Lance Fogg - Complex (Part 1)

When and where were you born? Are you originally from England? What was growing up like for you? When did you first begin to fall in love with music and what was it about the guitar that initially fascinated you? Do you have any siblings?

English to the core! I was born on 20th November 1943 in Hampton Court, which is a small suburb on the SW outskirts of London in an administrative area known as Surrey. It's mostly famous for Hampton Court Palace which was the main seat of royalty before Buckingham Palace in central London was built. Growing up was good. The family lived in Esher, a nearby small town where I went to school until 1951 when the family moved up to the Midlands because my father had changed his job. There was always music in the home as my mother was a concert pianist but also played a lot of chamber music with very clever musical friends. However we had the radio on the house a lot and I listened to popular music of the time which was largely of the big band type with solo vocalists, such as Ann Shelton, Dorothy Squires and Vera Lynn. The charts were heavily populated by American artists led by Bing Crosby. I was into music from a very age. When I was about 4 years old I used to walk around the house singing away so my parents thought I might benefit from singing lessons! As a result my first ever public performance was a recital given to the ladies of the local Women's Institute (the WI was the cornerstone of English house and home) at the lunchtime serenade where I sang 2 songs. I can still remember those, they were "The Owl and The Pussycat" and "The Drummer and the Cook"!! My mother made sure that I and my sister Karen, both learnt to play the piano. I managed to get up to BSM Grade 4 but then became distracted by firstly, the cello, and then later, the guitar.

My sister had more perseverance and continued up to Grade 9 and then went to the Birmingham School of Music and obtained her LRSCM in both piano and clarinet between leaving school and starting at university. I became fascinated by an early television show back in the mid 1950s called "Off The Record" which was introduced by one Jack Payne. It featured artists who had current hits  such as Petula Clark, Eve Boswell, Matt Monro and the Ted Heath Big Band. Is till rate Matt Monro as one of, if not the finest crooner ever!! What a brilliant voice. The guitar!! Late 50s and rock'n'roll was starting and I wanted one so in 1956 for a combined birthday and Christmas present I was bought a kit, Yes, I built my first guitar with the help of a fret saw. It was a round hole Spanish type with nylon strings. Not quite what I had hoped for but I learnt to play on it and eventually sold it to a school friend. The following year I went through the same routine but this time it resulted in a proper guitar, a Hofner Congress!! (I still have it; it sits on a stand on the landing on the stairs as a memento of the early days. It's been valued at £250, compared to its original cost of 15 guineas (£15.75)). I still wasn't content and later bought a Framus triple pickup scratchplate and fitted it myself. I used to hire an amplifier from a local music store and play along to my first LP which an aunt in Canada had sent me for Christmas - Duane Eddy's "Especially For You". I knew all the guitar parts as well as the piano, sax and bass parts. I did enjoy the Rebel Yells!!

Fogg at age 11.

What was your town like growing up? What would you and your friends do for fun? Did you go to many local shows/concerts in your area? What was the music scene in your community like back in those days? Were there any groups you saw that made a huge impact on you and if so, who were they?

As I related in answer to your first question, initially I lived in Esher, in Surrey, When I was 8 the family moved north to the Midlands and we had a house in the country, just outside Royal Leamington Spa. I obtained a scholarship to Warwick School (check it out on the internet, it's amazing), an independent school (we call them Public Schools) It claimed to be the third oldest in the UK, founded circa 914. Living in the country, my friends were mostly at school where I played a lot of rugby, tennis, squash, athletics and a lot of swimming. I didn't get into going to shows until I started at university. However local clubs and small venues used to hold dances. I joined the Young Liberals because they used to have 2 bands at their dances instead of the usual one. I was interested in being in a band but I didn't really get into it until I was 15 (1958) when a group  os us got together at school and were allowed to play in the sports store room at lunchtime. It was badly organized and was basically a free-for-all with the loudest dictating what to play.

