Roy Wood / The Move / Wizzard / ELO

The Move

Discography

(best work in color)

1968: The Move (UK only). 1970: Shazam. 1971: Looking On * Message from the Country. 1972: Split Ends. 1973: The Best of the Move (Sides 1 and 2 comprise the first Move album - The Move; sides 3 and 4 are a collection of singles form 1967 - 1969 which make for a surprise hidden classic Move album that can't be missed).

Roy Wood and ELO

Discography (Roy Wood albums only)

1972: No Answer.

Roy Wood / Wizzard

Discography

1973: Boulders (solo Roy Wood) * Wizzards Brew (Roy Wood with Wizzard). 1974: See My Baby Jive (Wizzard) * Introducing Eddie and the Falcons (Wizzard). 1975: Mustard (solo Roy Wood). 1977: Super Active Wizzo. 1979: On the Road Again (solo Wood) * Main Street (Wizzard - not released until 2000).

The original Move line-up was Roy Wood (guitar, vocals): Carl Wayne (vocals); Chris "Ace" Kefford (guitar, bass, vocals); Trevor Burton (guitar, bass, vocals), and Bev Bevan (drums).

Given the band's many successful hit singles in the UK starting in 1967, you would have expected a higher profile in the States. But a short tour of the U.S. was an ineffective excursion. With no songs charting in American Top 40 the Move never became a radio-friendly presence here. The Move's first album (The Move) and their UK singles from 1967 to 1969 weren't collected in the U.S. until Best of the Move appeared in 1973. The neglect was almost bizarre given the Move's early blend of Who moves (wide-eyed vocal keening by Wayne and Wood, and Bevan's energetic Moon-isms), Beatle-ish melodicism ("Beautiful Daughter," "Blackbery Way," "Wave the Flag,"), and well-sung ballad turns ("Something," "This Time Tomorrow"). The sometimes derivative nature was too effortless to be considered mere copying - the Move style was dense and effusive and never took the easy way out. Everybody sang, even the drummer - Bev Bevan's bass croak rounded out the bottom end of several shining harmony feats. Bridges were not neglected, details are carefully embedded, variety is consistent: pop craft is serviced with rough finesse, and the instrumentation is often on fire.

The Best of the Move captures the first flush of inspiration. Immediate success on UK radio seems to have seeded a devotion to mid-sixties pop craft on almost all of these tunes. Short, with quick verses, choruses, and bridges, a cartoonish and increasingly frenetic quality stamp them as idiosyncratic. "Night of Fear," the Move's first hit, was a gloomy winter nightmare. On "Killroy Was Here" the protagonist becomes more and more curious about the signatures that are turning up all over the place by an elusive "Killroy." He daydreams about Killroy's exploits; he speculates on his social status. Reverence becomes a vow:

"If I ever meet that man at all;
I'll hang a plaque upon my bedroom wall
A monument erected in his name;
Will help to contribute to his fame."

The joke is better than the song, but the larkish quality is the goofy state from which Wood often pitched his tunes. If at times, the underpinnings of the novelty song are present, many are offered with serious overtones. "Curly" is an epic tale of lost love clocking in at 2 minutes, 43 seconds:

"Mister Mackan was a practical man;
Curly was his only son;
And he loved him like no other can;
bi-dum, bi-dum, bi-dum.
He discovered the world in a wonderful girl
Although he played with more than one;
But he loved her like no other can,
bi-dum, bi-dum, bi-dum."

Curly's infidelity is suspect, understated, but finally summed up in the reflection of a friend:

"But remember she's right,
As we freeze in the night,
when the dawn took years to come.
Does he love her like no other?
Bi-dum, bi-dum, bi-dum."

Likewise, "Flowers in the Rain," is penned as a nature-lover's ballad with slacker overtones:

"Woke up one morning half asleep
With all my blankets in a heap
and yellow roses gathered all around me;
The time was still approaching four
I couldn't stand it anymore
Saw marigolds upon my eider down."

