55 years ago, Deep Purple were riding high on the success of their smash hit single, “Hush”. Their first 3 albums all performed well commercially, both in the band’s native England and the United States. Little did founding bassist Nick Simper know that this would all come to a screeching halt come the dismissal of himself and original singer Rod Evans. As we all know, they’d be replaced by Roger Glover and Ian Gillan respectively, resulting in one of the most crucial personnel changes in heavy metal history. Meanwhile, Evans would go onto front the supergroup Captain Beyond and Simper would form his own early metal juggernaut, Warhorse.
Nearly 55 years later, for the first time ever, Warhorse’s complete recorded works have been compiled into one must own collection entitled The Recordings 1970-1972. We had the honor of sitting down with Simper for what might be the most extensive conversation on the fabled outfit to date, as well as his thoughts on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, navigating an ever-changing musical environment, and who truly invented heavy metal. There’s “No Chance” you’ll be disappointed by this interview!
Greetings Nick and welcome to Defenders of the Faith! How are you doing today? Or should I say tonight as I know it’s nighttime out in England?
Nick Simper: Yeah, yeah, it’s still early. It’s a long way to go till my bedtime *laughs*. What time have you got there? Where are you?
I’m in Chicago. It’s 2:30 in the afternoon out here.
NS: Oh wow.
So I’ve really got a long way to go till my bedtime!
NS: *laughs* Alright! Who are these Defenders of the Faith?
We’re a heavy metal webzine, named of course after the Judas Priest album.
NS: I figured *laughs*!
But we cover more than Priest! We cover a slew of bands from all over the globe, one such band being Warhorse, who are the crux of today’s discussion. I’d like to thank you for taking the time to do this interview. It’s an absolute honor and a pleasure.
NS: It’s my pleasure *laughs*! Thanks very much for showing some interest. What can I tell you?
Well, let’s start with this latest release, The Recordings: A new set which compiles the band’s two studio albums and rare bonus material into one collection. What events took place that led to the development of this release?
NS: The Warhorse material wasn’t available, not legitimately. There was so much bootleg stuff going on. I was approached by the record company, Cherry Red. They wanted to take it on, so I said, “Fine.” They said, “Have you got anything we haven’t heard before?” I said, “Well, we got one demo *laughs* which was the original demo that we got our record deal on.” That’s when the band was known as Ironhorse *laughs* when we first started. The other stuff has been out previously on Angel Air, but it’s not available any longer on Angel Air. We didn’t make too much material over 4 years. It was only 4 years, so everything’s there now, but we do have a live album.
We kind of reunited. I think it was 2001. Just for the heck of it, we did a couple of shows. One was recorded. It’s a long story, but it’s taken 20 years to get hold of the tapes. At the moment, they’re being processed and all the stuff sounds pretty good. It’s not all Warhorse material. There’s a few other songs on it that don’t belong to the band. We got a bit of interest in that. It might be vinyl only. Probably a German company, but we’re not sure yet. It’s still early days. Apart from that, all the recorded stuff will be on this Cherry Red album.
Were you holding onto that demo for all these years or did you just happen to stumble across it?
NS: *laughs* Well, I knew it was around and there’d been a couple of other versions of the song available. I just thought it was interesting. Also with it was another version of the same song, which was recorded before we actually had a keyboard player. When Warhorse actually came together, we were working as a backing band for Marsha Hunt who you may be aware of, the mother of one of Mick Jagger’s daughters.
We used to open up Marsha’s shows with a song we wrote and we decided to try and record it. It didn’t work out too well with guitar, bass, and drums without a keyboard. I thought the actual acetate would be good enough to put on, but the technical guys said they just couldn’t make a decent job of it. That’s the only thing that no one’s ever heard before, apart from myself *laughs*! It would’ve been nice to have the two acetates on there, but there’s only one anyway.
Let’s go back to the beginning. Before starting Warhorse, you played bass on the first three Deep Purple albums. How soon after your departure from Purple did Warhorse come together? Were there any musical ideas from the Purple days that were carried on into Warhorse?
