 |
| aka, Paul Carrack |
The Hit
Ace’s “How Long” comes at an interesting time in the One Hit No More project. More than most of what came before it (see index in the top right corner), it flows into the larger stream of the 1970s mellow “rock” genre.
It starts with a lonely bass guitar, as I hear it, recalls the impatient tapping of a foot. It’s a good fit for a song that hints heavily at, if not future infidelity, then betrayal of some kind. Curiously, most parts of its tone and sound possess a kind of warmth - e.g., cozy trebles are all over the guitar, keys and vocals (more later) and the layered production creates a comforting ambience for a theme (again, betrayal) that seems like an odd choice. About that…
The man who wrote the song, Paul Carrack, didn’t write the song with that sound in mind. According to comments he shared with ClassicBands in 2017, Carrack envisioned something more strident and up-tempo, something closer to The Four Tops’ “Reach Out And I’ll Be There.” His explanation for the way the song wound up sounding like it did is worth sharing:
“But that wasn't how the band saw it or interpreted it, because we were basically stoned out old hippies. So, the version we came up with that evolved was the version, and I'm not knocking it 'cause it was bloody great, that wasn't how I envisioned it, that sort of laid back, smooth thing.”
It's worth reading that interview with Carrack, who comes off as humble and all-around unassuming, because it’s full of great recollections not just his own life, but growing up in the English Midlands (he’s a Sheffield lad, left fatherless too soon) as the wave that would become The British Invasion started to build. It also contains plenty of notes (too many?) on the writing and recording of “How Long” and what that meant to Ace as a band. With that, here’s one final note on the song: Carrack defends the fact it had just one verse on the grounds he wrote it on the back of a bus ticket on the way to a weekly visit to his then future mother-in-law’s for the “one square meal” he and his then-girlfriend would get each week.
The Rest of the Story
“Ace were a British rock band who enjoyed moderate success in the 1970s.”
Nothing I write below improves on that quote. Good on ya, Wikipedia.
Ace didn’t last that long as a project, which only makes it more remarkable that they traveled as far as they did. The only member I've noted so far, Carrack, says he was one of the last members to join the band. He did, however, come from other projects just like (apparently) the rest of them. Ace’s original line-up included Steve Witherington (drums), Jon Woodhead (instrument not noted), Terry “Tex” Comer (bass), who came into the band from a progressive jazz-rock band called Warm Dust along with Carrack, and Alan “Bam” King, a guitarist who’d played first with mod legends The Action (fondly remembered here), then later with an act called Mighty Baby. That original line-up came together in 1972 as Ace Flash and the Dynamos…small wonder they shortened it to Ace.
The band moved operations to London before too long - certainly by the time Carrack wrote “How Long” - and became fixtures of the London “pub rock” circuit (a short description: “Just guys getting together, forming little bands and playing small venues for fun and beer money basically and that's what Pub Rock was all about”). Based on the several sources I found, Ace was a largely collaborative effort, originally at least, with different people handling songwriting and vocals; a couple stray lines in the Classic Bands interview suggest that Carrack wasn’t even the driving force in the band - e.g., “I wasn't the dominant personality in that band. There was another personality in the band that was much more dominant,” which, here, I assume points to King, though Carrack didn’t name names.
In the sense of a band that lived hand-to-mouth and played for beer money, “How Long” dropped out of nowhere. As often when a music “scene” develops, agents from London record labels descended on it; in Carrack’s memory, Ace was one of the last bands from that scene to get signed, only one lucky label happened to find the band that wrote an international hit. It was the band’s debut single and, while it did well in the UK, it rose to No. 3 in the U.S. market…which explains Ace’s semi-collective choice to relocate to the America. Witherington had already been replaced by a drummer named Fran Byrne (who came over from a band called Bees Make Honey), but they lost Woodhead when they moved States-side. A guy named Phil Harris replaced Woodhead, and I don’t know why I’m mentioning the personnel changes because there is nothing (low-hanging) on any member of Ace who isn’t Carrack or King.
Ace hit American soil running, joining Yes for their 1975 tour. That put a once-and-former pub band in front of 20,000+ venues, something Carrack believes deprived them of the opportunity to really get to the know the States. The band tried to follow up “How Long,” and even put out a couple more albums’ worth of material - Time for Another (1975) and No Strings (1977) came after 1974’s Five-A-Side, the album that included their smash single - but none of it went anywhere successful enough to hold the band together. On a broader, cultural level, Carrack figured the arrival of punk and new wave spelled their doom regardless…and it might have, but none of that stopped Carrack from bouncing from one successful project to another for another decade or so.
