An Interview with
John Stax


By Nick Phillips
(Originally published in UGLY THINGS #9, 1990)
It was the proverbial dark and stormy night as Dick from the Cracked Jaffers, Cameron and Nick from the Puritans, and Doug, our resident Pretties fanatic, headed out to meet John Stax. We drove along the dimly lit roads until we reached John's house, nestled amongst the foothills of the mountains that surround outer Melbourne. We were all pretty nervous; after all, we were about to meet a living legend! Naturally we were listening to the Pretty Things as we drove, but somehow this didn't seem to help. We were about to meet the man who played THOSE bass runs. We decided that we needed some Dutch Courage to soothe our nerves and so we bought a substantial quantity of take away beers at a sleazy roadside bar. We'd finished about half of these by the time we arrived at John's place. We hesitated for a second -- maybe John had mellowed over the years? Would it be rude to arrive with so much beer? We needn't have worried! Once a Pretty Thing -- always a Pretty Thing. As we walked down his muddy driveway he was waiting at the door to greet us, Jimmy Reed blasting from his record player and a frosty cold beer in hand. He told us to put our beers in the fridge, If there's room. When we opened the fridge every square inch was full of beer. I've been expecting you! he said. A raving conversation was soon underway. At one stage John pulled out an old acetate of an unreleased version of the Pretties doing Get Yourself Home. It took a few minutes before he put it on because he had to wipe the marmalade off!

Before long the conversation was in full swing and John began to talk about when he used to sit in on Phil and Dick's classes at Sidcup Art College ...
UT: How long did you sit in at the arts classes for?
JOHN: 0h, not long, just once a week or so. At break times we'd nick off to the locker rooms and there'd be a couple of guitars there and we'd just start playing. The first job we ever did, actually we never told anyone that we'd do it. We'd just talked to this guy; he was a local entrepreneur who ran a place called the Inferno. One day we saw our name in the paper that we were going to play the following week, and we'd never said we were going to play! And it was packed!
UT: Who came to see you? The students?
JOHN: Yeah, everybody came. It was right next to the railway track. We only knew about a dozen songs and we kept playing them over and over again.
UT: Was that 1963?
JOHN: Yeah, it would've been about then.
UT: Can you remember what covers you played then?
JOHN: The same things we always did! We didn't change our programme at all. That was a bit of a problem really -- the whole time we always played the same things.
UT: How did the Pretty Things compare with the other R&B bands that were around?
JOHN: There weren't many.
UT: The Downliners Sect?
JOHN: (CENSORED!)
UT: They weren't well-respected?
JOHN: Well, put it this way: we didn't like anybody! Actually, I think I listened to them once and thought that they were pretty good -- but I never told anybody!
UT: It must have been a pretty exciting scene though, at that time?
JOHN: I used to enjoy seeing Graham Bond when he had Jack Bruce, when it was a trio: Graham Bond, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker. Graham Bond used to play a big Hammond. He had a mellotron. A mellotron is like a monster organ, it's really huge, and inside it's got millions of tapes. It's like a computer, without being computerized, so you can dial up anything you want.
UT: What about Alexis Korner?
JOHN: Alexis Korner? Dick hated him. We used to have a residency at the 100 Club on Tuesday nights --1964, I would imagine. Alexis Korner came down one night and sat in with the band, and Dick was really pissed off, because he hated Alexis for some reason, I've never known why, I just knew that he didn't like him. Alexis was trying to keep turning his amp up -- you know, trying to cover up Dick on his solos, and Dick was sort of hopping about trying to turn up his amp! He did the same thing with Keith Richards. We had a residency at Manchester as well, at the Cavern. It wasn't the Liverpool Cavern; it was the Manchester Cavern. The Stones were playing in town one night a nd we were doing a late spot. They came down after their show -- Jagger and Keith -- and they sat in for a couple of numbers. I think that we did "Don't Lie To Me", and Richards was trying to bloody take over the lead on it! And Dick did not like that at all, and he actually played the most brilliant lead I'd ever heard him play. Really great! There was something between them. I don't know what it was.