NS: It was so quick. As soon as I split with Purple, I was offered the job for Marsha’s band straightaway. I didn’t get on with it at all. There wasn’t a proper drum kit. It was three guys doing afro stuff and none of them seemed to play very well together. They could play alright individually, but they didn’t work very well together. It just didn’t gel. We did a couple of gigs and it was pretty disastrous. I used to spend quite a lot of time in those days with John Entwistle, who you probably know from The Who. We lived near one another in those days. We were good pals.
I was complaining to him one night over a beer *laughs*. He said, “Well, you know what you gotta do?” I said, “What do I gotta do?” His exact words were, “You form a new band and you knock everyone out.” I thought, “Yeah, that’s what I gotta do!” *laughs* It was a slightly different situation because when we started Deep Purple, we had financial backing to get it together. We had nothing like that, but as it happened, it just coincided with me saying to Marsha Hunt, after a pretty disastrous gig one night, I said, “I can’t do this Marsha. I’m sorry. I’m gonna have to say goodbye.” She said, “I’ll tell you something. You get me a new band. You be my bandleader and I’m gonna fire the rest of them.” I said, “You can’t fire the band on my account!” She said, “Consider it done. Get me a new band.” I thought, well, there’s nothing much else happening at the time. The wages were pretty good, so OK.
Of course, from that moment on, I thought, this is not gonna last forever with Marsha, no matter how good the band is. I have to look to get guys to work with and when it does eventually come to an end, we can branch out and do something on our own. I got Ged Peck, a guitarist who I worked with before, and Rick Wakeman was the keyboard player I was interested in. He approached me and said if I ever formed a new band, he’d like to be in it, but Marsha’s band didn’t feature keyboards, so it was myself and Ged Peck. The drummer didn’t work out, so I spoke to a guy named Mick Tucker who was in a band called the Sweet. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Sweet in America.
I love the Sweet! They had a few hits here in America, “Ballroom Blitz”, “Fox on the Run”, and “Love is Like Oxygen”.
NS: Before they sort of made it big, I said, “Would you want to join me on drums?” He said, “I’m not good enough for you.” *laughs* I said, “Of course you are or I wouldn’t be asking!” He’s a great drummer. He said, “No, you want a guy called Mac Poole.” I said, “Who’s Mac Poole? I’ve never heard of him.” He said, “He’s actually the guy that turned down the gig with Led Zeppelin!” *laughs* He said to me, “This guy is the best rock drummer in the country.” I was really intrigued and I told Ged Peck about it.
Of course, going back to ‘69, there were no mobile phones or contacts or Facebook or anything like that. We were like, “How do we find this guy?” Anyway, Ged Peck just kept asking people and asking people until he found somebody who knew Mac. We contacted him. Right at the time we found him, and he was as good as Mick Tucker said he was, Marsha Hunt said she wasn’t happy with the drummer. Myself and Ged Peck weren’t happy with him either, so he had to go. I said, “I’ve got just the guy for you.” *laughs* In came Mac Poole!
There were the three of us. We just started to write together and do stuff. We had this singer in mind called Ashley Holt who we’d seen working with Rick Wakeman. Rick Wakeman was just too busy. His whole situation personally was pretty busy at the time. He just couldn’t make rehearsals. He couldn’t be around when we needed him, so in the end, we had to say goodbye to Rick. Of course, he did well after that as everybody knows. We had no keyboard player on deck then.
We made this demo and we used Ashley Holt who we’d heard with Rick Wakeman. Ashley, as it happened, had also auditioned for Deep Purple in the day, but we didn’t really pay much attention to him because he was singing soul stuff and Deep Purple just didn’t want to do soul stuff *laughs*. We didn’t know what we wanted to do at the time, but we knew it wasn’t soul stuff, so Ashley got passed over which was, to my mind, the biggest blunder Deep Purple ever made because I think he’s one of the best vocalists around. He’s amazing.
Anyway, we went into the studio and put this demo down. Shortly after that, Marsha Hunt announced she was pregnant with Mick Jagger’s baby and she was gonna pack up the band. The timing was a bit sudden, but we thought, well, it’s make or break now. We started to look around at record companies. We made the demo which is on the new set and we managed to get a bit of interest from a few companies. We ended up signing with Vertigo. They were a brand new company and they were really kind of hip. They were really looking to showcase different stuff, or what was being called “progressive” stuff. I don’t think the word “heavy” sort of was used much then, but that’s the sort of stuff they were looking for. It worked out pretty well.
