Gary James' Interview With Songwriter
Russ Ballard



He has written some of the most memorable hits for singers, songwriters and bands of the 1970s and 1980s. Just consider, he wrote "Liar", which became a Top Ten hit for Three Dog Night. He wrote "You Can Do Magic" for America, which reached number eight on the Billboard charts. He also produced that record. He wrote "Since You've Been Gone" for Rainbow. He wrote "God Gave Rock And Roll To You" for Argent. He wrote "New York Groove", which was a big hit for Ace Frehley (of KISS). He wrote "I Know There's Something Going On", recorded by Frida (ABBA). By now, you get the picture. This guy knows how to write a song, and not just any song, but a hit song. The man we are talking about is Mr. Russ Ballard.

Q - None of your hit songs sound alike. In other words, "You Can Do Magic" doesn't sound like "God Gave Rock And Roll To You", which doesn't sound like "New York Groove". Are you writing the melody first or the lyrics first?

A - Usually I write the lyrics and the top line. I've always done that. It's lyrics. I think that gets the songs going for me. I find something to write about, a title. A title suggests whether it should be a hard song or whether it should be a soft song. It says things, to me anyway. The first hit I had was a long time ago with Three Dog Night, "Liar". I wrote it in '70. I wanted to write a song called "Liar" basically because it doesn't sound like a love song. (laughs) It projects something that's a little bit tough. It's in a minor key. It's got a Blues riff in there and there's also something in that song that I've always believed in. It's the old Alfred Hitchcock thing. It's the element of surprise in the song; "Ain't That What You Said? Ain't That What You Said? Liar!" (laughs) I love elements of surprise in movies or in a song or in a joke. It's a great weapon to have when you're writing a song.

Q - "You Can Do Magic". Where did that line come from? Did someone say that to you or it just came to you?

A - A lot of my ideas are kind of spiritual ideas. This is why I write so many different types of music. I've always listened to everything. I love Gospel music. I think that's where "God Gave Rock And Roll To You" came in as well. I don't mean religious music. I mean Spiritual music. "You Can Do Magic. I Never Believed In Things That I Couldn't See. I Said If I Can't Feel It, How Can It Be? No Magic Could Happen To Me. And Then I Saw You. I Couldn't Believe It. Said To Myself, What's It All About? There Could Be No Doubt. You Can Do Magic. You Know Darn Well When You Cast Your Spell, You Will Get Your Way." Well, it works on a few different levels. If you were that way you could be talking about, or talking to a spiritualist, or a lover, or a potential lover. So, it's a nice thing to write about. When I wrote that, I listened to quite a few America tunes. That was written for them. The lyric was kind of to my my heart. It was the kind of thing I like to talk about, to write about.

Q - And you produced that song as well, didn't you?

A - Yeah.

Q - That's a very beautiful song, Russ. It's withstood the test of time.

A - Yeah, it's got the hypnotic thing; "You Know Darn Well When You Cast Your Spell, You Will Get Your Way When You Hypnotize With Those Eyes, The Heart Of Stone." It's very hypnotic. I always thought if they could come up with something like their original hit, which was "A Horse With No Name". That was hypnotic as well. The overpowering element in the song was it was hypnotic. I thought they'd never done another hypnotic song since that first one. If I could come up with something that sounded hypnotic, which is what I did with that song.

Q - You say about songwriting, "I've always believed that you can only write honestly about what you know." To that I would add to interview a guy like you, you would almost have had to been alive during the 1960s and 1970s to understand what an important period of time that was. A twenty-something couldn't begin to understand what you went through and what you did in your life.

A - Yeah, a twenty-something person wouldn't even know the songs. (laughs) But I think as organisms, as human beings, we're not separate from each other. We think we are, but we're not. You want the same thing as me ultimately. In fact, the Russians, I don't mean Vladimir Putin, the ordinary Russian person, if you speak to them, want love. They want peace. They want their loved ones to be secure. We all want that. The guy in Africa wants that. We're not separate from each other. I speak to people and you realize we're not separate. If I can write something that affects me, it's probably gonna affect the next person 'cause we're not separate. We think we're separate. As organisms, as human beings, we're very tribal. We make these tribes. The tribes become countries, Italy, Spain, Germany, France. And the cities become tribal. We're very tribal. It must go back thousands and thousands of years, but when you get through the tribalism, it goes to show we're all similar because we're all tribal. We all want love. We all want to feel secure. We all want that. Sing about something that could affect you and it's about a relationship, it's going to affect other people because I've been through it. They know what is like to fall in love and fall out of love, the feeling of somebody leaving, somebody ending a relationship. It's painful whoever you are. That's common to the Russians, the Africans, the Spaniards. If you can say something that affects you, that you feel, "I Can't Live If Livin' Is Without You, I Can't Live, I Can't Give Anymore", everybody feels that.

