HAMISH Stuart has been thinking about old friends a lot lately. The former Average White Band singer-guitarist-bassist has just released the first album with his new group, the 360 Band, which features fellow AWB alumni, saxophonist Molly Duncan and drummer Steve Ferrone. Among its nine tracks is Too Hip, Stuart’s tribute to Robbie McIntosh, the Dundee-born drummer who was the catalyst in AWB’s formation and direction but tragically didn’t live to enjoy the success his input brought to the band’s eponymous breakthrough release, aka The White Album.
This weekend, Stuart will be back home in Glasgow as the special guest in a concert for another departed friend, Matt Irving, a schoolmate with whom Stuart formed his previous band, Dream Police. Irving, who went on to play with Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, Chris Rea, Paul Young, Squeeze and Roger Waters among others, died from prostate cancer two years ago and Stuart is very supportive of Men United, the charity that raises awareness in the illness.
“I wanted to tell Robbie’s story,” says Stuart down the line as he does the rounds of press and radio interviews to promote 360. “He really was the driver in putting AWB together and he stamped his personality so strongly on the songs that became the white album. When I think back to the first time I heard him, playing with the Senate when all the drummers in Glasgow came to hear this sixteen year old and stood there with their jaws hitting the floor, I think how great he was then. And then he got even better.”
It was two years after this that Stuart met McIntosh and another four years before he got to work with him. By this time McIntosh had earned a reputation across Europe with soul stars including Ben E King, who would later tour and record with AWB, and with the initially jazz-rock styled but latterly groove-orientated Oblivion Express, pianist-organist Brian Auger’s band that also included Glaswegians, guitarist Jim Mullen and singer Alex Ligertwood.
“Robbie’s heart was always in R&B,” says Stuart. “He was this larger than life character who could create an amazing groove and when I started writing Too Hip, I was thinking about the time we spent in this little house in Hollywood with blankets covering the windows for soundproofing, playing into the early hours. We had no idea that the songs we were coming up with were going to have such a lasting impact and no inclination that our lives were about to change so much, and then the white album came out and Robbie died just as it was really taking off.”
The shock of McIntosh’s death – he suffered a fatal heart attack after accidentally ingesting heroin – was assuaged to some extent by the presence in Los Angeles of his friend Steve Ferrone. Ferrone had followed McIntosh into a series of bands, including Oblivion Express, and was able to step in and keep AWB on the road.
“As much as Robbie stamped his personality on tracks like Pick up the Pieces and Person to Person, Steve did the same on the next album,” says Stuart. “The groove on Schoolboy Crush was all Steve’s and, later, Feel No Fret came from him laying something down. We never started recording anything unless it felt right, which frustrates reissue compilers because there are hardly any unreleased or alternative tracks, so these were strong ideas and Steve contributed a lot of them.”
Recording 360, says Stuart, was “a breeze.” The band came together when Ferrone, who – post-AWB – has played with everyone from Johnny Cash to Chaka Khan, was being installed in the Drummers Hall of Fame in Los Angeles. Only Stuart and saxophonist Duncan from AWB could make it but with guests including bassist Will Lee and keyboardist-saxophonist Larry Williams they played half a dozen AWB songs that Ferrone was influential in creating, and had such a good time that they decided to do some gigs. Getting their diaries to align – the very much in-demand Ferrone is currently touring with Tom Petty – can be problematic, but the album came together in four days and they have plans to tour next spring.
“We’re not trying to be anything we’re not,” says Stuart. “We just play what we feel, which is what we always did anyway, and we know we can’t be young and relevant so we just have to be what we are, old but hopefully still relevant. It’s funny but after all this time – almost forty-five years since the first AWB album – that period between recording the last note and the day of release, when you’re wondering how people are going to react, still feels the same: scary. But it also still feels exciting to be releasing the first album with a new band.”
360 is released on 3MS Music. A Concert for Matt takes place at King Tut’s, Glasgow on Saturday [September 9].
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