I'm just sitting watching flowers in the rain
Feel the power of the rain making the garden grow,
I'm just sitting watching flowers in the rain
Feel the power of the rain keeping me cool.

So I lay upon my side with all the windows opened wide
Couldn't pressurize my head from speaking
Hoping not to make a sound I pushed my bed into the grounds
In time to catch the sight that I was seeking.

I'm just sitting watching flowers in the rain
Feel the power of the rain making the garden grow,
I'm just sitting watching flowers in the rain
Feel the power of the rain keeping me cool.

If this perfect pleasure has the key
Then this is how it has to be
If my pillow's getting wet
I don't see that it matters much to me.

I heard the flowers in the breeze make conversation with the trees
Believed to leave reality behind me
With my commitments in a mess my sleep has gone away depressed
In a world of fantasy you'll find me.

I'm just sitting watching flowers in the rain
Feel the power of the rain making the garden grow,
I'm just sitting watching flowers in the rain
Feel the power of the rain keeping me cool.

Roy Wood's approach to lyrics have never been of the confessional sort, and as his career progressed lyrics devolved towards the serviceable. But on these early songs there is usually a kernel of meaningfulness that grounds the fancy. This was important at a time when rock was moving away from teenage love song sentimentality, and separated the Move quite dramatically from, say, the Dave Clark Five or Chad and Jeremy. On these early sides you get tunes full of harmony, melody, falsetto, quirky twists and constantly surprising arrangements. "Useless Information," "Ominibus," "Wild Tiger Woman," "Curley," "Flowers in the Rain", "I Can Hear the Grass Grow," "Fire Brigade" are so full of movement it takes a few listens to start getting your bearings. Hard to believe now, but as early as 1968 The Move's economical wildness was becoming out-dated. The band's unflagging presence on British radio during this era seems to have earned them an undeserved reputation as being lightweight. And it is hard to deny that what is most appealing about The Move and Roy Wood can also spill over into brash annoyance.

Phase Two of the Move began as they countered these criticisms. On Shazam, the Move wade through awe-inspiring digressions and colorfully extended hard-rock calamity - all of it embedded in glorious stereo studio tricks, and Wood's multi-instrumental dexterity. On Shazam there are moments when the bridges don't seem to want to end, where there's a hint that Wood would like to follow the musical terrain more fully into any territory that is suggested. Shazam starts with "Hello Susie," another slightly shrill Move classic. This is a grumpy, love/hate, tale about a self-absorbed celebrity and her resentful boyfriend (or servant?). Wood's disdainful delivery of the verses swings unexpectedly into a disarming and moving melody/reverie as he notes "her looks were tanned and quite amazing as she ran to me." Then the band's mean and crunchy thuds support Wood as he yells insults across the train station.

"Beautiful Daughter" has an obvious Beatles influence with a "Martha My Dear" air about it, but with darker undertones. A companion piece to "Blackberry Way," there's a host of unusual rock instrumentation mixed up in the tracks. According to Bev Bevan this is the type of thing that sent Trevor Burton running for a stricter rock and roll band format, yet it is some of the most artful stuff the Move managed. The innovative rock arrangements on Shazam included oboe, sitar, cello, saxophones, and more.

Likewise, there is a pure musical quality to the arrangements as the Move become more interactive and stretch out - later this would result in sitar solos followed by guitar solos, followed by oboe solos. Wood has a very obsessive sense of wishing to top himself, and he succeeds in many passages on a number of these songs. At this period, Roy Wood was in the healthiest, unhealthy space for a musical artist addicted to the studio and glued to musical experimentation.

Looking On delivers mightily and is our personal favorite. Abandoned by Kefford, Wayne, and Burton somewhere along the way, Wood and Bevan are joined by Rick Price (bass), and Jeff Lynne (piano, guitar, percussion, drums). The band rocks out in a thunderous style so full of twists and turns it makes you laugh from the sheer giddiness of the ambition.

