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	Interview with Brian Josh This interview was recorded at the Lion Inn, Blakey, as Mostly Autumn signed a major recording deal. An interesting time in the life of any band
	Pete: When did you start playing music? Bryan: When I was around eleven, I was playing the drums and the guitar at the same time. And I used to go camping in the mountains in the Lake District, listening to Floyd, Deep Purple and Genesis. I was really into the idea of the connection between nature and music. It inspired me to get on with the writing. So I started playing when I was around eleven, that's when I started learning the guitar, inspired by these guys - Ritchie Blackmore, David Gilmour and various other people. So that's where it all started really. My brother used to be playing all their CDs as I was growing up, when I was six. Pete: Older brother? Bryan:Yeah, older brother, Andy. He was playing all this great music, I was just out there listening to it. That's what sparked it off, really: I just felt it was something that was natural. Pete: That's quite early, eleven years old, to make those links. Bryan: Yeah. Pete: I'm thinking about music and nature. Bryan: Yeah, it was. It was even earlier than that, before I started playing, actually playing an instrument, that I was into that sort of concept. It was just something that fused, for me it fused, the landscape, listening to "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" when you're out camping in the fields and you've been climbing all day ....... it was all one thing. Very organic. Pete: Do you take your guitar with you climbing? Bryan: I do now, yeah, when I go, because there's times when you just get inspired and you want to knock something out, when something comes to you really. I always have a guitar with us. Pete: Did you start with drums, or did you start with guitar? Bryan: I started with drums, slightly before that. I was drumming at the same time as learning the guitar. I really enjoyed the drums, but the restrictions on creation were apparent with the drums. I enjoyed it, with the rhythms, and still to this day I organise a lot of the rhythms that we do, although you can't play the drums and the guitar at the same time. I think that's what led me to that instrument. Then I started messing about with keyboards, at a sort of reasonably basic level. Pete: Did you keep that up, keys? Bryan: Keys, yeah. Not so much recently, I haven't really had time, but yeah, I've always been interested. More sequences of notes from the keyboard really. Pete: Obviously guitar is your central instrument. Did you have tuition? Did you teach yourself? How did that work out? Bryan: I taught myself to play, really. For a few years. My uncle, my uncle Bri, showed me a few chords in the very first place, and then I just messed about with the instrument, and tried to get a feel for it. I taught myself for years. About ten or twelve years ago, I went to college, Leeds Music College, and did some courses, all the theory and everything behind the guitar, I did all that, and I used to teach guitar, full-time for a while. I like to try and forget all that, and just let it come naturally. Pete: Was that part-time courses at Leeds? Bryan: Yeah, kind of in between. It was a designed course, so it wasn't a full-time course, it was just something to do. Learning to read and write music, and all the technical things. Pete: Did that give you an introduction to recording technique? Bryan: No, because I'd been doing this a long time before that, I'd been recording since I was fourteen years old. We had some bands together then. Pete: Next question: what bands did you work in initially? What was the format? Bryan: Well, the first real band we had was a school band. Liam was in it, and Mark (Atkinson) actually, who was here the other night. We had a band called Expressions, which was a kind of melodic rock band, I guess. We were in that for a few years. It did rather well actually, we got on telly a few times, and a gig up the Marquee in London. It was a good thing at the time, but then I lost interest in that, in what we were actually doing. It all became a bit contrived. And I just got out of that, I got out of that in 1988, and that's when I got myself some keyboards and a studio and started getting to more what Mostly Autumn's about. I wrote "The Night Sky" shortly after that. Pete: Around '88? Bryan: It was around 1989 that I wrote that one. I was up in a place called Wasdale in the mountains of Winter, Long Winter, I was just staring out of the tent at the stars, it was an incredibly bright night, that's when that song just appeared. I had this arpeggio in my head, and I had a D50 keyboard at