Pearcy Jones

Percy Jones

By: Brian Tarquin

For those of you who are in the know, the name Percy Jones is synonymous with virtuoso bass playing. He is most associated with the groundbreaking UK fusion band Brand X that featured Phil Collins on drums. When the band became defunct in the early 80’s, Percy became a session player in New York City. He also performed live in hallmark clubs as: CBGB, OMFUG’s, Max’s Kansas City, and The Bowery. As a session player, he performed with Nova, Tiger, Susanne Vega’s Days of Open Hand, and appeared with fellow musician Robert Fripp.

English composer Brian Eno often describes himself as “a fan of Percy’s”, while guitarist Steve Hackett, has compared Percy’s style to that of the great Jaco Pastorius. Although Percy emerged with his own unique fretless sound. Jones also appeared on several recordings of Eno’s as Before and After Science, and Another Green World. He recorded on Steve Hackett’s debut solo album Voyage of the Acolyte and played on Roy Harper’s Bullinamingvase, all within a short time of Brand X exploding on the British scene. He also recorded sessions for avant-garde players like Jon Hassel, and David Sylvian.
Percy reformed Brand X with John Goodsall in the 1990s and again in 2016 for the band’s final reunion tours. Now Percy's comes clean with us and is quite candid about Brand X and his career.

BTQ: I had the pleasure of sitting down with jazz fusion bass player Percy Jones from the band Brand X, who were fusion groundbreakers in the 70s. They were one of the few bands playing jazz fusion from Britain with world recognition. Percy begins with how he started playing bass.
Percy: I grew up in central Wales, a very rural area. You know, when I got in my teens and started going to local dances it was the early days of rock'n'roll. And the dance bands were getting replaced by what they called “Beat Groups”. I started really listening to some of these bands, and I was especially fascinated by the bass for some reason. Those really low notes that would vibrate. I just got intrigued by the bass. At that point I never even picked up a bass. There were a couple of local bands that formed and there was a local guy selling a Vox Clubman bass for £10. I told my mother, and she gave me £10 and I bought the bass. It was a terrible bass with plastic machine heads. That's what I learned to play on initially.

I was playing in a little band, so I just sort of learned by ear. Listening to records. And trying to copy other people's basslines. I was listening to a lot of blues and r&b. As time went on, I remember hearing Alexis Korner doing a gig in Hereford, England which is just across the border in England. The rhythm section featured Danny Thompson and Terry Cox. They were doing a kind of a hybrid thing. Alexis was very much a blues guy, but the rhythm section was quite syncopated, which caught my attention.

In ‘66 I moved up to Liverpool because I got a place in the university to study electronic engineering. And I joined a band called The Liverpool Scene. Those guys introduced me to Charles Mingus, so I really got into what Charles Mingus was doing and had done. I was gradually moving to having a taste in jazz. So that's pretty much how it all started. But in saying all of that I was self-taught, I never studied music formally. There was a music class in grammar school where the music teacher sarcastically told me I should take Russian instead. So, I just kind of picked it up as I went along.

BTQ: The more that I speak to musicians like myself, it is so evident that one either has the talent inside or they don’t. No amount of studying is going to help, so subsequently you don't need to be trained formally. Percy goes on to explain how Brand X was formed and their major influences on their music.
Percy: I remember when Mahavishnu did their first record The Inner Mounting Flame. I think all the musos in England were knocked out by that, because it was so fresh and virtuosic. Really good stuff! Everybody in my circle was knocked out by what they were doing. I mean, apart from Miles Davis, what they were doing was also in line with what we wanted to do. Before that the music was generally much more conservative. That stuff is very adventurous in terms of writing, arrangements and chops. It seems to be a tendency with record companies when they're looking for new bands, they would look for a comparison with a band that was already successful. I don't think that was so much the case in the 60s but going into the 70s and 80s I noticed it became less about being original and more about sounding like somebody who's already successful.

