Gary James' Interview With Phil Wright Of Phil Wright's Original '70s
Paper Lace
Paper Lace enjoyed great success back in 1974 with a record called "The Night Chicago Died". That record would go on to top the Billboard charts and sell over three million copies. Phil Wright was the lead singer of Paper Lace then and now. The only difference is the title of the group, well, one of the differences to be totally accurate. The group is now called Phil Wright's Original '70s Paper Lace, and we'll let Phil explain why that is, and a whole lot more.
Q - Phil, you're part of two groups, Paper Lace and The Original Jukebox Heroes. Before say February of this year, (2020) how many gigs were you doing a year?
A - We were doing about twenty gigs over the year.
Q - I say February because shortly after, this pandemic kind of sidelined everybody.
A - Yeah.
Q - What kind of material were you doing with The Original Jukebox Heroes?
A - It was a mixture basically of Slade, Sweet, Mud, Paper Lace, Bay City Rollers. That's about it. We've all got a link with either one of those '70s bands that recorded the hits. I'm obviously with Paper Lace. The drummer was Pete Phipps, who was in the Glitter Band, Steve was with Slade for a time. Also, Phil Hendricks is still used by Les McKeown of The Bay City Rollers.
Q - At one point there were two groups calling themselves Paper Lace. Now it seems it's down to you. Did you win the court battle?
A - No. I actually lost the court battle. (laughs) It meant that I had to perform as The Original '70s Paper Lace to denote the difference between Paper Lace. Paper Lace is now owned by another member of the band. But the law is an ass, as I'm sure you know. Nothing ever goes smooth. Whatever you think the right way is, it rarely happens.
Q - Where did this name Paper Lace come from anyway?
A - Basically we were looking for a name back in 1970. We were looking for a new name. That band that I joined with Cliff (Fish), who is still a member of The Original Paper Lace, that's the bass player. I joined him in a band called Music Box, which graduated into Paper Lace. We were looking for a new name. We were looking at horse races. Just different subjects to find a name that was actually good enough. One of the guys looked in a book of things to make and folding paper, and tearing holes into it makes Paper Lace. Then we looked at the connection of Nottingham (England, the group's hometown) which is famous for lace making. So, it all seemed to fit really.
Q - Paper Lace actually started in 1967.
A - Yup.
Q - Your first hit wasn't until 1974. Was there enough club work to sustain the band? Did you have to work a day job?
A - I did a proper job. I was 21 in 1969 when I got married. Then I went professional. So, I was an apprentice at the time, a tool maker when I joined the band called Music Box. Then in 1969 I went professional. I finished my apprenticeship.
Q - Were you working every night of the week with the band?
A - Yeah. It was six or seven nights a week. It was a very lucrative time really. Every pub in actual fact was a potential gig. You played basically anywhere and everywhere at the time.
Q - So, the money was pretty good then?
A - Yeah, it was okay. Obviously a lot less in number then it is now, but obviously the value of it was similar then.
Q - Maybe a little better, because the cost of living wasn't as high.
A - Of course. Yeah, that's right.
Q - It was kind of unusual to have the drummer sing lead vocals back then and still is today.
A - (laughs) Yeah, that's right.
Q - How was it determined that you would be the lead vocalist? Was it because it was your band?
A - No, because it wasn't basically my band. I think at the time I had the strongest voice. We probably had three singles out prior to the hit, the first hit in 1974. I sang on two of them. Had the third one become a hit I wouldn't have been regarded as the lead vocalist really. But when we got together with the writers, Mitch Murray and Peter Callander, they said, "Well, you sing the lead vocals on most of your live act songs, so you should sing this one." So, that was it.
Q - Did Mitch Murray and Peter Callander write "The Night Chicago Died"?
A - Yup.
Q - People seem to think that song is about Al Capone's Chicago. Is that true? And what did the songwriters know about Chicago in the 1930s?
A - Not a lot if you listen to all the lyrics. (laughs) But it was about a policemen. "Daddy was a cop." It tells you right at the beginning. That wasn't our first hit. Our first hit was "Billy Don't Be A Hero" in the U.K. That was covered by Bo Donaldson And The Heywoods in the States. But it was our original hit. It was also written by Mitch Murray and Peter Callander.
Q - How did life for you and the band change when "The Night Chicago Died" became such a big hit. Did you tour America?
A - No. We never toured America. We actually thought we'd probably do some good in America. In those days it was a tremendous expense to tour in the States. It was a fortune and you needed help from your record company. Our record company at the time was Mercury, and they said, "Look, we don't need the band over here to have a number one record and the evidence that you're number one proves that. So, we're not prepared to put money into a tour." We couldn't really finance it ourselves, and so we never toured the States. We toured Canada. We toured New Zealand and Australia, but we didn't do the States. But by that time we'd had a number one hit in the U.K. "The Night Chicago Died" actually only got to number three in the U.K., but it got to number one in America.
Q - What was the big expense involved in touring America? Wouldn't it be difficult to get equipment from England to New Zealand or Australia?
A - Well, in actual fact, promoters in different parts of the world generally get a list of equipment you generally use and they provide it. But what we couldn't do in the States was find a promoter that was willing enough to sort of finance that side of it and obviously get the gigs in for us to tour. In New Zealand, when we first went out there, we'd had about four hits, four big hits. The promoter that financed the tour was quite happy to have us out there.
Q - In today's world, with Live Nation, they probably could've promoted you to any place in the world.
A - Absolutely.
Q - This band didn't end until 1980, but the you reformed in 1983. Now, what did you do between 1980 and 1983?
A - Well, in actual fact the band members went their separate ways in 1982. In 1983, that was when one of the members, Chirs Morris, who was the guitarist in the band, got three other guys together and reformed Paper Lace. But he only stayed in the band for short of three months and then he left. Things weren't working for him. So, he left and the band that carried on is basically the other band that call themselves Paper Lace, and now own the actual name, which is a bit of a travesty in actual fact because they were never proud of what they achieved because they hadn't achieved anything. (laughs) I've always been proud of what we did and now the band I'm in, which has two original members and two new guys, we've been working for approximately eight years. All the material that we perform is material that Paper Lace had a hit with or recorded on an album. So, it's all Paper Lace material. And that's basically what we promote.
Q - I hear more and more about bands that perform today with no original members and have the use of the name and the original members of the group can't use the name. It's very strange how those things work out.
A - It is. It's always a law technicality that gets them into that position. It's very unfortunate. There are a lot of bands around from the '70s that have no original members in the U.K. But that is maybe slightly different in the fact that a lot of those people in the original band have passed on. If there wasn't an actual band playing that actual music, then their music will have died with them. It's unfortunate that the bands that are around and have no original members, try to pass themselves off as original people. But if you look at most of them, they're too young to actually have the hits in the '70s anyway.
Official Website: www.Original-70s-Paper-Lace.com
© Gary James. All rights reserved.
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