that point, and it just came together. I got a guy called Troy Donockley who was playing in a band called 'You Slosh' at that time to come and play some low whistle on it. That was the birth of it. Pete: With the Expressions, you played the Marquee, and you got on TV, was that Yorkshire telly? Bryan: Yeah, it was all ITV newsy programme. We were there a couple of times, got into national papers, it was okay, it was nothing spectacular but we were doing alright. Pete: What age were you then? Bryan: We started gigging and that when we were about, fifteen, sixteen. That sort of age. I left when I was about eighteen or nineteen and started doing other things. Around that sort of time, maybe twenty, twenty-one, I don't know, I can't remember. Pete: It suggests though, those sorts of gigs and that sort of exposure suggests that you realised the business aspects .... was someone doing that for you? Bryan: Yeah. In the very first instance we were doing it ourselves. Jean was helping to finance it, my mother, and we had a couple of guys who wanted to manage us. It developed, we had a fairly decent manager, a guy from Leeds who had a studio over there. He'd give us loads of recording time because he was excited about the project. It did strike you straight away what the business can be like - it's a very shady sort of environment to be in, and it's very uncertain. It got to a level at that point, and it maybe could ..... they carried on without me, Liam stayed in the band, and Mark did, they called the band Frontier and they did a record, but then it just folded after that. Pete: Did you record stuff that you could put out? Bryan: Well, we did put demo tapes out, they were more like demo tapes. Pete: Was that to get gigs? Bryan: Yeah, gigs and to sell at gigs, really. But it was pretty good. In the very early days actually, the ideas were a lot better. When we were first doing it, when we were experimenting, there was actually something really good going on. But then it turned into, I don't know, a circus or something. I wasn't into it. There was no spirit in it at all. Pete: Were you doing your own material, or was it mainly cover stuff? Bryan: No, it was all our own material. Pete: All of your own then? Bryan: Yeah. We did do the odd cover, but yeah, it was our own stuff. Pete: So what age were you when you started writing songs, and the music that goes with the songs? Bryan: I was writing ideas of songs when I was fourteen, maybe a little bit earlier, knocking ideas out. Then 'Expressions' came, and I was writing songs when I was fifteen - serious sort of songs I guess, there were some very nice songs in the early days. And it developed, but it wasn't what I was into. At the beginning there was a hint of it, but it wasn't where I was going, in the other direction. It was the nature thing was coming back always. I felt very close to nature, and I felt the music should be like that. It was like a university class I guess, we did our schooling with that for a few years. Pete: On a general sense, then as much as now, talk a little bit about your influences. You mentioned some bands there, but on a broad level...... Bryan: Initially, the influences were Pink Floyd, it was in my blood at that stage. And a lot of the early Genesis which was being played. There was Queen as well, they were a bit of an influence. I really enjoy the early Queen, and Supertramp, The Alan Parsons Project, Roy Harper, I was really getting into that. And Jethro Tull, that sort of angle. And obviously Deep Purple, Rainbow, they were always there, but it was Deep Purple at that time. Those were people that generally influenced me. As a guitarist, Ritchie Blackmore was always there, he was a bit of a hero, and I loved the passion and feeling he had. It was so from the heart. The guitar was connected to his spirit. And Dave Gilmour, they are the main guys. Steve Hackett, from Genesis, he's a wonderful guitarist. But those bands I mentioned, and there's probably a few more when I think of it, like Spirit, I used to really enjoy listening to Spirit. Randy California. So it was good stuff. But I was always out there in the country, camping in the mountains, walking or climbing or whatever, even at an early age. And I was just connecting with music that hung around them surroundings. So those are the main influences really. Pete: I know it's not just you in the band writing things, but you write a fair proportion of them, don't you. Bryan: Yeah. Up to date, yeah. The first album was a collection of ideas mainly of songs I'd written over the years previous. So I was actually creating a band that could perform that live, and record it. And it was really a download of emotion. I lost my father, and it was something