"So be prepared to move on and continue on your chosen path, mostly that’s your only choice. Just be yourself at all times and tell the truth as you see it. Being in all the bands I was in was a lot of fun most of the time, but it takes patience and self-confidence - your inner spirit will often have to survive troubling times, but it’s well worth it, because playing music will always beat doing a job you don’t like."

Colin Allen: Tales of a Tub-Thumper

Colin Allen is an English blues drummer and songwriter. Allen spent the first ten years of his adult life working in aircraft engineering. He became interested in jazz at the age of 16 and two years later started playing drums. He studied drumming with local drummer Jack Horwood for two years and for a short period with Philly Joe Jones. Allen's first stage performance was in a skiffle contest at a cinema. He went on to play with jazz musicians in Bournemouth. During 1963 he became a member of Zoot Money's Big Roll Band, which included Andy Summers (later of The Police). For a few years ago he played occasionally at The Bull's Head, Barnes with the Big Roll Band when visiting London. Allen moved to London on January 1964 with Andy Summers. Allen’s memoir book "From Bournemouth to Beverly Hills: Tales of a Tub-Thumper" came out in 2018. Memoirs of a rock drummer who played with some of the most famous names of the last fifty years.

(Photo: Colin Eric Allen, a jazz/blues/rock drummer and songwriter)

Allen has worked with Bob Dylan, John Lee Hooker, Sonny Boy Williamson, Memphis Slim, Solomon Burke, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, Mick Taylor, Focus, Donovan, Stone The Crows, Georgie Fame, Brian Joseph Friel, and The British Blues Quintet with keyboardist Zoot Money, bassist Colin Hodgkinson, and vocalist Maggie Bell. In 1973 he joined the Dutch band Focus. He played drums on the album Hamburger Concerto (1974). Allen started writing lyrics when a member of Stone the Crows. He has also co-written songs which have been recorded by artists including Paul McCartney’s Wings (with music by Jimmy McCulloch), Fleetwood Mac, Mick Taylor and Mick Ronson. When co-writing he has mostly worked as a lyricist, as in Taylor's "Alabama", from his solo debut Mick Taylor (1979). To date about sixty songs he co-wrote have been recorded. He has lived in Stockholm, Sweden since 1985, where he has played with many Swedish artistes and for several years was a member of one of the best known bands called Totta's Blues Band. He retired from playing in 2012 after a professional career of almost fifty years.

Interview by Michael Limnios

How has the Blues/Jazz music influenced your views of the world and life’s journeys you’ve taken?

I can’t really say that the music I played influenced my views of the world that much, but the journeys I made - and there were many, meant I got to see a lot of different places in a lot of countries I would probably never have visited, if it wasn’t for my chosen profession, which I didn’t start until I was 25 years of age. I must say it was a lifestyle I embraced wholeheartedly - for ten years I’d been trapped in an engineering environment, which although it was okay, I’d long felt that there must be something else, far more exciting to be involved in. I’d already been playing semi-pro for a few years, mostly jazz trios, some Dixieland (called trad jazz in the UK). Rock ‘n’ Roll had been around for a few years but I didn’t really get that interested in it because it was just pop music, but then I heard jazzy rhythm & blues, a la Ray Charles. Finally I’d heard a style of rock music that ticked all the boxes for me, but that was in the final year before I left my hometown and moved to London with Zoot Money, Andy Summers and Nick Newall. We four were the founder members of Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band, and after we persuaded Paul Williams to learn bass and join us - that was it, we were off and running and never looked back.

"All I ever wanted was for people to enjoy the music I was helping to produce and to make a living. Making a career out of any artistic pursuit is mostly a slippery slope -sometimes it doesn’t work out, but for me it did - I was lucky." (Photo: Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band circa 1966, Colin started his working life in aircraft engineering, but his love of jazz and playing the drums led to him playing with other local jazz musicians and in 1963 he became a member of Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band)

How do you describe your music philosophy? What's the balance in music between technique and soul?

It’s not something I spent too much time thinking about. Play what you feel is the only honest and perhaps best approach, I suppose. “The groove is the most important thing”, is what most musicians will tell you. If it feels good and the guys you are playing with aren’t frowning, it’s probably okay.

My favourite music regardless of tempo, has always featured a nice feeling and interesting chord changes. The blues chord changes are pretty basic, but they are the changes that so much popular music is based on and over time, have been combined with other chord formations especially those of gospel music for example. Then we have what became known as ‘soul music’ I suppose.