UT: So Dick really called the shots in the early days with the Pretty Things?
JOHN: No!
UT: Wasn't he the leader?
JOHN: He thought he was. Usually you'll find the rhythm section are the real bosses, even though they don't come out and say it.


UT: Yeah! (Nick and Cameron)
JOHN: Well, the bass players are usually pretty down to earth guys, more sensible than the others. The others are primadonnas. If ever there was a prima donna it was Phil. He was unbelievable.
UT: Hang on, we've got a lead singer over here! (Dikko)
JOHN: Well, Phil was a nice guy. When I was about 14 or 15, Wally (Wally Allen/Waller) was my best friend from primary school and I used to go round to his place, and that's where I met Phil, he used to live opposite. I was a little bit on the outer there, 'cause they used to be right into slot cars.
UT: Scalectrix!
JOHN: Yeah! All their bloody little cars and shit like that. But after a while we got more into guitars and stuff. I had a banjo that had belonged to my grandfather and I used to take it round there and we used to play it -- a bit of Lonnie Donegan and stuff like that. We did skiffle. Wally's brother-in-law, he used to have a Gretsch semi-acoustic guitar and he used to play a lot of old stuff, and we used to mess around with that. I didn't know Dick then until Phil started going to art school and I used to go there. That's where I met Dick, and that was sort of the start of the whole thing. Just the three of us used to play in Dick's back room.
UT: Just bass, guitar and vocals?
JOHN: Yeah. This was after the Stones had left. This was about a year later, after they'd all moved up to London sort of trying to make it.
UT: Why did you play bass?
JOHN: Dick had a bass guitar, a spare one, so I picked that up.
UT: What sort of bass was it?
JOHN: You wouldn't believe it. I'd never seen one like it. It was about twice the size of a normal bass guitar. It was an Emperor – French -- and it was acoustic and about this fat! (John gestures wildly, as if telling a fishing story!) Actually, I used that on "Rosalyn". It was an electric, but it was like an acoustic. It was big! I had to have special strings made for it because you couldn't buy strings for it. It was good. I took all the frets off that one. I remember we were playing down in Southend in the early days, must have been about the sixth job we did, and I thought, shit, that'll be cool. I'll take all the frets off and make it sound better. I was knackered -- I couldn't play it! You ought to try it. After that, I took it home and was pushing all the frets back in. After that, I had a lot of respect for double-bass players!
UT: After you played that first show, did you start getting a lot of shows?
JOHN: Well, after the Inferno it sort of went pretty good. We booked the Railway Station Hotel; it was a sort of a jazz club. It was a very small room in the outer suburbs, but it was a good spot. We played there a couple of times and then we got the Central School of Art, because during this time Dick had left Sidcup and he moved to the Central School in London and he got us a gig at their annual dance. That was good. That was great!
UT: They would've been a good crowd?
JOHN: Yeah, great crowd! And from there we did the Royal Academy of Art. That was a fantastic bloody place. I used to have a 1934 Singer Le Mans two-seater. It was a coupe with a long fluted bonnet and a sunroof. It was an Occasional Four, they used to call it -- you could get four in if they kept their legs up like that! And we had nine of us in there plus a set of drums on the roof! I turned up at the Royal Academy and just about squeezed through their gates. At that time we still only knew a dozen numbers, but we played all night, for hours and hours. They kept asking us to play all these songs we didn't know -- so we just kept playing the same ones that we knew over and over. And it was great! All the women were typical upper class snobs, you know, they were all wearing long dresses, and all the university students all the fraternity loved it. We thought we were on our way.
UT: What about Jimmy Duncan?
