SPENCER DAVIS Interviewed By JUD COST:
Ground Zero For The British R&B Explosion

The Spencer Davis Group's two blockbuster American hits–"Gimme Some Lovin'"
and "I'm A Man"–seemed to practically trip over each other's feet in their madcap scramble to the top of the U.S. charts in early 1967. With a solid background in R&B that included a handful of Top Ten singles in its native Great Britain, however, these were no musical flashes in the pan. Then, just like that, the American market was left scratching its collective head as the SDG–at the height of its creative powers–vanished from sight. Lead vocalist Steve Winwood was rumored to be gearing up a psych/pop combo called Traffic in the Berkshire hills. Davis, the man who had started it all, brought in a new supporting cast of characters who cut some trippy SDG material for a film called Here We Go 'Round The Mulberry Bush. But the new Spencer Davis Group never again scaled the artistic heights of the original band. After spending countless hours on the telephone with Davis, taping the interviews that follow, I finally met up with the man, himself, in the summer of '01 at the San Mateo County Fair, 20 miles south of San Francisco. In town with an ad hoc alliance of musical luminaries that included Denny Laine of the Moody Blues, the Eagles' Randy Meisner and Michael Monarch and Nick St. Nicholas of Steppenwolf.

An amiable chap and a true raconteur, Davis ushered Jenifer and me backstage before the show to share some laughs, bottled water–and still more stories of the glory days of the Spencer Davis Group. One thing I learned from interviewing Davis on the phone. Much like the reputed interview prowess of the Who's Pete Townshend, it was a case of switching on the cassette recorder and trying to remember to flip the tape after 45 minutes. With a clear vision of his days at the top of the heap and the narrative talents of a schoolmaster (which Davis was at one time), Spencer Davis spins a whale of a
yarn. As you're about to find out.

When did the musical bug bite you as a kid, Spencer?
My uncle Herman used to come over to the house when I was about five or six years old, and he brought a mandolin, and he'd play songs for me. Right from the age of five, I was bitten by the stringed instrument. I knew that's what I wanted to do. My parents bought me a mouth organ and I learned how to play various things on that. Then they gave me a piano-accordion. But their purpose was being defeated, because I didn't want those things. I wanted something with strings on it. By the time I got a guitar, I was into Big Bill Broonzy and Huddy Ledbetter and 12-string guitars.

When did you first venture out to hear live music?
I saw Long John Baldry in 1955 playing in a Charing Cross Road cafe in London called the Gyre and Gimbel, also known as the Two G's. By the time I went up to Birmingham in 1960 I was well steeped in this stuff. It had taken me five years to get enough money together to buy a Semaitis 12-string guitar. Fifty pounds in those days was an enormous amount of money. When I got a city grant to go to college I immediately spent it on a guitar. And they said, "Now you don't have enough money buy your books." So I told them, "I'll use this guitar to earn more than enough to buy my books"–which was exactly the case.

You were born in Wales, weren't you?
I was born in Swansea in Wales in July of 1939. I moved to London when I was
sixteen and began working for Her Majesty in the Civil Service. Like anybody who works in a government institution, I'm not quite sure what I did. I was a clerical officer in the Post Office Savings Bank. All I did all day was to compute interest for other people's savings accounts and enter it into a ledger. I wanted to go traveling. Those were the days when I believed in the British Empire. I'd liked to have been in the foreign office or the secret
service but I wasn't. When I was in school I was very good in languages, so with typical British aplomb they decided, "Ah, since this guy is very good at languages we'll put him in the Post Office Savings Bank where he will do math all day." It took me 18 months to figure out this was a complete waste of time.

What was the London music scene like back then?
I used my evenings very well. I would go down to the coffee bars and see people like Davey Graham and John Martyn. I was obviously bitten by the whole bug. I saw Alexis Korner and Long John Baldry in the very early days at the 100 Club.