Q - Russ, you just have this ability to write a song that most people don't have.

A - Gary, if people can find a passion, God, the difference in life if you can find a passion; I've been very lucky that I've done this since I was young.

Q - But the talent was there, waiting to be nurtured.

A - Yeah, I guess so.

Q - You sang "Twist And Shout" with Julian Lennon. You said to him, "I've seen your dad sing this many times." Did you see The Beatles in their earliest days, singing in a club, or are we talking about something else here? Did you see them on a British TV show?

A - I was in Adam Faith And The Roulettes when I was 16, 17, so The Beatles were happening. Just started to happen. They hadn't happened in the States. And we met them quite a few times. We played on the same shows. I saw them when they were raw. I saw them at East Ham Granada. They weren't top of the bill. They were supporting Chris Montez from America and Tommy Roe.

Q - Did you think after seeing and hearing them that they had something?

A - They were amazing. Everything about them. They weren't the best musicians, but it sounded like the best band I'd seen, and I'd seen hundreds of bands. (laughs) But they came on the stage and their personalities; they were all singing in separate mics, which you never saw. I saw The Everly Brothers in the same venue and they both sang in one mic. The Beatles sang in separate mics. That was different. John was on the right hand side from me watching. George came into the middle. Paul was on the left hand side. All had different mics. That was very different. They were raw. They were fantastic. I could even remember the songs. That night they said, "We've just made an album." George started with "Roll Over Beethoven". They were saying, "Here's a song we wrote, 'Misery'." We said, Wow! These guys are fantastic!" We hadn't heard the album. They had "Love Me Do" as a hit in England. John sang "Twist And Shout", and it was raw and it was fantastic. Paul McCartney sang "Long Tall Sally". They were very, very good. It was raw. It was real. They were funny. They were saying funny things onstage. Then we saw them not long after that in a hotel. We were playing in the same town. We sat for two hours together. They'd just come off the stage. We were sitting in this room and they came in and Paul sat next to me. This was 1963, before they broke (in) America. "She Loves You" was just out. We were talking about everything. Paul said to me, "Do you know where we could get some good suits made in London?" I said, "Yeah. You ought to go to our tailor," and gave him the address. It was Dougie, (Arnold 'Dougie' Millings), who used to make our suits and made theirs. The silver suits with the velvet collars. He's the guy who made our suits years before them.

Q - How did The Beatles look when you saw them onstage? Did they have the collarless jackets? Was their hair starting to get long? Did they have the Cuban, high heel boots?

A - Oh, yeah. We had those boots too. You went to Anello And Davide to have them made. We met them (The Beatles) after seeing that show probably a year and a half. We met them in Yarman. They were wearing black tonic suits and pink gingham ties with shirts. But they all dressed pretty smartly. There was a sec over here called The Mods and I was one as well. The Who were Mods. It was a very big thing. It was style. It was all about style. It was all about style and the music's style. We all liked the same kind of music style. We all played the same kind of music. The Beatles' hair was Mod. We almost had that kind of hair. Everybody else had I guess what you'd call Pompadours.

Q - Did you ever get to see The Beatles in a club setting like The Iron Door where they'd go for an after hours drink?

A - No. We saw them at The Astoria in Finsbury Park. That was a big club. By then they had "From Me To You" out. It was a big club. It probably held 1,000 people. I guess there were 500 people there. So, they were yet to become this enormous band. It wasn't the best gig. In fact, that gig wasn't so good, but the songs, the talent was there.

Q - Do you correspond with Paul or Ringo these days?

A - No. The last time I spoke to Ringo he asked if I had some tapes of his. He asked me if I still had them. He said, "You know where they went?" I said, "I don't know." I got on very well with Ringo. I liked him very much. He was a great guy. He said, "I get great vibes from you," and I loved that. We saw each other quite a lot then, but my dad died around about that time. I couldn't finish an album that I started with him. I would loved to have finished it 'cause we had some great tracks.

Q - Now, you would come home at three or four o'clock in the morning after performing a show, get up and start writing songs at 7 AM. You say, "I became used to being exhausted and felt that I wrote better when I was in that state." How did you do that? How could you concentrate on songwriting in that state?