As a drummer, one only needs to be more cerebral when you are confronted with odd time signatures. For most westerners the oddest time was the waltz, but it wasn’t that strange because we heard it almost every day, The time signatures used in Turkish/ Greek/ Central European and Indian music just to name a few examples, are however something else. Around the start of the seventies it became ‘hip’ to mess around with such things - of course jazz musicians had been doing it for a while. We had all heard Brubeck’s ‘Take Five’ and his ‘Time Out’ album. Plus there was the Don Ellis Orchestra that featured lots of weird time stuff. Lots of prog groups indulged in such things. I had to play some odd time, but was quite happy when eventually it mostly got left behind. I had a really good drum teacher right from the start, so I learnt to read drum notation and had pretty good technique, but mostly stayed away from extended drum solos. I never like the idea of being the centre of attention, for me the fun was playing with the band, and messing with the groove off the top of my head. The less people took notice of me the better. If a drummer wants to solo, fine go for it, I used to do solos that were of a much shorter length, like exchanging four-bar breaks in a jazz group situation, such as I did occasionally in the early days, but I could have lived without that as well. Technique is vital, but all you need is enough to express one’s self and depending on the style of music you’ve set your heart on, you’ll finesse your technique enough, to do just that.

What moment changed your music life the most? What´s been the highlights in your life and career so far?                             (Photo: Colin Allen with Stone the Crows)

Every time one left a band and waited for the next person to enquire what you were doing and was I available etc. are always big changes. The life of a pro freelance musician was exactly that really. Sometimes those inquiries led to long periods with the same band - other times brief encounters. I guess quitting the straight life and going to London to form the Big Roll Band was the most exciting life-changing thing I’d done up to that point. From then on being involved with John Mayall and finally going to the USA a couple of times in nine months was pretty mind-blowing. It was the main reason I joined him - he was going to America and I wanted some of that.

Stone the Crows was a great time in a great band, but the death of guitarist/leader Leslie Harvey changed everything. If he’d lived on, who knows how things might have been. Focus was a hell of a band to join as well - such great players all of them, especially guitarist Jan Akkerman. Went all over the world with them, Touring for six months opening for super group Yes, with pop music folk hero Donovan was also pretty enjoyable, although the music was a little lightweight, compared to what I’d done before, but nonetheless, of a high standard. I eventually went to live in Los Angeles for six years at the end of ’79, just about the most daring thing I ever did I suppose. They had the best drummers in the world and I was going there to compete with them, which if you think about it is pretty stupid, but the way I looked at it was, I had quite a bit of money in the bank because I’d written the lyrics to a couple of songs with guitarist Jimmy McCulloch, when we were in STC together. He later joined Paul McCartney’s band Wings and they recorded those songs. “Medicine Jar” and “Wino Junko”. Including the live recording of Jimmy singing “Medicine Jar” on ‘Wings Over America’, I had a song on three albums. This meant I could go and spend time in Los Angeles, safe in the knowledge that whatever happened work wise, I’d be financially secure for at least a couple of years and not have to worry if I didn’t work, but within a month of arriving, there I was in the studio working on Rod Stewart’s ‘Foolish Behaviour’ album, so things took off rather quickly. I also did a lot of touring with Mayall again, went to Australia - stopped off in Hawaii for a couple of concerts as well, on the way back to Los Angeles. My sojourn in California, eventually led to my joining Bob Dylan for a European tour in ’84, alongside my old mate Mick Taylor, bassist Greg Sutton and keyboard player Ian McLagan. About a year after the Dylan tour I decided it was time to settle down in Sweden with my then girlfriend and four year-old daughter, and have lived there ever since and played with all manner of Swedish musicians. I finally retired from playing at the age of 74. I’d paid my dues and I’d done my bit.

"My favourite music regardless of tempo, has always featured a nice feeling and interesting chord changes. The blues chord changes are pretty basic, but they are the changes that so much popular music is based on and over time, have been combined with other chord formations especially those of gospel music for example. Then we have what became known as ‘soul music’ I suppose." (Photo: Colin Allen, Bob Dylan, Gregg Sutton, Ian McLagan, Mick Taylor, c.1984 / As a songwriter, Colin’s works have been recorded by artists that include Paul McCartney’s Wings, Fleetwood Mac and Lulu)

What do you miss most nowadays from the music of the past? What are your hopes and fears for the future of?

It’s strange - after fifty years in the music biz, my interest is almost non-existent. I have no sound system and only listen to music for reference really and always on Facebook. People post videos of live stuff I was playing on and I’ll sometimes listen, but mostly to see how good or bad it was. Generally, I can say it was pretty okay. I also watch other bands and artistes that I enjoyed in the past. When one is young and certainly when it becomes your passion because you play an instrument, then it’s music all the time - one is hungry for knowledge. If you mean what do I miss in today’s music when compared to that from the past – well nothing really because thinking like that is pointless. All of us are of our age - our era, and so is the music we heard when growing up. Tastes in music, in fact all the arts, change all the time and probably mostly with each generation - I never liked Rap music no matter the style and there were many and I definitely couldn’t stand Punk music when it appeared - it had none of the harmonic or rhythmic subtleties I loved about R&B and soul music.

