JOE COCKER

Rip It Up, Issue 2, 1 July 1977, Page 8

JOE COCKER

The Concert

For my money Joe Cocker has put on some of the best concerts Auckland has ever seen. His first show in 1972 with the Chris Stainton band, was widely misunderstood. Cocker unveiled new material and the large audience, familiar only with his wellknown songs, became disgruntled. They don't know what they missed. His versions of “St James Infirmary” and Do Right Woman” were killers, that most of the crowd in their resentment at not hearing their favourites,

ignored

Cocker's second appearance in Enzed was even better. I d rate it as one of the best rock concerts ever seen here. With a totally immaculate band that positively reeked of class, Cocker put on a show of immense subtlety and power. With Richard Tee on piano, Cornell Dupree on rhythm guitar, Gordon Edwards on bass and the amazing Albert Lee on lead guitar, he couldn’t miss. I've yet to hear any othepband achieve such a full and nelhoWsound at an outdoor concert and ""Cocker more than matched them. This time through Cocker was billed as "The Return of the Mad Dog'. But he no longer looks so mad. In fact, he was distinctly subdued; his hands no longer claw at the air or at his hair in the way they once did, and his vocal power seemed more limited than in the past. However, with his new band, American Standard, and well-known session players Nicky Hopkins and Bobby Keys, together for only the second

time on stage, it was perhaps no surprise that no chances were taken either vocally or instrumentally. Indeed, his versions of some of the old favourites such as “Space Captain” and “High Time We Went”, were pretty lame stuff. American Standard are not the class unit that either the Chris Stainton band or Stuff were, and predictably Nicky Hopkins contributions on piano and Bobby Keys' sax solos were the instrumental highlights of the night. But the most encouraging note of the concert was the energy Cocker put into many of the new songs. “Worrying Over You”, “Wasted Years' and "All Because of What You Did to Me Last Night” were proof enough that there's life in the mad dog yet. Hell, I'd go and see the man anytime. For Joe Cocker's gift is the ability to throw himself into a song. Not just vocally but mentally and physically too. So, when Joe gets it right, he doesn't just sing a song, he lives it, and that makes him the consistently compelling performer he is. There's too little genuine passion around to ignore someone like Joe Cocker.

Alastair Dougal

The first thing you notice about Joe Cocker is that body. The strangely bloated torso on spindly legs, the ragged hair pushed behind his ears and the stubble of a beard. His movements off-stage are exactly like those on. He can't keep his hands still; he wringsthem, pullsat his beard and, most characteristically of all, tugs at his hair which is now not only receding but streaked with grey. But this ravaged appearance belies his character. He's maintained that outward going working-class manner. Friendly and ingenuous. He answers questions in a low mumble, his conversation punctuated with you know after every few words.

He s not articulate, sure, but the rounds of a thousand Interviews have long ago killed any idea of maintaining a front and he seems prepared to answer anything. In fact, vulnerability and a certain gullibility would seem to be his downfall. His career shows him as being controlled alternately by musicians "and managers, few of whom have ever had his better interests at heart. Poor old Joe.

So do you think the music business has given you a pretty rough deal, Joe'?

"Maybe I have been isolated in some ways just because I got in a lot earlier. Some of the younger sort of guys they don't want to know anything about their business affairs as long as they've got their guitars and a few organs, you know'? But I've got to keep a check on what's happening with my own financial status as well as the music.

Like Jerry Moss A & M s president. He came through from a sad bacground, out of Brooklyn and the Bronx, and I suppose once you've got S2OO million in the bank you ain't about to part with it, right'? So, they ve missed a lot of the rough times you have to go through because once they get that bit of fatness around them they can t see it any more. They're dedicated never to go back to that. “So they can be a bit heartless at times."

The music business hasn't paid too well either, Cocker says. How about the story that he came out of the Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour with only a couole of hundred dollars'?

“I thought I came out of it with less than that. I don't know where it all

went ... we didn t even get any royalties out of the film. " At the end of that tour Cocker disappeared for a couple of years and, reputedly, was living with his parents in Sheffield. He only re-emerged when Jim Price managed to convince him to record the / Can Stand a Little Rain album. What was that seclusion all about?

At the end of that tour I was physically drained and disillusioned. I though that we d achieved something getting that far with the show and creating so much interest. But I could see what was coming up was to carry on for another five years until I crumpled up in a heap, or I d put a gun to my head or something, you know? “The only way I could hit back was to say No product! '.

And what about the accusations that Leon Russell used that tour as a launching pad for his own career? A lot of people accuse him of that but I've never had any grudge about that coshes got his own talent. But he still has that domineering thing . . . I mean we couldn't work on that scale or any way with him having that dominant bit inside him, you know?

"I've seen him since, about nine months ago and we just talked. I fell asleep on his sofa and I woke up and heard this church organ music and gentle piano. And there’s Leon and Mary, his wife's playing the organ, and it's about four in the morning. Leon just looked at me and said Well, are you ready to start work?' So I said, and Cocker emphasises the next sentence, “ TM going home!' He gets a little bit overbearing you know. The piano player and arranger from Cocker's last band, Stuff, Richard Tee had similar high handed tendencies. "Yeah, he had his own little way. I remember in the States we were doing this song The Moon's a Harsh Mis-

tress and I mis-cued on the intro. I did the same last night but Nicky Hopkins realised and changed the chords to suit me, but when I did it with Richard he wouldn't budge. I kept glaring at him but he would not move. For some weird reason it came out all right. But I don't know what the audience must have thought." What about the boozing, Joe? Stories say you’ve been told to ease up or die?

"I'd been having these sort of puking deals for about a year and a half. So the doctor said the classic example is Brendan Behan. What happens is your liver just blows up and you're dead, you know? "I mean I've not been drinking that madly, you know. Just a day off every now and then when I get swamped, just like anyone else. "It's often escapism. In my position,

you know, everyone s scared to give me grass because they think someone will throw them in jail for selling it to me. So if I feel dryheaded and need something to calm me down ... It just depends on what's going on in my mind. If the future seems slow and I can t see any real progress coming up I get to feel disinterested." Cocker and his new manager Michael Lang seem determined to put a new front over to the audience. His last album didn’t do too well. As Cocker admits, “Denny Cordell who used to be my producer said it was the epitome of what I'm about, blues oriented music, you know? So, it’s hard luck it wasn't more commercial."

So for the next album they're aiming for a more accessible approach. "I'm going to try and select a few more rockers, but unless you write your own, they're very hard to pick up, good rock and roll songs." The change on the album is also reflected in a stage act that Cocker views as more energetic than in the past. "We re trying to bring the rock'n'roll spirit back into it. The young guys in this band leap around something cruel. I feel like the old man stood up the/e"

As fits the man, Cocker's ambitions are pretty modest too. "It depends on what you mean by ambition. I have no ambition to own a record company but just to . . . get around to writing my own things and learning to play an instrument which I've been saying for ages. Nicky's been saying he's going to teach me the rudiments.

“I've also had these weird things lately because I'm living out of Hollywood. All these people suggest I should have a go at acting quite amusing I suppose. Do you ever feel nostalgic for those days when you were just an anonymous gas fitter in Sheffield then? "I sometimes think they were good days. I was really fit and I used to do a lot of physical work and had no big tax worries. You got your booze money and just had a lot of fun. But there s no way I could look back and regret what I’ve done.

“Some of the old timers in Sheffield must still be saying Ee bah gum, that Joe's doing really well you know'."

Alastair Dougal (with special thanks to Geoff Chappie for his incisive questioning)

The Interview