According to recent interviews with band members, Wood and Lynne were already mind-set on another project as they flew through Looking On and, the final Move album, Message from the Country. The latter shows the distraction in a few details - the use of close-to-identical bass lines in "It Wasn't My Idea to Dance" and "Words of Aaron;" and the inclusion of three novelty tunes - "My Marge," "Ben Crawley Steel Company," and "Don't Mess Me Up" (all by Wood). One of the band's best psychedelic moments occurs on the outro of "The Minister." "Ella James" and "Until Your Moma's Gone" are two classic Wood hard rock tunes with one of his trade mark "never-ending" arrangements at the end of the latter song. It's a pretty rewarding album from start to finish.

The new project could have crashed miserably, but the result was Electric Light Orchestra and the debut album No Answer. The clarity in the Roy Wood arrangements is surprising. "First Movement" is a "Classical Gas" style instrumental with some nice touches. "Battle of Marston Moor" has classic-soundtrack style instrumentation played with wit and color. Jeff Lynne's "Manhattan Rumble" yields a couple of passages that sound like Frank Zappa meets West Side Story . "Marston Moor" and "Rumble" portend more than they actually deliver. Elsewhere, Lynne offers great complimentary relief to Wood's fluctuations in style with lyrical themes of everyman anomie pitted against the world. Everything is dressed up in grandiose accompaniment that still seems pretty original. "Mr. Radio" has a Rudy Vallee megaphone vocal, that unfortunately doesn't sound much different from Wood's and Lynne's high-end trilling elsewhere, but Lynne's orchestrated "radio station channel changing" fade-in and fade-out effects are clever. A similar attempt at Victorian antiqueness occurs on "Nellie Takes a Bow:" it's destroyed a fanciful interlude that doesn't quite make sense. Much better are Lynne's "10538 Overture" which takes cues from the Beatles' "Day in the Life" and the "I Am The Walrus." Elsewhere Wood offers an irritating vocal mix on "Whisper in the Night" and a mediocre ghost story called "Look at Me Now." Early Electric Light Orchestra was criticized by certain reviewers as being anathema to real rock and roll. If anything, the Move and ELO's No Answer are as valid as the Beatles own attempts to move into new rock territory and remains an interesting listen today.

In a recent interview in Goldmine magazine, Jeff Lynne recounts that he should have known something was wrong with the partnership when Wood and Lynne fought over the producer's chair during the ELO recording sessions. Wood hired a new band behind his back and Wizzard was born.

One way to approach Wizzard is as a Roy Wood experimental trilogy comprising Wizzard's Brew, See My Baby Jive, and Eddie and the Falcons. As unbelievable as it may seem, Electric Light Orchestra was too small to contain Wood's obsessive enthusiasm and extra ideas spill out all over these three records. With no Lynne or Wayne to smooth things over, Wood reaches a zenith of lumber and blare. Messy, shrill, surprising, breath-taking, beautiful, ugly, misguided - for the most part Wood screams from the middle of dense mixes and right when you are ready to give up on many songs Wood interjects some melodic spice, some odd stereo effects, or a perfect solo, that keeps you hanging on, sometimes for no good reason. The records are a noisy mess. Eddie and the Falcons is particularly distasteful, poised somewhere in the realm between a parody of, or tribute to, rock and roll and teen idol artifice. What used to be rockabilly novelty tunes with Bevan's vocals now seem queasily sincere; the rock and roll vocals are stuffy and mumbling; the lyrics are dated and irrelevant, and Wood provides no visionary summation of what he means by it all. "Everyday I Wonder" and "We're Gonna Rock and Roll Tonight" are perfect gems among a shrill cacophony of fake "classic" rock/pop moves. Overdressed and over mannered, the result isn't just boring, it goes the full extra step and is as irritating as hell.

