A Few Words With...Percy Jones
by John A. Wilcox
Percy Jones is a true master of the bass guitar. His playing is always melodic, kinetic, muscular, and unforgettable. We were recently chatting on the phone and our conversation turned toward Percy wanting to set the record straight on the state of Brand X, the new official website, the fake Brand X, etc. We decided to do a little email interview to accomplish this & you are currently gazing lovingly with soft, dewy eyes upon it. Start your engines!
PS : There is a new Brand X website on the internet. Who put it together and what can fans find there?
PJ : The website is now up and running. It was put together by Sylvain Despretz. Brand X was retired by Rob Lumley and myself over a year ago after John Goodsall passed. We decided we needed a way to protect the legacy of the band, and also a means for fans to be able to look up detailed information on the history of the band. It goes into a lot of quite rich detail, with photos going back to the start of the band in 1974. It also covers all the sidemen that played in the band over the years.
PS : I understand there's a "Fake Brand X" section. Please tell me about that.
PJ : The "Fake Brand X" section is information is again to help protect the band's legacy. The two individuals who managed the band from 2016 to 2019 are legally required to stop representing the band in the event of the death of myself or John, and to hand back all keys to social media. They have refused to do this and still run a Facebook page called "OfficialBrandX". They present it as a Brand X centered around John, claiming that John wrote a will expressing his wishes for the future of the band. The three legal owners of the band were John, Rob Lumley and myself. One member cannot suddenly take sole ownership. We are trying to educate the folks that visit that page that it's bogus. They need to visit www.officialbrandx.com for a reality check.
Brand X had lacked legal protection for decades but now the band has it, on paper at least. This was with the help of Sonia Belaiboud, a real legal eagle.
She helped Rob Lumley and myself pen a comprehensive "artistic will" before Rob passed away, ratified by John Goodsall's next of kin, his daughter Natasha, which will have strong legal value to protect the artistic legacy of the band, and define in detail what can and cannot be done with the music in the future in terms of how it is to be reissued, credited, mixed, re-mixed, and who can and cannot perform it, or take the name Brand X, etc.
Brand X had lacked legal protection for decades, but now the band has it, at least on paper.
PS : Since John Goodsall's death in 2021 and Phil Collins' total disinterest in the band, that leaves you and Robin Lumley to carry the torch. What have the 2 of you decided and why?
PJ : Sadly Rob Lumley passed away just last week. Robin had been in poor health for some time. He had been living in Australia for many years but had moved back to the UK and was living on Dartmoor, an area that he apparently loved. He knew he had limited time left but seemed to be improving of late. I had a short phone conversation with him just a few weeks before he passed and he sounded remarkably upbeat. The two of us never discussed Phil, and the last time that I met with and talked to Phil was in 1981. I had no contact with him since I have no idea why he shows no interest in the band or it's members.
PS : Going back a bit - how did you first meet our pal Danny Wilding and what influence did he have on your career?
PJ : Rob Lumley had introduced me to a bunch of guys who used to get together every week in a rehearsal room in Clapham, south London for a jam session. It was fun because everyone could experiment and have a good time with no serious consequences. One day Danny Wilding and Richard Williams showed up, they were A&R guys for Island records. Amazingly, even though we were making stuff up as we went along, they signed us. This is the first time I recollect meeting Danny.
PS : How did you first come to work with Brian Eno?
PJ : I had played bass on a record called Peter and the Wolf which was based on the Prokofiev composition. The record was a concept type album by Rob Lumley and Jack Lancaster. They used the Brand X crew as the core band. They had numerous guests come in and overdub various parts, Eno being one of them. Apparently Eno liked the rhythm section and not long afterwards called Phil and I to come in and work on his stuff.
PS : What was unique about his approach in the studio?
