Tony Durant - Fuchsia Interview
Tell me about growing up in Sutton, UK. When did you first begin to fall in love with music, more specifically the guitar? Was this something that was relevant in your household growing up, or did you make that connection on your own?
The first 9 years of my life were spent in Cape Town, South Africa. My mum played Rogers and Hammerstein musicals like “Oklahoma”, “Annie Get Your Gun”, etc. and my dad played accordion. Then, as Apareteid started, we moved back to England, where I went to a boarding school when I was 9. It was what was done then…’make a man of you!’ my Dad would say. It certainly created a different person with the trauma of sudden partial loss of family. My first inroads into music… At my ‘big school’, Dover College, you were made to join the army cadets, which I reluctantly did, but found the band was the lightest way out. I started learning the bugle, but the snare drum was far cooler, standing there rattling out those beats. I developed my own sort of style, giving the marching band thing a bit of a groove; a lilt, a swing! The drum major was always screaming at me to play it straight! I learned to play “Wipe Out”, the old Surfari's tune. The drum solo bit was quite something then and at a boys' boarding school I found myself a bit popular. Soon I played a few songs with the school surf band. I do believe this drumming start gave me a different approach to guitar playing and songwriting. The Beatles and Rolling Stones were starting out then, and I was immediately attracted by their rebelliousness and creativity.
At the end of school (I left early), my dad bought me a drum kit, but I soon realized you couldn’t play drums on your own, so I picked up the acoustic guitar. I put a pickup on it and wired it into a record player — into the wiring that held the stylus on. It worked! But it wasn’t very loud. I then got my first electric, a Hofner Colorama and a small amp. My dad didn’t realize what damage he was doing to what might have been a straight career for a potentially normal kid! I learned to play a Chuck Berry riff, the riff, and I was away. I played in a band with a school friend, The People in active use (I had no idea what it really meant!) and we did a couple of local gigs, all cover songs. Then I answered a little ad in a music shop window in Redhill, near Reigate, South London where we lived. I joined The Aardvarks, who became Kraal, then Louise, a very out there psychedelic outfit in the mid-late 60s. We had our own light show, very new then, and played the London Clubs, Roundhouse, Happenings 44 with some of the legends of the period. We recorded a single (demo) written by the other guitarist, but we didn’t succeed in getting that dream record deal. The demo, “Look At The Sun”, was released much later. I had started writing then, but songs in Louise were largely by the other guitarist, Bob Chudley. I did record “Rue Morgue” — The Somnambulist, much later, which was released on Fruits de Mer and captures something of the period, hopefully. All these songs were released later.
When did you realize music was something you wanted to pursue and make the center of yourlife? Did you participate in any groups, or projects prior to Fuchsia? How did you first meet your bandmates and what was that initial chemistry like between everyone? I’m curious to know how the band’s name came about.
I had been playing in London for a few years with Louise as already mentioned, and by 1969, I thought I needed a change and left to go to university. I did a short course as I had not got the proper qualifications, and managed to get accepted by Exeter University. It was a change of life for me, surrounded by all these bright people from all sorts of academic pursuits and interests. I used to go to all these lunchtime concerts, classical music, Berlioz, Bartok, Stravinski, Back, and loved it all. I had perhaps thought of putting music aside for a while, but that didn’t work. I got involved in an arts project, Goya’s greatest works, and was soon looking for players for a new band. I found the very wonderful Michael Gregory and Michael Day. We hit it off music wise and soon were playing a few gigs, playing songs I’d written. Yes, there was chemistry! But the arrogance of youth hit me with all this classical stuff, and I thought how great it would be to include a 3 piece string section into this band we had. I would write classical strings, but couldn’t actually notate music. I’d think of string lines, record them onto an old Phillips tape recorder my Dad had given me, so as not to forget them, and slowly build up a string section piece I could check against guitar chords. Eventually, we found Maddy, Vanessa and Janet, who weren’t actually doing music courses but could play. They wrote all the arrangements down, and once we all got together and sat down and played together as a full ensemble. What a blast it was, hearing the whole band together with strings for the first time. Remember, this was pre Electric Light Orchestra, and live strings in a band was pretty unheard-off.