See My Baby Jive contains the UK hits "Angel Fingers" and "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday." These are overproduced train wrecks. Maybe it's an English thing, and if so, this album may be more tolerable in colder weather. To continue with the speculation, maybe the acceptance of these tunes by the British public encouraged Roy Wood's direction on the Wizzard albums and beyond. The trouble with much of Wood's work is that it never catches it's breath - it starts loud and full and only gets fuller (not louder). The whole sense of classic rock and pop dynamics is ignored. Our favorites on See My Baby Jive are the peripheral "Rob Roy's Nightmare" (nice instrumental), "Carlsberg Special" (great instrumental with many happy diversions), and "Bend Over Beethoven" (complex but uncluttered). So where is Roy Wood's classic instrumental album? It's obvious he has one in him. Elsewhere expect munchkin vocals on Led Zeppelin parodies, more mumbled and stumbled rockabilly, and icky teen-pop "romanticism."

Wizzards Brew, the first of the trilogy, is a minor classic of sorts. Roy Wood succeeds whenever his mess works somehow. It's hard to even tell how you are supposed to be taking "You Can Dance Your Rock and Roll." Part of it sounds like a rock and roll song with Star Wars special effects bursting in the background; other parts sound like free jazz-noise conspiracy. The sax is recorded backwards on "Meet Me at the Jailhouse," but this is just one of the many metamorphisis that occur as the song seeps and oozes in different directions. Nice drums on this one as well.

"Jolly Cup of Tea" is so spot on peculiar and so everyday British it qualifies as deadpan world music. The hectic rock style is maintained in "Buffalo Station/Going Down to Memphis" and "Wear a Fast Gun" is one of Wood's better ballads.

One album out of three isn't real bad. Wood's solo career reminds us that the things we don't like about Wood's music are also the things we love about Wood's music. After Wizzard disbanded, Roy Wood's art evaporates to a certain extent.

Boulders released in 1973 around the same time as Wizzard's Brew made a little bit of an impact in the States. It shares with later solo albums, Mustard and On the Road Again, streamlined and relatively straight forward production from a one-man-band standpoint. The UK charts were still indulging throwbacks like "Forever" and perhaps this wasn't a good thing for Roy Wood who sounded increasingly out of step. Without interaction with other musicians, and with Wizzard's blizzard being pretty much rejected as a commercial path, the solo Wood was tamed and only marginally effective. It took awhile for him to stumble into late-seventies production values, but he finally does in a shift to Warner Brothers circa the early eighties in some kind of singles deal that does nothing for him stateside. He sounds like a fine producer giving a college try at breaking into the "New Wave," Midi-led, production market. Some of the tunes are nice but what we like are instrumentals like "Premium Bond Theme" which has familiar morphing and enchanting Roy Wood style. Many Wood compilations have a familiar drawback of trying to cover too much territory, with suspect highlights like "Angel Fingers" and "Christmas," familiar ELO tunes and spotty individual work. He remains a major curiosity capable of who-knows-what glorious resurgence at any moment.

Surprisingly, the year 2000 brought us the unreleased 1979 Wizzard album Main Street. The album proves that Wood's talents were intact and vital at the end of the seventies. In fact, we'd call it Wizzard's best LP. The blare is gone and the eight arrangements can actually be called tasteful - closer to Steely Dan than to Eddie and the Falcons. Every song has something peculiarly Woodian in the mixes. Main Street reminds us that Wood has offered some of rock's finest and most joyous horn and woodwind arrangements. Main Street wanders from Jimi Hendrix guitar tributes to elegant, jazz band music, even pulling some Midwestern Americana, "Wichita Lineman" style orchestration out of "Indiana Rainbow." The backward drums breaks are here as well and they are even funnier than usual. Good record.

Somebody should give credit to the many musicians who have worked with Roy Wood, but Wood's tendency towards one-man-band maneuvers make the contributions hard to follow. As a one-man-band, Roy can be compared favorably to artists like Steve Winwood, Paul McCartney, Todd Rundgren and Stevie Wonder. He has our vote for the best one-man-band around.

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