I was in the Liverpool from ‘66 to I think it was ‘71 playing with this band The Liverpool Scene. I moved to London and found a place in South London. There were some musicians in the area like Keith Tippett, his wife Julie Driscoll and Robbie Lumley. I got to know these people and some others. That's where Brand X started. Because Rob Lumley had been jamming with some people every week at a rehearsal room in Clapham, London. And he invited me up one Wednesday. So, I sat in with John Goodsall, that's where I first met him. That evolved into Brand X gradually. Some people left, some new people came in and we ended up with Brand X. I remember somebody hooking up an audition with Island Records. Two A&R guys from Island came over to listen to us and we were essentially almost all improvising. None of us thought we would get signed. But they heard something in the music that appealed to them. So yeah, we did a record for Island, which sounded like the Average White Band or more accurately below average white band. Island was happy with it, but we weren't. We asked if we could do another one at that time.

We were listening to what Miles Davis was doing with electric instruments, electric bass, Fender Rhoads, and so on. We wanted to move in that direction; we asked Chris Blackwell if we could do another record and he okayed it. We had to change the lineup to sort of get that sound. So Goodsall and Lumley stayed, but the other guys, including the original drummer moved on. And then we started looking for a drummer who could play that stuff. Bill Bruford came down and played. He turned us down. Then one of the of the A&R guys, Danny Wilding suggested the guy from Genesis. Well, I was not that familiar with him at the time. Danny told us, “The guy's a really good drummer. Check him out!” So, Phil Collins came down. Played and we liked him. And he liked us. He signed up with us as a drummer. And then we did another record, which was Unorthodox Behavior which never came out on Island. It’s a complicated story, but it ended up coming out on Charisma Records. Which was Genesis’ label.
A couple of years later we were doing a gig. I think it was at a venue in London. And we were in the band room tuning up, and this older guy walked in wearing a blazer with a badge. And he said, “Percy Jones?” I said, “Yeah.” And he handed me these papers. It was a subpoena from Island Records to go to court. So, someone from the management was there and grabbed it and said don't worry about it. Go out and play. I never heard any more about it so I think it must have been settled out of court somewhere. But you don't expect to get subpoenaed when you're tuning up to do a gig.

We started getting more opportunities to tour, especially in the US. The problem we had then was Phil was unavailable a lot of the time because he was playing with Genesis. In order to do the tours, we were getting offered, we had to find another drummer. I asked Alphonso Johnson in LA, who had been playing with Weather Report, if he knew any good drummers in the States that might work with us. So, he recommended Kenwood Dennard in New York. I came to New York and met Kenwood and played with him and decided, he was the guy. Then Morris Pert came in playing percussion. And then after Kenwood, it was Mike Clark who played with Herbie Hancock and the Headhunters.

At that point, we were under pressure from management and the record company to play music that was more accessible. That to me was the writing on the wall. So, the last two records we did were a bit problematic because I was adamant that if we're trying to pander to a bigger audience, we probably would lose the audience we already had. I Stuck to my guns. The only solution was to have two lineups on those last two records. For my stuff it was me, Mike Clark, Peter Robinson. The other line up doing the more commercial stuff was Phil, Rob Lumby and John Giblin to play bass. And John somehow managed to play on everything in both bands. The consummate diplomat, you know. But if you've heard those last two records, you can hear the difference in direction.

The first record Unorthodox Behavior was pretty much written collectively. I mean we were all writing bits and pieces and somehow managed to couple things together. So, some of the tunes were mixtures of ideas that I had, ideas John had, ideas Rob had, and sort of cobbled together to make tunes. So, the writing credit on that record are split four ways. From then on, we started mostly writing complete tunes ourselves. I could write a complete tune. Morris wrote some stuff. But John was a prolific writer, and he probably came up with most of the songs.