We played skiffle, a peculiarly British amalgam of country, blues, hillbilly and jazz. The best known exponent of this art form was one Lonnie Donegan and also a group called The Worried Men. They began to get airtime on a TV show called The 6.5 Special (BBC Black & White!) which was run on Saturday nights, yes at 6:05pm! This was the climax of the week! At 16 I took my "A" Levels in Maths, Physics and Chemistry as my main subjects and as a bribe, if I passed all the papers first time my parent promised me a double bass! I should explain that previously the very enthusiastic music master at Warwick School had asked me, as first cell in the school orchestra if I would be interested in transferring to double bass as there wasn't one and he was thinking of purchasing one with school funds. Three weeks before the End of Summer Term Concert, a large wooden crate appeared and I managed to unpack it, get the bridge in place and string the instrument, learn how to play it and then learn the parts for the concert in time. So there I was - a bass player! I was fascinated that the four strings on a double bass were the same as the bottom 4 strings on a guitar but an octave lower. How was that arranged??

Did you participate in any groups prior to Complex? Tell me about how the band came together. How did you initially meet your bandmates Bob Mitchell, Brian Lee, Lance Fogg and Steve Coe? Where would you guys practice/rehearse and what was the overall chemistry like when you guys first started jamming together? When and where did the band play their very first live performance and what was that experience like for you?

Getting my own double bass was an opener to playing in jazz bands as double bass players were fairly rare. I started by playing in jazz trios - piano, bass and drums - for functions and dances, in hotels and night clubs. Pass ing my driving test shortly after my 17th birthday was a help as I was able to borrow my mother's estate (USA station wagon) car and cart the double bass around to gigs. Jazz trios turned into jazz bands and dance bands on a fairly regular basis. Mostly what are termed as "scratch" bands, i.e. you turn up at the gig, get given a pile of music, start when the conductor waves his baton and when you get to the end of the pile of music, you turn it over and start at the beginning again. It was useful for speeding up reading music and getting to grips with unusual chord shapes. Then I went to university - Aberdeen in Scotland - and had a ball. In my first year, as well as supposedly learning all about engineering, I was playing in the university orchestra, two jazz bands and two rock bands. I used my student grant money to purchase my first bass guitar and a "proper amplifier", a Selmer Treble & Bass, a 50watt valve amplifier and a separate 2x12 inch cabinet.

Together with 3 friends at university we formed the university's first rock band, The Misfits. In 1962 when I started at university, the Beatles were just about to start on their journey of world domination and turn the music industry upside down. The Misfits were very much a Beatles-type group and we soon started getting booking at all types of venues and functions and even took over from the dance bands that were a feature of the university's Saturday night hops. Also during my time at university, particularly in my final year when we wound up The Misfits to concentrate on our final exams, I became involved with local entertainment agents and learnt a lot about the management side of artists. I was instrumental in getting top acts to perform at university functions including The Move, The Tremoloes, Simon Dupree and the Big Sound, The Steam Packet and Freddie & The Dreamers (all UK). The Sixties were awash with new bands!! I came home after university in 1967 and by this time, the family had moved up to Lancashire and my parents had a house on the Promenade in St Annes. This was right next to Blackpool so I was determined to find a band to join. I was working fairly locally so could be around for rehearsals and I had my own transport .

After a attempt to form a jazz band which lasted only about 6 months I advertised myself in the local press as "Bass player looking to form a band - can play anything from Bach to beat" and one response was from Brian Lee who, like me, had just finished at university and wanted to start a group. He phoned me and then called round complete with his guitar and small amp. We had an evening of playing mostly the stuff that he had been playing in his university group which consisted of covers by Hendrix and Cream and other artists I had never heard of. Brian had also made contact with Tony and the three of us met round at his parent's place in St Annes. Brian had previously played in a band called The Ramblers before going to university. The Ramblers were a "Cliff & The Shadows" type band and had been quite successful locally. They were managed by Brian's mum and she gave over the front room as our rehearsal room which was a major plus for a start-up band. COMPLEX's first gigs was a 4-piece with the addition of another Tony on rhythm guitar who had played with Brian in The Ramblers. I'm not 100% sure, but I think our first gig was in 1968 in the Broadway Rooms, a church hall up in Fleetwood [If you check out Blackpool in the UK on, say, Google maps, you will see that it lies on the Fylde coast, a peninsular between the Ribble and Wyre rivers, with a succession of small towns along it - south to north: Freckleton, Warton, Lythan, St Annes, Blackpool, Norbreck, Cleveleys and Fleetwood] Tony, Brian and myself gelled immediately at the first jam and the three of us remained the core of the band right though to 1978.

