{"id":2572,"date":"2012-11-30T09:55:25","date_gmt":"2012-11-30T14:55:25","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2012-11-30T09:56:52","modified_gmt":"2012-11-30T14:56:52","slug":"the-rock-town-hall-interview-martin-belmont","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/the-rock-town-hall-interview-martin-belmont\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rock Town Hall Interview: Martin Belmont\u2019s Got Answers"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"image_block\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><object width=\"425\" height=\"150\" classid=\"clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0\"><param name=\"data\" value=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/flashback425x150.swf\" \/><param name=\"src\" value=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/flashback425x150.swf\" \/><embed width=\"425\" height=\"150\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/flashback425x150.swf\" data=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/flashback425x150.swf\" \/><\/object><\/div>\n<p><em>Press for the reunited <strong>Graham Parker &amp; The Rumour<\/strong> tour (and album) focuses much attention and credit on the band&#8217;s appearance in <strong>Judd Apatow<\/strong>&#8216;s upcoming movie, <\/em>This Is 40<em>. I&#8217;m sure that played a small part, but longtime members of the Halls of Rock know this 2010 interview with Rumour guitarist <strong>Martin Belmont<\/strong> is the main reason the band is back together and playing at <a title=\"Graham Parker &amp; the Rumour at the TLA\" href=\"http:\/\/tlaphilly.com\/event\/0200492F9DCA3AED\" target=\"_blank\">Philadelphia&#8217;s Theater of the Living Arts tonight<\/a>. OK, our interview is a distant second to the documentary Belmont discusses in the following interview, but let&#8217;s give ourselves credit ahead of Apatow. Next thing you know the Farrelly brothers will be taking credit for exposing Jonathan Richman to a mainstream audience. Go Graham! Go Martin! Go Rumour! I will be at tonight&#8217;s show with bells on.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><code>This post initially appeared 3\/19\/10.<\/code><\/p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/WqcPKX00TFU?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p>The guitar playing of <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.myspace.com\/martinbelmont\" target=\"_blank\">Martin Belmont<\/a><\/strong> has graced recordings and concerts by Graham Parker &amp; The Rumour, Ducks Deluxe, Nick Lowe, Carlene Carter, Johnny Cash, Elvis Costello, and many more. He continues to keep a busy schedule, playing the music he loves with a reunited Ducks as well as three other Americana-oriented British artists. In 2009 Belmont released <em>The Guest List<\/em>, a collection of covers sung by most of the singers he&#8217;s backed for a significant time over the years. For someone like myself, who grew up listening to Belmont&#8217;s work in the 1970s and 1980s, it&#8217;s an intimate, low-key way of catching up with the old gang and getting introduced to some Belmont collaborators who are not as well known in the States.<\/p>\n<p>The first sign that Belmont might get into the spirit of a Rock Town Hall interview is when, as we settle into our trans-Atlantic, webcam chat via Skype, he wants to describe his \u201ctop-shelf\u201d CD collection lining the walls behind him. There&#8217;s a Beatles box set, a Folkways Anthology of American Folk Music, a couple of Elvis Presley box sets. Then he wants to know how we operate in the Halls of Rock. After I basically run him through our mission statement, in which Rock Town Hall serves as a sort of methadone clinic for rock &#8216;n roll addicts with increasingly busy lives, he says, \u201cI know <em>exactly<\/em> what you mean.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I describe my experiences finding out about Graham Parker &amp; The Rumour as a teenager, trying not to come off too much like Chris Farley&#8217;s mouth-breathing Paul McCartney fan from <em>Saturday Night Live<\/em>. Belmont asks if I\u2019ve seen Parker perform solo in recent years &#8211; I have. He raves about his old friend&#8217;s abilities as a performer and songwriter, and then we get down to talking.<\/p>\n<p>And talk we did. There are a topics we didn&#8217;t have time to cover, but as we chatted, rock lover to rock lover, I hope you get a sense of Belmont&#8217;s ultimate sideman&#8217;s dedication, warmth, and regard toward his collaborators. At one point he talks about the importance of the guitarist serving the song and being able to weave into whatever situation the song and its musicians requires. It was clear to me that these abilities to weave extend well beyond Belmont&#8217;s fretboard.<\/p>\n<p>The patented Rock Town Hall <strong>Dugout Chatter<\/strong> segment that concludes this interview is presented in audio form. Through my space-age, retro technology for recording this interview, I hope the audio Chatter gives you an added sense of Martin&#8217;s enthusiasm and passion for rock &#8216;n roll. <em>Take it away, Martin!<\/em><br \/>\n<!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<div class=\"image_block\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/blogs\/rth\/belmont.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/blogs\/rth\/belmont.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"375\" height=\"500\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p><strong>RTH:<\/strong> You&#8217;re still gigging a lot\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>MB:<\/strong> I play live with about four different bands. At the moment I\u2019m mostly working with a guy called <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hankwangford.co.uk\/hanks_page.html\" target=\"_blank\">Hank Wangford<\/a><\/strong>, he\u2019s a kind of English country, sort of honky tonk\/rockabilly \u2013 that end of country. And then I\u2019ve also been working with <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.myspace.com\/ducksdeluxe\" target=\"_blank\">Ducks Deluxe<\/a><\/strong>. We\u2019ve got a Swedish tour coming up towards the end of March. And then there\u2019s a couple of other bands: there\u2019s a band called <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.myspace.com\/lospistoleros10\" target=\"_blank\">Los Pistoleros<\/a><\/strong>, which is a sort of offshoot of Hank Wangford which is a kind of Western Swing, jazzy \u2013 not very jazz, a little bit jazzy \u2013 like Western Swing but with country and rock \u2018n roll in it, as well. And then there\u2019s a band I play in called the <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.myspace.com\/johnny2badnicky\" target=\"_blank\">Johnny Nicky Band<\/a><\/strong>. He\u2019s one of the guys that sings a track on my album. He\u2019s like a real old-fashioned, in the best sense of the word, soul singer. He\u2019s like Otis Redding and Sam Cooke \u2013 he\u2019s from that school. And he sings <em>great<\/em>. We all live close to each other \u2013 me, him, the bass player \u2013 and we just do local pubs, just to play music we like, which is kind of soul, blues, rock \u2018n roll, and quite a lot of reggae. So that\u2019s about my life\u2019s work\u2026I also teach.