Due to the way fame works, the story of Ace wound up as the story of Paul Carrack, who would not only go on to join bigger future projects like Squeeze (that’s him singing on “Tempted,” but he didn’t write that one; Chris Difford did, and Carrack can’t praise him enough for that tune and others in an interview with Best Classic Bands) and Mike + the Mechanics (and that’s him on “Silent Running” and “The Living Years”), he’d play with UK legends like Roxy Music, Elton John, Roger Waters, Nick Lowe, Eric Clapton (who was still touring with in 2017, btw), The Pretenders, and Ringo Starr. He wrote his share of songs - including a couple for The Eagles’ When Hell Freezes Over thing - but Carrack is equally famous for his voice. The BBC hailed him as “The Man with the Golden Voice,” and Carrack’s Wikipedia page flags an instance of even higher praise:
“If vocal talent equalled financial success, Paul Carrack would be a bigger name than legends such as Phil Collins or Elton John.”
If only there was more about the other members…even “Bam” King…
About the Sampler
I never fell in love with Ace, but I cottoned to what they had in mind after a week’s worth of listening. Despite Carrack confessing “we weren’t that good,” Ace put out reasonably accomplished, non-hack music - it’s just a question of whether you like it or not. Full disclosure: I’m not going to keep anything I put on the sampler, but, again, it has a clear, if era-specific sound - a sound I’m still struggling with how to describe, but let’s go with “lounge blues.”
Most of what Ace put out plays around the same tempo (unrelentingly mid), but they riffed on a decent variety of riffs on that sound - something that likely followed from the collaborative songwriting and maybe even each songwriter’s preferred instrument(?). Five-A-Side featured a couple shuffling piano-fronted tunes - e.g., “Satellite” and “The Real Feeling” - but most of what they did led with guitar and blended in keys to fill in the sound. Most of the rest play in that vein - e.g., “Found Out the Hard Way,” and “Why” (which...I can't find) - but Ace tilts toward a(n always soft) rock sound on some - e.g., “Movin’,” “Crazy World,” "Message to You," and the ballad-esque “Tongue Tied” (probably for Carrack’s still-wife) - while pulling in some funk influences on others - e.g., “24 Hours” and the slow-starting “You Can't Lose.” I rounded out the playlist with another ballad, another approach Ace leaned into, represented on the sampler by “Sail on My Brother.”
All in all, this is a case of you can’t win ‘em all, but you can also do a lot worse. Till the next one…
Ace’s “How Long” comes at an interesting time in the One Hit No More project. More than most of what came before it (see index in the top right corner), it flows into the larger stream of the 1970s mellow “rock” genre.
It starts with a lonely bass guitar, as I hear it, recalls the impatient tapping of a foot. It’s a good fit for a song that hints heavily at, if not future infidelity, then betrayal of some kind. Curiously, most parts of its tone and sound possess a kind of warmth - e.g., cozy trebles are all over the guitar, keys and vocals (more later) and the layered production creates a comforting ambience for a theme (again, betrayal) that seems like an odd choice. About that…
The man who wrote the song, Paul Carrack, didn’t write the song with that sound in mind. According to comments he shared with ClassicBands in 2017, Carrack envisioned something more strident and up-tempo, something closer to The Four Tops’ “Reach Out And I’ll Be There.” His explanation for the way the song wound up sounding like it did is worth sharing:
“But that wasn't how the band saw it or interpreted it, because we were basically stoned out old hippies. So, the version we came up with that evolved was the version, and I'm not knocking it 'cause it was bloody great, that wasn't how I envisioned it, that sort of laid back, smooth thing.”
It's worth reading that interview with Carrack, who comes off as humble and all-around unassuming, because it’s full of great recollections not just his own life, but growing up in the English Midlands (he’s a Sheffield lad, left fatherless too soon) as the wave that would become The British Invasion started to build. It also contains plenty of notes (too many?) on the writing and recording of “How Long” and what that meant to Ace as a band. With that, here’s one final note on the song: Carrack defends the fact it had just one verse on the grounds he wrote it on the back of a bus ticket on the way to a weekly visit to his then future mother-in-law’s for the “one square meal” he and his then-girlfriend would get each week.
The Rest of the Story
“Ace were a British rock band who enjoyed moderate success in the 1970s.”
Nothing I write below improves on that quote. Good on ya, Wikipedia.
Ace didn’t last that long as a project, which only makes it more remarkable that they traveled as far as they did. The only member I've noted so far, Carrack, says he was one of the last members to join the band. He did, however, come from other projects just like (apparently) the rest of them. Ace’s original line-up included Steve Witherington (drums), Jon Woodhead (instrument not noted), Terry “Tex” Comer (bass), who came into the band from a progressive jazz-rock band called Warm Dust along with Carrack, and Alan “Bam” King, a guitarist who’d played first with mod legends The Action (fondly remembered here), then later with an act called Mighty Baby. That original line-up came together in 1972 as Ace Flash and the Dynamos…small wonder they shortened it to Ace.