When did you form your first band?
When I was sixteen I formed a band with the locals in Penge, a suburb of London. There was another illustrious son who came from Penge, Bill Perks, who later changed his name to Bill Wyman. We called ourselves the Saints, probably because we were so innocent. We were playing skiffle music. My girlfriend lived in Welling in Kent. There was a famous ballroom down there with a sprung floor. When you'd dance you could jump up and down, and it was like a trampoline. We used to go see Chris Barber play there and the banjo player in his band was a guy called Lonnie Donegan. Sometimes he'd play guitar with Chris Barber on bass and they'd play "Rock Island Line" with Beryl Bryden on washboard. I was totally hooked.

Tell me about the skiffle craze in England at the time.
Lonnie Donegan created the skiffle boom in England around 1955-56, the same time as the Everyly Brothers, Elvis Presley, Fats Domino and Buddy Holly–all this was going on. I was absorbing all those things. I remember coming home from the Civil Service after 18 months, thoroughly depressed. I was working for the Queen and she never came once to see how I was doing. I was skiffling away on the evenings and waiting for the weekends, just as a hobby. So I got transferred into the Customs & Excise department, compiling records of Britain's exports: "ten tons of horse manure to Nigeria and balls of string and wool to Lagos." Since Her Majesty had not visited me in Customs & Excise I was not going to put on a uniform for the Queen and stand on a wall in Berlin and get shot at, or go to Northern Ireland and get blown up. That was it! I wrote a letter to my headmaster in Swansea and told him I was a bit of a late bloomer and I wanted to come back to school.

When did you first get into a recording studio?
My first taste of recording, the very first record I ever made, was when I was eighteen and living in London. I recorded Buddy Holly's "Oh, Boy!" and then "Midnight Special." You can see from that, the mix of current stuff and traditional that I was into, even then. That stayed with me the rest of my life. That dipping into both sides of it–both the traditional and the pop sides–along with Steve Winwood's voice were the main ingredients that made the Spencer Davis Group so successful. But you also have to take into consideration the contributions of the other members of the band.

Did you find a local musical scene back in Swansea?
That's where I ended up in a country & western band playing Hank Williams songs. We didn't have a name for it because everybody was drinking Scrumpy (cider), and whatever they called the band that evening was what it was. American country music and the blues are all part of the same family. I was listening to Woody Guthrie and Cisco Houston before I'd ever heard of Bob Dylan. I had a harmonica in a wire frame bent around my neck, playing on the streets in London and Paris and in Holland. I was a busker.

What were you playing when you moved to Birmingham to attend the University?
My partner in crime at the time, my girlfriend, was a young lady called Christine Perfect who later married (Fleetwood Mac's) John McVie. We used to play in folk clubs with the Ian Campbell Trio. With Christine on piano and me on 12-string, we'd play Canadian folk songs that she was into, mining songs like "Spring Hill, Nova Scotia." And we also did W.C. Handy songs like "Careless Love," and, of course, Leadbelly tunes. We were getting more and more into the blues things. Christine and I played the pub circuit.

When did you begin to assemble the Spencer Davis Group?
I went to a place called the Golden Eagle in Hill Street in Birmingham. That place was like a shrine to me. That's where we played (later) with Sonny Boy Williamson. We jammed with him when Giorgio Gomelski brought him by when he was touring with the Yardbirds. Giorgio wanted to manage the band. I'd been to the Golden Eagle on my own and did the interval, playing Willie Dixon songs like "Got My Mojo Working," Then the owners of the club said, "We don't need the rock 'n' roll band." I felt awful because these guys had ost their gig because of what I was doing.

Did you put a band together for the event?
The owners asked me, "Can you play the whole show next week?" And I said, "On my own? No! But I'll go and get a band for you." So I got Pete York on drums first because I'd known him already playing trad jazz in the University band. I said to Pete, "I've got a gig at the Golden Eagle but we need two more 0people." So I went to see a local band called the Muff Woody Jazz Band and in it they had a 16-year-old kid sitting down at the piano who could play like Oscar Peterson and sing like Ray Charles. He was fucking amazing! I thought, "Right, we'll have you in the band for a start." And that was Steve Winwood. So, I asked this kid, "Do you want to be in the band?" And he said, "Oh yeah,
but I don't have a driving license." So Steve's brother, Muff, who was playing guitar– seeing an opportunity here–leapt forward and said, "I'll put the guitar down and play bass. And since we live in the same house, I'll bring him because I do have a driving license."