<\/p>\n<p><strong>RTH:<\/strong> Teach guitar or&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>MB:<\/strong> Yes, that\u2019s the only thing I can teach. <em>[laughs]<\/em> When you get to my sort of age and the kind of music \u2013 there are people who will play anything, but unfortunately I only play what I like, and unfortunately what I like, in today\u2019s scene is a kind of minority: what is generally called roots or Americana, which covers folk to blues to Cajun to Tex-Mex to country to rockabilly. That\u2019s my roots, if you like, all that kind of stuff, prior to The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Elvis, Otis Redding\u2026all of that stuff that I grew up with in the \u201860s. You can hear that stuff in Graham Parker. He\u2019s like The Rolling Stones crossed with Van Morrison with some Bob Dylan\u2026 It\u2019s a mish-mash.<\/p>\n<p><strong>RTH:<\/strong> And then you always had that reggae strain in there too, which so many of the British bands did but, but of course we never had.<\/p>\n<p><strong>MB:<\/strong> Yes, and that\u2019s mainly because the vast majority of black folk in England are from the Caribbean. And there was that company Island Records, which was set up by a white Jamaican, Chris Blackwell, and he kind of broke those bands through to a bigger stage, particularly Bob Marley &amp; The Wailers \u2013 there were several others. So we just heard reggae all the time \u2013 and its forerunners, like bluebeat and ska.<\/p>\n<div class=\"image_block\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/blogs\/rth\/guestlist.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/blogs\/rth\/guestlist.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"320\" height=\"320\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p><strong>RTH:<\/strong> Right, that\u2019s always been music we need to play catch-up with. I want to ask you about how <em>The Guest List<\/em> came together. I like the album a lot. As a listener it\u2019s a great way to catch up with some artists I first heard long ago, some I did not know what had become of since then, someone like <strong>Paul Carrack<\/strong>, who I haven\u2019t heard since the time he toured with you and Nick Lowe.<\/p>\n<p><strong>MB:<\/strong> Yep, that was me, Paul, Nick, and Bobby Irwin was the drummer. Before that we had a bass player as well.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll tell you how <em>The Guest List<\/em> came about. Originally, way back in \u201995 I did an album called <em>Big Guitar<\/em>, which was basically just me with some instrumentals that I\u2019d written, because I can\u2019t write lyrics to save my life. But occasionally I come up with a reasonable tune. So I did these kind of tunes, they were kind of like themes from imaginary Westerns. And I\u2019ve got this baritone guitar, so it\u2019s like a big twang. That was fine, and then I just went back to playing as a sideman, which is what I do, basically. Then about 3 or 4 years ago I had a few more tunes that I\u2019d written. The drummer I\u2019ve been playing with had a home studio, basically a laptop with some outboard stuff. We started laying down a few tracks, just drums and acoustic guitar. I happened to be talking to Dave Robinson <em>[ie, Parker\u2019s manager, Stiff Records founder]<\/em> \u2013 I\u2019ve kept in touch with him over the years and we\u2019re still friends &#8211; and I told him that I was putting together some more instrumentals. He said, \u201cYou know what you should do, you should ask all the singers that you ever played guitar for if they would each come in and sing a track.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I said, \u201cOh, don\u2019t be ridiculous! They\u2019re not going to want to do that. I\u2019d be too embarrassed to ask!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He said, \u201cDon\u2019t be stupid, just ask.\u201d And of course everybody said yes. But it did take the best part of 3 years to do. But, it wasn\u2019t like <strong>Bruce Springsteen<\/strong> making <em>Born to Run<\/em>. It was 3 years of an afternoon here and then a couple of hours 3 months later. If you put it all together it probably took a about a month, but spread over 3 years.<\/p>\n<p>There were two people who I worked with, more than just an odd session, who I couldn\u2019t get. One was Elvis Costello \u2013 we just never found the time because he\u2019s living in America and he\u2019s always doing something. The other was <strong>John Hiatt<\/strong>, who almost joined Nick\u2019s band, in fact he was in Nick\u2019s band for about 6 months. You know John Hiatt? Great songwriter!<\/p>\n<p><strong>RTH:<\/strong> Sure. Is this what led to <strong>Little Village<\/strong>?<\/p>\n<div class=\"image_block\" style=\"text-align: center;\">\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/blogs\/rth\/rynick.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/blogs\/rth\/rynick.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"324\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"image_legend\">Ry Cooder and Nick Lowe<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>MB:<\/strong> That came later. That was after Nick and <strong>Jim Keltner<\/strong> and <strong>Ry Cooder<\/strong> did a John Hiatt album, <em>Bring the Family<\/em>, a fantastic album. Then they decided to form a band, and it wasn\u2019t that great. I saw them live, and of course they\u2019re all great players: Ry Cooder is one of my absolute guitar-playing heroes, Jim Keltner is one of the three great drummers of all time, but as a band, when it was like four equal parts, there was never any focus. Whereas when they were doing a John Hiatt album there was a focus, because it was John\u2019s latest batch of songs. So I saw them live and it was OK, great playing and everything, but I didn\u2019t think the album worked well and neither did they. They knocked it on the head quite quickly.<\/p>\n<p>Oddly enough Ry Cooder has just been touring with Nick again. He did an English tour and did some Australian dates. I saw them in Liverpool and it was just absolutely fantastic. It was just Nick, Ry, and Ry Cooder\u2019s son, Joaquin, was playing drums. And it was supposed to be <strong>Flaco Jimenez<\/strong>, originally, but he couldn\u2019t make it, he was ill, so it was just a three piece, and it was wonderful.<br \/>\n<!--nextpage--><br \/>\n<em>Our chat was like this, full of short, animated detours about various artists who still thrill Belmont to accomply or simply to see and hear. We returned to discussing the round-up of contributors to <\/em>The Guest List<em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/b0l3QWUXVho?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\n<strong>MB:<\/strong> Carlene Carter, for example, who I hadn\u2019t seen for 20 years &#8211; we were really close, I nearly married her sister. She was, of course, married to Nick. I got in touch with her, and she said, \u201cYes, I\u2019d love to do it, but I don\u2019t know how we\u2019ll work it out.\u201d As it turned out in the summer of 2007 she was doing a couple of festival in Scandinavia, and instead of flying back to the States she flew to London and spent the day in the studio with us, and did that wonderful track that her Mum had written, who I also knew very well and was fond of \u2013 and had died the year before or so \u2013 she died before Johnny.