Legendary Musician Martin Barre Talks Jethro Tull, Guitars, Touring and More!

By: Rick Landers

More often than not, it seems a musical group’s signature is defined by the vocalist up front. But as much as the legendary group Jethro Tull goes, Ian Anderson’s melodic grizzled vocals and flute gymnastics offered a gripping definition, it’s the ripping crunch of Martin Barre‘s lead guitar work and his ability to marinate Tull’s songs with emotional heft, are what turns our heads and grabs our guts with sinewy twists, turns and head-on collisions.

“Aqualung”, “Locomotive breath”, “Cross-eyed Mary” and other signature songs of Tull would ring hollow without Barre’s contributory musical depth and reach.

Legends are borne when their play is always at the top of its game, and listening to Martin, when the song unleashes him to pounce one can imagine him thinking, “I’ve got this.”

And, he always lays it down with perfection.

Hailing from a working man’s town, Birmingham, England, his work ethic comes honestly, and he hits pay dirt with every song he’s recorded for more than half a century. Most interesting is he’s grounded in the sophisticated sounds of jazz, having been influence by his musical parents who led him the jazz masters, Barney Kessel, Johnny Smith and Wes Montgomery.

Guitar International has spoken with Martin before and we’ll ask that you head back in time to read our background introductions about him in earlier interviews, so we can all get down to where he is today. When we spoke to him recently, he’d just come back from a local run, and was looking to make tea, but we ventured into talking about the inevitable talk about Jethro Tull, along with his more recent projects, and we checked out his guitars. As in the past, Martin was a lot of fun to talk with as he informed us with his insights into music, the industry, his favorite guitar and more.

Let’s get to it with Martin Barre,  the legendary guitarist who’s gifted us with some of the crunchiest, most memorable riffs, as well as some of the finest melodic six-string articulation that we’ve ever heard.

CHECK OUT MARTIN BARRE’S TOUR DATES!

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Rick Landers: It’s been awhile. You may not recall, but we had an interview several years ago and if I’m not mistaken that you were a runner back then. Are you still running?

Martin Barre: I just got back. Yeah.  I am and it’s keeping me sane in this lockdown, because we’re really bad in the U.K..

Rick: Yeah. I heard it got worse within the last couple of weeks in the U.K. I’ve got some friends over there, so.

Martin Barre: Yeah, it’s probably the worst country in the world, which is fairly unbelievable considering how advanced it’s supposed to be, but yes. So we’re housebound, but I can go out running.

Rick: Yeah, I tend to walk my dog. I used to be, I’ll say I’m still a bicyclist, but I haven’t been on my bike for probably two years. So, I need to get back and try to get in shape. I’ve gained some weight since this COVID thing started.

Martin Barre: Yeah, haven’t we all. Around here it’s not safe, in those country roads, and there’s some crazy kids driving cars. And I wouldn’t feel safe around where I live here. You’re probably better off to go to some safer areas to take your bike out.

Rick: Yeah. It’s been a while since I’ve been in England, but I would say generally, we’ve got some wide-open spaces and trails and everything these days. Not so much back in the day, I used to live in England. I lived in Coventry, I think you lived there, right?

Martin Barre: Yeah. Lanchester, it was a Polytech and now it’s University of Coventry. It was opposite the bombed-out church.

Rick: Yeah. I’ve been there. I actually used to work for Virgin Records back in the seventies. If you recall, there was a small shop there in Coventry.

Martin Barre: I was there in the mid-Sixties.

Rick: You’re originally from Birmingham?

Martin Barre: Yeah, born in Birmingham, I lived there until I was sort of 17. And then really, if you wanted to do anything in music, you, needed to be in London really, you might say, or Liverpool.

Rick: A little bit North. Oh, that’s true, Liverpool and The Cavern and all that. So isn’t the area you lived in isn’t that where guide buses were built back in the day? The double Decker buses were built there? And then the guy from The Move, I can’t remember his name, but he lived or is from that area too.

Martin Barre: The name has escaped me, it’ll come back in the middle of the interview. [Both laugh]

Rick: I’m not real familiar with The Move, but I’m sure he’s been in more bands since that time.

Martin Barre: Yeah, well they’re more of a pop group, but a good pop group.

Rick: I think Ron Wood was in that group. Wasn’t he? Was it Ron Wood? No, no, no. The other guy, crazier guy. I think his last name is Wood though. He was around when Slade was around and those groups.