A - (laughs) I was writing every day. I was also doing gigs. At that time for two years I was in a band. We'd jump into the group car and drive to Birmingham, which is like two hundred miles, Manchester, which is further. Cardiff. We'd finish a gig at 10 PM, be in the car at 10:30 or 11 PM or sometimes midnight and get home at 3 in the morning, which was normal. I was doing this almost every day. And the day we weren't doing it, I spent all day writing in my little bedroom where I lived with my Mom and Dad, just writing. We'd get back in the early hours of the morning and I'd still get up then. In the summer I'd get up at 5 AM and go into the studio. So, I said to Ringo once, "I get up and I'm in the studio as soon as I get up." He said, "I'm an owl. You're a lark." (laughs) I thought that was funny. It's true. I'm a lark. I get up and I go in and work. When I was a kid I didn't have a studio. The next best thing was to go into my brother's bedroom. He went and got married. So, I put a piano in there. I sat there playing the piano and writing tunes. I'd write a tune from 7 AM to 1 PM. I'd go down and have lunch and at 2 or 3 PM the group car would come and pick me up and we'd drive. I did the same thing the next day and the next day. I worked on Sundays when we weren't playing. I'd be writing tunes. I was exhausted, but I think when you're exhausted it's a great way to come up with some great ideas.

Q - It's better than being on drugs, searching for inspiration.

A - It's very similar, but it's much, much better. You can be very, very dark. I wrote a song that was a hit in England called "I Don't Believe In Miracles". I would never have written that song had I not been exhausted. People said you can't call it "I Don't Believe In Miracles". I said this was for Colin Blunstone to sing in The Zombies. People were saying you've got to call it "I Do Believe In Miracles". I said no, no. It's got to be "I Don't Believe In Miracles", but it ends with "I believe that somewhere, someone is going to light the way when things go wrong. The bullet that shot me down was from your gun. The words that turned me 'round were from your song. But I don't believe in miracles," and it was a hit. So, I wrote quite a few like that, being exhausted, and I loved it. I didn't like being exhausted. I loved the fact that I could sit and sit with a guitar or on the piano usually, and write.

Q - You were playing cabarets with The Roulettes, which I assume were supper clubs or dinner clubs. You didn't like those gigs. Did you have to wear matching dress? Did you have to wear tuxedos? Did you guys have to tell jokes between songs?

A - Yeah. We used to do that kind of stuff, but it was good money. These clubs paid really good money. Adam Faith was a really big star. There were two big stars, Cliff Richard and Adam Faith. And we were backing him (Adam Faith) in The Roulettes. So, he was always on TV. We were always on TV. It bugged me that I was only 17 years (old), younger than The Beatles, and doing this old man's gig.

Q - How old was Adam Faith?

A - He was 23.

Q - Yeah. He was an old man.

A - He was an old man. He was a star from when he was 20. He was a big star. And he became an actor.

Q - We didn't hear much about him in the States.

A - I know. We had a hit there. We did a song called "It's Alright" and it was in Good Morning Vietnam. That song is played for over a minute in the movie. It wasn't a big hit in the States, but it was in Billboard's Top 30. (#31 in February, 1965)

Q - You were playing in this group, Unit 4 Plus 2.

A - Yeah.

Q - And of course they had this hit record, "Concrete And Clay". (#28 in June, 1965) Did Unit 4 Plus 2 ever tour the States?

A - No. They never did, but that was a number one record. You had two versions in the States in the Top 20. Eddie Rambeau sang it.

Q - You wrote "God Gave Rock And Roll To You" after you were coming out of a depression. I'd be the first to say I don't really understand depression. I understand what it is to be down. What were you depressed about? Do you remember?

A - Yeah. I was always a happy soul. The depression came from over-work and exhaustion. That's when it's not funny. We started a tour of America in 1975 with Argent. "Hold Your Head Up" was in the Top 10 in America. We started an eight week tour with me being totally depressed. We'd been working really, really hard, but a really good friend of mine, his wife had cancer. She was 28. He was 27. I couldn't believe that she had cancer. She was too young to have cancer. I was already very exhausted from work. At that time I went on holiday to Spain and all the time I was there I was thinking I should have phoned Nick. I should have phoned him to see how his wife is. I didn't do it. So, the very first thing I did two weeks later when I got back from this vacation, I picked up the phone and phoned him. He worked at a studio. He didn't pick up the phone, but an American guy picked up the phone. I said, "Is Nick there?" He said, "No. Haven't you heard?" I said, "No." He said, "Carol died and he's at her funeral today." I couldn't believe it then. I just went down. I found I couldn't sleep. This depression lasted a few months. I wrote "God Gave Rock And Roll To You" when I was coming out of it. I was feeling so good. It was the opposite. I came out of it and everything was wonderful. The sky was bluer. The leaves were greener. It was wonderful. I think it's the kind of thing religious people go through when they say, "God has touched me, God has spoken to me." When you come out of depression it's amazing. It's like you're given another chance. It's wonderful.

Q - That's you singing on "Hold Your Head Up".