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/blogs\/rth\/TallLoverMan.mp3\">Martin Belmont with Carlene Carter, &#8220;Tall Lover Man&#8221;<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The only one that wasn\u2019t done with all of us in the same room was Graham\u2019s. He sent me a sound file of himself singing, strumming the acoustic guitar, and playing the harmonica, with, you know, that Bob Dylan harmonica holder thing. And we just played along with it.<\/p>\n<div class=\"image_block\" style=\"text-align: center;\">\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/blogs\/rth\/dylanparker.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/blogs\/rth\/dylanparker.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"314\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"image_legend\">What was and what also should have been.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The rest of the album was done as live as possible, as much as we could we did it live in the studio or, in some of the earlier tracks, in the drummer\u2019s kitchen. Nick Lowe\u2019s track was done live in the kitchen, everything, no overdubs \u2013 one acoustic guitar overdub, but that was it \u2013 and I think that shows, it\u2019s got that feel that you only get recording like that. No click tracks. No drum machines. <em>Verboten!<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>RTH:<\/strong> Like a lot of rockers from your generation you\u2019ve noted that <strong>Elvis Presley<\/strong> was the beginning for you. A few years later, when the British Invasion bands hit, how did you feel about that, growing up with American rock \u2018n roll first?<\/p>\n<p><strong>MB:<\/strong> The thing was, pop music doesn\u2019t mean a lot before the age of 10 or 11. At that point that would have been about 1960, and I discovered Elvis Presley and that kind of stuff. But by that point he already went into the army. The very first record I ever bought, or got my mom or dad to buy me, was \u201cJailhouse Rock,\u201d which was from 1957, but was the most exciting sounding thing. <em>[Sings opening line.]<\/em> That voice just tears into you, like nothing I\u2019d ever heard before. But at that same time, in 1960, there was an awful lot of shit. I think Dylan said this, it was like every other singer was called Bobby: there was Bobby Vinton and Bobby Vee and Bobby Rydell&#8230; And then, of course, when The Beatles showed up, in 1962, I would have heard \u201cLove Me Do\u201d and then \u201cPlease Please Me\u201d in \u201963, that sounded so, so weird. It didn\u2019t sound like anything else. It just sounded weird, and I didn\u2019t get it straight up, the first two records. Then, when \u201cFrom Me to You\u201d came out I got it, and that was it. The Rolling Stones, of course, made the next big splash over here, and then there were all the others.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s funny, because I know you guys call it the British Invasion, but a lot of those bands that got very big \u2013 if not for very long \u2013 but very big in the States: Herman\u2019s Hermits, Dave Clark Five, all those bands\u2026 The Beatles and the Stones were in a completely different league than those guys. Those were just sort of pop bands.<\/p>\n<p><strong>RTH:<\/strong> Yeah, the others all got lumped in.<\/p>\n<p><strong>MB:<\/strong> Yeah, they were all British and they were all having big hits over there &#8211; and let\u2019s face it, a lot of them were having hits with American songs. The same thing happened when blues started to take off over here. You\u2019d get Manfred Mann and the Stones, of course \u2013 all these bands doing songs that a lot of white teenagers in America never heard: Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, and those guys.<br \/>\n<!--nextpage--><br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/A1FK620bS7A?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\n<strong>RTH:<\/strong> Those artists may have been lost in America without the British bands.<\/p>\n<p><strong>MB:<\/strong> Yeah, for myself as well. The first time I heard \u201cSmokestack Lightning\u201d was by Manfred Mann, and then I heard Howling Wolf, and that was something else that changed my life. There\u2019s nothing new under the sun, so they say. There are things that turn things around. Rock \u2018n roll, in \u201956, turned things upside down, and I guess it was the first music specifically for teenagers. Their parents didn\u2019t like it, which made it all the more attractive. And that carries on today, with kids who like rap music. If I had any kids and they liked rap music then I would force them to wear headphones. It\u2019s the same thing, really, it\u2019s better if your parents don\u2019t like it.<\/p>\n<p>Right now I love loads of different stuff, but it\u2019s generally old stuff. The new records I like that have come out in the last couple of years are not by new artists. The best new albums I\u2019ve heard recently are <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/battle_royale_best_gimmick_free_beard_in\" target=\"_blank\">Levon Helm<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s new album and Ry Cooder\u2019s last album and Dylan. <em>[laughs] <\/em>Bob Dylan is probably the peak for me. I\u2019ve liked everything he\u2019s done from the beginning. I liked him when he was a folksinger, I liked him when he became rock \u2018n roll. I love the fact that he\u2019s never, ever done what people either expect or would like him to be. He\u2019s only followed his own star.<\/p>\n<p>So&#8230;if you get me started I just start rambling.<\/p>\n<p><strong>RTH:<\/strong> That\u2019s fine, that really fits the tenor of Rock Town Hall.<\/p>\n<p><strong>MB:<\/strong> Back to <em>The Guest List<\/em>: I wanted everybody to do covers, so it was kind of an even playing field, because some of the people were not well known and some of the people were pretty well known. There were some songs that I\u2019d always wanted to do and other songs that some of them had always wanted to do. For example, there\u2019s a track sung by a guy called <strong>Geraint Watkins<\/strong>, I don\u2019t know if you know him.<\/p>\n<p><strong>RTH:<\/strong> A little bit, yes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>MB:<\/strong> Well that song is called \u201cIsland of Dreams.\u201d That was originally a hit in 1962, I believe, by The Springfields, which was a folk group that Dusty Springfield came out of. It was a great song, and Geraint gave it a great treatment. Nick wanted to do the song that he did, and Paul Carrack always loved that <strong>Louvin Brothers<\/strong> song that he sang. Carlene wanted to do that song by her mother.<\/p>\n<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/WA8nIFNT3Ss?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nThere\u2019s a song on there called \u201cBeyond the Blue Horizon,\u201d the last one, which is a <em>really<\/em> old song. I did actually say at the gig, I said, \u201cThis is the oldest song we\u2019re doing tonight, and that\u2019s saying something!