What part of town did the Winwoods come from?
They were from one of the biggest suburbs of northern Birmingham called Great Barr. Of course, Steve didn't really want to travel with his brother. He wanted to hang with me because I was his blues idol.

How was Pete York as a drummer?
Although he wasn't in the University, he played in the Birmingham University Dixieland band, because he was the only drummer around capable of doing that stuff. Pete's idols were Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich. He was a Buddy Rich fanatic. He thought he was Buddy Rich, even down to the fiery temper. Buddy Rich used to shout at the guys onstage and so did Pete.

How was the Birmingham scene back then?
I was studying languages there. It was jumping musically at that time. This guy named Evan Parker who was playing like Coltrane came up to me once and said, "Hey, let's play together." So he was playing soprano sax like John Coltrane and I was playing Leadbelly 12-string. People wondered what the fuck was going on.

What did you call your new band with the Winwood brothers?
We called it the Rhythm & Blues Quartet at first. Then, because I'd put it together, they started calling it the Spencer Davis Rhythm & Blues Quartet. It was a logical step to just drop the Rhythm & Blues bit and call it the Spencer Davis Group. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. Of course, it was a double-edged sword. I'd recognized how good Steve was, so I stuck him out front and told him, "You're the main singer," although I sang 50 percent of the material. But the public–can you blame 'em, with a voice like that?–jumped on the Steve bandwagon, and then the press pushed me into the background. It was like, "Oh, ignore him," and I didn't like that. I had put Steve into the foreground and I was the guy who had put the whole goddamn thing together.

Tell me more about the musical abilities of the Winwood brothers.
Well, Muff was no slouch on guitar. Muff and Steve were listening to more modern things like bebop than the straight-ahead trad stuff I was into. And whatever instrument you stuck in front of Steve, if it had notes, he immediately played a tune. He was that kind of talent. He was a natural. I was the one who introduced Steve to the world. I was the one who recruited him. No one can ever take that away from me.

How would you describe Birmingham's Golden Eagle, where you broke the band in?
It was a pub, centrally located in Hill Street. Most of the music in Britain back in the '60s was played in a function room above a pub. For these Monday night sessions there was a band on there called the Renegades–who happened to be huge in Scandinavia. So, I strolled over there on Monday night with a 12-string guitar hand-made by a Greek Cypriot named Anthony Zemaitis. They were known affectionately as "Tony Zemaitis boxes." I had a bent coat hanger which I used to stick my harmonica in, something I'd used running around Europe, busking. And I asked to play the interval spot. And I was greeted with hoots of derision, a one-man band. But I got in there and sang Leadbelly songs like "Good Morning Blues" and "How Long Blues." Then I finished off the evening with what was to become the national anthem of this new wave of British rhythm & blues, "I've Got My Mojo Working."

Did you win over the crowd?
If you have ever been present in a room when one style of music has been visibly replaceby another style of music–in other words, the arrival of the next wave–this was it. When the rhythm & blues craze swept Britain, I can say to you it was about 8:30 in the evening one night in early 1963. Sure, the Beatles were going and they'd dipped into Motown. But nobody yet had dipped into the North American catalogue of raw blues, not Mick Jagger or Eric Burdon. Not Van Morrison or Paul Jones. That was something I'd had a handle on since I was 14 and got turned on to Big Bill Broonzy by an art teacher who played guitar in Swansea. So, I played the interval at the Golden Eagle and the place went nuts. The club promoters said, "You can come back next week and play the whole evening." And I said to them, "No bloody way. I'll never be able to play the whole evening. But I will bring a band back." Now I had to look for a band. So somebody told me, "You've got to go see this Muff Woody Jazz Band." They were playing in the northern suburbs of Birmingham. It never even occurred to me to have Christine in the band. The thinking just wasn't there. That would have been a nascent Fleetwood Mac.