Martin Barre: Yeah, they were all crazy.

Rick: “We’re All Crazy Now,” remember?

Martin Barre: Ah, Roy Wood. This is the guy we were talking about.

Rick: Hey, I was looking at your schedule. You’ve got a schedule for 2021 and it’s pretty daunting. I know that COVID might impact that, but you’ve got so many gigs scheduled. So, I was going to ask you about you running and all that. How do you keep in shape? How do you keep yourself prepped up? Because that’s a lot of work and it’ll wear you out if you don’t schedule things properly.

Martin Barre: Oh, I thrive on it. I always say to people, I probably couldn’t do your job, whoever I’m talking to. I’d find their job exhausting. I’ve been doing my job a long time, and I know how to deal with it, as I pace myself and what I need to do to be able to be on top of it. So I’m good. I’m an old hand on the road and I know the shortcuts to make life easy. I’ve made all the mistakes. So we travel well, we schedule well, everything, I know how to do it. I’m a good tour manager.

Rick: Oh, so you actually do all the logistics and work out the scheduling?

Martin Barre: Yeah. Me and my wife too, because I know what to do. And if it goes wrong, I know how annoying it is. I mean, don’t want to be boring, but if you played in Chicago and the next gigs in Detroit, you don’t want to be staying North of Chicago in a hotel and you have to drive to Chicago.

Rick: Yeah, its horrible.

Martin Barre: Yeah, so it’s stupid things like that. So, I know when people say, “Oh yeah, I got you a gig a year in Cincinnati.” And then the next day you’re in so-so, it’s a four- hour drive. And I’m like, no, it’s a six-hour drive. And we would have to stop to have a cup of coffee if you don’t mind the reality of being on the road, you stop to have a pee break. We stopped to fill it with fuel. All these things are so simple.

Rick:
Well, I think that’s interesting. I think that’s good because although we got the COVID thing, when people are, especially young folks, are beginning to go on the road and young managers, because a lot of people will pull in a niece or nephew or a brother to be their managers. They don’t think about that stuff. So I think it’s good to talk about it and say, you got to have some scenario planning really to figure it out.

Martin Barre: Yeah. I mean, I love it. We pin up a map in the kitchen here, being my wife, huge map, the East coast, West coast. And then we pin, we’ve got the dates, pins. We Google the journeys, hotels, and I’ve got all my itineraries going back years and years. And if we’re in Rochester, I go ah, hang on. I think the last time we played there, we stayed in a really good hotel. It’s like a good food guide and it works well.

Rick:  Do you have different colored pins for different parts of the tour? Cause I see you’re going to Canada. You’re going to the U.S, Europe.

Martin Barre: We just do one tour at a time and maybe a six weeks tour, it’s probably a month’s work to book everything. It’s a lot of work.

Rick: Yeah, but then you’ve got a handle on it, as well. I mean, you don’t have to wait for somebody who might not be competent or get sick for that matter.

Martin Barre: Yeah, and I enjoy it.

Rick: Do you work out the negotiations as well with the venues?

Martin Barre: Yes. Sometimes they get good hotel rates and there’s different ways of doing it. There’s always a negotiation and a bit of give and take on what you get and what you don’t get. Sometimes I Google “include hotels”, we look at them and they’re like, no we’re not staying there and we just say, “Sorry, forget it.” We’ll get our own  and give us an allowance. It’s experience.

The sad thing is we’ve been everywhere. So, someone says I got to do some gigs in South Dakota. Well, I’ve been there. I sort of know the territory and it’s good. But, we’ve got a lot of work and will it happen? Don’t know, it’s not looking good ’til we’re thinking September. A reality for my personal point of view is that September might be something to aim at. Possibly something might happen.

Rick: So, in your agreements, do you have opt out clauses? So you guys have an option to say, “Okay, we’re not doing this gig,” so there’s no money lost or anything like that.

Martin Barre: It never gets that far. I’ll let the venue change because that way they’re responsible. I’ve never pulled a gig. I never would. It’s just a better way of doing it. That way the venues are responsible for the decision, that they’re paying for all upfront costs.

Rick: Yeah, and they got a lot of liability if they…

Martin Barre: Yeah, they got the liability as such, so if they pull a gig that they’re going to have to sort out the mess. I’d never pull a gig.

Rick: In all those years, wow.

Martin Barre: There’s no reason to do it.