\u201d There\u2019s something about that song \u2013 I never knew who it was by. I got the sheet music from a BBC library, and it says it\u2019s from some film I never heard of\u2026<em>something Holiday<\/em>. I heard the song somewhere and just loved it, something dreamy, old-fashioned, pre-rock \u2018n roll&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The song that Johnny Nicky sang \u2013 I call him soul music\u2019s best-kept secret \u2013 that song that he does I found on a compilation blues CD. It\u2019s by a guy called <strong>Earl King<\/strong>, who\u2019s a New Orleans blues-soul guy, it\u2019s called \u201cTime for the Sun to Rise.\u201d I always loved that song, and I played it for Johnny and he loved it.<\/p>\n<p>So it\u2019s a bit of an indulgence, in some ways, to pick these great songs and get great singers to sing them. And I sung two myself \u2013 and that was more because somebody felt I should. I picked \u201cGet Rhythm\u201d because I just loved Johnny Cash, and I\u2019d been doing that song onstage for years, whenever it was my spot in a set. And the other was \u201cI Viberate,\u201d which was by, believe it or not, by Conway Twitty when he was kind of rockabilly. It\u2019s actually the same tune, the same chords \u2013 it\u2019s identical \u2013 to \u201cGoodness Gracious Great Balls of Fire,\u201d but with different lyrics.<\/p>\n<p><em>Belmont discusses the fact that album is not yet released in US, and that a search of a US label is ongoing. He did not know that the album is available in the States for digital download, which is how I bought it.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>RTH:<\/strong> I was able to buy it from eMusic, but then I don\u2019t get all the goodies, the booklet and stuff.<\/p>\n<p><strong>MB:<\/strong> So it\u2019s a download. Yeah, I download things every now and then, in my teaching, \u2018cause someone says, \u201cCan you show me how to play such and such as song,\u201d and I\u2019ve never heard it and I don\u2019t want to spend much money on something I know I\u2019m not going to like very much. When I get a CD it goes back to vinyl albums. I like looking at the cover and reading the notes. I like all the details.<\/p>\n<p><strong>RTH:<\/strong> I didn\u2019t know that you were a roadie for <strong>Brinsley Schwarz<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>MB:<\/strong> Yes, I was, but not for very long. <em>[laughs]<\/em> I really didn\u2019t like it \u2013 no, it\u2019s not true. When I first did it was exciting, it was a completely different lifestyle. I was in art school, and I left in 1970 and moved up to London, \u2018cause this was down in the provincial southern coast of England. A friend of mine who left college before me met Brinsley Schwarz and their organization and a couple of other bands who belonged to this organization. Through him I get this thing that they\u2019re looking for a roadie. You don\u2019t get any money but you get to live in this house with them \u2013 everybody lived in a big house \u2013 and you get everything paid for. The next day I found myself traveling to Glasgow for a one-off gig and then back again. That\u2019s like 800 miles. But nobody thought anything of it at the time, we\u2019re like 21, 22 years old.<\/p>\n<p><strong>RTH:<\/strong>Sure, that\u2019s what life\u2019s for then.<\/p>\n<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/M6IDGGJVnBo?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\n<strong>MB:<\/strong> It\u2019s exciting. So yes, I was a roadie for something like 8 or 9 months. I met <strong>Sean Tyla<\/strong>. He was on the fringe of this same group of people&#8230;that\u2019s right \u2013 Brinsley Schwarz\u2019s (the band\u2019s) publicist, a chap called <strong>Dai Davies<\/strong>, sort of, kind of suggested that me and Sean ought to start a band. We used to talk at Dai\u2019s flat about all the stuff we liked and found out we were compatible musically. Then I got ill and it got put off for a bit. I had meningitis. I recuperated and we got this band started. Dai was the manager, and we started playing the pub circuit in London. That would have been the summer of \u201972. We all lived in a big house that was in the center of London in what was called a squat. Do you know what squatting was? I don\u2019t know if you have that same term in America.<\/p>\n<p><strong>RTH:<\/strong> Yeah, at some point, probably in the punk era that\u2019s been the adopted term for us as well. <em>[A week later and I still can\u2019t remember what we called it before then. Maybe this was always the term and I never heard it until I was a teenager reading about punk bands living in squats. Oh for the love of my hometown\u2019s most well-known and controversial housing activist of my youth, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.phillymag.com\/articles\/in_search_of_milton_street\/\" target=\"_blank\">Milton Street<\/a>!]<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>MB:<\/strong> The original bass player in Ducks Deluxe was already living in this place. It was a three-story house that today, by the way, has been renovated and gentrified and is worth probably 2 or 3 million pounds. Back then was fairly dilapidated, but we had running water, we had electricity, and we had a room to practice in and rooms to sleep in. It was fantastic. We had no overhead. We didn\u2019t pay any electricity or water bills or anything. They just kept letting us use it. It was very odd. I don\u2019t know how that worked.<\/p>\n<p>[The house] was very close to the first pub we played, just up the road. We had, like, two AC30s and a bass rig and a drum kit, and that was it. We started out doing pubs and we gradually broadened out, we started making forays out of London. By the next year, 1973, we\u2019d got a record contract with RCA! At that time it was David Bowie\u2019s label, Elvis Presley\u2019s label\u2026one of the big ones. And this is some little shit-kicking band from London doing, you know, <em>rock \u2018n roll<\/em>! I don\u2019t know, maybe it was easier to get record deals in those days, but also you did it by getting people to come and see you live. It wasn\u2019t like now, when you make a tape on your home computer \u2013 not a tape \u2013 look at me! You make up your own recording on your own computer, quite sophisticated, and you put it out yourself or you put it out on MySpace and you get played, and then occasionally a big company will pick you up. But there\u2019s no going out to see bands with the purpose of signing them. Most of it\u2019s not done like that now. I know a young guy who got a deal with Sony BMG, one of the big, big corporations, and he was so excited. He has one single and spent a lot of money recording it, getting it publicity and everything, and it did nothing. They dropped him straight away. There\u2019s no sort of idea of development anymore.<\/p>\n<p>You think about &#8211; in America it was great, with companies like Warner Brothers in the late \u201860s, with people like <strong>Randy Newman<\/strong> and Ry Cooder would get signed up. They would never make vast amounts of money for those companies, but that companies knew that they were good, and their other acts, who did make tons of money, were be financing these acts that the guys just knew should be recording. I don\u2019t think that would happen today.<\/p>\n<p><strong>RTH:<\/strong> From what I\u2019ve heard of Ducks Deluxe over the years &#8211; it\u2019s always been hard to get my hands on releases, they\u2019ve always been imports \u2013 you were a very rocking, straightforward, aggressive band. <em>[Belmont agrees emphatically.]