Steve really stood out in the Muff Woody Band?
Muff was playing guitar, kind of leading the band. His younger brother was wearing short pants and playing Horace Silver, Oscar Peterson and Ray Charles on the piano. He played "One Mint Julep" on the melodica which tore the house down. I went up to them and told them, "I've got a gig at the Golden Eagle and I need a rhythm & blues band." I already had Pete York, an I was going to use a guy named Roy Stephens as a stand-up bass. I was pretty close to being authentic. I even had a mind to have a banjo in there, as well. We're talking the real thing. Since Steve was the only one Iwas really interested in, I said to him, "Would you like to be in it?" And he leapt at the chance: "Oh yeah! Would love to do that. But I'm too young to drive myself." And Muff, ever one to spot an opportunity, said, "Never mind. I will switch from guitar to bass and since we both live in the same house, I'll bring him." Hey, that's perfect, I thought. Muff switched from guitar to bass and we preceded to learn some Jimmy Reed songs which Steve sang and I did the Leadbelly songs. We split the vocals fifty-fifty.

How was the band's debut?
We played the Golden Eagle the next week and it was a smash. The word got around and by the following Monday the local TV station sent a crew out to film the line around the block. They didn't film the group, just the line. But obviously we'd got it. We nailed it. We were the hottest item in Birmingham. The Golden Eagle was the launching platform for the Rhythm & Blues Quartet. I felt awful about the Renegades. I'd just done them out of their residency. But that's the law of nature. I had no control over that. It's like when you go out and open the show for somebody and three years later you come back and they're opening for you.

Did you give your new band members free reign?
I went out and actively recruited the members and stuck 'em in the band, but I didn't tell 'em what to play. You'd never do that. To get the best out of 'em you'd say, "This is your space. Fill it." After that we could actually work. Our notoriety kind of spread with such a precocious kid–this prodigy–in the band. He was just sixteen at the time. People couldn't believe it: the guy's voice, his style of guitar. He was incredible. One of Steve's talents was his ability to mimic. The best way to describe him was he was like a sponge. He could absorb all these different styles and spit them out.

Who could he mimic?
It's a loose comparison, but Steve was kind of like a musical version of the Woody Allen in movie Zelig, who gradually took on the identity of the person he was speaking to. Peter Sellers was the same way. At the end of the day people used to want to know who the real Peter Sellers was and Peter Sellers didn't even know himself. Steve had this amazing ability to mimic and copy. When he wasn't singing this kid had a strong Birmingham accent. You'd never put that voice with what was coming off a record and say it was the same person.

Did you listen to Peter Sellers on the Goon Show on BBC radio?
We all grew up with that. Pete York copied a lot of that Harry Secombe/Peter Sellers/ Spike Milligan stuff from the Goon Show and would amuse Steve for hours on end. Steve and I share a lot of influences, Richard Thompson of Fairport Convention, for example.

Did you have a heavy work schedule in those days with the SDG?
There were seven days in the week, but we could actually work eight gigs a week in the Birmingham area. And we did. We worked Saturday afternoon in the park and Saturday night at a club. Then Sunday we'd work again somewhere else. It was a matter of word-of mouth. I was a student at the time at Birmingham University ˜studying comparative philology, the love of language˜and I was chairman of the Rhythm Club, so I was able to book us on shows with bands like Manfred Manne. I'd booked them six weeks before their
record ("Do Wah Diddy Diddy") hit number one. So, I was the god and the place was packed. It was a real scam because the hall only held 500 people and it was on an upper floor, kind of a dangerous thing to do. As people left to go to the bar we'd re-sell the ticket. We had a rotation going on. You'd never get more than 550 people in there but we managed to sell 750 tickets by dropping some money to the stewards to allow more people to come in. There was all this jostling around, with people leaving the room, and then when they all tried to get in at the end it was a little embarrassing. So, the band was off and running. We did a live recording session above a pub in Bradford Street called The Crown. We recorded upstairs before a selected audience. We also recorded some demos–some of Steve's tunes, some of mine–at a little studio called Hollock & Taylor's. God knows where those tapes are now.

