John Verity
John Verity is a blues based guitarist and singer from Yorkshire, England. Like many other English kids, John was captured by the exciting rock and roll movement happening there in the early '60s. Starting off on an guitar that was barely playable, he persevered on the instrument and eventually acquired a Vox electric guitar. After some woodshed time of honing his playing skills, John began to showcase his craft with various local bands. He would open for bands like John Mayall's Blues Breakers (with Eric Clapton) and Terry Reid. After hearing Terry Reid's great high tenor singing voice, John began to sing as well. He would develop a style similar to Reid's. His group signed with management and took a residency gig in the Bahamas. While there, they were asked to come to Florida - in the US - to open for Jimi Hendrix. John's musical career was gaining momentum. After returning home and going through typical band changes, John was invited to join the band Argent, with Rod Argent of Zombies fame. This elevated his career once again. John states " I've always moved into a band where the musicians are a lot more capable than me. It's always been a conscious effort and it makes you raise your game." At age 70, John shows no signs of slowing down as he continues to tour regularly, playing festivals and top notch clubs with the John Verity Band. I recently chatted with John about his career.
R.V.B. - Hey John. Robert von Bernewitz from Long Island, New York... How are you?
J.V. - I'm doing fine... thank you. How about you?
R.V.B. - I'm doing pretty good. We have a chilly day here. How's it looking over there, across the pond?
J.V. - We're getting winter here now... finally. It's late but it's very cold today.
R.V.B. - Have you gotten any snow yet?
J.V. - We're on the east side of the UK. It's on the edge what's called East Anglia. East Anglia is really flat... all the way to the sea. We don't really get much snow here at all. There's no mountainous region to encourage it... so it's usually quite mild.
R.V.B. - I see. Thanks for taking this time for me. Congratulations on your career. You've done a lot of great rockin'. What brought you into this world of music?
J.V. - Wow! The '60s... things kind of change. I'm a child of the '60s, really. I was a teenager in the '60s. Everything kind of changes musically, in terms of youth culture. I discovered rock & roll and blues, and that was it. I really wasn't interested in anything else.
R.V.B. - You were just passed that folk revival... skiffle era?
J.V. - Yes, it was just towards the end of skiffle. The music scene here - up to then - was diabolical. The stuff that you used to hear on the radio was just terrible. Then a lot of the American black rock & roll records started to get played on the radio. Strangely enough, the place to listen to music back then was on the armed forces network. A lot of kids my age discovered the radio stations were meant to cater for American soldiers over in Europe. They were requesting a lot of the Elvis, Buddy Holly and things like that. We kind of got turned on to that. Through that, I started to look back into the early blues stuff. Then the Beatles hit and everything changed. It was fantastic.
R.V.B. - You were a typical kid. So you decided to pick up the guitar?
J.V. - When I was about eleven or twelve, I wanted a guitar. My parents bought what they thought was a guitar. It was a really shitty acoustic with action about 1" high. I started to learn on that. Then I wanted it to be electric. I've always been into electronic things. If I hadn't been a musician, that's probably what I would have done. I turned this acoustic guitar into an electric guitar by gluing a contact pickup to it. Then I discovered that you could plug it in to the back of a radio. There was an input that was meant to plug a record player into it. I found that it was sensitive enough to plug a guitar into it. It must have sounded diabolical but it made a noise.
R.V.B. - You got to start somewhere.
J.V. - I'm like a lot of people in my generation. Eventually I went to get an electric guitar.
R.V.B. - What was your first real guitar?
J.V. - It was a Vox guitar. They probably didn't make it to America until many years later. Vox amps were built in the UK. Then they started to make Vox guitars. They were actually built in Italy and marketed in the UK. They were terrible things. Back then there was an embargo on American goods. You couldn't get a Fender or a Gibson over here. These Vox guitars were like look-a-like guitars. They had the sort of shape of a Strat, but they were just awful... Hahaha. It was white and it looked like an electric guitar. It was made out of plywood. It got me to be playing proper electric guitar for a while. It was about the equivalent of $20 back then. This was in the early '60s.
R.V.B. - Did you form a local high school band?