<\/em> Historically we talk about a \u201cPub Rock scene,\u201d a \u201cmovement\u201d \u2013 at that time was there any sense of being part of a \u201cmovement\u201d or was it simply a matter of being happy doing what you were doing?<\/p>\n<p><strong>MB:<\/strong>Well, we were happy doing what we were doing and the fact was, when we started out, we played in pubs, and we found new pub venues, as did several other bands at that time. We\u2019re talking about \u201972, \u201973. Brinsley Schwarz band started doing pubs as well.<\/p>\n<p>It was kind of all sparked off by an American band, called <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/pub-rock-also-rans-part-1\">Eggs Over Easy<\/a><\/strong>, who had moved to London for some reason \u2013 I don\u2019t know why \u2013 and decided to stay. There was three of them, and they all played everything: they all played keyboards, they all played guitar and piano. Their drummer was John Steele, who was the original drummer of The Animals, way back in \u201cThe House of the Rising Sun\u201d and the lot. Somebody said, \u201cYou\u2019ve got to come and see this band, they\u2019re playing at this pub in North London.\u201d People did, and the Brinsleys went to see them. And everybody was knocked out because they were doing stuff that you would have considered yourselves, the Brinsleys particularly, would have considered themselves too\u2026not <em>cool<\/em>, but Eggs Over Easy would play anything. They\u2019d do \u201cBrown Sugar.\u201d They would do anything, you know, things most bands would steer clear of: <em>It\u2019s not obscure enough for us to do it!<\/em> But they would, and it was great. Suddenly the audience was like, <em>All right, this is great. Just do it! <\/em>We all liked this stuff, and Ducks Deluxe was very much based around Sean Tyla\u2019s songwriting. All of his songs were about America, as if he was a native American. They&#8217;re all full of American names and diesel trucks. It\u2019s his fantasy. Musically it was Rolling Stones, the Velvet Underground, Bob Dylan&#8230; All that sort of stuff. We had a 3- or 4-year run: two albums for RCA, then they dropped us. The last recording we did was an EP, four tracks, which we recorded for a French company, Sky Dog.<\/p>\n<p>Then we broke up; that was 1975. The same year &#8211; the Brinsleys had broken up before us \u2013 myself and Brinlsey and Bob Andrews, who was the keyboard player in Brinsley Schwarz \u2013 we thought were going to get a band together. We found this bass player and drummer <em>[Andrew Bodnar and Steven Goulding, respectively]<\/em>, who were a bit younger than us, from another London band. We started just rehearsing, just trying stuff. Dave Robinson had this little 8-track studio above a pub, and this guy called Graham Parker had come in to do some demos. Dave heard this guy and thought, <em>Uh oh, this guy is good. This guy needs a band.<\/em> And he thought <em>I\u2019ve got a band that needs a direction.<\/em> And that\u2019s how that came about.<\/p>\n<p><strong>RTH:<\/strong> I was curious to know if the Rumour had already formed or if you were formed to support Parker.<\/p>\n<p><strong>MB:<\/strong> We were already formed, but before we met Graham all we\u2019d done was rehearse. We worked on some songs, some originals, some covers. It wasn\u2019t very long, maybe 2 or 3 months. Then Dave came in and played me the stuff he\u2019d recorded of Graham\u2019s. There were about three tracks. One was called \u201cBetween You and Me,\u201d which was a demo that was what was eventually used on the first album. We tried to re-record it when we did the first album, but it never sounded as good as the demo, so we put the demo on it. One of the other ones was \u201cDon\u2019t Ask Me Questions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Throughout our talk the admiration and camraderie Belmont still felt for his old bandmates in The Rumour came through. This was a relief &#8211; I couldn&#8217;t be sure if he&#8217;d be sick of talking about that point in his career. The pride he feels about the band after all these years is refreshing. Then he would blow my mind with the prospect of a film being made on Graham Parker &amp; The Rumour.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><!--nextpage--><br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_NBb9a_E79M?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\n<strong>MB:<\/strong> None of us would have been a natural frontperson for the band, and none of us would have been a prolific songwriter. So the idea of hooking up with a potential frontman and a great songwriter \u2013 and of course developed into a fantastic frontman, a great communicator with the audience. So it worked out very well, although it didn\u2019t achieve what everybody thought it was going to achieve.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a filmmaker in America, called <strong>Michael Gramaglia<\/strong>. He made a film about <strong>The Ramones<\/strong> called <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.endofthecentury.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">End of the Century<\/a><\/em>. It won a couple of awards, I believe. It\u2019s a very good film \u2013 I don\u2019t mind The Ramones, but you know, they\u2019re not the top of my list, but the film is <em>really, really good<\/em>. The last couple of years he\u2019s been <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbnoj.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">making a film about Graham Parker &amp; The Rumour<\/a>, putting it together, getting old footage. He\u2019s been over here [ie, England], interviewing me, interviewing Nick Lowe, interviewing Dave Robinson. He\u2019s interviewed Graham, he\u2019s interviewed pretty much everybody. The premise of the film is <em>Graham Parker &amp; The Rumour: What Happened? Or What Didn\u2019t Happen?<\/em> Because there was a point when Bruce Springsteen said, \u201cGraham Parker &amp; The Rumour: the only band I\u2019d pay money to go see.\u201d We were the critics\u2019 favorite and a big draw live, but we never sold the records that went with the rest of it. So it kind of never happened like it was supposed to. That\u2019s the angle he\u2019s doing it on. I\u2019m still not sure when it\u2019s coming out. Hopefully that will be out before too long.<\/p>\n<div class=\"image_block\" style=\"text-align: center;\">\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/blogs\/rth\/belmont1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/blogs\/rth\/belmont1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"241\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"image_legend\">Damn, we never got a chance to discuss who would win the battle of the Hamer guitars: the Rumour, Rockpile, or Cheap Trick!<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>We split up around 1980, and The Rumour carried on for a bit. In fact we did an American tour, we were employed to be the back-up band for a singer called <strong>Garland Jeffreys<\/strong> in which we got to open to promote our Rumour album. It worked out very well, then we broke up. I moved to working with <strong>Carlene Carter<\/strong> in her backing band for a couple of years \u2013 I had worked a bit with her before. Then <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/i-am-ready-to-forgive-nick-lowe-for-his\" target=\"_blank\">that band became Nick Lowe\u2019s band<\/a> and went on through \u201986-\u201987. Since then I\u2019ve been playing with the bands I\u2019m playing with now.