JOHN: It was at the Central (School of Art) that this drunken idiot turned up and he was Jimmy Duncan and he turned out to be one of our managers. He said, "Sign here and I'll do all this for you!" Well, we introduced him to our manager, who was another student, Bryan Morrison, and the two of them formed the Morrison-Duncan Agency.
UT: How long did that last for?
JOHN: Quite a while. It was going for a couple of years. They did the Fairies as well. They were just around the corner from Denmark Street where we recorded at Regent Sound. We did "Rosalyn" at Regent Sound. That's where the Stones used to record. It was only just a makeshift studio, but it had a fantastic sound. The Stones wouldn't do it anywhere else--they did all their early stuff there. It was just makeshift -- egg cartons on the wall and all. It was really good. Anyway, Bryan, one day these guys walked in with a demo and gave it to him. He kicked them out. He thought it was a joke. And it was Procol Harum with "Whiter Shade of Pale". They brought it in, "This is our demo--will you manage us?" and he pissed them off! It shows you how stupid Bryan was! Well, he's not stupid because he's a multi-millionaire now and he plays polo with Prince Charles. He manages ... What's that guy's name? The dickhead with the stubble? Yeah, he manages George Michael and he used to manage the Pretty Things! Anyway, Bryan's done really well. He plays polo with Prince Charles and Fergie's old man. I read an article on him in the Sunday Times last year. He's bought this big property. It's got 140 horses and 11 polo fields. But Jimmy embezzelled heaps of money from us, but we never pressed charges. The worst thing we ever did was never go to America. Bryan never thought we should. Our biggest thing that we did over there was that old bloke, Ed Sullivan, (puts on Ed voice) "Here, ladies and gentlemen, are the Pretty Things." We did "House In the Country" live. We recorded it live at Twickenham Film Studios. (I don't think this clip ever aired - MS)
UT: That would be great to see!
JOHN: Yeah. Also, Pretty Things On Film. We did that one in about '65. It was a pretty groovy sort of guy that did it. He was pretty well up in sort of avant-garde movies. There was a lot of playing in it. I remember I had to go to a studio and overdub another bass line.
UT: Tell us about your tour of New Zealand in 1965.
JOHN: It was the Sandie Shaw tour. We went back to England about a week before I got married, so we were there in New Zealand for about ten days or two weeks. It was an unbelievable tour! We went down well in some of the places we did. In Auckland we didn't, but the rest of the country was all right. In Auckland we played the town hall for a couple of nights and that was all right. Then we played a nightclub and that crowd didn't take to us very kindly. On that tour, there was us and Sandie Shaw, who was a real bitch.
UT: But you were the main act, weren't you?
JOHN: No. She was!
UT: No wonder they rioted!
JOHN: And there was Eden Kane -- he was a friend of ours too -- and some local New Zealand bands. The thing was, it was a very low budget tour and they'd move us around on coaches, and put us in these sleazy hotels where we used to get bitten by bed bugs. I had an iron that I used to iron my stuff with, and one place was so bloody cold -- I think it was Christchurch -- that I left the iron on all night, trying to warm the room up! Viv was on a bit of a downer, and he and Eden Kane were drinking a bottle of Old Granddad each every day – minimum -- usually a bottle and a half. This was on the coach from one place to another. He was just like that, you know? I mean, prior to us going to New Zealand (back in England), we'd roll a 12-paper joint and that'd last the whole length of the motorway. When Viv was asleep he used to foam at the edges of his mouth -- it was horrible -- and when he was right out of it we used to get some of the papers and we used to lick them and stick them on his eyelids and then wake him up and held start fluttering! Other times, we'd say, "Viv, Viv, you're home!" and he'd open the door and we'd be doing a hundred miles per hour! He used to loon about the stage a lot. We started all that before the Who or anybody who did it. I remember a tour of Scotland that we did. It was so embarrassing, The curtain went up, and he's trying to play, and he's getting his stick caught under the cymbal. And then we're looking behind us, and all of a sudden he's just fallen straight back and the curtain's gone down and we've picked up and run! The Scottish crowd went crazy! We just had to run for it and lock ourselves in our hotel. Towards the end of the New Zealand tour, Viv was getting that bad. Once we stopped halfway in the middle of nowhere on this coach. The reason we stopped was because Sandie Shaw wanted a piss. So we stopped outside this farmhouse. This bloke who was the tour manager, he took her in there, and when she came back, Viv and Eden Kane got out and they pissed all over her feet. That really pissed her off!