How much were you making at The Golden Eagle?
We were getting about ten pounds for the band, an enormous amount of money. That's when I went down to London to the Crawdaddy Club to see a band called the Yardbirds with Eric Clapton playing guitar. I said to (their manager) Giorgio Gomelsky, "This band is very good but mine is better." Giorgio said, "I'll come and see the band." (When he came north) Giorgio had Sonny Boy Williamson with him because the Yardbirds were backing him. They had to go up to Manchester to do a television show so Giorgio stopped off in Birmingham with Sonny Boy Williamson and brought him into the club. I was god before Eric Clapton with Birmingham's R&B aficionados now because I'd brought in Sonny Boy Williamson. And we backed him at the Golden Eagle. Sonny Boy was in his 70s, drinking scotch like it was never ending and still chasing women like crazy. He was having a ball because suddenly this guy was huge in Britain. That old, black rhythm & blues was far more appreciated in the U.K. then than it was in America. They were sending people over like Jesse Fuller.

How long did you stay at The Golden Eagle?
We got an offer to go down to another Birmingham club called the Whisky A-Go-Go and they offered us fifteen pounds each. We had arrived! Hey, that was back when some people were only earning five pounds a week. Then we started doing these Riverboat Shuffles. Where they'd originally had traditional jazz, suddenly it was cool to have the Rhythm & Blues Quartet on board. That's what we were doing in this movie, The Ghost Goes Gear, playing on a pleasure boat going down the Thames. It was dreadfully camp. On the commentary track, which I did with Martin Lewis, we talk about that film.

What did you think of Giorgio Gomelsky?
Giorgio wanted to get involved with managing the band. He looked a bit like Rasputin to me, so I was a little bothered. But he was probably a lovable scoundrel. Then a gentleman brought up this Jamaican girl called Millie Small who'd had a hit with "My Boy Lollipop," to do a television show called Thank Your Lucky Stars. And the guy was Chris Blackwell. He'd been told there were two Birmingham bands to look out for: the Spencer Davis Rhythm & Blues Quartet with the young Steve in it and the other one was Carl Wayne & The Vikings, who became the Move. Blackwell came and saw our band first and he didn't even bother to go see the other one. He said, "That's the one." So now we had to choose between Chris Blackwell and Giorgio Gomelski. I liked the way Chris Blackwell spoke. He sounded very well educated, very intelligent, and he didn't look as if he had a bomb stuck in his backpack ready to go off. We decided to sign with Chris.

How soon after that did you change the name?
The real reason we changed the name from RBQ to the Spencer Davis Quartet was not because I'm an expert at giving interviews. That's baloney. Whether Steve stuck out in the band like a sore thumb–which was a major truth–the material itself stood out, as well. Certainly Eric Burdon or Paul Jones never sang like Steve, but all of that was an added bonus. We were on the right track, material-wise. It wasn't something that Steve brought to the band. He was pulled in as a member of the band. And Pete York was no slouch either. He was probably the most technically proficient drummer on the scene, right up
there with Mike Hugg from the Manfreds who came from a more jazzy, blues background. But in terms of technique, no one could touch Pete York. He was into big band swing. And Muff Winwood was a guitar player before he took up the bass and, c'mon, he was into Wes Montgomery. I was the most traditional and basic one in terms of what I was listening to and playing.