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve done quite a lot of sessions over the years, but I\u2019m not really a <em>session man<\/em> in the way that a session person is able to be able to turn up and play anything that anybody wants you to play. I can\u2019t do that and I have no desire to do that. <em>You want me to play like <strong>Jimmy Page<\/strong>, well, then get Jimmy Page.<\/em> That\u2019s not my thing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>RTH:<\/strong> One of my good friends was very excited to hear we\u2019d be talking. We came of age listening to you and Brinsley Schwarz, discussing your guitar dynamic, imagining what you went through&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>MB:<\/strong> There are several templates for two guitars working together. There\u2019s the classic Beatles template, if you\u2019d like, where you\u2019ve got an out-and-out rhythm guitar, which is basically a strummer, which most of the time would have been John Lennon, and then you\u2019ve got a lead guitarist, with a lot less restraint than lead guitarists today, who would be putting in little fills and joining-up bits. Sometimes they\u2019d be playing pretty much the same thing.<\/p>\n<p>Then there\u2019s Keith Richards-Brian Jones and Keith Richards-Ronnie Wood now, where Keith describes it as the \u201cancient art of weaving.\u201d They don\u2019t do it as lead guitar and rhythm guitar. They do it as both playing <em>whatever<\/em> and they sort of weave in and out of each other. That\u2019s the sort of thing you can do when you\u2019ve both been playing together for a long time. I don\u2019t think any way is right or wrong; it\u2019s whatever is appropriate to the set-up of the band and whatever other instruments are playing. If you have two guitars and a keyboard that adds another dimension. If one of the guitars is an acoustic guitar the electric guitar, which is the lead guitar, needs to work around the acoustic, because the acoustic guitar tends to be the center when it\u2019s that type of country thing. With Hank Wangford, he plays the acoustic guitar, I play the electric guitar, and we\u2019ve got a pedal steel player, so again it\u2019s all about finding your niche in the overall sound of the band appropriate to kind of music you\u2019re playing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>RTH:<\/strong> When people come to you as a sideman \u2013 I can see a lot of clear connections among the people you\u2019ve played with \u2013 but is there a <em>Martin Belmont Sound<\/em> they\u2019re expecting? Do they point back to specific recordings you\u2019ve done over the years?<\/p>\n<p><strong>MB:<\/strong> Yes, I think people know the kind of bands and artists I\u2019ve played with, and they kind of know what they\u2019re gonna get. They\u2019re not gonna get any <strong>Metallica<\/strong> type of guitar thing. It\u2019s not going to be jazz; it\u2019s going to be pretty much basic \u2013 I just call it rock \u2018n roll, but it pretty much encompasses a whole lot of things. I think what I\u2019m good at &#8211; what I\u2019d like to think I\u2019m good at is playing to the song, to me that\u2019s what the best guitarists do. If you look at <strong>Scotty Moore<\/strong>, <strong>George Harrison<\/strong>, Ry Cooder\u2026they play to the song. They can do flash bits, if they need to; they can do hardly anything, if the song requires hardly anything. The song is the starting point. <em>[Belmont slips into what I imagine is his guitar teacher tone.]<\/em> You play to the song. You don\u2019t play the song as an excuse to get in a flash solo. If the song requires a flash solo, then you can put one in. You can improvise, if it\u2019s that kind of song. Or if it\u2019s an instrumental break you can have a very short, pithy solo: just straight to the point, four bars, and out.<\/p>\n<p><strong>RTH:<\/strong> Were the separate Rumour albums always part of the plan?<br \/>\n<!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<div class=\"image_block\" style=\"text-align: center;\">\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/blogs\/rth\/rumourpurity.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/blogs\/rth\/rumourpurity.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"320\" height=\"320\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"image_legend\">(Front cover of the Hannibal release &#8211; couldn&#8217;t find a big enough photo of the back cover shot.)<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>MB:<\/strong> I guess it was in the plan because we were sort of a band before we met Graham. Funnily enough, we\u2019d written and arranged a couple of covers before we met Graham, and Bob, the keyboard player, wrote a couple of songs. We worked out all of these, and in actual fact the very first gig with did as Graham Parker and the Rumour, where nobody knew Graham Parker from Adam, but people in The Rumour were better known than Graham, we used to do this very bizarre thing: we used to do a couple of Graham\u2019s songs and then he\u2019d go off, and then we\u2019d do a couple of Rumour songs and he\u2019d come back on. It was a really, really bad idea. We soon realized it, we soon realized that he was going to be able to do it. Because he\u2019d never been in a real, proper band before, we were never sure, at first. You could tell he\u2019s got good songs, but you were never sure\u2026 It was obvious very quickly we were much better off doing his songs. But we always needed an outlet for doing our own stuff. Over the course of the years we were together we did three Rumour albums, which were a mixture of original songs and covers.<\/p>\n<p><strong>RTH:<\/strong> I\u2019ve got two of them: <em>Purity of Essence<\/em> and \u2013 it\u2019s such a tongue twister &#8211; <em>Frogs, Sprouts, Clogs, and Krauts<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>MB:<\/strong> That was our tip of the hat to the European economic community. It\u2019s a terribly, appallingly sort of English thing, but it sounded like a good title. Do you know where <em>Purity of Essence<\/em> came from? <em>[I do not.]<\/em> It\u2019s from one of our all-time favorite movies, <em>Dr. Strangelove<\/em>. It\u2019s one of those movies we used to watch on the bus when we were touring America. We\u2019d watch it all the time, so everybody knew every line in that film.<\/p>\n<p><em>Frogs, Sprouts, Clogs, and Krauts<\/em> was the second one. The first one we did was called <em>Max<\/em>. Do you remember <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/choose-sides-lindsey-buckingham\" target=\"_blank\">Fleetwood Mac<\/a><\/strong>? They had an album called <em>Rumours<\/em>. \u201cWe\u2019ll put out an album called <em>Max<\/em>!\u201d Gosh, weren\u2019t we witty?