UT: I can't imagine why!?
JOHN: Anyway, Viv was getting worse and worse in New Zealand and it was somewhere down in the South Island. And under the stage was our dressing room. It was really bad, they had posters on the wall for Douglas Fairbanks -- but not Junior -- Douglas Fairbanks the original! We'd been giving Viv a bit of a hard time because of his drinking. He was really bad news. We'd locked the dressing room and he tried to break into it with an axe. You could see the axe, just like you see in the movies! Anyway, he got over that, and that night he tried to set fire to the bloody stage. He was just rushing across stage with these firebrands, like lighted torches made of newspapers! The fire brigade were called out and they kept squirting him with all this stuff, chasing him across the stage!
UT: Were you still playing?
JOHN: No, we were quite serious and concerned, but we could see the funny side of it after. One other place in New Zealand, we arrived in the afternoon at this motel and Viv stunk to high heaven. Obviously he hadn't changed his clothes for days and days and days, plus held had a sort of sexual reverie with these two women. Oh, he was really rank! They'd sort of golden rained all over him a couple of days previously. Plus he had a lobster that held bought the week before and he'd set up a little prayer mat in the lobby of this motel and he had all these groupies and stuff that were hanging around and he had them sort of praying all around him. And it smelled! He had this lobster and he wouldn't give it away -- he wouldn't let go of it. Meanwhile, upstairs next door to me was Eden Kane. This was in the afternoon and on the coach they'd both drunken a bottle of Old Grandad each. Eden Kane was naked in his room and he screamed. I ran in, and he was trying to get out the door and I was trying to stop him. He said that Sandie Shaw had stolen all his money! So he's broken free and he's run off down to reception naked. I'm haring after him, trying to subdue him. And the whole scene when he gets down there and there's all the things, the motel manager, and there's Viv in the middle!
UT: Tell us about some of the other tours.
JOHN: We had a nice tour of France with Spencer Davis and Bill Haley. That was a funny tour. It was about '66. We did a lot of those gigs in France: the Locomotion, the Alhambra. In fact one of the best memories of that era was hearing Spencer Davis when they played. We did a dress rehearsal in the afternoon. We did our bit and went down into the auditorium, and Spencer Davis came on. He had the Hammond then, I mean Stevie Winwood's only 17 years-old, and all of a sudden they did "Gimme Some Lovin'"-- the first time we'd ever heard it. We all had Coke bottles and were blowing in the bottles along with it. We rushed up afterwards and said, "Could we record that song?" And they said, "No. We've just recorded it." Later we did France again: the Sorbonne University with Jimi Hendrix. That was great! There were about 6,000 people jammed in. He was bigger than us, he was huge. 1967, I guess. Actually, Mitch Mitchell played with us after Viv left. He came and sat in with us until we got a new drummer. We played a couple of dozen shows with him. He was really straight. He had a three-piece suit when he joined Jimi Hendrix and the next time I saw him I couldn't believe it – "Mitch, you're wild!" Anyway, when we arrived at the Sorbonne they wouldn't let us in. They said, "No, no, the Pretty Things have already arrived -- all those long-haired louts." Some French bastards had already gone in and said they were the Pretty Things! We also played some good shows in Copenhagen. We had Billy Harrison playing with us. We did a tour of Denmark and Dick was ill. He was really bad, and at the last minute we had to get Billy Harrison from Them to play with us. We also did a Midlands tour. Oh, Viv and Dave Davies from the Kinks! We weren't touring together but in the same areas, and the two of them were getting out together and they were both crazy! In the end, Viv just couldn't play, he was that bad.