The band moved operations to London before too long - certainly by the time Carrack wrote “How Long” - and became fixtures of the London “pub rock” circuit (a short description: “Just guys getting together, forming little bands and playing small venues for fun and beer money basically and that's what Pub Rock was all about”). Based on the several sources I found, Ace was a largely collaborative effort, originally at least, with different people handling songwriting and vocals; a couple stray lines in the Classic Bands interview suggest that Carrack wasn’t even the driving force in the band - e.g., “I wasn't the dominant personality in that band. There was another personality in the band that was much more dominant,” which, here, I assume points to King, though Carrack didn’t name names.
In the sense of a band that lived hand-to-mouth and played for beer money, “How Long” dropped out of nowhere. As often when a music “scene” develops, agents from London record labels descended on it; in Carrack’s memory, Ace was one of the last bands from that scene to get signed, only one lucky label happened to find the band that wrote an international hit. It was the band’s debut single and, while it did well in the UK, it rose to No. 3 in the U.S. market…which explains Ace’s semi-collective choice to relocate to the America. Witherington had already been replaced by a drummer named Fran Byrne (who came over from a band called Bees Make Honey), but they lost Woodhead when they moved States-side. A guy named Phil Harris replaced Woodhead, and I don’t know why I’m mentioning the personnel changes because there is nothing (low-hanging) on any member of Ace who isn’t Carrack or King.
Ace hit American soil running, joining Yes for their 1975 tour. That put a once-and-former pub band in front of 20,000+ venues, something Carrack believes deprived them of the opportunity to really get to the know the States. The band tried to follow up “How Long,” and even put out a couple more albums’ worth of material - Time for Another (1975) and No Strings (1977) came after 1974’s Five-A-Side, the album that included their smash single - but none of it went anywhere successful enough to hold the band together. On a broader, cultural level, Carrack figured the arrival of punk and new wave spelled their doom regardless…and it might have, but none of that stopped Carrack from bouncing from one successful project to another for another decade or so.
Due to the way fame works, the story of Ace wound up as the story of Paul Carrack, who would not only go on to join bigger future projects like Squeeze (that’s him singing on “Tempted,” but he didn’t write that one; Chris Difford did, and Carrack can’t praise him enough for that tune and others in an interview with Best Classic Bands) and Mike + the Mechanics (and that’s him on “Silent Running” and “The Living Years”), he’d play with UK legends like Roxy Music, Elton John, Roger Waters, Nick Lowe, Eric Clapton (who was still touring with in 2017, btw), The Pretenders, and Ringo Starr. He wrote his share of songs - including a couple for The Eagles’ When Hell Freezes Over thing - but Carrack is equally famous for his voice. The BBC hailed him as “The Man with the Golden Voice,” and Carrack’s Wikipedia page flags an instance of even higher praise:
“If vocal talent equalled financial success, Paul Carrack would be a bigger name than legends such as Phil Collins or Elton John.”
If only there was more about the other members…even “Bam” King…
About the Sampler
I never fell in love with Ace, but I cottoned to what they had in mind after a week’s worth of listening. Despite Carrack confessing “we weren’t that good,” Ace put out reasonably accomplished, non-hack music - it’s just a question of whether you like it or not. Full disclosure: I’m not going to keep anything I put on the sampler, but, again, it has a clear, if era-specific sound - a sound I’m still struggling with how to describe, but let’s go with “lounge blues.”
Most of what Ace put out plays around the same tempo (unrelentingly mid), but they riffed on a decent variety of riffs on that sound - something that likely followed from the collaborative songwriting and maybe even each songwriter’s preferred instrument(?). Five-A-Side featured a couple shuffling piano-fronted tunes - e.g., “Satellite” and “The Real Feeling” - but most of what they did led with guitar and blended in keys to fill in the sound. Most of the rest play in that vein - e.g., “Found Out the Hard Way,” and “Why” (which...I can't find) - but Ace tilts toward a(n always soft) rock sound on some - e.g., “Movin’,” “Crazy World,” "Message to You," and the ballad-esque “Tongue Tied” (probably for Carrack’s still-wife) - while pulling in some funk influences on others - e.g., “24 Hours” and the slow-starting “You Can't Lose.” I rounded out the playlist with another ballad, another approach Ace leaned into, represented on the sampler by “Sail on My Brother.”
All in all, this is a case of you can’t win ‘em all, but you can also do a lot worse. Till the next one…
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