J.V. - It wasn't in a school band. I didn't manage to hook up with anybody at school. Pretty soon after I started playing, I stopped going to school. It took quite a while for my parents to find out. I didn't need to go to school anymore because I was going to be this big rock and roll star.
R.V.B. - You had big dreams.
J.V. - Yeah... so school was no good to me at all. I stopped going from about 14. Then I eventually got thrown out. I went out and auditioned for people and got into a band. That's how I got started.
R.V.B. - What part of the UK were you from as a teenager?
J.V. - I'm a Yorkshireman... so my peers were pretty fearsome, really. The town I come from... the best guitarist in town was Alan Holdsworth. I bumped into Alan when we were both teenagers... at a music store where we were both buying strings. He said "Why don't you come out to my house sometime and we'll play together. So I went out to his house and sat in his bedroom with him... him with his guitar and me with mine. It was about the scariest experience I had in my whole life. He was frightening, even back then. This the mid '60s by now. There was just no way that I could come anywhere close to what he was playing.
R.V.B. - Did you pick up a few things from him?
J.V. - Oh yeah! Alan had really, really long fingers. I have these dumpy sausage fingers. I don't look like a guitarist at all. Alan had these huge spiders. His span on the fretboard was just ridiculous. He came up with his own kind of style. He invented all that tapping thing, really
R.V.B. - He almost invented his own scales. He was really an amazing player. It's a shame he recently passed.
J.V. - Yeah... he didn't look after himself. Not at all. We remained friends like ships in the night because we were both gigging all the time. We'd just bump into each other occasionally.
R.V.B. - So you started getting your chops up and networking yourself around town?
J.V. - Back then, there was just so much work. Youth clubs had bands on all the time. In the north there were these things called workingman's clubs. They were like social clubs, really. They would have music all the time. You could play just about every night of the week. In the '60s, the whole band thing had really taken off. There was music everywhere. You could get your chops by playing every night. I would just work myself up to a slightly better band, to a slightly better band... that's how I did it.
R.V.B. - In that magical time period, did you see a lot of acts live?
J.V. - Yes... but usually when I was playing at the same place, or on the same bill. I didn't get much of a chance to go out and see anybody because I was gigging all the time. One of my bands played with was John Mayall's Blues Breakers when Clapton was with them. They were still doing clubs at that period. A real eye opener for me in the '60s, I opened for Terry Reid. Are you familiar with Terry Reid.
R.V.B. - Yes, he was on the Epic label.
J.V. - Terry had this amazing voice. He was in the frame for Zeppelin, but he didn't want to do it. Terry Reid was very special, vocally. It made me be a singer. I was just a guitarist in the band when we opened for Terry. He's got an very high vice - or he did back then - and I've got a very high voice. At the time it was really unfashionable. Bands didn't really have singers with high voices. It didn't really happen until Robert Plant and Terry. In the early '60s, you'd be more attractive to a band if you had an Otis Redding type voice. The soul scene happened really big here in the '60s. There were loads of soul bands. When I saw Terry Reid, it made me realize that I could probably be a singer as well. I really, really wanted to be a singer. It made my whole thing change, really. Up to then, all I really wanted to do was be a guitarist.
R.V.B. - What kind of gear were you using at this time? Did you eventually get a Fender or a Gibson?
J.V. - I got a Strat first. I had loads of different guitars but I eventually went up to getting a Strat. I got what I thought was a really nice 1962 Strat... which now would be worth an absolute fortune. I didn't hang on to it. I got to play a Les Paul with P-90's on it. That was kind of my sound. It just hit me , really... It just worked for me. Back then I was using an early Marshall stack... which would have been about 1967, I suppose. That really worked for me. Back then there weren't that many pedals. The guitar would sound good straight into your amp. The P-90's pushing the front end of a Marshall 100... it was just a great sound.
R.V.B. - I can imagine. There's nothing like the sound of a '60s Les Paul and a Marshall.
J.V. - Hahaha... we were playing small venues with this gear. It must of been absolutely deafening. Going straight into an amp like that, you just didn't get any drive unless you turn it up. We were playing pretty flat out in these small venues with these Marshall 100's. It must have been horrendous.
R.V.B. - Hahaha. Not to mention carrying the things.