Do you recall your first recordings with the group?
The first original song we did was the B-side of "Dimples," our first single. It was "Sittin' And Thinkin'" which I'll take credit for. I wrote it and sang it live with a harmonica. The only thing that's overdubbed there is Steve's piano which fattens it out nicely, which is perfect, the ideal thing to do. When we got into the overdubbing in the studio we thought, "Ooh, it'd be nice to stick something on there," but we never went overboard. What was intriguing about it wasn't that it was a straight-ahead slow blues but that it incorporated some time changes. Then we recorded the A-side, John Lee Hooker's "Dimples," but Eric Burdon beat us to the punch with "Boom, Boom, Boom," which is essentially the same song. And John Lee Hooker, himself, brought out the song, as well. But it all brought attention to us.

How did you wind up on Fontana Records?
Chris Blackwell had a production deal with Jack Baverstock of Philips, which was paying him money to record the acts. It was actually a fledgling Island production thing. Before that it was called Blackwell, Pierce & Robinson and he bought Pierce and Robinson out. Blackwell knew exactly what he was doing. He had the gaze of a cobra and the venom of a rattlesnake.

How would you describe the band's first album?
The first album, essentially, was what we played onstage, and the second album kind of went that way, as well. There was stuff on there that we were now getting into that was really good. You can see it was an usual band by the material we were tackling. We were kind of a blues cover band in some ways, with originals thrown in. We recorded the first album at Olympic Studios, some stuff at Philips in Stanhope Place and we recorded at Lansdowne and at DeLaine Lee. All over the place, wherever we could get in. And we went in and out. We were masters at it. We recorded first or second take, and because we were so tight as a band, we cost them next to nothing. We had no incredible record advance money from anybody.

Who engineered your sessions?
When we used Pye Studios our engineer was Brian Humphries who had ears like an elephant. Best ears in the business. He was brilliant. He caught us. He knew the band and he knew exactly what to do in that studio. A lot of times these so-called recording engineers were the ones not just putting it on tape but doing the mixing as well. Blackwell's talent was the ability to exploit the talent of others. When Chris Blackwell put himself down as our producer he was nowhere near the studio. I know. I was there. The man who was our producer was Jimmy Miller and only Jimmy Miller. I would like to see the record set straight. Blackwell brought him into the fold. When we did "Keep On Running," Blackwell phoned me up and said, "You guys have got to come up with original songs"–which is absolutely correct. It's the same advice given to Pete Townshend by his dad: "You're not going to make any money covering other people's songs. You'll just make money for them."

Who was Jackie Edwards, the man who wrote some of your material?
Jackie Edwards was a Jamaican songwriter–he wore a pork pie hat–who was signed to Chris Blackwell. And Chris played me a little demo of "Keep On Running" over the phone. It was a little blue-beat thing, just his voice and a piano. We needed to boot it upstairs somewhat with the fuzz riff from the Stones' "Satisfaction." He also wrote "Somebody Help Me" and he co-wrote "When I Come Home" with Steve.

How did the singles fare?
We weren't really a singles band. We put out "I Can't Stand It" in 1964 and that did very well. We backed up American soul singers like Jimmie Witherspoon, the Soul Sisters and Inez & Charlie Fox whenever they came to Britain, because they'd say, "This is the band that's gonna do it." While we were touring with the Rolling Stones we were backing Inez & Charlie Fox in the clubs.

Were you concerned about duplicating songs when you played live with other R&B combos?
On shows that we played together with Them or the Stones, the Pretty Things or the Animals, we were all digging into the same pot of that North American black blues explosion, so we had to be very careful not to play anyone else's material. And at the same time we were scraping away at writing things too. But "Keep On Running," "Somebody Help Me" and "When I Come Home" had been basically two guitars, bass and drums. And then we were introduced to Jimmy Miller by Chris Blackwell It was a phenomenal move, a classic move. We were instantly booted upstairs for the American market. And Jimmy was just enormous–so much energy, so much personality.