I had to download and put onto a CD. I didn't expect it to sell at all, really. And the second album to an extent as well was a lot of stuff that I'd written myself and I was putting out, and I was just using the band. But then there was more writing influence from other members, Heather and Ian were contributing Pete: So that was coming in latter days ... Bryan: Yeah, in the second album really. They did some co-writing, and some stuff of their own as well. Pete: I was thinking about ... your lyrics are fairly heavy duty, they're not just rock and roll lyrics. Do you read much? Bryan: Yeah, I used to do, and whenever I get a chance I do now, yeah. Pete: Anything off the top of your head which you'd think, "Yeah, that was something which I've felt......" particularly? Bryan: "The Lord of the Rings" obviously was, that had a great impact. Again, that was something that was real close to nature. Really interesting writing, he's a phenomenal writer, the detail in there. Other books, I don't know really. Reading a lot like, "Supernature" and "Supernature 2", they had a different angle on it completely. All about life and what it's about. Books with that sort of angle about the mystery of the universe, I've always been interested in that. And astronomy as well, I've read a lot like that. As far as other books go, as soon as I try to think of them they all go out of my head. I've read a fair few books. Pete: Do you listen to other lyrics then, rather than read poetry, for instance? Bryan: Yeah. I definitely listen to lyrics, yeah. I think it's very important. It's there, if people want to listen to it. But yeah, I do. I'm the type of person who will listen to lyrics to try and get in the spirit of what the song was written about, by whatever artist. Poetry, whenever I've read it I've been interested, but I don't sit down and read poetry. Pete: Who are your favourite songwriters? Bryan: Again, it's probably got to be the people who have influenced me. Pete: As you've just listed? Bryan: Yeah, as I've just listed really. Pete: When you write, it's a bit of a cliché, it's an age-old question this, does the tune come first or do the words come first? Bryan: Generally, it comes together. Generally ..... I can actually put songs together in my head now, because music's inside me, and I can negotiate all the chords and the way the chords move, and it's strange really. It definitely happens naturally, it kind of floods out. Sometimes there are times when I'll have a concept for words, a concept for a feeling in a song, and the music will lend itself to that later on, and vice versa sometimes. I'll have a piece of music and a feeling about it, and then the words will come up. Yeah, it works both ways, and a lot of the time it all comes out together. I'd say mainly, your head's like a radio station, when it tunes into something it just flushes through. And with a strong emotion about something as well it just all comes together. You can never predict when it happens, but that's how the writing happens. It's a very natural process. Pete: Do you have to be in a particular place to write, or does writing come out of the air, and you've got to get it down wherever you are? How does that sort of thing work? Bryan: A bit of the latter. Generally, as I say, I've always been going up to the mountains or into nature, that's where I generally get inspired, because your mind seems to be clear of everything else and you can fine tune things, ideas will grow. But then again, ideas do pop into your head, and you have to get it down, yeah. That happens a little bit. But generally, somewhere that's stress-free, and where you can feel the freedom of no stress. Pete: How does that work? I know that if I think of a riff, if I don't get it down fast then the next day I'm thinking, "What was that?" How do you do it? Is your memory really good, or do you write music? Bryan: I can actually write music - well, I used to be able to, I haven't bothered for years, and you get rusty with it. I don't bother with any of that. My memory seems to be pretty good for chords and lyrics, fortunately. My memory's terrible generally, five minutes and it's gone completely, I don't know where I am. But as far as remembering riffs and chords ... I mean I have forgotten things, but generally I'm okay with that for some reason. I don't know why. Pete: You don't have to use a little recorder or anything? Bryan: No, but I generally try to have something like that around, because I'll want to develop an idea or put it down. But no, it's pretty straight in there. When an idea comes, I'll record it in my head, if you like. Pete: I bet that cuts out a lot of aggravation. Bryan: It does, yeah. Pete: We'll go back to ... I was