BTQ: It's always interesting to see the dynamics in a band - who becomes the main writer and who contributes. Percy goes on to tell me how their luck changed for the worse because when he moved to New York, the label and the management company dropped them.
Percy: We got dropped by the management and then by the record company. We were presented with a huge debt, from management, which is still recouping today. A rough time because I had just moved to New York and I thought we had another tour coming up. I didn't know many people in New York at the time. I got a job moving furniture. I don't know about 9 months. I started meeting people. I was in a supermarket in Brooklyn buying some vegetables and a guy came up to me and said, “Are you Percy?” I said, “Yeah.” And he said, “We got this band would you like to come down and jam?” So, I just went down and jammed. And it was a band called “Noise R Us.” I liked the stuff. It was sort of like Punk Jazz, but it had a horn section and some good writing and good arrangements. I played with them for several months, doing gigs like CBGB's and some of the other clubs that were around at the time.
Toys R Us threatened to sue them, so they had to change their name. Consequently “Noise R Us” never recorded anything and things dried up. So, trying to be productive I started writing some songs. I remember going to Sam Ash and buying a really low-end sequencer. You know, MIDI was fairly new at that time. I'm walking out of Sam Ash and I bumped into Elliott Sharp who I already knew. He was one of the first guys I met when I moved to New York. He said I'm curating some gigs at The Kitchen, which was a venue at the time. He said, “do you fancy playing there?” and I said, “Yeah.” And he saw the box under my arm, the Roland cheap sequencer. He said, “you can use all that stuff if you want.” I went home and then I started writing and programming some new stuff. I was using a 4 track, a drum machine, a Casio 101 synth, the Roland sequencer and some homemade stuff to sync the sequencer to the four track. I had to build an interface. I did the gig at The Kitchen thinking it was a one off, but that went OK. Then I started getting other gigs doing the solo stuff. I did a lot of gigs at The Knitting Factory, the old one when it was on Houston Street. Played CBGB's and Wetlands too. I did some gigs with Michael Manring and Scott McGill. That went on for a while. But I was starting to miss playing with people, so I decided to put a band together. I had met Frank Katz at the Drummer’s Collective and had jammed with him. And was really impressed with his drumming. He was an obvious choice for a drummer and then Mark Wagnon came in playing MIDI vibraphone. So that was Tunnels. I did that for a few years. We did several records, which brings it up to 2005 when I retired Tunnels.

In 2016 I got a call from Kenwood Dennard sort of out of the blue. He said, I know this guy who is willing to finance Brand X to get the band back together. But on condition that he plays in the band. I asked him, “Well, what does he play?” And Ken said, percussion and he studied with me. I met this guy who was Scott Weinberger and he put up some money to get the band together. We started rehearsing, actually down the street from where I lived. Kenwood's mother had a music school, so we rehearsed in there. Subsequent to that I called Goodsall, and explained what was happening and he agreed to jump in. It was me, Goodsall, Kenwood, and Chris Clark on keyboards. We rehearsed and cobbled it together and did a tour which seemed to be pretty well received. So, we kept doing American tours. Things started to turn dark because there were two managers. There was a guy that I mentioned that played percussion, and another guy he brought in who was acting more like a manager. Everything was very vague, like their commission. The percentage was going up and down monthly. And then we couldn't get any accounting out of them. You do a tour trying to find out what the venue’s paid how much merch they sold, because we were selling CD's, T-shirts, key rings.

The situation didn't improve so by 2019, I confronted them and said I'll give you 3 months to come up with some figures. And if you don't, I'm not going to work with you guys again. You know, meaning the management. I didn't say I was going to leave the band. I sent them spreadsheets to fill out for hotels, gas, tolls but after three months they never sent anything back. Then I told them, I'm not working with you guys anymore. I'm still an owner of the band along with Goodsell and Lumley. You know, Lumley hadn't played in the band since the late 70s, but he was legally still an owner. I started looking for another guy to promote gigs for us because I wanted to work with someone who was honest. But John and Chris Clark, decided to stay with those two guys, so they pretty much took over the band. They were calling bass players, like Nick Beggs, Jeff Berlin, John Giblin and Julie Slick. Jeff Berlin was going to do it, but I think he got warned by somebody and he'd be bailed out. They eventually found someone to play bass, but then John caught COVID ended up in the ICU in Minnesota and consequently died. So, Rob Lumley and I retired the band.