That’s how it started. We had the name Ironhorse and then we found out someone else had a band called Ironhorse. It was a question of, “What do we call ourselves now?” I said, “Well, what about Warhorse?” Everybody said, “Yeah, there’s lots of opportunities there with being knights on horseback and all this stuff.” Somebody said, “We gotta have a first World War scene on the album!” I said, “Yeah, yeah! That sounds good!” *laughs* That’s what we did! It just came together very easily after that.
Warhorse’s self titled debut was significantly heavier than anything you had done with Deep Purple. In the same breath, Purple were pushing the envelope that year as well with In Rock. Did you feel a sense of rivalry with Purple or was Warhorse rather a musical reflection of the ear, hard rock subsequently morphing into heavy metal?
NS: Not really. Jon Lord had to say in an interview, somebody asked why I wasn’t in the band any longer. *laughs* He told a bit of a lie and he said, “We wanted to go in a heavier direction and he couldn’t do it.” I was really, seriously annoyed with that because not only was it a deliberate lie, but I was pushing for Purple to become heavier all the time. Of course, there was all the classical stuff going on which was kind of undermining what I wanted to do really. Everybody went with it because we didn’t have much else going on at the time *laughs*. It seemed a good idea, but after a while, it was kind of wearing a bit thin. Ritchie Blackmore and myself, we came from pretty hard musical backgrounds.
That was the only kind of thing in the back of my mind. What I did, I wanted to do it louder and noisier and heavier than anything they did. It was funny because when I was working with Marsha Hunt, we worked on 3 or 4 shows where there were quite a few acts on them. We kept coming up with Deep Purple and it was not embarrassing, but for me, they were seeing me doing something I wasn’t happy doing. After we started Warhorse, I was dreaming of the day we’d be on the same bill as Deep Purple and it never happened, ever *laughs*! There you go. That’s the way it was. A lot of people, they sort of compare it and they say, “There’s echoes of Purple there.” I think, well, it was the same sort of lineup. We were striving for the same kind of things, I guess. The Hammond organ sound and loud guitars, there’s gonna be some kind of similarities, isn’t there? You can’t help it *laughs*.
Speaking of this sonic evolution, did Warhorse feel a kinship with other heavy bands of the era like Black Sabbath, Uriah Heep or Stray? Was there ever an underlying thought that this could lead to something bigger?
NS: It’s difficult to know. In the early days, there wasn’t too much competition. Bands were coming up like Uriah Heep and UFO, who supported us once. I guess the kind of music was changing, there’s no doubt about that. There was always a good comradeship on the road and kinship with people. The only times we got bad vibes is when we played with blues bands. *laughs*
To this day, I don’t know why that was, but we worked with several blues bands and they always refused to talk to us in the dressing room *laughs*. It was all a bit strange *laughs*. Whether that happened to other people, I don’t know, but we had good times on the road. Everybody seemed to get along great. There was no friction. Of course, there was a lot of variation as well, different types of things out there and different types of music going on. I mean, as you say, it was a bit of a revolution, wasn’t it?
Some songs on the first Warhorse album, particularly “Ritual” and “Woman of the Devil”, boast dark lyrical themes. Did the band have an interest in the occult at the time or were these themes merely for storytelling purposes?
NS: Not in the slightest. Nobody had any interest in that. We were so busy trying to create the music and Ashley Holt was coming up with lyrics. In a similar way as with Deep Purple, we left the lyrics up to the singer and never sort of listened to them too much or read too much into them *laughs*. We’d just get on with trying to get the music done. It’s only in retrospect when you listen to some of it and you think, yeah, some of that was a bit near the mark *laughs*. Ashley Holt had a penchant for strong lyrics, shall we say. Not exactly offensive lyrics, but he would come up with stuff where I’d say, “Maybe you should tone it down a bit Ashley.” *laughs*.
There was definitely, definitely no interest at all in the occult. There were a couple of bands out there that were making waves, kind of sold themselves on that. It was Black Sabbath and there was another band, Black Widow. There was a few of them and they were kind of using more of the imagery with the graphics and the devil riding along on a motorbike and all this sort of stuff *laughs*. I guess it was popular with a few bands, but not many of them survived. Black Sabbath of course broke through, but there was never any interest in that with Warhorse at all.
