HW: Blackheath

[Chris Bates]

Mark Edmonds wrote of Alan Davey:

> Sure, there have been some great Davey influenced moments which wouldn`t
> have been there if he wasn`t in the group

IMO AD completely revitalised HW. In the early '80s they were
in danger of disappearing up their own arses, the music was
becoming too mellow, too simple. Partly that's a reflection of
the times, there was new technology which sounded too clean and
a lot of good bands began to produce bad albums. Basically
quality studio gear seemed to make prog and hard rock musicians
head straight for the AOR ground.

Alan Davey was a HW fan, he understood what made HW tick and what
appeals to  the fans and to some extent he reintroduced it. That
something is a spirit of adventure, of danger, of perpetual change.
In HW Brock is a catalyst who allows others to interact around him
but the band began to ossify after Levitation. Alan brought change.
Having said that it's good that he's gone because the band was
again starting to stagnate, getting too electonic, relying too
much on samplers and sequencers.

> these moments were out-weighed by his slightly crude sub-Lemmy clone
> style playing and singing. Lemmy is brilliant - he is one of the all
> time greats of rock and his style is _his_ style - if you accidentally
> stray too close to his style then you end up sounding bad.

I think that you are just plain wrong here. Lemmy plays bass like
a guitar, in fact like a guitarist. He doesn't just hold down the
bottom end but uses the full range of the instrument to enhance the
harmonic structure of the music. He uses arpeggios and intervals
to add tonality. Great, but not unique. Lemmy plays very much like
Jack Bruce, John Entwhistle and Noel Redding. Sure Alan is
influenced by this (didn't he learn by playing along to HW records?)
but it's not Lemmy's style, it's a generic rock bass style. Would
you rather he held down root notes, usually on the beat a la Harvey?
Or that HW had a bass player who played slap-funk on a fretless 5-string?

> Now listen to Alan trying to sing The Right Stuff (for example) and its
> painful

Agreed

> Alan undoubtedly did contribute energy to the group at a time when they
> needed it (after HLL left) but he brought in a new aspect of the sound
> which to me always sounded lumpy.

Not sure what you mean by *lumpy*, but AD had the misfortune to play
with some awful drummers. Richard is very good but those anonymous
morons before him who merely banged out a 4/4 beat... YUCK!


Chris Bates