J.V. - Yeah! It's crazy, isn't it. We humped all that gear around. A lot of gigs were upstairs. Hahaha... it was just madness. I'm paying for it now.
R.V.B. - Was it called the John Verity Band at this time?
J.V. - No. There hadn't been a John Verity Band up to then. Eventually in late 1967 - the gig where we opened for John Mayall's Blues Breakers... it was a festival - I was just a localish' band from my town. Another band approached me and offered me a gig. They were fully professional. The bands that I'd been in up to then were kind of semi-pro, so people had jobs as well. The band was called the Richard Kent Style. They were a soul band, really... with a brass section and the whole bit. I figured that having a brass section and all that stuff, I could maybe talk them into doing some Chicago blues. That's what really attracted me about the band. I joined them and I was with them for quite a while. They were the first band that I ever came to America with. That band morphed into another band called Tunnel. We lived in Florida for a while. That was my first experience of working in America. We did some big festivals. We opened for Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Pacific Gas and Electric... who were big in America but never really made it here, Blues Image... who were pretty big back then as well. When that band split, it morphed into the first John Verity Band. The First John Verity Band was an American lineup, with me. The band split and everybody came home except me... I stayed.
R.V.B. - What part of Florida were you in?
J.V. - North Miami Beach. We had a manager there. It was a really long story. We went from England to the Bahamas. There was a rock club in the Bahamas called Jokers Wild. It was on Freeport, and It's reason for being there was that it was easy to get to from America. The audience was American college kids. We did a residency there.
R.V.B. - it's kind of like paradise.
J.V. - Yeah it was. It wasn't the same audience all the time. The kids would only come over for like a week. They'd all go, and then another lot would come and stay. The audience was changing all the time. This was like 1969 so you could imagine how crazy it was, with everything that was going on then. We had about a year there. We came back to England a couple of times in between. The final time we were at Jokers Wild, a promoter from Miami Beach came in and offered us a gig. He took us across to America and got us an apartment and a car. We went and rock and rolled for a good year over there. Then that band fell apart. I didn't want to come home so I found two American musicians, and that's when the first John Verity Band started.
R.V.B. - So eventually you moved back home. How did the gig with Argent come about?
J.V. - During the time in Florida, I was writing... all the time. I did some recording tests with various people. I did some recording tests with Tom Dowd... with Atlantic, but I was having problems with my work papers. Eventually I had to leave. I just couldn't get permanent work papers. I was flying out to Nassau and just getting short term visa's. First they gave me a long one and after that, it was getting shorter and shorter. The last time over, they gave me about four days. I just realized, "I gotta come home." So I came home with all of these songs I had written. When I got home, I got some recording equipment together and made some demos... got my first record deal. Not as quickly as it sounds... it took time. I had to get a band together. What used to happen back then and still happens to a certain extent, was that the record company would put you on a tour, opening for a big band. They put my band on the road opening for Argent. During that tour, Russ Ballard, Argents lead vocalist and guitarist announced that he wanted to leave. He recommended me to replace him. He said "You should look at the guy in the opening band." That's how that came about. It was the right place at the right time, really.
R.V.B. - You did a couple or records with. How was that experience? Did you get to write some songs?
J.V. - I didn't get to write much music material. When you're in a band with Rod Argent, he's a major writer. His biggest success was Time of the Season and She's Not There. He's a Brilliant writer. I wasn't going to get my foot in the door on the writing front. But it was a great experience. I was really out of my comfort zone. As a musician, it wasn't really my type of music... to be really honest. It was just a really good career move. Also, one of the things that I have done throughout my career, as I've moved from band to band, I've always moved into a band where the musicians are a lot more capable than me. It's always been a conscious effort and it makes you raise your game. With joining Argent, everybody in the band was streaks ahead of me, when it came to technique. I really had to pull myself together and get my shit together. For that, it was amazing.
R.V.B. - Did you tour with them?
J.V. - Yeah! We toured America. Things were changing a bit, in the middle of the '70s. In England, the whole punk thing happened. Kind of overnight, Argent became a really unfashionable band. We were perceived to be these old school rock stars.
R.V.B. - That happened to a lot of bands.
