大象传媒

by Bob Stanley

Bert Weedon

That record sold a million. But I don't think Bert ever got a gold record...

Brian Matthew on Burt Weedon

As we sit down for our regular chat, I'm talking to Brian Matthew not as the esteemed 大象传媒 announcer and DJ, but as the producer of a number one album. He may wave the notion away, but in 1976 Brian was co-producer on Bert Weedon's 22 Golden Guitar Greats; astonishingly, it knocked Led Zeppelin from the top of the album chart that November.

Brian had been approached by the budget Warwick label back in 1975 - more on that in a future piece - but in 1976 he was asked to produce a collection of songs that included Bert's hits Guitar Boogie Shuffle and Ginchy as well as covers of hits by Duane Eddy (Rebel Rouser, Pepe), the Ventures (Walk Don't Run, Perfidia) and, of course, the Shadows. "I'd done a lot of work with Bert as I was forced to use him on Easybeat after John Barry had done a couple of seasons and then left to go to America. I got on alright with old Bert but I never thought he was that good. And yet he was enormously popular, no question. My agent at the time [in the early sixties] had booked me to do a series of Sunday concerts with him in Blackpool - he went down a storm, with a packed house. An enormous crowd roaring for an OK guitar player, not the world's greatest."

Fast forward to 1976 and Brian still obviously had his doubts about being in the studio with the hero of many a schoolboy guitarist. "My problem with Bert was that he'd got a dreadful mate, a drummer who was just a poor player, no two ways about it. But whenever you did a session, you'd find Bert would drag this guy in. I said to Warwick, 'I don't think you should let Bert choose the musicians, so can you please let me have a word with him'. So they did."

The drummer Brian brought in was Andy White, the same session drummer George Martin had turned to in 1962 when the Beatles first recorded Love Me Do, as the great man had thought Ringo wasn't quite up to snuff. The 1976 Bert Weedon sessions took place at Ray Davies and the Kinks' own Konk Studios in Hornsey. Other musicians on the session included saxophonist Rex Morris, another veteran who had been a member of Lord Rockingham’s XI as well as playing on the Beatles' All You Need Is Love, Revolution 1 and Honey Pie, most of Bert Weedon’s original hits and - more recently - the Wombles' albums.

The sleeve credits Brian as co-producer, but he insists "someone else was producing that session, and I was a sort of supervisor. I didn't produce the album - nor would I have liked to! - but I did get my way with the drummer, and got that improved."

"That record sold a million. But I don't think Bert ever got a gold record." Nor, presumably, did the unduly modest Brian Matthew.