Both of these CDs feature rare live material. What were some of the most memorable shows or festivals Warhorse played?
NS: There were quite a lot of them, but I think one of the most memorable is when we went over to Holland. We had a single out called “St. Louis”, which is on the first album and was written by The Easybeats. That was in the charts in Holland. We went over there and played a theater. The crowd just rioted! I don’t know why, but they did *laughs*! All of a sudden, the police were there and they got machine guns. These guys were like stormtroopers and they more or less lined up on the stage and the crowd just melted off then *laughs*. That was pretty memorable.
We were touring all the time, so there were a lot of great moments. Of course, you got the odd daft gig where it didn’t happen too well, but most of the time we had a lot of fun and we enjoyed it. Playing in Germany, that was good. We had a very successful night in Frankfort and the promoter took us out for dinner afterwards. There was a guy in there. He was a lot older than us and he took exception to the fact that we were English. To make a long story short, he pulled a big pistol and chased us out of the restaurant *laughs*! We didn’t stay to see what kind of gun it was, but it was a big one *laughs*! You remember things like that.
We usually got good reactions. We went to Glasgow in Scotland and there was almost a riot there at the university. They didn’t seem to have any security, so it was a bit frightening. It ended up that the dressing room got trashed. Any money that was in there was stolen. That was a bit unfortunate, but generally, the crowds up north of the border are great. We had some good times!
That seems to be a common theme of these shows from the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s. You never hear these crazy stories today because everything’s presented by Live Nation and there’s security everywhere. There isn’t that same sense of recklessness and danger.
NS: Yeah, I mean, it was a gradual thing. When bands started gigging in the ‘60s, usually there wasn’t drink available. It was dance halls that only had coffee and coke. There’d be one big guy at the door to dissuade people from getting in trouble *laughs*. There’d often be fights and stuff like that. As the gigs got bigger, I guess they needed more assistance. A lot of the universities had enormous crowds. They would put on sometimes 6 or 7 bands on one show, and often there was very, very little security. You’d think, “I hope nothing goes off here.” *laughs* I can tell you lots of times about being attacked at gigs and things *laughs*. Everybody that went through the ‘60s and ‘70s can tell that story *laughs*.
Interestingly enough, neither Warhorse nor Red Sea were ever distributed in America upon their release. Was there ever an attempt to break into the American market or were there some obstacles?
NS: Well, it was very depressing for us actually because when we made the first album, we sold it to…it was a big company in America. It might have been Warner Brothers or something like that. The guy in charge was a guy called Artie Mogull who was also the label boss with Deep Purple. He took an interest and we were also with the same publishing company as Deep Purple, so we had the in there. He said he liked the album and he gave us an advance of quite a few thousand dollars.
Then, he said, “We’ve been told we’ve overstretched and we’ve got too many acts. We’ve gotta drop some of them. You can keep the money, but I’m afraid we can’t release you.” I would’ve sooner given the money back and seen the record come out because I think it could’ve done well in America. After that, because we had done deals in England and we had a manager as well who was after getting the right percentages together. I think everybody was dealing with…they all seemed to want a bit of the action, you know?
They didn’t seem to be interested in putting a product out because it might be good. They all wanted, “What’s in it for us? What can we get out of this?” So terms could never be agreed with our management and American companies. Because time went on, we just didn’t get released in America. *laughs* It was a big shame, you know? If “St. Louis” had come out, it might have done well being about an American city. There you go. That’s the way it went.
1972 saw the release of Warhorse’s second and final album, Red Sea. What did the band set out to achieve with this album to differentiate it from the debut?
NS: I guess we matured after the first one. The first one had so much…I don’t know. It sounds a bit frantic in places *laughs*. I think there was just so much adrenaline running to get the thing up and going, and being involved with a new label. I think we relaxed a little bit and we went to…because Vertigo was owned by Philips Phonogram, who were a Dutch company, they had a big convention over in Holland and we were chosen to represent the company to all the delegates from all around the world.