J.V. - The atmosphere in London - which was the heart and soul of the English music scene - was just diabolical. I had made my mind up anyway that I wanted to do something different. I wanted to do something less complicated... more straight ahead... but not punk. I wanted to do a real straight ahead three piece rock band.
R.V.B. - That's where the Phoenix years came in?
J.V. - I would of done Phoenix, even if Argent just kept going. I would of done it along side. We'd had discussions in the band. I'd been honest with everybody. I said "Look... I want to another band, but I'm happy to do it along side Argent, if everybody's cool with that." Strangely enough, a lot of people were doing that. Phil Collins had a band alongside Genesis called Brand X. Quite a few people were doing that. I thought that would work out alright and not upset anybody. But then, everybody in Argent just decided we didn't really want to do it anymore. There was no big fall out, we just decided to stop. At that point, Phoenix became my main project. Because Argent had stopped, I was able to take two of the guys with me. Phoenix was really Argent without Rod Argent.
R.V.B. - This gave you the opportunity to write more.
J.V. - I was the main writer in Phoenix. I also produced the band... it was my band. It was exactly what I thought. I thought it was what the world needed but whilst we were in the studio, the punk thing really happened in the UK. It totally screwed up the whole Phoenix thing. Because we were just wrong... overnight.
R.V.B. - You took that act out on the road a lot, I understand.
J.V. - Oh yeah! We opened up for Aerosmith. We didn't just stop. We knew the UK was a complete non-starter for us. We figured we could still do stuff in Europe and America, but we never got to America. The whole scene in London was just toxic for old school rock and rollers like us.
R.V.B. - You mentioned that you always put yourself with top notch people. I see that later on you worked with Brian Connelly of Sweet.
J.V. - When we decided to wrap Phoenix up, I was doing some producing. I had produced Phoenix and a few other things. I made my mind up that when Phoenix stopped, that I would come off the road, and concentrate on the studio end of it. I produced a lot of stuff. I produced the first Saxon album. I produced Brian. I went out on the road with Brian for a bit. We took the people who recorded the album out with us. We opened for Pat Benatar, in Europe. I did a lot of production for a few years.
R.V.B. - How long did the typical tour last with Aerosmith or Pat Benatar?
J.V. - They were a couple of months. They weren't major world tours. I think Aerosmith had just re-formed actually. They came over to promote a new album. That might have been a couple of months. When Argent split, I think Aerosmith split around the same time. I was asked to join Joe Perry's band. I didn't really fancy it.
R.V.B. - Do you have any interesting stories while playing live? Something that may have went wrong?
J.V. - Hahaha... how many do you want? The guy from Tunnel - that I was in the Bahamas with - reminded me of a story of when we opened for Hendrix. Back in those days, the opening act would often suddenly find that the power would go off... usually if you were going too well. If the audience were really getting into what you were doing, all of a sudden all the power would go off. It would usually be, somebody to do with the main band. They just wanted to stop you. So we were playing away, and it was really, really going well. All of a sudden everything went off. I went to take my guitar off thinking, "That's it." Suddenly all the power came back on. I put the guitar back on and we carried on. I looked across the stage at the bass player Harvey, and he nodded to one side passed me... behind the PA. I looked over, and our manager had a gun to the head of Hendrix's tour manager. He thought that he had pulled the power. He had gone over and held a gun to his head and said "Switch the Fucker back on or I'll blow your head off."
R.V.B. - Hahaha. Where did this happen?
J.V. - It happened at Miami Jai-Alai. July 5th 1970.
R.V.B. - I remember those Jai-Alai places.
J.V. - Yeah! We played behind the net. Hahaha
R.V.B. - Hahaha. They used to have them here in Connecticut. They were so crooked.
J.V. - I remember it well because it was two days after my 21st birthday. Opening for Hendrix was very, very scary, actually. I thought I'd be made to look really silly, but it was a good experience.
R.V.B. - Do you have any other gigs that were good?