PJ : Well, he was unlike anybody else I had worked with. He wasn't a technically advanced keyboard player but he had really interesting ideas on the sonic side of things and an unusual method of composition. There were no charts, he would give you an idea to work off. You would start playing, really improvising off whatever his starting point was. He would then start giving directions, like "take those two measures and repeat them". I remember Sky Saw on Another Green World started with just a "one and" A note played on the piano. I think he got the best out of the musos that worked with him by giving them a lot of freedom to be themselves, but was able to direct them gently in the direction he was aiming for. I once saw the longest tape loop ever, it went completely around the control room at Island studious. Keep in mind this was still the days of analog. Working with Eno was really enjoyable, we tracked some stuff with just the two of us. I was using electric bass and upright, a lot of it was probably never used.
PS : Sylvain Despretz has been working on a Brand X documentary. Has he discovered any information on the band you were not previously aware of?
PJ : Yes he has. For instance, I was never aware that Phil was not an owner of the band, he was hired out to the band by his own company. Therefore the debt that was put on the band in 1980 made Lumley, Goodsall and myself liable, not Phil. I read a bit of a rant online recently by a guy who thought we were disrespectful to Phil for calling him a sideman on the website. Phil contributed enormously to the band musically, but was still legally a sideman.
PS : In the latter day Brand X shows, there was zero new material. What was the decision behind that?
PJ : That's correct, and it was becoming a bone of contention with me after a while. The management were pushing us to play material from the first three records because they deemed those to be the most popular. I soon felt like I was playing in a tribute band of itself. I then wrote two new tunes for the band but made the error of sending an mp3 rough of one of them to one of the managers. He commented that "it doesn't have a melody that I can hang my hat on". Actually it did have a melody, but it wasn't Good King Wenceslas. So nothing new was played and I eventually refused to work with the management any more because of the lack of accounting.
PS : Have the Brand X studio vaults been drained or is there still any unreleased material?
PJ : Last year a recording done for Island surfaced at Rob Lumley's place. It was a recording done prior to Unorthodox Behaviour which we were not too keen on and had asked Chris Blackwell if we could do another one, all instrumental. From what I have heard some of it sounds pretty good, so it could be a candidate for release at some point.
PS : Looking back, what significant mark do you feel the band left on the music scene?
PJ : Well I think we had our own style of mixing up jazz, rock and whatever else without taking ourselves too seriously. A band is always the sum of it's parts and over the years there was mostly some good chemistry going on. During the last reunion I was struck by how many people showed up with CDs and Vinyl to be signed. It proved to me that the music had touched more people than I had originally thought.
PS : What projects are you currently involved with?
PJ : I play with a band called PAKT which is Alex Skolnick, Kenny Grohowski, Tim Motzer and me. It's all improvisation and we get together and gig whenever everybody is available. I already had a rapport with Kenny because he was in Brand X just before it blew up.
I also have a band called MJ12 which is instrumental. the approach is rather similar to Brand X in that we play compositions, but with room inside of that for improvisation. But of course it's a different sound with the line up, Chris Bacas on saxophone, Steve Moses, drums and David Phelps guitar.
Also a project on hold for now called Box of Noise. I'm not sure what that will sound like until we actually do something.
I get calls now and then from musos who need a bass track. I have done several for Richard Barbieri, and a record by Mark Wingfield which is supposed to come out in the Summer.
PS : Do you still have an active interest in shortwave radio? What attracts you to it?
PJ : Yes, I got into it when I was about 12 years old and have never lost interest in it. I like the freedom of it, being able to communicate with someone on the other side of the planet with no wires or fibre optic cable, or having to pay anybody for that matter. I use Morse code which is of course commercially obsolete and generates ridicule from some people. It has an extremely low bandwidth but it works, and it's actually the original digital mode. I'm fascinated by how electromagnetic energy propagates through space. What actually is the vacuum, it has an impedance, permeability and permittivity, so it's not just empty space. There are a lot of unsolved mysteries with shortwave radio, like long delayed echoes for example, still not explained to this day.
PS : Please tell me 6 albums you never tire of listening to.
PJ :
Gabriel Faure - Requiem
Charles Mingus - Ah Um
Stravinsky - The Rite Of Spring
Miles Davis - Live Evil
John Coltrane - My Favourite Things
Elvis Presley - Heartbreak Hotel
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