It was just a very sad ending, you know. Not just because of John passing away, but the whole business side of it was so ugly. The one guy still has a Facebook page called official Brand X. And I mean hundreds of people go there, and they don't seem to know who they're talking to. I looked into the finances of the whole thing and found out that the company Burning Shed in Europe had paid them $30,600 but they never revealed to me. We got burned! That was the final chapter with Brand X. And not a very happy one.

BTQ: I hate when I hear stories like this when a band really gets bamboozled by these outside managers. Percy tells me about his new project, called PAKT featuring guitarists Alex Skolnick and Tim Motzer, plus drummer Kenny Grohowski.
Percy: It started out as an idea by Leonardo Pavkovic at Moonjune Records. He suggested putting the four of us together. Kenny Grohowsk was actually the last drummer in Brand X. I think it was like the last 18 months before everything blew up in the band. So, I had already worked with Kenny. Leonardo suggested putting me and Kenny together with Tim Motzer and Alex Skolnick, who I've never met. So, we did a gig in Brooklyn at Shapeshifter Lab, in the middle of the COVID thing. We were all masked up. That went OK, you know, for a first gig. And then we started doing some gigs around the Northeast, they all went OK. So, it gradually picked up momentum. We've done a couple of records on Moonjune, so that's an ongoing project well.

I just got back from the West Coast; we did two weeks starting in Seattle. We worked down through Oregon, California and we ended up in Phoenix, AZ. Well, initially it was looking pretty grim because a lot of promoters were scared off by the word “Improvisation”. We went out there and played and it was very well received. In LA the Baked Potato, some of the shows were sold out. So that made-up for the gigs with lower attendance. The one bad gig was in some place called Lompoc, CA right next to Vandenberg Space Force Base. That was the worst place of all of them. There was only a drum kit on the stage with no amps. The owner sent me down the street with one of his staff to rent a bass rig. The music shop had a group of bass amps that were really beaten up. So, I picked out an SWR because I'm somewhat familiar with those. We carted it down the street back to the club and then we found out there's no power cord or speaker cable. Then we got it powered up, but it was completely dead. There's no power coming out of it. I started rocking the mute switch and it gradually came to life. The two, guitar players had to use monitors during the sound check. During all of this a Space X rocket took off from Vandenberg. It was a new experience for me. Me and Alex ran outside to take a look, but it was in the stratosphere, the rocket had gone. That was the best part of the gig. I think 15 people showed up. After the gig, the promoter said, “You only brought in 15 people. I had to pay $50.00 to rent a bass amp. You're supposed to play for three hours. You only played for 30 minutes.” We played for well over an hour, which is what we usually do. We're not going back there again! That was the low point of the tour. We should never have played that venue. Bad judgment.

BTQ: OH Man, I've been there and smoked that! I always love when the managers and these so-called promoters blame the artist for low turn outs. Percy goes on to tell me about his gear and new projects.
Percy: I'm using a Wal 5-string fretless bass that I've had since 1984. The amp I have here is a AE. I like them a lot, but they just went out of business recently. It's a combo 12-inch speaker with a transmission line cabinet also another speaker which is a 12-inch in a reflex ported cabinet. I think it is 800 watts and it's a Class D amplifier. We did some recording while on the road and went into a studio. I can't remember where it was, Oregon or California and we put some stuff down, just again improvising. So, we'll see if any of the stuff is usable. There might be enough stuff there for the record, I don't know. We'll have to wait and see. I've also got a band here called MJ12, which I enjoy a lot, that plays compositions. Although there's a lot of improv within the tunes. And that's myself on bass, Stephen Moses on drums, David Phelps on guitar and a Chris Bacas on soprano sax. We've been playing pretty much small places like Barbès in Brooklyn. So that's an ongoing thing. I'm starting to think about doing another solo record because I haven't done one in 40 years or something, still sort of mapping it out.