J.V. - I've been doing this for so long that nothing really sticks out in my head. I've been a regularly gigging musician for over 50 years, so it would be really hard for me to pick anyone out. I prefer small gigs. I've done stadiums and every size gig, really. I've always enjoyed smaller gigs more because you can communicate with people better. The big events, that a lot of people might think I would infuse about... I don't really. It's a lot harder to get a great sound at huge venues. Some venues, it's almost impossible to get a sound. I've done well at Albert Hall... a couple of times here London. People really infuse about the sound in there. It's really difficult to get a sound in there. You've got to be really quiet... because the acoustics are perfect. If you play too loud, you get this weird delay all the time - to the point where you'll have to look at the drummer as he's playing - because you're hearing two snare beats for every snare beat.
R.V.B. - So you have 20 albums under your belt. Do you feel that you're coming up with new ideas as each album passes?
J.V. - Well it's scary because you get to a point where you do an album that you're really proud of, but then all that positive stuff goes away, because you've got to come up with something better - haven't you - next time. How much better can you get? I've got to come up with a new album in the next year or so. My last album, I think was my best album.
R.V.B. - The "Blue to my Soul album?"
J.V. - Yeah! I think some of the stuff on that is the best I've done... and similarly, the one before that. I felt the same way about it. The the same with the one before that. I think I've managed to keep moving upwards. But I don't know how many times you can keep moving upwards. It's really freighting. I write lyric ideas all the time. Just from things that happen day to day... scribble notes down. I'll record little musical ideas from my phone, I think, like everybody does now... just to keep a log of what's coming into my head all the time. When I've got time, I'll come in here into my studio and start laying ideas down properly. In the back of your head, you're thinking "It's got to be better than the last one." There's just a lot of pressure to keep coming up with something new. I do work better when I'm just enjoying myself.
R.V.B. - Where do you play with your act now. Do you play locally? The UK band that I've got, we've doing mostly festivals in 2019. There's quite a healthy blues circuit here. There's quite a lot of blues clubs that keep us fairly busy. There are plenty of good festivals as well. Our first gig this year will be on the 18th of January. This sort of theme here, kicks off towards the end of January. There's a bit of break over the Christmas period. Our first gig is like a three day festival. There be in the region of about 3,000 people there... so it's not massive. It's obviously indoors. We've done that one before. We're quite busy. There's a gig list on my website. I've gone back to playing all the time now and fitting in the recording in between... rather than the other way around.
R.V.B. - Do you teach at all?
J.V. - I have done a bit but to be honest, I don't really enjoy it. People ask me all the time about guitar lessons. I'm not really into it. I'm more into giving people ideas into how to record properly. I did do that for a bit. To be honest, my heart is into playing live. That's what I like best of all.
R.V.B. - What are you proud about with your place in music?
J.V. - I don't want to sound over confident but I'm playing better than ever. I'm proud of that. I'm 70 years old this year. I'm still able to sing properly. I know how lucky I am for that. You do kind of worry that your voice is going to go. As a guitar player, I've improved over the years. I'm just proud of the fact that I've managed to keep going.
R.V.B. - How were your years with Charlie?
J.V. - I only did one album with Charlie. Charlie was managed by the same company as Phoenix. We were with the same management company. I was brought in as a producer on the Good Morning America album. Whilst we were working on that, Terry Thomas - who was the guy who wrote all the Charlie stuff - suggested "Would I consider guesting on some vocals?" So I said "Yes." When it came up to discussing the material, I said that I thought we could use a better drummer. Without being unkind, I just thought the original drummer - his name was Steve Gadd, but not the Steve Gadd that everybody thinks - could of maybe stepped back on a few tracks and let somebody else do it. I brought Bob Henritt in from Argent. He originally came in for some recording and they asked him to come in to join the band. At that point there were two drummers in the band. Then Terry asked me if I would play some guitar on it as well. "There's some guitar parts that you can play better than I can." Eventually he said "Why don't you just be in the band." That's how it came about.
R.V.B. - Did you tour with them?
J.V. - No we never did. It was just a studio band. Charlie never really gigged that much. It was more of a recording project and a platform for Terry's songs.
R.V.B. - I appreciate you taking this time with me. You've had a long and successful career. Congratulations on all of the great work that you've done.
J.V. - Thank you... cheers.
Interview conducted by Robert von Bernewitz
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For more information on John Verity visit his website www.johnverity.com
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