P.J. Proby Interview, Part Two

Below is the continuation of my interview with the legendary PJ Proby. You can read part one about his experiences with Elvis Presley and The Beatles here: P.J. Proby Inteview Part One

FZ: Can you tell me about the first time you met Jimmy Page and what your impressions of him? I think he worked on the song, “Somewhere” for you.

PJ: Well, I can tell you he worked on that whole album [I Am PJ Proby]. I was singing, “Hold Me” to Millie [A Jamaican singer known best for her song “My Boy Lollipop”] and Jack Good heard that and said, “Jim, Jim, Jim, that’s fantastic! We’ll go into the studio tomorrow and record it.” So the next day I went into the studio and there were four musicians in there and he [Jack Good] introduced me to Big Jim Sullivan, lead guitar player and then Jimmy Page – who looked about fifteen – rhythm guitar player, Clem Cattini on drums and Charles Blackwell on piano.

FZ: One of my favorite records of yours, which was actually your last record with Liberty [Records] was Three Week Hero. A lot of people don't know that the entire lineup of Led Zeppelin backed you up on that album. Can you tell us a little bit about that album and what it was like?

PJ: Yeah, after that session, Big Jim Sullivan was the most sought after lead guitar player in England so he was on everybody but everybody’s sessions. At that time Jimmy Page couldn’t really pick lead all that well. So he went off and wasn’t heard for a long time and the next thing I knew he was in The Yardbirds. About 1968, a friend of mine from Hollywood, Steve Roland had come over to London and had done pretty well as a producer for [the group] Dave, Dee Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich. So I went down to Steve and asked him to produce my next album, EMI wanted one out now. I listened to some stuff he had there, demos, and he said, “I’ll put a band together for you.”

So when I got to the studio that day, there was what they called, “The New Yardbirds”. There was Jimmy Page, lead guitar player, a great lead guitar player by now and John Bonham and another guy Paul Jones and Albert Lee. Anyway, we recorded that album, I think it was in two days. We even undershot, we recorded it with about thirty-five minutes left over, and so Roland yelled down, “Why don’t you all busket? We shouldn’t waste the studio time.” I told the boys, “Y’all start picking and I’ll write as you pick.” So the three last numbers on the album, “It's So Hard to Be a Nigger/Jim's Blues/George Wallace is Rollin' in This Mornin’”, I just made up as the boys played.

Afterwards, I said, “Man, y’all did a terrific job. I’ve got some tours coming up, would you back me?” They said, “We’d love to, we’ll be your backing band, but first we’ve got two obligations we’ve got to honour in California and they named two places in California that I had just come back from playing with a band of mine that was called Canned Heat. The boys told me they were going over to play in San Francisco and all that, and I said, “Look, from what I’ve heard and the way you boys played tonight, not only are you not going to be my backing band, I’m going to say goodbye right now, because I don’t think I’m ever going to see you again. That’s how successful you’re going to be. You’re exactly what they want, you play all that psychedelic stuff and everything.“

The heavy metal word hadn’t been invented then, it was just hard blues and stuff. So I said, “You’re going to go over there and go down so great I don’t think you’re ever going to come home.” They didn’t ever come back until they changed their name to Led Zeppelin and stayed over there and came back huge huge stars.

FZ: Did you ever manage to catch up with them once they became big stars?

PJ: No I never have and I have never seen Jimmy Page since. I said goodbye that day when I cut that album and I haven’t seen one of them since.

FZ: I heard a rumor that you were asked to replace Jim Morrison in The Doors. Is there any truth to that?

PJ: Yeah I was asked to do that. I got as far as the recording studio. I was to meet everybody down in the recording studio and luckily the red light was on which meant don’t enter, they’re recording. In the time it took for the red light to go out, I realized that I could never ever fill Jim Morrison’s shoes. I could never do a show where I go out there and pull my doo-da out or take my pants off onstage. I know I already had the reputation for being wild over here with the ripped pants and everything, but Morrison went all the way and I couldn’t do that. So what I did was when the red light went out I thought to myself, “You can never replace that son of a gun,” and I got in my car and drove off.

FZ: This was after Jim Morrison’s passing?

PJ: Right.

FZ: In 1997 you toured with The Who in their live production of Quadrophenia, what can you recall about that?

PJ: I’d known The Who since [19]64. They were my support act. In 1997 all of a sudden a phone call comes through, they said they wanted me to take Gary Glitter’s place as the Godfather in Quadrophenia. So I said, I don’t know how I can learn all that in one-week, the whole goddamn play. So they flew me to New York to see the play and I saw it, I was sitting next to Daltrey’s wife. At the end they were all going, “Who, who, who,” so I said to her “I thought that was fantastic, why are they booing him?” So she says, “P.J. they’re not going ‘boo, boo, boo’, they’re going, ‘who, who, who’.”