When did the band first get together to practice and play? Prior to recording the band’s legendary self-titled LP back in ‘71, were there any live shows, or moments that stand out to you the most before the band had an album under its belt?
As I said, it was an extraordinary moment to hear those first songs for the first time as an ensemble. Maddie, Janet and Vanessa dutifully wrote out their parts, we had a little check through, then Mick and Greg, played them. Wow, what have we created? We thought the whole thing sounded rather good, and very original. Greg came up with the name, Fuchsia, from Lady Fuchsia, the mysterious lady in the Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake, which became very popular at the time, though written many years before. More songs came, and we decided to record a demo, at a small studio, pretty ill in Torquay (where John Cleese’s Fawlty Towers was set). The demo showed a combination of heavier songs, without strings, and then the pure Fuchsia material. We played only one gig, at the University as the full band, made very difficult it by the then current technology of the time. It was so hard to amplify the strings. I sent the tape off to Paul Conroy, (of Genesis fame) an old friend from Sutton's days, who played it to Terry King, the boss of Kingdom Records, who promptly signed us up. The album was recorded that summer during Uni holidays at Sound Techniques studio in Chelsea. We were so very inexperienced, which you can hear, but somehow the naivety and magic shone through (eventually, It took nearly 40 years).
How did you initially go about writing and recording the group’s lone masterpiece? How did the deal with Pegasus come about and would you mind giving some details behind tracks such as“The Nothing Song”, “Gone With The Mouse” and “A Tiny Book”?
So, it was 1970, and we had a record deal. Now the hard part; writing more songs. The writing was a newish departure for me, writing in a very non-pop way (no standard-Intro, verse, verse, chorus, verse, solo etc…) More of a stream of consciousness idea, the music will take me where it will, with no normal self-critical stops and tweaks according to having a firm idea of a finished product, ie none of this, ‘let’s write a song in this genre, for this market as writers usually do. That is why the songs do seem to make their own way on their musical journey. “The Nothing Song” is influenced by my childhood and schooling, reading the ‘Nonsense Poetry’ by Edward Lear. All manner of images there… Rene Magritte, the surrealist painter… a few digs at modern society there too. Very Psychedelic imagery. Just anyone. A surrealist vision/observation of the world in the style of 1960s Bob Dylan, perhaps. “Gone With The Mouse” was a song about the rise and fall of civilizations! Snapshots of history. Why be limited in your vision in your artistic approach to songwriting! Greg thought up the title when he heard it, a more condensed version of the epic novel, Gone With the Wind! “A Tiny Book” was a more personal if not obscurest observation of a relationship breakdown. Again, the song takes on a path/life of its own in its various descriptive passages.
What eventually happened to the group after the release at the beginning of the decade? Did you continue to play music? I understand you eventually relocated to AUS towards the end of the decade.
The group ended shortly after the release of the album. I think the scene had moved on and the fact we didn’t really fit anywhere neatly into any particular market left the record label with a big problem. We were supposed to tour, but it never happened. I wondered how it might have gone? We had one tiny review in Melody Maker, a great review, but easily missed! We recorded another demo, “The Band” and “Ragtime Brahms”, great tracks, but no interest from the limited labels I saw. “The Band” was, of course, resurrected by the wonderful “Me & My Kites” 40 years later as a single release that I got to sing on. Breaking up Fuchsia was a very hard decision to make. I loved these people who had devoted so much to our project, which had not gone in the way we’d hoped, but how time can change things! I kept playing with Greg and Mick, at Exeter, doing covers of other people's songs around the traps. My UNI career came to an end, and I moved from London to Richmond. Greg and I were in a few bands — Punchin’ Judy, a band signed to the Transatlantic label; Greyhound, a reggae band; Transatlantic as well; we did quite a few sessions for the label for their publishing arm. In the 70s, I continued writing and recording songs, including a musical based on Brecht and Weill’s City of Mahagonny opera/musical. Virgin were interested, but no Arts Council Grant meant the possibility of a deal fell through. I met an Australian guy, Dave Warner around 1976, and I did some sessions with him. He returned to Perth, Western Australia, intent on getting a record deal. He did, and invited me over to produce an album and play a tour. He got me over on a migrant visa, which was extraordinary (“No actors or musicians” the entry forms said at the top, or page one!) I spent the next two years commuting between England and Australia where the album charted, and we became pop stars! We were very big, if only for a shortish time, but still play the odd revival show to good crowds now.