UT: Was it a deliberate philosophy to be as wild as you could onstage?
JOHN: After a while people expected it, so you had to try to do it. Originally it just sort of happened.
UT: Did you all go off onstage?
JOHN: Dick was always hopping around. He used to hop! But I used to a bit. Depending on the venue, you sort of make do with what you've got. If there's things you can climb up on, then you climb up on them. Pete, our road manager, used to get so annoyed, because it was his job to keep up all the parts, like tambourines -- we always had to have two or three tambourines – and maracas. There were no maracas left in London because we bought them all, and Phil would smash his maracas and throw them into the crowd. Then he'd look round to Pete and say, "Well?" and Pete said, "There's no more!"
UT: What were your versions of "Mama Keep Your Big Mouth Shut" like live?
JOHN: We just did that 'cos it was sort of a cute number.
UT: I'd hate to see what other songs you were playing if that was a "cute" one!
JOHN: Well, we were amazed at the way it went down. People picked up on it really good. We used to do "Roadrunner", "Big Boss Man," "Hey Mama", "Pretty Thing", "Eldorado Cadillac"…
UT: What's your favorite Pretty Things song?
JOHN: There are a few, actually. I like "Rosalyn"; it was the first one and I reckon it was pretty good. I think it was before its time. No, even better than that, I like "Midnight To Six Man". I thought it was the most professional. We spent 16 hours recording that song!
UT: Who played piano on that record?
JOHN: It was a lesbian. She played Hammond organ with Goldie & the Gingerbreads and she was brilliant. We played all night on that song. We didn't start until 9 or 10 o'clock and we worked all night and finally got it down. Dick did a beautiful solo. When "Midnight To Six Man" didn't take off I thought we put so much into that one. We did take after take of that -- we would've done 30 takes. We hadn't played it live before.
UT: What sort of bass did you use when you recorded?
JOHN: First off I used that Emperor bass on "Rosalyn". After that, I had a Star bass, one of those horrible violin-shaped basses, that was an English one. I didn't use that for long because it was really hopeless. The early stuff I would've used a Rickenbacker, then that got stolen. I got a second hand Fender Jazzmaster, it was a brilliant guitar. The Jazzmaster was the one I used most of the time.
UT: On some tracks you played harmonica, leaving Dick or Brian to handle the bass?
JOHN: Brian, but only live onstage.
UT: Did anyone else ever play bass on any recordings?
JOHN: Yeah, Brian did on "She's Fine, She's Mine", I think. I played harp and he played bass. I played harp on 90 percent of the songs; Phil played the rest, the ones we did in one take. "I Can Never Say", I think Phil might have played on that.
UT: Who did the backing vocals in the studio?
JOHN: Me and Brian and Ian Sterling and Leslie Duncan. She was a brilliant singer. She made her own album.
UT: Did you play on many songs on the Emotions LP?
JOHN: No, a couple. I was getting sort of eased out for some reason. I don't know why. I was really pissed off, and I remember ringing up the papers to let them know I wasn't sacked, I'd left. Yeah, that was pretty bad that.
UT: You left because you didn't like the way things were going?
JOHN: That was true, but the main reason was that I was the only one who was married -- or I thought I was the only one who was married -- and I just couldn't afford it. We weren't getting any work. We were working about once a month.
UT: What did you think when they found another bass player?
JOHN: I wasn't too happy. But it came with a rush. We were just starting to record Emotions and I remember arriving at the Bond Street Studio and they had someone there playing bass. Wally replaced me. He was the bass player in Bern Ellliott & the Fenmen, who had bright, shiny green suits and they used to play Beatles covers, etc. They were sort of a local band makes good -- but not real good! Actually, Brian must have left just before me. He got married early in the piece and we never knew. He never told us. That was a strange situation that. There were sort of these three mousy birds that used to hang around, and he married one of them.
