Gary James' Interview With Dave Cousins Of
The Strawbs



They formed in 1964 and on February 26^th, 2021 they released their newest album titled "Settlement". Their fan base remains strong in both the U.S. and Canada. What an incredible journey this group has had. Longtime member Dave Cousins spoke with us about the journey of The Strawbs.

Q - Dave, I actually saw The Strawbs when you opened for The Guess Who at the Syracuse War Memorial back in the mid-1970s. Do you remember that tour?

A - Yes, I do.

Q - That seems like an odd pairing of acts, not that there's anything wrong with that, but what was the thinking behind that?

A - There was no thinking behind it. They put us on with The Guess Who. The Guess Who had a policy, I don't know if Burton Cummings still has the same policy that the support band does not get a sound check. That was his policy. We had it written in our contract for that particular tour that every show we did that we had a sound check. And so when we heard about this policy I went back to the hotel to find the contract and brought it back with me, showed it to the stage management and said, "This is our contract. As you can see it says that we are allowed to have a sound check." He said, "It's a guest house policy. You don't." I said, "Then we won't play." He said, "You can't do that." I said, "I'm sorry, but we can't just go on and hope for the best." I said, "We're not being pretentious. We just need a line check to make sure all the instruments are going through the desk." Suddenly the doors opened and the audience came in. So I went to the front of the stage and said, "My name is David Cousins. Will you please close the doors because unless we get a sound check we're not going to appear and the audience will be very unhappy. I'm asking for five minutes just so we can do a line check and so that we can play." I've never told this story in an interview before. So we went onstage and they closed the doors and we did, as I said, a line check that took five minutes. I went onstage and we started to sing and people started shouting out to me, "Can't hear the vocals, Dave. Dave, we can't hear the vocals." I suddenly realized that somebody was playing with the P.A. system. I then got a message from my crew that said that The Guess Who's sound man was sitting beside our sound man and pulling my vocals out. So I went to the front of the stage and said, "Do you know we've had a wonderful tour. This is our last show on the tour, our last but one show on the tour. We've played with people like John Entwistle, Lynyrd Skynyrd," and I just went through a whole list of people. "They're the nicest people we've ever dealt with. As far as I'm concerned The Guess Who are the biggest bunch of shits I've ever worked with." There was an immediate uproar. The audience started fighting. The Guess Who fans started fighting with our fans. (laughs) As we walked off, The Guess Who were all lined up and saying, "You're an asshole, man." I just walked off and went straight back to the hotel. In the morning we had a band meeting and the band members said, "You should have never said that." I said, "Why not?" I believed it. It caused all sorts of friction in my band. Anyway, that's my story with The Guess Who. We were supposed to come back and do another tour three months later and guess what? Burton Cummings refused to support us. And he pulled out of the show. (laughs)

Q - What city did that happen it?

A - I think it was Portland, Oregon or somewhere on the coast there. Burton Cummings didn't think very much of me and I don't think very much of him. (laughs)

Q - Who were some of the other people you performed with besides The Guess Who, John Entwistle and Lynyrd Skynyrd?

A - When we toured America we toured with Santana, Joe Walsh, King Crimson. You name 'em, we played with 'em.

Q - According to Rolling Stone's Encyclopedia Of Rock, The Strawbs, "Never became a truly major American attraction. They toured the U.S. constantly and hardly ever played the U.K." So, where is it that The Strawbs were playing in the U.S.?