We met a new A&R man. He replaced the one that originally signed us. He was very keen because usually with A&R guys, they’re not very interested in something they haven’t signed themselves. They tend to lose interest in the roster that’s already there and just look for who they can find, but we had a guy who was very keen on Warhorse. We did this concert for all the delegates at the convention and he said, “I understand you guys made that first album on a shoestring budget.” I said, “Yeah, it was very, very, very small money and we were very hard pushed to get it mixed properly in the end. Some things had to go.”He said, “I can give you my word. I know you guys work on a tight budget and you’re used to doing things like that, but you can more or less spend what you like and make the album you really wanna make.” So we said, “Oh, that’s great!” We sort of relaxed a little.
(Guitarist) Pete Parks had joined the band by then and he was a different style of guitarist than Ged Peck completely. His style of playing kind of affected the writing. Whereas Ged Peck I still think is one of the most amazing players around, what he would say with a million notes, Pete Parks would say with 3 notes and create the same kind of emotion. It’s very difficult to compare people like that because they’re so different, but Pete’s style of playing definitely affected our style of writing. Doing songs like “Sybilla” and all those kinds of things mainly came from Pete’s ideas. He just changed the style of the band and I think we relaxed a little bit because we got this so-called super budget.
Then halfway through, we discover that this A&R guy is gone *laughs*, but he hasn’t told anybody about our promise of a better budget. The new guy wanted to stick to the same budget as the first album. The problem was we were three quarters of the way through the album and they said, “Your money’s running out.” We had to compromise quite a bit on that album as well to do the best we could with the time and money allowed. That wasn’t a good thing, but we did the best we could with it under the circumstances. It sounds like we’re making excuses *laughs*, like we could’ve done that better *laughs*, but it’s true.
Was it those events or a culmination of events that led to the demise of the band in ‘74?
NS: The problem was we were still signed to Vertigo and there was quite a long period where we couldn’t get any communication with them, but we couldn’t sign with anyone else because they hadn’t allowed us our freedom. We were kind of in no man’s land. When we finally were free of them, it’s an unbelievable story, but it’s true. We invited a guy from Warner Brothers over here called Larry Yaskiel who was quite a legendary producer. He came to our rehearsals and he loved us. He said, “Wow. Great! Stay around boys. I’ll be back in a half an hour.” He came back with a load of bottles of champagne and he said “Alright, that’s it. We’re in business.” We drank the champagne and we all shook hands.
No word of it a lie, the very next day, the headline in the newspapers was “Arab Oil Embargo”. All the record companies, they just nearly died because they thought, “If we can’t get oil, we can’t make vinyl.” Immediately, Larry Yaskiel said, “I’m sorry. I can’t sign you now. I can’t sign anybody.” And you think, what’s the chances of that happening? In the end, the oil did get through and vinyl was made, although you might have noticed some of those albums from the period, the mid ‘70s, were very, very thin *laughs*. Very bendy, very lightweight *laughs*.
That’s a true story, and things like that, they really knocked you back. We kept going on the road. We had a good road crew. We had a truck and a big PA and all the equipment. We could put on a really good show. We could put on a stadium show if we needed to because we’d acquired all the stuff we needed. Mac Poole left and joined a band called Gong who I don’t know much about, but they were a bit avant-garde I think. We got this new drummer called Barney James. There again he changed the dynamic quite a bit. Whereas Mac Poole *laughs* was a pretty frantic drummer, he was really full on, Barney James was a bit more laidback.
There again, the music started to change as when you listen to the demos we did. It was a bit more…maybe a bit more commercial? Maybe a bit more lyrical? I don’t know how you’d describe it. Anyway, it was all coming together OK and we met up with Rick Wakeman again, because he was with Yes then. He was gonna do his own thing as a side thing from Yes and he asked if he could borrow Ashley Holt and Barney James. We said, “Yeah, of course.” He said, “I want them to make this record with me and maybe do a few shows.”
There was talk of Rick producing the third album, which came to nothing, but we finally did get an offer from a subsidiary of Tamla/Motown of all people. I think they were quite a new label and they seemed very interested, so we met up with the guys to discuss this and it turned out that Barney James and Ashley Holt had been offered a regular gig with Rick Wakeman. He was gonna go on tour, so they said, “We’re leaving the band.” It was a bit of a blow at the time. I didn’t see it coming.