As in the past, today’s popular music is exactly that, but it draws mostly from things that have gone before. I suppose the music that hasn’t change that much is classical music – the great orchestras in the main, play compositions of the great composers, but as in most art forms, there has always been the avant-garde movement in music also - some people always have a different slant on things and so from time to time things may get a little controversial - it’s the way we are, and I doubt that will ever change.

I have no hopes and fears for the future - that is in the hands of others and anyway at my age, I’ll never know what transpires. I think as in the past, humankind will continue to create things of beauty in the arts. That kind of thing will never be lost unless of course, us humans cease to exist.

What is the impact of music on the socio-cultural implications? How do you want the music to affect people?          

Socio/cultural implications, I’ll leave that to the experts.

All I ever wanted was for people to enjoy the music I was helping to produce and to make a living. Making a career out of any artistic pursuit is mostly a slippery slope -sometimes it doesn’t work out, but for me it did - I was lucky.

"As a drummer, one only needs to be more cerebral when you are confronted with odd time signatures. For most westerners the oddest time was the waltz, but it wasn’t that strange because we heard it almost every day, The time signatures used in Turkish/ Greek/ Central European and Indian music just to name a few examples, are however something else." (Photos: Focus, 1974 & John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, 1982 / Colin Allen played with a number of artists, including Zoot Money, Bob Dylan, John Lee Hooker, Solomon Burke, Sonny Boy Williamson, Georgie Fame, Donovan and Stone The Crows to name just a few)

What were the reasons that made the UK in 60s to be the center of Blues/Rock researches and experiments?

I suppose circumstances relating to the post war atmosphere were a major factor, one being that suddenly we in the UK were inundated with two forms of American culture - movies and music. We’d always had our own, but it seemed all the best stuff was from the USA and so it became the centre of young peoples attention. Everybody wanted some Levi jeans - few got them for quite some time.

Eventually with the appearance of rock and roll, the youth of the day could understand where things were heading and how exciting it all was. Then of course we in the UK had the ‘skiffle craze’ created in part by the interest in Dixieland music or as we called it ‘Trad-Jazz’. Skiffle was a genre of music with influences from American folk music, blues, country, bluegrass and jazz, generally performed with a mixture of manufactured and homemade or improvised instruments. So this attracted a lot of young lads to the idea of forming bands, once they got their hands on a suitable instrument - and playing the songs associated with the skiffle style. Although a raving modern jazz fan, I was in a skiffle group - we only play once, in a skiffle contest at a local cinema. The fact the British blues thing was so popular is a little mysterious, especially to me - I knew nothing about old blues stuff, Somehow I had hopped right over it and landed on modern jazz. Many who gravitated towards blues were art students, but I was working in an aircraft factory at age fifteen - I had to get out and earn a living, but some of my fellow apprentices in aircraft engineering were jazz fans and so I caught the bug and never looked back. I eventually discovered the music of Ray Charles and that was it for me.

Most of the guys that initially embraced the old blues stuff were guitar and keyboard players I guess, but the Brit blues bands of the sixties were made up of many musicians who had started playing, because of an interest in jazz, Why they succeeded in America - the land of blues musicians I’ll never know, but it’s sometimes said the average white folk in the US didn’t want their kids listening to black music, but if white English kids were playing it, than that was okay.

As for other styles like ‘prog’ - well that was often the territory of classically-trained musicians, who by virtue of their prodigious technical ability had to make everything as complicated as possible, if only because they could - and so ‘prog’ was born. I suppose it was mostly a European thing.

"Every time one left a band and waited for the next person to enquire what you were doing and was I available etc. are always big changes. The life of a pro freelance musician was exactly that really."

(Photo: Colin Allen with his car, c. 1960s)

What are some of the most important lessons you have learned from your experience in music paths?

Again, not something I thought about while I was active and now I’m retired, I suppose even less. I can say that if you are constantly in situations that involve other people then things can get difficult now and then - egos, insecurities and such can cause the occasional explosion and it can be very disappointing, if break-ups occur.

So be prepared to move on and continue on your chosen path, mostly that’s your only choice. Just be yourself at all times and tell the truth as you see it. Being in all the bands I was in was a lot of fun most of the time, but it takes patience and self-confidence - your inner spirit will often have to survive troubling times, but it’s well worth it, because playing music will always beat doing a job you don’t like.