The title of this review was:
For a group that's been together for more than two years, it seems strange that they have only gigged live about 60 times. But that's Bread. They are not really proud of that record, and are going to do their best to get fully on the road.
Bread guitarist, singer and song writer Jim Griffin looked out across London from his hotel room window, commented that there was no fog - "I was led to believe it was always foggy" - and talked of the group's lack of experience on stage.
"Performing live is now very important to us, and we've found that it's a tremendously rewarding experience. You get immediate gratification if you play well. This is obviously not so with records. This British tour we are doing is one part of a year's heavy date work we have now decided to do, and we'll be playing everywhere. We realised that we lacked something in stage presentation, and that's something we're working on, and something we have got to perfect.
"Maybe after a year on the road, we'll settle back again into doing full studio work, and picking out the important gigs to do.
"You see we've got to do plenty of recording. I can't conceivably see the complete Bread thing getting over to the public in any less time than three years. We've got so much stuff, so many ideas. so many other types of material to get out. Up to now, only a fraction of the whole Bread concept has come to light.
"We can't get it all on 12 tracks of an album. We've talked about albums with 24 tracks, and maybe even more. Yep, it's going to take a long time. The concept is so great because we have all been influenced by so many types of music - but we are not copying. Like I love hard rock, and dig listening to it, but I won't write a hard rock song until I really feel like doing it. We don't write any of our material for the sake of being commercial. You've got to play what you dig. I don't think you can succeed otherwise.
"Right up to this moment we are very much into country music. But you are right when you mention the live act, because our stage image is our biggest hang-up at the moment."
Jimmy started playing guitar when he was 12, and until he was 16 he wrote small things - nothing special, just things. Later, he began singing his own material, and made a few demo discs in Memphis. People were interested in him, and when he graduated high school he was signed up as a solo artist and remained such until just over two years ago.
As a solo singer he had only a limited amount of success. "This was I feel because I didn't sing one of my own numbers. I made a few singles and an album. They sold locally, but never made it on a national scale. I had the feeling I wanted to bring myself out, so did this guy called David Gates - a great guy who I respected. This was the reason for the formation of Bread, we wanted a basis for our own ideas."
How could he describe Bread music? "Well we go for a good harmony, an honest lyric - we're not preaching anything, just singing about living emotions and feelings. I attach tremendous importance to the lyric, about 50 per cent of the number in fact. But it's the music that comes first. I agree that many American bands have maybe forgotten about lyrics, but this is because they have turned on to some other facet of their music.
"We've always tried to keep our sound uncomplicated, but if strings and brass might make it sound better, then we put them in. We've been talking about having pre-recorded tapes of the strings to use on stage. Cheating? No, I just think the audience might like it, it sort of adds to the thing. What we are really looking forward to is the emergence of audio/visual tapes. We want to be well in on that. That's going to be a wow." [NOTE: Jimmy SWEARS he didn't say "wow!" He told me that to the English reporter, his Tennessee accent probably sounded like "wow"...but what he really said was "That's going to be a while."]
Most recent update: Thursday, March 11, 19996
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