They said, “Rick Wakeman’s taking us on this American tour.” I said, “Well great! Do the American tour, but we’ve been writing and rehearsing stuff for a long time now. We’ve got a deal, so why don’t we just finish the album at least?” But no, they were adamant. They wanted to cut ties and that was it. They were off with Rick Wakeman, which is what they did. I don’t think it lasted very long with Rick Wakeman, but it was a good experience for them. I thought, I couldn’t face keeping it going after all that time, getting a new singer and a new drummer. Just the thought of it *laughs*. I just said, “No, I can’t do that.” We said, “That’s it. That’s the end of Warhorse.” It just folded up.
Not long afterwards, of course, Ashley and Barney said, “Oh, we shouldn’t have done that.” I think they missed Warhorse and I don’t think it was all that successful with Rick Wakeman, although they had some good gigs and some good money. I think they missed the band and realized how good it could’ve been. By then, I wanted to take a rest from the road because by then I’d been on the road solid for 10 years *laughs* which doesn’t sound a lot now, but in those days, 10 years and you were a veteran!
I was off with a few sessions which was easy money and I said to Pete Parks, we’d become pretty close, “Why don’t we try and write some stuff?” So that’s what we did. We both came off the road and started writing and creating. We ended up with a new outfit which was called Fandango. We did two albums and that was that. That was 1979, 1980, but yeah, Warhorse should’ve been bigger than we were, I guess *laughs*. That’s life. You do need, not just the musicians and the music. You need the whole paraphernalia. You need the right agent to sell you out. You need a record company to get behind you. Philips Phonogram, as Vertigo, launched in a big way, but they gradually fizzled out. It wasn’t how we thought it was going to be. There you go. Any more questions *laughs*?
Just a few more! It’s funny you mention Fandango, because that’s the perfect segue into the next question. I’ve always enjoyed those albums, Slipstreaming and Future Times. Come that era, what were the differences you noticed between the industry and scene of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s and that of ‘79? Furthermore, what are your memories of those two records and what are your favorite songs off of them?
NS: Well the scene was changing. It got very hard because punk came along. I had a band on the side which was just a gigging band. There were no record deals, no agents. It was just purely for fun with some very, very well respected musicians. We just went out for fun, playing pubs and bars and roadhouses and anything just to keep our hand in. From the performing point of view, Pete and I were keeping happy. Because we started to write some stuff, we found a couple of new guys.
Strangely enough, after Barney James lost his job with Rick Wakeman, he reassembled Warhorse to do his own album *laughs* without Ashley Holt because Barney decided to do the singing instead of the drumming. That was how Pete and I found ourselves making this album for Barney James. The drummer was this guy called Ron Penney who was the drummer for Fandango on the first album. Of course, we got a new bunch of guys and we started writing stuff. Punk was taking over. I think we went to just about every record company in Britain and they just said, “No, no, no. We can’t give this sort of stuff away. This is all dinosaur stuff. It’s dead and buried. Forget it.”
One guy actually said to me, I forget the record company now, but I think I was…I don’t know how old I was about then. 35, I suppose? He said, “I remember coming to see Warhorse at the Marquee! I was always there! What a great band!” I thought, oh, we got somebody on our side *laughs*. Then he turns around and says, “What’s an old guy like you still doing in the business?” *laughs* I thought, hang on a minute! I’m not that old! But that was the sort of attitude they had. Anything that had any connection with hard rock, heavy metal was considered untouchable.
It was while we were doing the rounds trying to sell Fandango and getting rejected all the time, we bumped into an agent who used to work for Warhorse. We hadn’t seen this guy for a long, long time. He said, “Hello, what are you doing?” I said, “We’ve got this new outfit together and we’re trying to get a deal, but we’re having real problems.” He said, “I know somebody that will rip your arm off for it.” I said, “Who’s that?” “Well, it’s a new German company called Shark Records. They’ll love it.”
He gave me this guy’s number and it was this guy called Jonas Post, who did come from quite a wealthy family in Germany. He set up his own studio and basically gave us the deal to get Fandango going. His first words to me were, “I just hate punk music!” *laughs* “I love what you guys do.” I thought, you’re probably the last person left alive that likes what we do *laughs*.