I always rated Tony as an excellent drummer, an even better vocalist and one of the most musical people I have ever met. He had an instinct for knowing what numbers suited us and when rehearsing he would pick out the notes for vocal harmonies and small things on recording which gave songs their individual character. The first gig was very satisfying. Little did any of us know that COMPLEX would last for the next 10 years. We had been going about a year and one of our regular venues was the YMCA in St Annes. It was at one of the gigs there that a very young Steve Coe came up and started chatting. He had been to several of our gigs and was interested to know if were might be interested in playing some original music as well as our cover versions.

We invited him round to our rehearsal room at Brian's parents' house and it just so happened that there was an upright piano in the room. Steve sat himself down and proceeded to play some of his compositions with sort of guide type vocals. I remember the four of us looking at one another and we were all thinking "hey these are good". So, much to Steve's amazement, we not only said we would like to arrange this music for the band but also asked if he was interested in joining the band. He said yes! COMPLEX became a 5-piece for a short while until Tony, the guitarist, left to join the Army, something he had always wanted to do. Steve's music became very important and took up about half of our repertoire. He had this arrangement with a friend, Bob MItchell, who wrote the lyrics and Steve wrote the music - very much like Elton John and Bernie Taupin. I only met Bob once when he came to a gig to hear how we performed. He only came to gigs very rarely.

What were your first impressions of everyone? Can you tell me about writing as well as recording the band’s first LP “The Way We Feel” that was released in ‘71? What was the band’s process and approach to writing as well as recording these tunes? How did the deal with Deroy come about?

Tony, Brian and myself got on well with each other right from the start. I respected both Brian's and Tony's musical ability. They could play virtually anything and play it well. If we were rehearsing a cover of a song, Tony had an uncanny knack of sounding like the original singer, not deliberately but subconsciously because he managed to get into the feel of the original and portray the original singers own interpretation. With Steve's own original compositions, Tony used his own very versatile voice to convey the song's meaning. Arranging Steve's music was great. Sometimes Steve had his own ideas about how they should sound but was always open to other ideas. Many of the arrangements were created straight away with the bass and guitar complimenting Steve's keyboard work and sometimes taking over part of it. It was a very amenable and creative process. The first album started life as a demo. In those days, most bands who wanted a recording contract started by sending demos round to the major record labels in order to attract their attention and, hopefully, get an audition and subsequently get signed up to produce recording for the company.

We started the process by deciding it was time to make a demo. Problem was - which track do we put on the demo??? Eventually we decided there was only one way to do it - put all the best songs on and make it into a "demo album" ! We were very green and perhaps rather naive about it as none of us had had any experience of recording. Even I had only ever recorded the music of a jazz trio in a friend's front room. I don't know how we came to meet him but one of us knew someone who worked in Granada TV studios and so one day Graham Atkinson turned up at Brian's parents' house complete with home-built audio mixer and started to organize a recording session. The kitchen became the control room and the front room became the studio with leads running along the corridor. We thought the results were fantastic and Graham even took the masters to Granada studios and added some sound effects like the rain and thunder on Storm On Way and the scream on Witch's Spell.

The crowd noises on Madamoiselle Jackie were actually made by COMPLEX in the studio that day. The whole album was recorded over a weekend and because the numbers were part of our routine we knew them so well so most backings were finalized in one take and so were the vocals. The deal with Deroy came about because of what happened to the first album. The master tapes were sent to Craighall Studios in Scotland because the Ramblers had used them for recording purposes. Craighall butchered the master tapes (and probably still have them somewhere) and the quality of the original discs is appalling. Looking back, we should have sent them back and demanded a re-run of the pressing. But we wanted to get them out to record companies and so went ahead duly dispatching about half of the 100 pressings complete with a sleeve which was too small and had to be selotaped together with my design on the cover.  