just having a little chat with Liam the other night, just remembering him coming up here, and it must have been some years back, and he said, "Oh, we've got this little band together in York, and it's got together pretty well," which of course was Mostly Autumn in the early stages. Could you tell us about how you got the band together? How did all that happen, when did it start? Bryan: I had a number of songs which I'd written, "The Night Sky" obviously, in the late '80s, early '90s, whatever. Then I had a few more songs, and a few years later, when I had some more ideas, I just decided that it would be really nice to take it out live. And I had to sort of custom-build the band for how I felt I could express this in a live situation. And that's how it happened. I knew I needed some violin and stuff, and keyboards. So I got all the people that I knew could play and just put the word out, and got the band together, and that was around '95. It was really prompted by the loss of my father, that's when I really got it together. Pete: Did that focus things? Bryan: It did yeah, it made me write the music, and want to develop the songs, and get them down on recording. I just got the ... go into the studio and did that, but the studio actually came slightly after. We gigged the band for about a year I think, and replaced various members, and that's how it began. I did actually do some support sets, there was a cover band I was messing about in in the early '90s, which was a pure for-a-laugh. It was called One Stud Stammo ..... a lot of the Floyd, and Beatles and things. And I actually put some of the early ideas as a support to that band. That was about '92, actually, '93. Pete: Was that acoustic ...? Bryan: No, we had just a few of us, just the keyboards, myself, bass and drums. And female vocals. So we actually did do some Mostly Autumn gigs in about '93, I think it was. Just a few, I think it was three or four. Pete: Under that name? Bryan: Yeah. But it was as a support to the other band. And then I left it for a while and brought the other one together. Pete: Around when? Bryan: About '95. That's when the main band started. It went through a lot of changes rapidly. Pete: How did you work the band up? Did you spend a lot of time rehearsing and then do some gigs, or were the gigs part of that? Bryan: Yeah, we had to rehearse it. We booked some gigs, and then I gave myself a couple of months to try and get it rehearsed up, so we could actually get the material out there in a good form. That's how that came together, really. ----------------------------------- Pete: Just round your house, or rehearsal rooms? Bryan: Rehearsal rooms. Pete: It's quite a big band. Bryan: The way we rehearse actually ....I'll take a few members and rehearse them, and then go to a few other different members and rehearse that bit up, and then we have minimal full-on rehearsals. Pete: To save time that way. Bryan: Yeah, and space and stuff. There'd be grouping up, little rehearsals, and then coming together. Pete: The line-up you have now, was it roughly that line-up whether it was different people or not, from the outset? Did you have that range of sound in mind from the outset? Bryan: Definitely. Absolutely. I mean, there's no violin in there at the minute, but it's possible that I may get some violin at some point. It was definitely, definitely that sort of ... you know, the wind instruments as well, the whistles, flutes, recorders, that was something I always had in mind, and the keyboards obviously, acoustic guitars, and the drums and bass. And the vocals. It was always that sort of form. Even in the early days it was the same. Pete: Fairly traditional influences. Bryan: Yeah. Pete: Because you haven't mentioned any traditional musicians in the list of people. Bryan: Actually, no. The influences came from ..... again, after going climbing in the mountains we'd go down to the Wasdale Head Inn or other pubs in the Lakes, with my father, and the traditional music was going on all the time. They were away with a huge jug of ale and just playing all night, singing sea shanties and stuff, and it was a really fantastic atmosphere. And I felt that was, again, fused with nature .... there was an organic feel about it. Feeling that you'd heard that sort of music in a previous life or something. So I really enjoyed that sound. Pete: Starting at the age you started playing that, is there musical influences in your family itself, with your dad or with Jean? Bryan: Actually, no. Pete: Where did it come from? Bryan: I don't know where it came from. My brother was the main influence in playing music to me. Playing the CDs, the records. He was the one who was pushing this music on me, and I was just around