A - All over the United States and Canada. We did every city that there was to do. We only did one headline tour which is the last tour we did in America in 1977 I think it was. Or maybe '78. We graduated then to doing our own tour. We were far bigger on the East Coast than we were on the West Coast. So, for example we started off by playing two nights in The Beacon Theatre in New York and going on to play to about a 150 people in a theatre in Berkeley, California. So, as we went across the country the audiences dwindled down, but we didn't mind playing support acts with people. We played with the Eagles, we played with Blue Oyster Cult, Santana. Carlos Santana used to stand on the side of the stage and watch us 'cause he found what we did so different to what anybody else did, he was fascinated by it. We played with The James Gang. Tommy Bolin was fronting The James Gang. We were supporting them and it was at the Academy Of Music. We went on first and we went down an absolute storm 'cause New York was really our home city if you like, in North America, in the U.S.A. Toronto and Montreal were the big cities in Canada. Tommy Bolin came onstage with The James Gang, ran down the walkway, hurdled down on his knees and said, "Who do you want to hear?" The audience shouted out, "The Strawbs!" (laughs) It was all a bit embarrassing. We left. But we were very popular indeed in New York City. I used to walk down the street and people would shout from across the street, "Hi Dave!" And it was very flattering and very rewarding.

Q - When you put The Strawbs together, what was your intention? How far did you think the group would go in terms of popularity?

A - I didn't put the band together with any intent of achieving anything. I was making an album. We were a Bluegrass trio and I started to write up songs. We were originally The Strawberry Hill Boys 'cause we rehearsed in an area of London called Strawberry Hill. We were fans of bands like The Rocky Mountain Boys, Stoney Mountain Boys, The Foggy Mountain Boys. Because we rehearsed in Strawberry Hill, The Strawberry Hill Boys seemed the natural thing to do. We were becoming very popular on the Folk and college circuit and then we started writing our own songs. Being called The Strawberry Hill Boys didn't seem to fit anymore. So, we just abbreviated to The Strawbs. We were becoming more and more popular, doing more radio shows for the BBC, but nobody was particularly interested in us to make a record. And so we then recruited a young lady called Sandy Denny to join the group. We made some demos in London at the headquarters of the English Folk Dance And Song Society. A friend of mine who was a DJ in Denmark, married to a Danish girl, took our tapes back to Copenhagen, played it for the boss of a record company in Copenhagen, Sonet Records. He listened to our album, phoned me up and said, "You're the best thing I've heard since The Beatles. I want you to record for my company." Nobody else was interested, so we went to Denmark and made an album in Copenhagen. It so happened that Sonet Records distributed A&M Records in Scandinavia and the head of International, Dave Hubert, came to Copenhagen. He played our record, loved it, took it back to Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss who then said, "We want to sign The Strawbs to our label." So it was a very strange way of being signed to the label. We were the first British band signed to A&M Records, signed by a Copenhagen record company, which is a very odd situation indeed. Nobody knew in the English label when they first opened the English office in London where we were from. They thought we were from America. I had to go into the office and say, "Hi. We just landed." They said, "When did you fly in?" I said, "We didn't fly in. We live here." So the people at A&M London had no idea who The Strawbs were that they were getting this album from. We were recording in Los Angeles and then they sent them back to the U.K. So the record division of A&M thought that we were American. Everything you've ever heard about The Strawbs has always been convoluted and it certainly is. Sandy Denny had left us by then and joined the Fairport Convention. They said that they loved the songs but they wanted to hear a single by The Strawbs on our own without Sandy, just to make sure they were doing the right thing. Somebody from A&M phoned me up and said, "Do what you want to do." I said, "Are you going to send a producer over?" They said, "No. Go and find your own producer in London." So it happened that Tony Hooper was in the band at the time, and sadly died just before Christmas, lived in an apartment block in West London and on the ground floor was a young guy from Decca Records, an engineer called Gus Dudgeon, who just produced his first album by a Folk singer called Ralph McTell, who we knew. We went down and played our songs for Gus and he loved them. The he said, "I'll need to get an arranger. I've got this young guy who just arrived from New York. He'll be ideal for you. He's Tony Visconti. Would you like to meet him?" I said, "Yes, please." So we went off and played Tony Visconti our songs. He loved them as well. So we went into the studio with Gus Dudgeon producing, Tony Visconti doing the arrangement for it, and it was the first time they ever worked together in the studio and I think it was the only time they ever worked together in the studio. That was back in 1968. That was before anyone had ever heard of Gus Dudgeon or Tony Visconti. In the 1970s they became the two most famous producers of the 1970s. They worked together for the first and only time on Strawbs' first single. That is the record that Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss listened to and said, "Yes, we love it. We want them to make an album." They sent us $35,000 and said, "Go in the studio and make an album." So, we went in the studio and made the album. We spent the $35,000. The album came out. There was even more of a fuss about that. Gil Friesen, who was another senior executive at A&M Records, came over to London to listen to the album, hated it 'cause he hated the orchestral stuff that we'd done, and said, "That's not what we wanted. We thought it was sort of a Rock group." We then went back into the studio and made some more tracks. Then the album came out and it sold extremely well. It was The Strawbs that kept A&M in the U.K. going for the first two years of their existence. Even though they were putting out records by Herb Alpert, he wasn't selling that many records over here in the U.K. They had Sergio Mendes. It was only when The Carpenters came out that they started to make money. So, Strawbs kept their whole label going for two years in the U.K.