But Germany was always a good market for hard rock. It always has been. Strangely enough, it’s amazing that stuff that sold for over 50 years now, Purple, Warhorse, Fandango, it still sells in Germany of all places! That was good for us. Unfortunately, there were lots of other problems Jonas had where his money ran out, so he couldn’t put the budget behind promoting Fandango as he hoped to. Consequently, the records didn’t do too well. They’re just collectors items now *laughs*. We never got to go on the road, so it was sad. It was a good outfit, I thought.
Most definitely. That’s an interesting point you make about Germany, especially in that era. They had Scorpions, Accept, Fargo, and all these other hard and heavy bands. The punk thing wasn’t happening out there like it was in England or the States.
NS: You know, it’s strange. I can go back to before Deep Purple. We toured Germany, myself and Jon Lord, with an outfit called The Flower Pot Men. They were basically a pop act. They were very good, but they had four singers and they were the frontmen. Most of their stuff was like The Four Seasons, that kind of thing, high falsettos. Before they came on, the band, which also featured Ged Peck, would do a couple of numbers before they came on. We would do stuff that we borrowed from Graham Bond. Do you know about Graham Bond?
Yeah, The Graham Bond Organization, right?
NS: Yeah, yeah. That was what really inspired us. We would do a couple of Graham Bond type of songs and some of the German audiences would come up and say, “We like you better than when the singers come on because the singers sound like women and you sound like men!” *laughs* Even back then, in ‘67, there was that kind of attitude in Germany. They knew what they liked and they stuck with it. It’s good.
Even in recent times, I work with this Austrian band called The Nasty Habits. We do a Mk. I Deep Purple show and the Germans do love it. They know the songs. Even the next generation’s come along and they say, “Yeah!” I say, “How can you know all this music?” They say, “We listened to it. Our parents played it all the time and we like it too!” Usually, kids don’t go for what their parents like, but in the case of Deep Purple, it seems quite a lot of generations got onto it. Obviously, we were doing something right.
I’m only 25, so I was one of those kids who got into Deep Purple at a very young age thanks to my parents as well, subsequently buying the records, getting the shirts, and going to the shows.
NS: Really?!
Yeah, and at that time, I was roughly 10 or 11 years old, so I just became obsessed. You need to know every little thing about this new favorite band, and it was exactly that! Hearing songs like “Hush” and “Wring That Neck” left a huge impression on me, to the point where now I’ve been listening to Purple most of my life.
NS: Well I’m glad it did because we deliberately set out to try and create something different. We didn’t know what, but we wanted it to be loud and leary and outrageous. We got halfway there, I think *laughs*. It certainly was different. We weren’t sure whether people were gonna like it. The guys who really inspired us were Vanilla Fudge. We did a theater tour, I think it was just about the last theater tour around England. We’d have about 6 or 7 acts on the show and they’d all get 10 minutes each. Second on the bill was Vanilla Fudge. I’d heard their first single, but I didn’t take too much notice of it.
I remember when they went onstage, the drummer came into the dressing room to scream his head off. He said, “You gotta come and listen to these American blokes!” I said, “What for?” He said, “Just come and listen.” We not only listened, but watched them. I’ve never seen guys with so much panache. The way they attacked their instruments almost, the venom in it! Jon Lord saw it as well and it affected both of us. We thought, well, we wanna do that *laughs*! We wanna do what those guys do! We didn’t set out to copy them, but people like that really inspired you.
The only person that inspired me like that in England was Graham Bond, because Graham was on Vertigo with Warhorse when he launched his band, Magic, at the same time. He was a big Warhorse fan, Graham. He was a lovely man and a terrific musician. He’d had Ginger (Baker) and Jack (Bruce) with him and they were really groundbreaking. He was a lovely guy. If somebody asked, “How was heavy metal invented?” I think you’d have to say, “Vanilla Fudge in the States and Graham Bond in England.” They were two of the inspirations of what became heavy metal. That’s the way I see it anyways.
It was 8 years ago now that Deep Purple were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. While it was a long overdue achievement, many were critical of the Hall’s exclusion of the Mk. I lineup, specifically yourself and Rod Evans. Where do you stand on this?