when it was playing. But no, as far as instrumentation goes ... I had a cousin who was a very good guitarist, and my uncle was good too. I'd say it was slightly outside my family, if you like. My Uncle Bri, he used to be in a band, a lot of bands and stuff when he was younger, and I guess he was the main influence for learning to play the guitar. But I did have a cousin who also was well into it, we used to jam as well. When I was playing the drums he used to play the guitar, we used to jam about. That was when I was thirteen. But not actually in the direct family, no, there was no one else playing anything, really. I think some of my grans and great-grandmas used to play the piano and stuff. Pete: Going back, staying with when you started, what did you get? Did you get an acoustic guitar? Bryan: My first one was, yeah, a nylon-string acoustic guitar. Actually no, the first guitars I was messing about on were electric guitars, but then I got myself a nylon-string acoustic. Then I got myself a decent electric guitar, and got to practice on it. Pete: Let's do a bit of train-spottery stuff. What instruments do you use now? Bryan: I use Fender Stratocasters as the electric guitars. With the MG pickups and a frequency expander - they have a frequency expander in there that broadens the frequencies basically. And the acoustics - a Takamine six-string and a Takamine twelve-string guitar. That's what I use there, and at the minute I'm using a Takamine nylon-string as well. And obviously Marshall. A Marshall JCM 800 lead series amp, which I really love. They're the warmest amps that Marshall ever did. Pete: So is that it then? Have you got any ambitions for other guitars, or other amplifications? Bryan: Yeah, I'd love to try things out wherever possible. I like to look into the different sounds that you can get from different amplifiers. And guitars as well, obviously if I had the money I would have some Gretsches ....and a Gibson SG. There's a lot I'd just like to mess about with if I had the money. Pete: For the variation in sound? Bryan: Yeah, totally. For the warmth you get from the Gibsons, and the Gretsches as well. I'd really like to purchase a twelve-string electric guitar, I think that would be really nice. Great for the sound of the band. Yeah, just for the varying qualities that you get from different instrumentation. I feel the Stratocaster's a guitar that you can carve your personality onto, definitely. Pete: And also real versatile guitars. Bryan: Yeah, that's it, they are, very versatile. Pete: You've been through college and that, and been playing for some years. How much time do you spend just on your own, practising? Bryan: Very little, actually. I never pick my guitar up ... Pete: Talking more historically than now. Bryan: Ah right, okay. Originally I used to mess about all the time on my electric, I used to be always messing about, through my teens and that. Experimenting with different things, and pedals ... I used to pick it up a lot then, and then as time went on I stopped practising just because ... I don't know. I got to a level where I felt that I was quite happy with what I was doing, and then ... I pick the acoustic up more now really, the acoustic is generally what I write songs on. I don't know ..... because it's easier, and it's a fuller sound..... But there are some songs that are based around the electric guitar, like "Heroes", there's a very strong electric guitar in there, and actually "The Night Sky" was written on keyboards, which is interesting. Pete: Was it? Bryan: Yeah. But I've never actually, apart from the early days, been one to pick up a guitar and practise for hours, because I was never really ... when I was about eighteen, I used to fly up and down the fretboard and that, experiment with that, but I got bored with that in the end, it's not where it's at. It's the feeling....The difficult thing on a guitar is playing with the space, and .... pushing it. That's the hardest guitar playing I ever do. Pete: Push but don't rush. Bryan: Yeah, exactly. And that's what I've always been interested in. Pete: Have you ever had a teacher? Bryan: No. Never. Pete: Have you looked at books? It's astonishing, we had Bert Weedon's "Play in a Day", and now you can get virtually anything, can't you. Have you looked at those things? Bryan: No, never. I did look at them, when I was teaching guitar to kids and stuff, obviously I was working stuff out for them, showing them how to read tablature and all that. But never on a personal level, no, I've never been interested. I've always kind of sussed it out and messed about. Pete: You just listened and used your ears. Bryan: Yeah. --------------------
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