How did the "Gimme Some Lovin'" sessions go?
Blackwell booked the Marquee rehearsal studio for us, so we went in there and Muff came up with that little riff. I'd been listening to Ravel's "Bolero" and the keyboard passage on it is very similar to the figure on "Gimme Some Lovin.'" I didn't just listen to blues. I listened to Welsh folk music, to Irish folk music, medieval folk music, to jazz. We had this riff with nothing going on, so I added in a G-minor, an A-minor, a C-minor and an E-flat minor.
And Steve said, "No, play majors." It was songwriting in it infancy and we had the track in about 20 minutes. So we all trooped off to the pub. And Blackwell came looking for us: "What the hell's going on?" And we told him, "We've finished." So we all trooped off back into the studio, played the thing for him and he was blown away. No lyrics. Steve and a pal came up with the lyrics later on. And the rest is history.

Was it an immediate smash?
We recorded the English version and It got to number two and sold as many as
the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations." For the American market, Steve re-sang
the
vocal, with piano and cowbell overdubbed, and the future members of Traffic
were added on background vocals: Dave Mason, Jim Capaldi and Chris Wood.

You had a pretty amazing track record in the U.K. pop charts.
Right, "Keep On Running" was number one, "Somebody Help Me" was number one.
And "When I Come Home" was in the top ten and I'm A Man" got in the top ten–the last real Spencer Davis Group record. There was a split in the band then, when I recruited Eddie Hardin and Phil Sawyer who came from a band called Shotgun Express with a girl named Beryl Marsden from Liverpool. There was an attempt to put out a last single by the old band with "Back Into My Life Again," which was OK, but didn't do anything. Ours was "Time Seller," a total psychedelic departure from the rhythm & blues thing with a bit of Schoenberg in there. It was huge in Europe. And on the back was "Don't Want You No More," which I wrote with Eddie Hardin. It was covered by the Allman Brothers. So I managed to escape from under the Winwoods and establish my own identity.

Tell me about your other U.S. smash, "I'm A Man."
One of the problems we had with Steve was that his diction was bad. Nobody could figure out the words to "I'm A Man." Jimmy is the sole lyric writer on that song. All Steve does is play organ and sing. And that's my old Harmony Stratotone in there just before Steve starts singing–one of the song's most recognizable stamps. When we did "I'm A Man," I can still see Jim Capaldi playing some kind of percussion instrument.

Why was there no U.S. tour for your two huge '67 hits?
It's very simple. The Winwoods had gone by April of 1967. So, here we are with two of the biggest records in our lives and no band. That was very bad planning. Had Steve done a U.S. tour with the Spencer Davis Group it would have made his transition into Traffic much easier, I'm convinced.

What caused the group's breakup?
I've never really known why that happened. One day it was there and then it just disappeared. I've never understood why a band as successful as we were would suddenly just split at the height of its career. That was musical suicide. The last thing we did was a tour with the Hollies. I just couldn't believe that something I'd painstakingly put together was just dissolved. It was dreadfully wrong. But maybe that's what Steve wanted. At the time he was heavily into pot, although I don't think that was a major factor. It was a cultural thing, too.

Was there bitterness after the split?
There was acrimony at first because of the bad planning. It was devastating to both of us. Terrible timing. I never wanted acrimony. I thought we could have existed as both the Spencer Davis Group and as Traffic at the same time. But our new record, "Time Seller" and Traffic's "Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush" were both stuck way up in the 90s n the U.S. charts. Then we did eight songs for the soundtrack to a film called Here We Go 'Round The Mulberry Bush with the Eddie Hardin/Ray Fenwick band. Blackwell tried to keep the Spencer Davis Group going but I took a walk because I was so disgusted with the whole thing.

How do you feel now about the Spencer Davis Group?
The ingredients and the chemistry we had in that band, it was one of those magic moments. I don't think anything any of us did afterward ever had the impact of "Gimme Some Lovin'" or "I'm A Man." In terms of legendary rock/blues classics, we nailed it. Those songs are bigger than all of us. You can't re-record songs like that. You'd be missing the ambiance, the naiveté, the sheer original beauty and balls of the original. It just sucks you in. You've got those four people in this magic band.