NS: It’s always nice if somebody gives you recognition like that, but they didn’t ask and I wasn’t gonna lose any sleep about it. It seemed like the guys running the show just weren’t interested in either myself or Rod Evans. That was their way. I always understood through the years of the Hall of Fame that everybody involved with an act was invited. Everybody would be there. It was a bit of a surprise when they didn’t (invite us).
*laughs* A lot of people have said to me about it that they reckoned the guys running the show were lunatics and hadn’t got a clue. A lot of people said, “Look at the stuff that is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, people that have very little to do with rock n’ roll!” It lost what it really stood for, I suppose. I’ve been around a long time now *laughs*. It didn’t worry me too much. I’m not going to say it wouldn’t have been nice. It would’ve been nice to say, “Yeah, somebody’s recognized something you did all those years ago.”, but I don’t really need that.
In the past 15 years, we’ve seen a lot of unsung ‘70s metal bands get back together for new music and shows, whether it be Pentagram, Bang, or so forth. At any point did you consider doing this with Warhorse or are you content with the band’s output?
NS: It would be nice, but I don’t think it would happen now. When we had the reunion, there was quite a lot of interest. We got inquiries because we didn’t know that people would turn up for it. Pete Parks said, “Why don’t we play together for the hell of it while we’re all still alive?” He said, “I know a little club where we can just do it. No fuss, no razzmatazz. Just go and do it for the fun of it.” Ashley Holt said, “It could be a bit shaky. Why don’t we do one the night before? I know a place where there’ll be only 2 men and a dog. We can play and if we mess it up, nobody will know.” *laughs* I said, “OK, that sounds good.”
He had a word with the governor of this place and he said, “You can come down and play.” Anyway, the word got out, we got there, and there were about 1,000 people trying to get into this place! I said, “Jesus!” We were pretty shaky, I must say. But the following night, we thought, wow, all these people came to see us and remembered us! The following night was even better. Because we’d done the gig the night before, it went off a lot better. We made a few blunders, a few mistakes because we only had time for 3 or 4 rehearsals, but I think people are gonna like the live album when it comes out. I hope so anyway.
There was a lot of interest because there was a buzz going around. “Oh, these Warhorse guys are back together and did a couple of gigs.” We had a few agencies phone up. We even had a guy approach us who wanted us to come to South Africa of all places *laughs*! People thought we were gonna reform, so we thought, maybe we should reform. Yeah, why don’t we reform? Let’s do that. Let’s start writing a new album and reform.
Sadly, right at that time, Mac Poole, the drummer, contracted cancer. He was very sick. Thankfully, he survived for about another 15 years or so. We thought, Mac’s not gonna be around too long, and that really took the wind out of it. I had done an album with Micky Underwood, he was always one of my favorites, in Quatermass II. I said, “Well, perhaps we get Micky Underwood to take Mac’s place?” The other guys said, “Well, Micky’s great, but it wouldn’t be the same without Mac.”
In the end, we abandoned the whole idea just because Mac couldn’t do it. So we all went our own ways and it didn’t happen. Now, of course, poor old Mac’s gone and (keyboardist) Frank Wilson, he’s OK, but his health is not up to touring. He knows he won’t be able to tour. I don’t think there’s much chance of it happening, but never say never *laughs*. You never do know, do you?
I didn’t think I’d be out playing the Mk. I music again with these guys from Austria. They asked me if I’d come and do a one off show in Vienna and I said, “What would I wanna do that for? That was years ago!” They said, “Well, it’s still your music and no one’s really heard it since 1969.” I said, “Yeah, you’re right. Let’s do it!” We went down for this one off show and people came from all over the world and offered us tours! We said, “What the hell?!”
It was great because The Nasty Habits band, they’re a lot younger than I am obviously *laughs*. It was good to play with younger guys and their take on the Purple stuff. It gave me a new lease on life because I didn’t think I’d be playing to big audiences and big crowds again at this time of life. I’m very grateful for that. We’re doing a couple next month, one in Vienna and another one in Austria at the Italian border. I’m still doing it, so who knows what could happen, but I don’t think Warhorse would come back *laughs*.
Warhorse’s The Recordings 1970-1972 is available now on Cherry Red Records. For more information on Nick Simper, visit www.nicksimper.net.