UT: What was Brian like?
JOHN: It was a shame really, because you know how you always pick on someone? When we first moved to London, our first check that we got we all went out and bought leather waistcoats and suede jackets. Mine got thrown in Trafalgar Square fountain by this bird I lent it to, and it was ruined, and everybody else's disappeared, but Brian always used to wear his and it was always perfect. So we threw bananas at him one day! I mean, that's what it was like. In the early days we needed a rhythm guitarist because there was just the three of us, and so we advertised in the local paper and he answered. We went to see him and he had a nice big amp, which we could all play through. In those days we had a homemade amp and a homemade speaker with pink material across the front of it. It was horrible. We had a 15-inch speaker inside it, and we lashed out about two or three hundred quid and bought a Miantsi echo unit. It was only a tiny little thing and we were all going through that, and the PA was going through that. It sounded quite good, actually! We bought two amps from the Stones which were tiny little blue things, the speakers were shot but I think that's what Dick used on "Rosalyn". It had a great sound but it was very quiet, they amplified it to record it. Actually, Brian played slide guitar on "Rosalyn". Brian was weird. He had long hair but it was so fine, and he used to wash it every day and comb it. Just before we'd get to a show in the car, we'd just be coming off the motorway, and we'd all sort of look around and say, "Down with the windows!" and we'd pull the windows down and his hair would go WHOOOSH! "You bastards!" We'd get him every time! Actually, Pete dropped Brian off one night and we had an idea. We didn't know what was going on -- that was before we knew he was married -- and Pete followed him. They dropped him off on a corner somewhere in Clapham and they followed him home and found out where he lived, and they started knocking on his door. That was when Brian really cracked up. It was a shame. They went in after and they found his guitar smashed into a million pieces. He never turned up for a job after that. They found held had a nervous breakdown.
At this point in the interview, Wendy Stax, John's gorgeous wife, comes home to find her husband sitting amongst a pile of empty beer cans, excitedly conversing with a bunch of long-haired, drunken louts. Obviously she is used to this, as she sits right down, pours herself a drink and joins the conversation. She starts by telling us how she met John in London.
Wendy: I used to work underneath their managers' office and I used to see this car with sort of lipstick all over it and these guys getting out. It was a different life to what I knew. We used to sort of meet each other in the lift!
UT: What did you think when you went and saw John playing for the first time?
Wendy: Well, to tell you the truth, I wasn't looking at the band. I was looking at all the girls! They were just hysterical. They used to throw themselves at them and leap on the stage!
John: Understandable!
UT: What did your parents think of John?
Wendy: My parents were really straight, and when I took John home to meet them, we took Twink too. (John's flat mate at the time.)
John: And Twink had hair down to here!
Wendy: It was Sunday afternoon, and my father's sitting there reading his newspaper. I said, "Dad, I'd like you to meet a couple of friends of mine." And he just sort of pulled his paper down and went, "Ohhmmm!" And that's how he stayed all afternoon.
UT: John, what was 13 Chester Street like?
JOHN: Jonesy (Brian Jones) used to crash there occasionally. He came in there one night, held driven up in his Rolls Royce with his girlfriend and held walked in, and he had a little ukelele. And he just walked in and smashed Viv over the head with it and smashed it – "Hi Viv!"
UT: Did you ever do any publicity stunts?
JOHN: We did a few, but one that sticks in my mind was when the pirate radio stations came out. We hired a boat on Hyde Park lake and took out all this old radio equipment and pretended that we were broadcasting from our own Radio Rosalyn! We got a bit of publicity out of it.
UT: And the most important question of all: Did Dick always have a goatee?
JOHN: Yeah. Actually, Bryan (Morrison) used to try to get him to dye it pink. In Germany, when we went there, everyone was disappointed because they thought he had a pink beard. It was just a rumour!