Q - Did you get tour support from A&M?

A - Yes, we did. They were incredibly generous. All throughout our career of touring in America, all through the '70s we had a huge amount of tour support. Our management took the decision that we should leave A&M Records. It was not a decision that I wanted to make, but I could do nothing about it because they had control over my music publishing and I couldn't say no. But anyway, they supported us all the way through. But in the year 2000 record sales continued to go on despite the fact that I didn't play music for twenty years. I stopped playing in 1980, for twenty years. I took a sabbatical. In the year 2000 records sales continued to the extent that we paid back all of those tour advances and we started to earn royalties. And over the last twenty years we have earned Universal, or A&M Records as it was until they signed to Universal, we grossed over a million Pounds Sterling for Universal from our record sales. I can work that out 'cause we earn about five thousand Pounds a year in royalties and have done every year consistently, and you work that out over twenty years on a royalty rate of 10%, that means they grossed over a million Pounds from The Strawbs over that period.

Q - What is that in terms of dollars?

A - About a million and a half dollars.

Q - The New York Times reported that The Strawbs were one of hundreds of artists who lost their master tapes in that 2008 Universal fire. How big of a loss was that to the band and could anything have been salvaged?

A - I don't think anything was salvaged, but there were duplicate tapes in the U.K. Some of them, but not all of them. Some of the masters have been lost, but luckily Universal U.K. reissued the old albums and therefore there are CD versions of the albums that are effectively the masters now. However, when I listen to the master of "Hero And Heroine", it's an awful re-mastering job and so somehow we've got to go back in retrospect and find either a virgin copy of the vinyl and re-master it from that, but I think we will have masters for most of them. But it was a tragic loss because there will be out-takes, etc, that are completely gone.

Q - You took a harder edge with your solo album that included Roger Glover and Jon Hiseman. Did you like that style of music? Why did you decide to go that route? Did you just want to try something different?

