Howard Werth on Audience then and now

The band first got together in 1969 out of the ashes of the Lloyd-Alexander blues band which I had been playing in since 1965 it became Lloyd-Alexander Real Estate towards its last year when Keith Gemmell & then Trevor Williams joined. Audience was created out of
the desire to do something new and vibrant. We first gained contact with the Space Electronic I believe through our management of the time who had connections with people in the Milano fashion industry. Audiences unique sound started with the discovery of the electric nylon strung guitar and the use of effects on the sax flute & clarinet together with the concept of fusing together music & imagery from around the globe as well as from different ages, in order to create something fresh and it developed from there.
Charisma was a bit like a family with Tony Stratton Smith as the mother hen who nurtured his chicks with a mixture of trial and error, journalistic nous (he was a sports journalist on the Daily Express) and the down to earth guidance from Gail Colson. We immediately felt at home in Italy and with the people at the Space Electronic.At the time of the last tour we were with Rory Gallagher and had a great time, but we had lost a bit of career direction and by the timewe were back in London we decided to call it a day.
Probably the best time we had was our tour of the U.S and Canada with Rod Stewart and the Faces and our week headlining at the Whiskey a go go on Hollywood's Sunset strip as well as our times spent in Italy. The worst time was splitting up when we still had so much potential but had run out of steam. Rolling Stone record guide said that much of our strategy was later to be taken up by Roxy Music and David Bowie. My solo career really started soon after Audience split with the recording of 'king Brilliant' for Charisma and Elton John's Rocket Records in the U.S punctuated by the approach from the Doors to fill the space left by Jim Morrison. The Doors decided against reforming but I later worked with Ray Manzarek extensively on my songs with Ray producing and managing me in L.A where I had re-located, I also worked with members of Captain Beefhearts Magic Band around this time. At the end of 1981 Jake Riviera, Elvis Costello's manager and business partner brought me back to England to record the album that became 'six of one & half a dozen of the other'.

I then went on to start up two recording studios in east London where I started to record what became the album 'The Evolution Myth Explodes' during that period I briefly joined up with members of the Dr.Feelgoods band, withwho I gigged and recorded some tracks. The Audience comeback was something we had talked about from time to time over the years & when Keith suggested it again last year mentioned it to an agent aquaintance who said he would get us some gigs, that gave us the impetus to get together and rehearse.I think it more difficult for a band like us to happen today as the genres are more specifically delineated, although some acts such as Radiohead, Goldfrapp & Rufus Wainright do draw on the same spirit of experiment and cultural mixes, albeit with new technology at their disposal.

For nine years from 1995 I have been teaching music business and performance at Shoreditch college in Hoxton, London, I have recently given this up as Audience has started to take up more time. The differences between now and the 70's are mainly in the industry itself which has become more corporate and formularised and less nurturing of new music, within technology which has brought high quality sound production to the home studio as well as new forms of access to music (web labels,track downloading etc.) and also the demographics of music purchasers the young are no longer as large a group as the 'baby boomers' were in the 70's (they are still the largest generation and still want to buy music).


The 70's was definitely the era of eclecticism but I think that it became self indulgent with ever enlarged pretensions and lost a lot of its humour it was at this point that punk reared its ugly head and tore down a lot of what became self important nonsense.I think a fresh approach to some of those early ideas has re-emerged as an antidote to a lot of the formulaic music that the industry has encouraged largely through the influence of accountants and lawyers who increasingly now run the major record labels. But the new technologies and web labels have given new opportunities to creative independent musicians to create and sell their product. I think there are now more varieties of music magazines out in the market (in the U.K anyway) which cater to different specialist tastes, a lot of the pop titles are now experiencing declining sales and so I think are having a little less influence than they used to.



If you are a creative person stick to your vision, but in order to stay working in
music take care of business, if you leave the creative process to somebody else then still take care of business!

Howard Werth
London 8.9/05