By late 1979, after two years of hard touring, the band Dave Warner from the Suburbs broke up. I spent two years in London doing a few things which I came to know, (Zero was one of them — a great band), then my wife and I decided to spend a couple of years in Australia, just for fun. Perth was the obvious choice, where I was known. I started doing a few jingles, which used to pay well. Then an agency we worked for contacted my 2 partners and I, to say a guy called Alan Bond was going in for the Americas Cup, and needed a song. No money, as little hope of success after 140 odd years of USA wins. We wrote a song, “Australia II We’re Going to Win”, which was accepted as the Official Challenge Song, and they played it on the boat in Rhode Island where the cup challenges took place and raised public awareness for the campaign, and money, of course. Then, what do you know? Bondie and the boat won. It was huge! We were at the Royal Perth Yacht club on the night of that amazing last race, with Bob Hawke, the Australian prime minister there, and we won! Then followed the victory parade in Perth, playing the song on the back of a truck driving through Perth with Matilda the giant kangaroo and hordes of people. What an experience! The jingle business in Perth took off and 2 years later it became 30. I kept playing live music — The Sensational Sixties was a very successful show, which I loved, playing all the songs of my youth. We moved to Sydney in 1989, when a band I was in secured an amazing publishing deal, and a record deal was there for us, but like so many great bands I’ve worked with, it didn’t happen. We had a family, four great kids and what a happy man I am. But around early 2010, I heard rumors of strange things happening regarding Fuchsia in England.
Was I ever in a band called Fuchsia? My friend Dave from here asked me — probably not, because I had never mentioned it. I was then contacted by Gianpaulo Binelli, Nightwings records, who broke the news to me that Fuchsia was something of a cult item online, and was being produced/marketed online by 5 small record labels, from the original vinyl album. We did a deal for a re-release, we released the Mahagonny demos as well, and I started writing in the Fuchsia style again — it was, after all, a project I’d never really completed. At the same time, the UK press started writing lovely things about Lady Fuchsia and its ‘forgotten gem’ status. (thanks to you all). The new album, “Fuchsia II: from Psychedelia to a Distant Place”, was recorded here in Sydney. I found string players from the most unlikely places; like music teachers putting their cellos in the back of their cars. “You don’t play cello, do you? I need a cellist for some sessions! Up for it?” I’d ask. Soon I was up and running, with some great players to help me. The album got great reviews. The live side, which in the late 70s I’d never really entertained, I started to contemplate. Two good friends who I was helping by playing bass in their cover band, heard the music and insisted that we should play it. Before long, I was doing a few shows around Sydney and Melbourne, with string players, then in England. Fruits de Mer Records (London) were great at releasing vinyl, which was quickly snapped up, and in promoting the band at their Psychedelic Festival in Wales. (Thanks Keith!) I’d head over to England, with a few string players there, and my son and nephew in tow, and we’d play.
Is there anything else you would like to further share with the readers?
I’ve released a number of new tracks since 2013 when the album was released, (some tracks destined for “Fuchsia III”, which I’m still working on) and even got the Mahagonny Musical presented live, performing it at the Perth Alternative Arts Festival a few years back. One major adventure around 2013 when Fuchsia II came out, and it all started happening again, was when David Svedmyr, a Swedish musician, contacted me to say that he and his band “Me & My Kites” (a song title of Fuchsia I) were huge fans, knew all the songs, and asked could they record “The Band”, an old Fuchsia demo from 1971/2 as a single. I agreed, of course, and ended up singing on it, and was then invited to tour Sweden, N. Europe and down into the UK with them as a support band and my Fuchsia band. What a buzz! They were fabulous, and we had three years doing this. We are still great friends. In summary then, Lady Fuchsia has been very good to me. At a time when most musician’s lives just fade into the background, only left with memories of good times, I’ve been fortunate enough to revisit those times, which have been fantastic. It is hardly a revival as it never really happened back then anyway.
