D I S C O G R A P H Y
Walking The Reeperbahn (1996)
Released: December 1996
Label: Dirty Dog Discs
Martin Turner's memories:
"For this album I decided to re-assess some of the recordings I had stockpiled over the years – in particular songs that had been recorded with my band the Wolf Gang. I also had some newer compositions that I had written and recorded since the second split with Wishbone Ash. The Wolf Gang recordings had been filed away for several years, but I wanted to take another look at them to see if there was anything there that could be worked with.
Reviewing the music all those years later, it was clear there were some decent recordings in there that deserved to be available to the Wishbone Ash fan-base, who during my years not playing with the band had constantly requested some solo music. However, I didn’t want to just release the recordings as they stood, as there were areas in which I felt they could be improved upon. In particular I was very keen to get Robin Berlin involved – a very tasteful lead guitar player who I had worked with on the Roy Hollingworth album – as, with all due respect to Stewart MacKenzie’s interesting and atmospheric guitar work on the Wolf Gang tracks, the music also needed some orthodox rock guitar and I knew Robin could provide this missing link. I had also met a guy in Southfields called Steve Williams – a very respected drummer who had played with artists such as the Human League and Midge Ure. I got him to come down to my home studio to record new drums tracks on a couple of tunes which had originally been recorded to a drum machine. I also got my brother Glenn involved.
Using Steve, Glenn and Robin’s contributions, we were able to make the music sound a little more up to date and, in retrospect, I wish I had done that on more of the songs, some of which had been recorded as demos with me playing all the instruments. Having said that, despite these perhaps lacking a little in polish, they do have a certain feel, of which I am quite fond – technical quality is not always everything.
To a certain degree, the Walking The Reeperbahn album had the kiss of the eighties, mainly due to the use of the keyboard sounds of the day, which do tend to date it a little bit. The album dives off in a few different directions musically, but as a record of what I was doing during my spells away from Wishbone Ash, I believe it stands up well. Most of the music on there was not written with Wishbone Ash in mind and the instrumentation is different, but I still think it contains the same melodic and creative qualities that I brought to Wishbone Ash and I was glad to finally have this material available. Although some of the music has a different feel to what many perceive as the traditional Wishbone Ash sound, I stand by the material for its melodic content and its relevance to the point in my life at which the songs were written. My songs generally reflect whatever is happening in my life at a particular time, and this album is an important part of my life journey. Generally it was well accepted and I think a lot of people enjoyed hearing me making music in a different context to Wishbone Ash."
adapted from the book "No Easy Road - My Life and Times With Wishbone Ash"