A - No. It was between the time we put out "Grave New World", the album, and "Bursting At The Seams". I had a whole back load of songs. When we recorded "Grave New World" there were arguments within the band. "We don't like these songs. We want to do more Pop songs." The band was in two divisions if you like with with myself and Dave Lambert in the middle with Blue Weaver and myself enjoying the creativity of the epic songs if you like. And Hudson and Ford wanted him to do their songs, which I don't blame them. They were the more Pop variety. When I started writing songs that lasted ten, eleven minutes, they weren't so keen on doing them. So, I had a song called "Blue Angel" that I'm particularly proud of and wanted to do. And so I said I want to make a solo album. A&M agreed to me making a solo album. We had a free hand to record anything we wanted. A&M never exercised any artistic control over us what-so-ever. Anything that we ever delivered them, they put out. They never queried anything. They said go and make a solo album, so I did. I wanted to use a drummer, so I knew that the drummer who was regularly voted the number one drummer was Jon Hiseman, and I booked him to the session. His only request was if you want to use my name on the sleeve you've got to pay me a double session fee, which I readily agreed to. I knew of Roger Glover from the Deep Purple albums. Our management phoned him up and said, "Dave would like to use you." He said, "I don't know anything about his music. Can we meet up first?" And so I went round to Roger's house and played him some of my songs in the various tunings I use. He said, "Wow! I absolutely love this!" And then he said, "Listen to this," and he played me the first ever J.J. Cale album that came out with J.J. Cale playing slide guitar through a Wah-wah pedal. He said, "I'd love to do it, but I want to play bass on one particular song that I just played you that way, using a fretless bass and slide on it as well. So I said, "Fine. That's wonderful." Since then Roger Glover and I have remained the best of friends all these years. Every time we pass in the night he sends his regards to me and I send my regards to him. I haven't seen him for a long time 'cause he lives in Switzerland now. So that was fine. Rick Wakeman had left the band by then. He'd left the band and joined Yes and the first session he did after he joined Yes was playing for me. I absolutely adored it. He didn't ask for any money for playing. He came and did anything I wanted him to do. He played the most beautiful piano on anything I ever heard him play on the record. I told him so constantly. In fact, I e-mailed him about three days ago and he hasn't replied yet, so I'll actually e-mail him again. We've remained the best of friends all these years. Miller Anderson was the guitar player and I played with him and made an album with him about five or six years ago. (2015 - 2016). So, all the people who played on that record still remain the best of friends. I regard that album as being on of the high spots of my career.

Q - You, at one time, suffered a wrist injury. What was the problem with your wrist?

A - (laughs) I'll be very honest with you. I went down to the local pub. I didn't drive. I very sensibly got the bus down to the pub. I came back from the pub and I had one or two too many and I tripped as I came through the front gate of my house and sprained the wrist. It was as simple as that. So, we were going out as a duo at the time with a guy called Brian Willoughby and I said, "Brian, I can't do the gig that we're doing on the weekend." I was doing a little Folk job. I said, "I can't do it. I can't play." He said, "We can't let people down." I said, "What do you suggest we do?" He said, "I'll phone David Lambert up and see if he wants to do it." So he phoned Dave up. I hadn't seen Dave in twenty years. Dave came back and played with us. We went and played that one gig. It was incredibly successful. That's what started me playing again, playing music again after I'd taken the twenty year sabbatical. And so I just sat in the middle and sang while those two played guitar. People loved it. We then started a completely separate division of the band, acoustic Strawbs as opposed to the electric band. It was beautiful. We do acoustic shows now where all three of us sit on the stools. I talk and tell stories about the songs we made. Then we have the electric band. It's a five piece band where I stand up and swivel the hips and wave the arms in the air wildly and the electric band is a very powerful Rock band. But we have two totally separate divisions of Strawbs. The latest album we made, "Settlement" has done unbelievably well. In fact, it went to number three on the official Progressive Rock charts in the U.K. and number two in the Folk charts. It went into four separate charts in the official charts. It went to number twelve in the Independent Record charts and it went to number twenty-seven in the Scottish Top 50 chart. (laughs) The lock down did us a lot of good. I haven't seen a member of the band in 18 months. We're all living in separate parts of the country and abroad. Our keyboard player, Dave Bainbridge is living in Baltimore at the moment. Our drummer lives in Portugal. Blue Weaver, who produced the album, lives in Germany, and the other three of us live in the U.K., but nowhere near one another. The album was made totally independent of one another with Blue Weaver in Germany putting it all together and mixing it.

Q - You left The Strawbs to work in the radio business. I know you were quite successful, but how much did you know initially about the radio business?