What was the process/approach to this album and what did you guys want to achieve and/or express on this record that maybe you couldn’t on the debut? Was this a self released project?

The first album was recorded and released in November 1970 and the follow-up, The Way We Feel" about 7-8 months later in June/July 1971. As far as can remember, there were no other recordings made at the time. We had an audition down in Manchester for EMI as a result of the first album and then we landed up in some small studio in Liverpool but I'm not sure when that was or if anything came of it.

1972 saw the release of the “Untitled” LP on the legendary label Emidisc. Can you tell me about that project? This was after Steve Coe left the group, correct? There’s a gap from ‘72 to ‘76 when you guys released your first and only single on Pye. What were the band’s activities during this time?

Ah! Yee......es!! This was something that Mrs Lee, Brian's mum put together and without our knowledge at the time, well, certainly mine. Steve had left the band back in late 1971 and we had managed to find a replacement, one Mike Proctor. The problem with having a keyboards player in a band is that you develop a certain full sound which replacing with a guitar just doesn't sound the same so we were looking for another keyboardist. We found Mike who had been the very fine keyboards player with a local heavy rock band, Innocent Child, who were heralded as Blackpool's answer to Deep Purple. They were badly managed and had a disastrous tour of Germany in which they had to sell their gear to pay to get home. It signaled the end of Innocent Child and we found Mike at a loose end. I only found out later that Mike had also had an early solo career and produced a cult single "Mr Commuter". So he had a fine singing voice as well as being a classically trained pianist.

With Mike, COMPLEX had a slight change of direction, but still kept busy gigging and we managed to arrange a recording session at BBC Radio Blackburn (now BBC Radio Lancashire) as well as recording some of our own early "Proctor influenced" compositions. The master tapes were returned to Mrs Lee who decided to get them onto acetates and which eventually became unearthed and portrayed as COMPLEX's 3rd album. The tracks are now on the 3rd CD on The Complex Anthology. During the period 1972-76, Mike suddenly left after being with COMPLEX for about a year (I found out he was playing in a heavy rock band with some local friends for the holiday season and then we lost of track of him completely) and so we were back to square one with trying to find a replacement keyboardist. Fortunately, I remembered seeing a good keyboards player with a local band, Bitter Harvest, when they were at the same audition for Opportunity Knocks (an ITV programmed searching for hidden talent). So I set about luring him away.

Fortunately Bitter Harvest were in the process of disbanding so Keith Shackleton became immediately available. He came complete with extremely large, very heavy and very old Hammond organ and a Leslie tone cabinet. Fortunately the disbandment of Bitter Harvest also resulted in their roadie wanting to sell the large Ford Transit van which I snapped up at a bargain price. This meant we had the means of transporting the newly increased size of stage gear. COMPLEX continued to gig around not just the North West but further afield and build up a growing reputation. With Keith we started writing again, probably the most well-known number at the time being "Smiley Anne". We won a few competitions and played a number of outdoor venues as well as the well-worn pub and club circuits. We approached a large agency, L E Agency in Wigan who were handling well-known bands from the Manchester area but we got chucked off their list when we went and got bookings ourselves at "their" venues. Well, we didn't know the venues were "theirs"!!

What eventually happened to the band after ‘76? How did the deal with Grapefruit Records come about for the group’s “Live For The Minute - Anthology”? What was it like to finally release some of this material after all these years? What do you think of a whole new generation of fans and listeners appreciating the band after all these years?

Then in or around 1976 we met Johnny Burton. Initially I just thought he was a bit of a fan with a mouth and I didn't have much time for him. But then he claimed he could make us into big stars and started to promise all kinds of things. I can't remember exactly when but I had become a bit disillusioned with COMPLEX. I felt the urge to try something a bit more challenging and perhaps not so commercial and so one day in 1977 I gave my notice but left them a month find a replacement. A month later I departed COMPLEX and set out into the wide world looking for something different. COMPLEX meanwhile had found a replacement, one Dave Yardley and he is the bassist on the COMPLEX single on the Pye label, "Who Got The Love" c/w "She Turns Me On".

