changed a lot. When I first went into theater it was at the Liverpool Playhouse. I worked there for a year and I loved it.

JG: During fan conventions, you’re at work. But besides the job, what do you get out of conventions?

ES: One to one contact with the fans. You get exactly what they like and exactly what they don’t like. Sometimes they’ll pose questions and you’ll think, “Oh, I really haven’t had that, I really didn’t think of that.” And how lovely for people to appreciate to tell you all these things you never thought of. It’s not an audience you have to fight for. I don’t know any other audience like it. How lucky am I? And there are people who are not around anymore who obviously I miss, and when questions are asked about them, how lovely to be able to reminisce about them.

A conversation with Denny Laine

Denny Laine has been to the Chicago Fest for Beatles Fans several times, and always is a crowd favorite. A member of Wings from beginning to end, he was the one stalwart who accompanied Paul and Linda McCartney to Nigeria for sessions that turned into the band’s best-loved album, “Band on the Run.”

Before Wings, Denny was the original lead singer in the Moody Blues, when they had a simpler, bluesier sound than the orchestral approach that later backed singer Justin Hayward. It’s Laine’s voice on “Go Now,”  a 1965 No. 1 hit in the U.K., No. 10 in the  U.S., and later a Wings concert staple.

I spoke with Laine via a phone call to his Las Vegas home in August 2010 for a Chicago Sun-Times preview of the Fest for Beatles Fans. The newspaper story had three or four short quotes. Here’s a longer transcript of the interview.

JG: Denny thanks for taking the time for this. It’s going to be great to have you back in Chicago. You know, last time you were here, you and Laurence Juber (lead guitarist in Wings’ final lineup) did a panel that I thought was the best Beatlefest had ever had. It was “Beatles Under the Influence,” tracing music that had influenced the young Beatles, and you and Laurence played some things I’d never heard, some blues, old English folk and music hall stuff.

DL: Did we really? You know, Laurence and I weren’t necessarily going through the same experiences. We come at this from different backgrounds. He’s got a lot of knowledge on the other side of the business as well, a more classical training. He doesn’t  just know the groups and the bands, but he has a completely different background of trained musicians and session work and all that kind of thing.

We [British musicians] got it all from the folk world, and that went to America and came back via folk, blues. It’s an exchange thing. I think.

JG: What have you been up to of late? I understand you’re recording again.

DL: It’s taken me a couple of years, but I’m just on the downhill as far as a new album. It’s just being mixed with the last few songs being mixed. The artwork is going to be based on my new website, dennylaine.com, so you can see the style of artwork that is going to be there. It should be already packaged about a month from now. It’s called “Valley of Dreams,” and I’ve been writing over a two-year period or more because I wound up going to England for a year and working over there. I started to write a book.

The album has taken time because I had that year in England. I had to come back and finish here in Vegas with the producer. I didn’t want to go off the beaten track, I wanted to keep the same people, so I just finished it off in the last couple of months.

The other thing is that I’ve had this musical around for 20 years or so that I’ve been trying to put around, an ecological musical. And it didn’t see the light of day earlier on. We did do it with some college kids once. But now UNLV is starting to look at it with their people. It’s called “Arctic Song.” It’s all about the environment. It’s sort of science fiction meets ecology, the world problems, the green issues. Now of course, it’s become so current people may pick up on it.

JG: That sounds like something I’d like to see.

DL: I hope you do.

JG: Wings fans and Beatles fans will want to know, do you have contact with Paul? There was a difficult separation at the end of Wings.

DL: I bumped into Paul one night when we went to UB40, we’re both big reggae fans. We all hooked up. The newspaper got hold of the picture we had taken together, so that went nationwide the next day. It at least showed me and Paul were back on the same page, so that was good.

JG: Looking back, how do you feel about what you did with Wings?

DL: I’m starting to look at stuff again. Who knew that we would still be popular 30 years later, or the music would? It’s been taken over by the kids, the children of the parents who were fans and what not. And I’m getting children who are 12 years old coming to see me. It’s across the board all that music --- especially the Beatles, of course. The music has just lasted and lasted and lasted. And now it’s going into musicals, so you have the “Love” musical, the ABBA musical, “We Will Rock You.” So all those songs have a complete re-emergence.

I’m looking at it with new eyes, I suppose. There are people around me, working with me, who were big fans in the day, and have all the stuff, things I haven’t looked at. I haven’t played a Wings album for years. But now I’m starting to listen, and thinking that was a good band, it was tight, it worked. Especially the ’76 tour [JG—the tour from which “Wings Over America” is drawn]. That really did work. The band was tight, everything was great. Me and Paul had a great relationship. We knew each other really well before Wings even got started. I mean, the Moodys did the Beatles second British tour, we were good friends before all that. And that really came across to me, that we really just gelled in writing together and working together.

I’m more interested at how the band was onstage, and I was quite impressed looking at some the new stuff.

JG: When you were with the Moody Blues, you were playing blues and blues-based rock and roll, and had some good success. Later, they evolved into something completely different, with the lush productions and orchestral backing, a totally different sound. Do you have an insights into the change?

DL: I was watching the Moodys documentary which I am on of course, and found out why they went in that direction. It’s quite hilarious. It’s an uncanny thing

I think [keyboard player] Mike Pinder said since I left, they started getting into more melodic stuff, they weren’t as much of a blues band any more. The original Moodys before the “Go Now” album were a real blues band. We didn’t play any R&B. And it developed into R&B, and “Go Now” came from that batch of songs. But we had the harmonies, we had all the voices, we had singers, so it became an R&B band with harmonies.

We were part of a whole different scene in the ‘60s. We were friends, the Beatles, the Stones, Rod Stewart, the Animals, Tom Jones. All these people were friends of ours. We’d have parties and we used to play each other’s music to each other. If the Beatles had a new song, they’d drop by and play it to us and vice versa. It was a much different world then. People weren’t stars to the point they were off doing their own thing and not mixing with people. The whole thing was kind of a mish-mash of exchanging ideas.

JG: I’ve always loved the “Go Now” album. It’s one I bought in 1965, and I still like to put it on the turntable. I liked that bluesy feel a lot.

DL: Donovan did our liner notes on the back of that album. He was another friend who was hanging around. Brian Jones was another very close friend. We watched everybody make it and go through all their changes. We had a lot of support and a lot of feedback. And we were playing live all the time. We weren’t going into the studio for months on end. It’d take a few weeks to make an album. And then we would go on the road, and on the road you’d get feedback all the time.

JG: Will you be playing any songs from the new album at the Fest?

DL: I won’t be doing it with the band [Liverpool, in its night-closing concerts]. Maybe in my own session. With the band, I sing “Go Now,” “Band on the Run,” “Mull of Kintyre,” “Live and Let Die” ---  sort of my tribute to the Wings thing. Uusally I just do my songs that I did --- “Time to Hide,” “No Words” and stuff like that. I try not to copy Paul’s version if I can help it.

JG: I know you work hard at the Fests. But besides a job for the weekend, what do you get out of the Fests.

DL: Meeting people. Although I don’t do a lot of them. It’s meeting the fans. I get involved in the nostalgia of the whole trip from all our points of view. Most of the time I have some little story people haven’t heard.

I like the thing of all fans being together in one place, because it generates a certain energy that you can’t find anywhere else. It’s not like a normal gig. It’s an occasion.