<\/p>\n<p>We recorded <em>Purity of Essence<\/em> twice. We recorded it once, and it was released by Stiff in England and Europe. Then a company called Hannibal, <strong>Joe Boyd<\/strong>\u2019s company, were going to put it out in America, and Stiff wanted like $10,000 for it. They said, no, and I said, I\u2019ll tell you what: record it again, it\u2019ll be cheaper. So we recorded it twice and there are actually two albums. We recorded some new tracks for the second version that aren\u2019t on the first version.<\/p>\n<p><strong>RTH:<\/strong> I didn\u2019t know there were two versions; I\u2019ll have to see what version I have. <em>[Hannibal US release.]<\/em> Mine has that hilarious cover with you wearing paisley shirts on a paisley background.<\/p>\n<p><strong>MB:<\/strong> Yes, that\u2019s right. Now that was the original cover for the original, English Stiff record. I can\u2019t remember what tracks are different\u2026Hold on, I need to see what version I have myself. <em>[He reaches back to his CD shelf to see if he can clear up this question. He seems to be looking through the Graham Parker section, for those nerds among us who may wonder, as I observed, if he files the Rumour albums under P, with Parker, or R, for Rumour.]<\/em> I don\u2019t have a copy of that one.<\/p>\n<p><strong>RTH:<\/strong> Speaking of albums recorded twice, what is the story with <em>Stick to Me<\/em>, did you really have to record it a second time, or is this story apocryphal?<\/p>\n<p><strong>MB:<\/strong> That wasn\u2019t our fault! What happened was, we recorded it at Island Studios \u2013 not the famous Island Studios in Basing Street, where The Wailers, Free, and Cat Stevens and all those other Island acts were. But they opened up a second Island Studios in West London, and we went in there with a producer, I forget his name now, and recorded that album \u2013 the same tracks that are on it now. And it sounded <em>absolutely sensational<\/em>! A load of money was spent: there were string overdubs, there were horns, we got in extra female backing singers. There was a lot of money spent on it, big production. Then, when the tapes were played in other places, it didn\u2019t sound right. <em>The sound was all wrong.<\/em> It was muddy, the EQ was all wrong. I don\u2019t know how it all quite played out, but what we were hearing coming back through the speakers at Island Studios was not what was going onto the tape. And in the end there was a big fuss about it, because Dave Robinson said, \u201cWe won\u2019t be paying for this!\u201d and they said, \u201cOh, yes you will!\u201d In the end it was settled by an acoustic expert, who came down on our side. There was definitely something technically wrong with the studio, and it was also considered the producer\u2019s fault for not checking whatever.<\/p>\n<p>So we were booked to go out and do gigs straight after, and we did a whole lot of gigs, during which time we played most of the tracks live, so we knew them backwards. Then we went back into another studio with Nick Lowe, <em>Mr. Not Hanging About<\/em>, and we did the entire album \u2013 strings, horns, and backing singers \u2013 in a week. But that is the story. The album got very mixed reception; some people thought \u2013 the classic phrase was \u201cgrimy and blurred.\u201d In fact Nick was going to call his records <em>Another Grimy and Blurred Production<\/em>. Other people thought it was a great record. I think the songs on it are great, and I think it sounds fine. It\u2019s not the best of the albums we did, but it\u2019s certainly a good album.<\/p>\n<div class=\"image_block\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/blogs\/rth\/mercurypoisoning.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/blogs\/rth\/mercurypoisoning.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p>At that time, when that one came out, 1977, we were starting to have big problems with our American record company, which was Mercury. They did nothing for us. We did these back-breaking tours of America: six of us in a station wagon, two people facing out back. It was just awful. In the middle of winter of 1976, minus 20 in Minneapolis, and these jerks from the record company would turn up \u2013 we were doing <em>Heat Treatment<\/em> at the time. They\u2019d say, \u201cListen, we\u2019ve got this great promotion!\u201d And their promotion was an electric blanket with <em>Heat Treatment<\/em> stamped on it. They were doing nothing. So it got to the point where we did another American tour in \u201977, it was getting worse. The following year, \u201978, we didn\u2019t do an American tour. We went to Australia and New Zealand and a couple of other places. We released the live album to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/contractual-obligation-albums\" target=\"_blank\">fulfill the contract<\/a> with Mercury. Graham made a song called \u201cMercury Poisoning,\u201d but they didn\u2019t put that out. And then we signed with Arista.<\/p>\n<p>The first album we did for Arista was, I think, the best album we did, <em>Squeezing Out Sparks<\/em>. I think that and the first album we did were the absolute best. There\u2019s something on every album, but for me, <em>Squeezing Out Sparks<\/em> is the most unified. It\u2019s got the best songs, it\u2019s got a thread running through it, it\u2019s really powerful. We got rid of the horn section, we got back to basics. And boy did it show.<\/p>\n<p><strong>RTH:<\/strong> I agree with the two albums you cite as the best. Each one has a strong identity. They sound like they came from a particular time and place.<\/p>\n<p><strong>MB:<\/strong> The first album of anybody\u2019s got to have a good backlog of songs. The tricky second album is always the one that\u2019s hardest. As Graham says, he was basking in the glow of the critical reception of the first one and going out touring, and then they said, \u201cWell, what have you got ready for the second album?\u201d And he said \u201cWhat?!?!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The second album had some good songs on it, but it\u2019s not my favorite, mainly because of the production. It was recorded with a guy called <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Robert_John_%22Mutt%22_Lange\" target=\"_blank\">Mutt Lange<\/a><\/strong>, who went onto become one of the world\u2019s most successful producers \u2013 wouldn\u2019t you know it! <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/please_explain_bon_scott_s_value_to_ac_d\">AC\/DC<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/which-band-reduced-rock-n-roll\" target=\"_blank\">Foreigner<\/a>, and his wife, Shania Twain. Co-wrote that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/sting_stewart_and_adams_arraigned_on_roc\" target=\"_blank\">Bryan Adams<\/a>\u2019 <em>Robin Hood<\/em> song\u2026 Just sickening!<\/p>\n<p><strong>RTH:<\/strong> At least he has one good album to his resume.<\/p>\n<p><strong>MB:<\/strong> He did the first Rumour album as well, and he mixed the live album, <em>Parkerilla<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<div class=\"image_block\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/blogs\/rth\/kingbiscuit.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/blogs\/rth\/kingbiscuit.