A - I was in the radio business for twenty years. The reason I knew about radio is when we went to record; first of all I went to Copenhagen to do a solo tour in 1967. I met this guy called Tom Brown, who was a DJ on Danish radio, but he was presenting a Folk show. It was recommended for schools because of his perfect English accent, his impeccable English accent. He interviewed me for the show. He married a Danish girl, came back to the U.K. and it turned out that I got to know him very, very well. It turned out he used to hold hands with Sandy Denny in the cinema when they were 15 years old. So, when I told him Sandy had joined the band he was over the moon about it and very excited about it. It was him who took our tape over to Copenhagen and that's how we came to record for A&M Records. Now, the thing was then when Tom moved back to the U.K. Danish radio said would he produce a show from the U.K. They wanted a Pop music show. He came to me and said, "Dave, I know nothing about Rock music. Will you be the producer of the show?" So, in 1967 I became the producer of The London News for Danish radio. I did that until 1972 at the same time The Strawbs had records going into the charts, Rick Wakemman joining the band, Blue Weaver joining the band. It was only when Strawbs appeared on Top Of The Pops that our single, "Part Of The Union" went to number two in the charts in the U.K. that I had to stop producing that radio show. I couldn't fit it all in. That was my experience in radio. But I was working out of the BBC studios where Radio One was coming from, which was the primary radio station in the U.K. So, I know all the DJs. I knew John Peel. I knew them all because I was in there every Sunday, producing the radio shows. So I was working in the BBC studios while The Strawbs were evolving. But nobody else in the world had done anything quite like it.

Q - Did you tour with Supertramp?

A - I don't remember doing that. We didn't tour with Supertramp. I don't think I've ever seen Supertramp onstage. They were on the A&M label, but they came two years after us on A&M. The biggest and happiest tours we ever did were with King Crimson and we were all extremely happy doing those. Mostly they were King Crimson and Strawbs, with us supporting King Crimson. When we got to Canada it was reversed. King Crimson supported us, Montreal being a hotbed of Progressive Rock happening in Canada. Strawbs evolved and they were very, very popular and so that's how that happened. But anyway, those shows were wonderful. When I got back to England after one particular tour, I had a call from Robert Fripp who said, "Dave, I'd like to do some Folk/Rock shows with you. Can we have a session together to see how we get on?" So I went 'round to Robert's house in London and he got his Spanish guitar out and I started to play one of my songs in an open C tuning. It was one of my ten minute epics and and he played along to it. He put his guitar down and said, "Dave, I think you're self-sufficient. You don't need me." (laughs) And that was the end of that idea. But we we've remained the best of friends. These things happen. It would've been a sensation if Cousins and Fripp had gone 'round the Folk clubs, but it wasn't to be.

Q - You mentioned a while back you were on the same bill as Lynyrd Skynyrd. How did The Strawbs go over with their audience

A - It was a huge stadium in Denver. We went on first obviously and the audience loved it. We got on very well with Lynyrd Skynyrd. They were very friendly people. Everywhere we went we played to huge audiences. I think there were over 20,000 people in that stadium that night, maybe more. Everywhere we went, people loved what we did 'cause we were so unusual and distinctively different. It was a mixture of me playing acoustic guitar, but the songs were very Heavy Progressive. We were doing the "Hero And Heroine" material at the time and that was very Heavy Rock. The show that we did, I didn't talk at all. We went from one song straight into another, into the next, into the next. It was just a continual flow of music for forty-five or fifty minutes and the audiences loved it. We toured with the Eagles, Poco, REO Speedwagon. We got on well with all of them. We still see some of them. Ambrosia supported us and they were lovely people. I left 'em a note to say how much I enjoyed their set. We did one of these Rock cruises about five years ago (2016) and Ambrosia were on the cruise. The lead singer came up and said, "Dave, we've never forgotten the fact that you took the trouble to leave us a note to say how much you enjoyed our show. Thank you very much." We got on very well with the Eagles. When The Flying Burrito Brothers came over with Bernie Leadon playing banjo with them, we sort of upstaged then a little bit because I got my banjo out. It was the whole focal point of their act, but they didn't mind. I went backstage after the show and exchanged licks with Bernie. So, friendship builds up.

Official Website: www.Strawbs.co.uk

© Gary James. All rights reserved.

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