A - Yeah.

Q - You were with Argent for how long?

A - Rod wanted to put this band together in 1969. We didn't do anything except rehearse. We rehearsed for a year. Then we went to a club like The Beatles did in Germany and played seven, 45-minute spots a night. We did that for two weeks. That's what The Beatles did. Then you find out why The Beatles became so good.

Q - The Beatles used to say they played eight hours a night in the Star Club in Hamburg, Germany. That would've been impossible to do. Your voice and fingers couldn't hold up under such a schedule. What The Beatles didn't say is they rotated with three other groups a night. The Beatles would play their 45-minute set, then the next group would come on and play 45 minutes, and then The Beatles would go back onstage. No one's body could withstand eight hours of singing and playing, seven days a week for three months, or however long The Beatles were there.

A - I'll tell you something fascinating, Gary. I spoke to The Beatles about this. They played the Star Club in Hamburg. We'd already done this and I'm asking them about it. We did it a few years later than them. I said, "How loud did you play in these clubs when you played?" "We played at the same level wherever we played. We played at basically the same level and that is it." We played for so long at the Star Club that we'd do 'Red Sails In The Sunset' and we'd come to the end and we did if for like fifteen minutes because we'd look at our watch and say we've got another ten minutes to go. We should make this last longer. We used to go over and over the ending. At the Star Club they might have had one other band. If they were lucky they might have had two. We played alone for two weeks. I said to a guy called Ziggy after the first night, "We're never gonna get through this. How do you get through these gigs?" Ziggy said, "You buy the Anime pills and you take them with beer."

Q - They're like amphetamines?

A - Speed. Yeah. It's pure speed and it's sold over the counter in Germany. This is in Munich. You'd take it with a beer and the next night you'd feel suicidal once you've had these things. I don't think that did me any good either. We didn't take that many, just enough to get us through that two weeks.

Q - Who in The Beatles were you talking to about the Hamburg days?

A - That was Paul.

Q - Those were tough gigs for The Beatles in Germany. That's how the developed that "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah."

A - That's how they developed the whole thing. That's how they got their voices close together. Obviously, initially they had the talent and they had two guys who were insanely talented, the two together (John Lennon and Paul McCartney) and I guess wanting to out-do the other. I always thought when I saw The Beatles together they always wanted to please John. When we walked into this room, everyone sat on chairs. He sat on the floor. He was obviously different from them. Yeah, it was happy days.

Q - Did you by chance ever meet Brian Jones?

A - I met him once, yeah. We chatted. I was going out with a lovely girl at the time when The Stones were happening big. She was presenter on a TV show. I loved her. She said to me one day, "Brian Jones keeps phoning me. He wants to take me out." I couldn't say anything 'cause I was out playing with the band. So, I couldn't say, "Don't go out with him." Whether she did or didn't, I don't know. I met him in Charing Cross Road and we said a few things 'cause we'd done a couple of TV shows together, Ready, Steady, Go! and Thank Your Lucky Stars. We nodded to each other. He seemed like a very quiet guy.

Q - How long did it take you to write Frida's big hit, "I Know There's Something Going On"? (Billboard #13 in 1982)

A - To write that whole thing took about an hour.

Q - That's not bad.

A - That's not bad. (laughs) I think the best songs of mine have been really, really quick songs.

Q - You say, "I'm still writing just about every day. I still get such a kick out of writing and recording. It's great." Where do you draw your inspiration from to get up and write every day? You've lived the Rock 'n' Roll dream. What's left for you to prove?

A - I'm the same about music as I was when I was 16 years old. I'm lucky enough to have found a passion. I've had the Rock 'n' Roll dream. I've lived it and I'm still doing it. It's because it's passion. Writing is a passion. Most people don't have a passion. When you have a passion it's the way to go. We have to find a way where everybody finds their passion. I know everybody doesn't have a passion. If you find a passion it's a different world. It makes sense. The world makes sense. If you don't have passion, you go to a job just for money to pay the bills and you go home and say, "I've got another twenty-five years to go." When I get up, I can't wait to go into the studio and write a song, play a bass, play the drums, play the guitar, play the piano, do the backing vocals. You don't want to go to war when you're having fun, so everybody should have a passion.

Q - Russ, bottom line; you were just born at the right time, in the right place, with the right stuff.

A - Yeah. The whole thing was magic. There's still magic. There's still so much great stuff out there. The Rock scene live is still very big. Rock music doesn't sell like it used to sell. It doesn't sell on radio. It doesn't sell online. It doesn't stream. Young kids want to hear their music. There's still some great music out there. Great kids with great voices.

Official Website: www.RussBallardMusic.com

© Gary James. All rights reserved.

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