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"394\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p><strong>RTH:<\/strong> I have one more memory lane-type question for you. I\u2019ve told you that I grew up listening to your records with my friends, and the records of your colleagues. There used to be a syndicated radio show, called <em>King Biscuit Flower Hour<\/em>. I think it broadcast Sunday nights in Philadelphia. I would tune it in every Sunday in my bedroom. They would often have bands I liked, instead of Foreigner and Journey and stuff I couldn\u2019t stand. One night <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/weekend_download_elvis_costello_aamp_the\" target=\"_blank\">I was very excited; it was going to be <strong>Elvis Costello &amp; The Attractions<\/strong> and<\/a>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>MB:<\/strong> It was me!<\/p>\n<p><strong>RTH:<\/strong> It was you! Everything came together that night, because I have one of my favorite guitarists playing with another of my favorite musicians. And <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/weekend_download_elvis_costello_aamp_the\" target=\"_blank\">it was fantastic<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>MB:<\/strong> I\u2019ll tell you how that came about. I obviously knew Elvis and The Attractions because we were all part of that same&#8230;thing. They were scheduled to do a 3- or 4-week European tour, and a day or two before the tour <strong>Steve Nieve<\/strong>, the keyboard player, had got in a horrible car wreck. They couldn\u2019t cancel the tour and they couldn\u2019t find another keyboard player that could do what he did, so they said, \u201cLet\u2019s get Martin in. We know he\u2019s a good bloke, and he\u2019ll be able to play the songs.\u201d I had to learn hundreds of songs, and Elvis\u2019 songs, some of them are quite simple <em>except<\/em> but he\u2019s got a habit of the second verse being not quite the same as the first. Then the third verse is not quite the same as either, it\u2019s got a few extra bars or lines.<\/p>\n<p>So I did that, and it was at the end of that tour that we did that gig at a little pub in London, the Hope &amp; Anchor. I used to live there. That\u2019s the pub that Dave Robinson had the 8-track studio where we formed The Rumour. It was recorded there for <em>King Biscuit Flower Hour<\/em>. So yeah, I had a cassette of that \u2013 I probably still have the cassette, but I was never able to transfer it. It was great, because he used to throw in covers. He did the Sonny Boy Williamson song, \u201cHelp Me.\u201d We probably did the Elvis [Presley] song \u201cLittle Sister\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>RTH:<\/strong> \u201cDon\u2019t Look Back,\u201d The Temptations\u2019 song.<\/p>\n<p><strong>MB:<\/strong> Yeah, \u201cWalk and Don\u2019t Look Back.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>I end the proper portion of our chat by reverting to something probably worse than the Chris Farley character, describing in a bit of detal my band\u2019s fascination with that show and how we still point back to it as a template for how we wish we could sound. Belmont asks if I can burn him a copy of my digitized cassette tape in return for a proper CD of<\/em> The Guest List<em>, complete with the 12-page booklet!<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Finally: Rock Town Hall&#8217;s first audio Dugout Chatter&#8230;after the jump!<\/em><br \/>\n<!--nextpage--><br \/>\n<ins><strong><big>Dugout Chatter: Martin Belmont Audio Edition!<\/big><\/strong><\/ins><\/p>\n<div class=\"image_block\" style=\"text-align: center;\">\n<div><object width=\"400\" height=\"400\" classid=\"clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0\"><param name=\"data\" value=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/dugout400x400.swf\" \/><param name=\"src\" value=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/dugout400x400.swf\" \/><embed width=\"400\" height=\"400\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/dugout400x400.swf\" data=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/dugout400x400.swf\" \/><\/object><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Here is link to an <strong>AUDIO Dugout Chatter<\/strong>. This is a first for Rock Town Hall. As is to be expected when I&#8217;m charged with navigating technological bounds (ie, taking a line out from my computer speakers to record our Skype conversation on two tracks of an old 4-track cassette recorder&#8230;) the sound is a little sketchy, but I think it&#8217;s worth hearing the effort that Martin puts into his answers. Let this be a lesson to our regular Townspeople and future interview subjects when faced with a Dugout Chatter session!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/blogs\/rth\/Belmont_DugoutChatter.mp3\">CLICK HERE for Rock Town Hall&#8217;s Dugout Chatter with Martin Belmont (audio chatter)<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The questions that Martin faces are as follows:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Brian Jones or Mick Taylor era of the Stones?<\/li>\n<li>What is your favorite guitar part \u2013 lead or rhythm &#8211; in the world?<\/li>\n<li>Which member of The Rumour looked best in paisley?<\/li>\n<li>Have you ever played with a musician taller than you?<\/li>\n<li>On who\u2019s guest list would you most like to appear?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>Thanks for all your time and good spirit, Martin, not to mention the music!<\/em><\/p>\n<nav class=\"page-links\"><strong>Pages:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/the-rock-town-hall-interview-martin-belmont\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">1<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/the-rock-town-hall-interview-martin-belmont\/2\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">2<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/the-rock-town-hall-interview-martin-belmont\/3\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">3<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/the-rock-town-hall-interview-martin-belmont\/4\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">4<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/the-rock-town-hall-interview-martin-belmont\/5\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">5<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/the-rock-town-hall-interview-martin-belmont\/6\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">6<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/the-rock-town-hall-interview-martin-belmont\/7\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">7<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/the-rock-town-hall-interview-martin-belmont\/8\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">8<\/span><\/a><\/nav>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Press for the reunited Graham Parker &amp; The Rumour tour (and album) focuses much attention and credit on the band&#8217;s appearance in Judd Apatow&#8216;s upcoming movie, This Is 40. I&#8217;m sure that played a small part, but longtime members of the Halls of Rock know this 2010 interview with Rumour guitarist Martin Belmont is the <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/the-rock-town-hall-interview-martin-belmont\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342,667],"tags":[10,237,4,3,67],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2572"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2572\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}