“Who are you calling ‘eccentric’?”
Happy birthday to my favourite 24-carat rock’n’roll eccentric, Roy Wood.
From his days as guiding light of The Move (I was hooked as soon as I heard “Do Ya” for the first time), to his founding membership in ELO, to his many various solo projects (Roy Wood’s Wizzard, Wizzo, Roy Wood’s Helicopters, The Roy Wood Big Band, Roy Wood’s Army), the man has gone to great lengths to display his mad genius.
At the beginning (1965-67), the Move were a five-or-six piece guitar pop band, cranking out one UK chart hit after another, almost all Wood originals.For their second album,they pared down to four (Rick Price on bass, Carl Wayne on vocals, Bev Bevan on drums, and Roy on guitar and anything else that wasn’t nailed down) and produced an album of, IMHO, unparalleled brilliance,”Shazam“.
It was around this time that Roy started to find his sound – DENSE. Heavily influenced by Phil Spector, Roy didn’t think there was a sound that existed that didn’t sound better double-tracked; Vocals. Guitars. French horns. Oboes. Bass. DRUMS (!).
Playing a lot of the instruments himself, Roy was increasingly becoming a studio recluse. This eventually became too much for Carl Wayne and Rick Price, who left to pursue other opportunities (Wayne eventually replaced Terry Sylvester in the Hollies). To replace them, Roy called on fellow Birminghamian (and ex-Idle Race frontman) Jeff Lynne. The Move became, at this point, one extended studio project – they released albums in 1970 and ’71, but never toured – it was just Jeff, Roy and Bev, locked in the studio, playing all the instruments.
Out of this setup grew an interest in having a legitimate rock’n’roll orchestra. As a side project, the three started “The Electric Light Orchestra“, designed to perform Jeff and Roy’s extended orchestral pieces live. In the early 70’s, the techincal obstacles to doing this were pretty much insurmountable, and Roy eventually got fed up and left. Jeff and Bev stuck with it, technology eventually caught up with them, and it made ELO one of the most successful bands of the 70’s.
This little backgrounder was intended just to whet your appetite – I’ll follow up with an outline of Roy’s solo career, and some personal highlights in a later post.