I went off and formed CONTRABAND which played a mixture of original compositions and covers of Steely Dan, Doobies and Wishbone Ash. We played on the college circuit and some pubs but there was a clash of personalities in the band and it ended after about 8 months when the singer/guitarist said he hated audiences and stalked off the stage. A few months later I was in a music bar in Blackpool, chatting with some musician friends and the m/c announced that Wednesday nights would be specially for local bands. I laughingly suggested we could do that so was born GERIATRIX with a first gig a month later. GERIATRIX became TRUE BRIT after we discovered that the guitarist was already writing material for HMV Music and basically needed us as a vehicle for his songs. After our second gig as a 6-piece we went down to London ostensibly to meet our "manager" and found ourselves signing on the dotted line for a recording contract.

Although I gave up my day job with the expectation of having a full-time job a professional musician, it didn't last long. Our "manager" wasn't all that interested and then he fell out with his connection in HMV and a tour that we were on was a disaster with very little support from the record company. So it all ended in acrimony. In the meantime COMPLEX had been rocking along. The single with Pye Records flopped because the company had virtually no budget to promote it. I rejoined in 1978 and played through to the end which came on New Year's Eve. We came off the stage and Tony Shakespeare just disappeared. I turned to Keith and Brian and asked when the next gig was and they said the diary was empty. That was the last gig COMPLEX did. Tony was so disillusioned with the industry that he swore he wouldn't touch another set of drums. I think we were all a bit pissed off with the way bands were treated, expected to rehearse, organize and entertain for virtually no money, getting pushed around by promoters and agents and getting no recognition for all their hard work.

That said, the past few years have given us some surprises with the 2 albums becoming collectors' items, being valued at £thousands and the band reaching deals with 4 record companies for digital re-releases, the 3CD compilation "Live For The Minute: The COMPLEX Anthology" being the latest and probably the last. It has always surprised us how there has been this continual interest in COMPLEX and our music, much of it due to Steve Coe's genius for composition. I occasionally play some of the tracks and am generally quite surprised at the quality of the composition and the performance. I always felt that "The Way I Feel" off the second album could have been a smash hit, perhaps re-arranged with some brass paying the riff and some funky clarinet in the mix it might get a second chance. I now have a multi-track recorder and might do some experimenting with that and other tracks. Steve died some years ago but left a legacy.

The deal with Grapefruit Records came about because David Wells who organized the first digital re-issue of the two albums on the Tenth Planet label in 1998 had connections with Cherry Red and Grapefruit labels. When he came up with the idea of releasing the music on CDs back in 2012 we suggested that a 3rd CD be included featuring all that happened since Steve left the band. For a long time the idea was discussed but things like royalties that would be due to Pye always seemed insurmountable until at last he managed to persuade Grapefruit to get involved. Even now, the tracks on Spotify exclude the two from the Pye single because of royalty disputes. Personally I had always wanted COMPLEX's music to be featured online because I thought it was good enough and gave a genuine snapshot of what was popular back in the 1970s. I am so pleased that it is now getting aired and if it entertains a new generation then that is a bonus.

Is there anything else you would like to further share with the readers?

It came as a nice surprise when Tony Shakespeare phoned me one day back in 2009 and asked if I was interested in reforming COMPLEX. He, Brian and myself decided that we would emulate the sounds of the 70s and have another guitar in the band instead of keyboards. So the new COMPLEX played the local pubs and clubs for the next 3 years. always getting people coming up and reminiscing about the "good ole days" when they first heard us!! It all took off rather more successfully than Tony expected and we finally had to draw the curtain when Tony's new solo career started to interfere with getting gigs. I would like to think that somewhere, some time in the future, a new band will decide to do cover versions of COMPLEX's music. Then I know we will have succeeded.

http://complexband.co.uk/3.html

Dakota Brown