You see, I hadn’t been to a Who concert and I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know about lighting candles in the audience and all that. My audience used to rush the stage and rip the shit out of me! I said, “Okay, I’ll do it, but how am I gonna learn all this?” So we went back and got about a week’s rehearsal before we opened and luckily they had monitors with the words on it all over the stage, not only for me, but for Roger and for Pete too. So I didn’t have much of a problem.

FZ: Now you’ve recently released two singles on your website, “We the Jury” and “I’m PJ”, can you tell us a little bit more about how those songs came to be?

PJ: Well, “We the Jury”, I have always been in trouble with the [British] government, because I’m an American, and they don’t like the idea of an American over here playing and putting another person out of work. That’s how they looked at it, no matter how much you were liked by the people, that didn’t matter to them. The government has their own way of looking at things. So they’ve always caused me problems and here lately, from 2001 until now, they’ve tried to say I was spending taxpayer’s money and all that kind of stuff. They built up a case against me to send me to prison for three years. So I’ve been awaiting that trial, and this year I finally went to trial. Before I went I wrote this song to put out and sell, but my lawyer wouldn’t let me do that until after the trial. In the end I won my trial, the government dropped their case against me, I did not go to prison and now the record is out for anybody to buy.

The other one, “I’m PJ” was written by a friend of mine [Mike Dees] that I had met when I was about twelve, and he was about seven or eight in San Marcos Academy, the San Marcos Military School in 1949 or 50. He went on to become a successful singer in Hollywood writing songs for 20^th Century Fox and I think he was Ronald McDonald for a time. So he sent me this song and he wrote it about me, but I thought, “Good Lord, I can’t sing a song about myself!” Then I thought again, and I thought, “Good Lord, yes I can! At my age I can do any fucking thing I want! I don’t have all that much longer to live, and I don’t have any right to give a shit about what anybody thinks about me any more. I’ll just lay it on, and if they don’t like it tough shit!” But I hope they will like it.

So that’s how those two songs came about.

FZ: Well Mr. Proby, it’s been a real pleasure talking to you, I had a great time. You’re one helluva storyteller I can tell you that much!

PJ: Thank you…where exactly are you by the way?

FZ: I’m in Seattle

PJ: I’ve always wanted to go to Seattle, I’ve been to Seattle once, but that was only to change planes on my way to Canada. Isn’t Hendrix buried there?

FZ: He is, I’ve been out to his final resting place and paid my respects before.

PJ: I met Jimi when Chas Chandler brought him back from New York before he even had a record out. Chas invited him to a party and when Jimi came to the top of the stairs. I was drunk, and I said, “Hey colored boy, I don’t like the way you’re dressed. You go home and put on a suit and I might let you in here.” Nobody had told me that Chas had brought him from New York and that he was his manager and his own artist. But they told me that before Jimi got back, and I knew that Chas and I were going to have a helluva fistfight if he had found out I had talked to Jimi like that. So when Jimi got back I said “Hey man, I’m gonna apologize to you, I’m very sorry. I’m just a Texas redneck asshole. Come on in, I’m sorry about all that,” and he’d gone home and put on a suit! That’s what a nice guy he was.

FZ: Well Mr. Proby, again it’s been a real pleasure.

PJ: Thank you, it’s been a real breath of fresh air to hear an American accent!

 If you would like to see P.J. Proby live, he is currently on tour throughout the U.K. along with The Animals and Gerry and the Pacemakers. Below are the dates.

September
Fri 14th - Grimsby GRIMSBY AUDITORIUM
Sat 15th - Darlington CIVIC THEATRE 2 Shows
Sun 23th - Southport SOUTHPORT THEATRE
Tue 25th - Croydon FAIRFIELD HALL
Wed 26th - Southsea KING’S THEATRE
Thu 27th - Salisbury CITY HALL
Fri 28th - Basingstoke THE ANVIL
Sat 29th - Worthing ASSEMBLY HALLS
Sun 30th - Tunbridge Wells ASSEMBLY HALL THEATRE

October
Tue 2th - Buxton OPERA HOUSE
Wed 3th - Leicester DE MONTFORT HALL
Thu 4th - Llandudno VENUE CYMRU
Fri 5th - Hull CITY HALL
Sun 7th - Blackpool OPERA HOUSE
Fri 12th - Leamington Spa ROYAL SPA CENTRE
Sat 13th - Southend CLIFFS PAVILION
Sat 27th - Bath FORUM
Tue 30th - Liverpool PHILHARMONIC HALL
Wed 31th - Gateshead THE SAGE

November
Thu 1st - Bradford ST. GEORGE’S HALL
Wed 2th - Wolverhampton GRAND THEATRE
Sat 17th - St Albans ALBAN ARENA - 2 Shows
Sun 18th - Poole LIGHTHOUSE
Tue 20th - Eastbourne CONGRESS THEATRE
Wed 21th - Northampton DERNGATE
Thu 29th - Aberdeen MUSIC HALL
Fri 30th - Perth CONCERT HALL

December
Tue 1st- Glasgow ROYAL CONCERT HALL

http://www.pjproby.net/index.htm