Rick:  So, when your audiences do show up, if the tour kicks in, what should they expect? I know you’re doing your “50 Year Jethro Tull” songs. But, are you going to have any special guests or are you expecting to have some surprise folks show up? Like surprise guests, people that you know in the States.

Martin Barre: No, no. It’s a quick answer. The 50 year shows now moved on, ’cause it’s all backlogged and the next idea was to do two halves. One half would be my favorite songs and it might be my music, it probably will be. And maybe some Tull things, and maybe a Porcupine Tree track or a Government Mule track, just something fun. And it’s going to be great to play the second half, we play all of “Aqualung”.

Rick: Oh, do you? Okay.

Martin Barre: And that was the next idea, moving on and sort of upping the game. And now, that was a year ago, of course, that that idea, so the ideas have moved along. But, unfortunately the gigs haven’t. So we’ve got to go back and do, excuse me, shows with the Dee Palmer and Clive Bunker, who we’re doing the 50 years show because they’re contracted to do them.

But mentally and musically, I’m thinking ahead, the next version of what I would do on the road, which wouldn’t be with that big band. It would be back to a smaller four or five-piece band, but playing different music. And I want to change it. I don’t ever want to do what Sol did in the latter days and go back with the same show. It’s horrible, it’s really lazy. So, I want to move all the time for my own enjoyment.

I don’t want to play the same stuff and I don’t want the audience to hear the same songs. So, when you say, what will the audience expect? I don’t know, because I’m going to surprise them and me. And I don’t want it to be predictable.

I don’t want to say you’re going to get this and then you’re going to get that song. I just find it to be really fresh and a bit of emphasis in it. So, it’s all I promise. It will be a great show.

Rick: Will you guys be improvising at all, or is it all stuff you’ve already, like tracked and you know what you’re going to do?

Martin Barre: Oh, we’ve got a huge catalog. I’ve got a list of music that we’ve played over the eight years. And it’s huge, it’s probably five hours of music. And the nice thing about that is that we’ll be in the dressing room, about to go on stage and you can always make a little change.

It might be a shorter set, a longer set or a single set, a double set. Or just say, try to play this song tonight. And they’ll all go, the band will go I’m trying to remember how it goes. I said, “Come on.” Okay. And we’ll go out and play a song we haven’t played for two, three months, but it’s there. And it’s great because it sort of keeps that freshness.

And I mean if somebody says well, no, we’ll do it tomorrow night, I want to just prep it up a bit. Fine, but I want to change it. And I don’t like the thought that people come to multiple shows and see the same show.

I like to think that people talk about the gig and they’ll say, “Oh yeah, we went to see Nelson play in Washington. What was that? Oh, it was the show when you played “Black Satin Dancer”. Wow, I’ve never heard him play that.” And I like that sort of vibe where there’s always the oddball unexpected elements of the show.

Rick: It sounds like that also adds probably some tension. So, maybe it’s a good tension. Now we’re going to be focused on this, because we’ve got to remember the next the melody or something.

Martin Barre: It’s great, you’ve got to be on the edge to get comfortable. Most of us take chairs on stage and sit down. But, we’re all the same, we all have that energy. They’re a good bunch of guys, we all think on the same page, for want of a better expression.

Rick: So, what are the other members, I guess Dee and Clive most, I guess that’s mostly right. You’ve got, is Clive the singer? The vocalist?

Martin Barre: No, Dan Crisp is the singer. Clive’s the old drummer from Tull. Dee and Clive were guests, which is why and then I’ve got the two girl singers and they were guests, as well. But, I planned in my mind that I’ve been working with Adam Wakeman and that’s Rick Wakeman’s son. Some great people and players, and really got on well with him.

And the last gig we did was in Chile in end of February last year. And I mean sort of South America with a four-piece band, then Chris, me, Allen Swanson, Darby Todd, and Adam Wakeman. And it was so good because Adam’s a phenomenal musician and he just sort of brings another layer into the ballpark.

And I wanted to get him on board more in the future, but it’s all gone wrong. And he plays with Ozzie and that’s his commitment, he’s very loyal, as I would be. So, we’re sort of juggling with what Ozzie might or might not do. He is a super nice guy and he’s quick. He’s a good fellow to work with. I don’t know. It’s all question marks and then finances come into it because I’m like, there’s another American, who’s the slide player?

Rick: Jerry Douglas?

Martin Barre: No, he’s in some band with a girl singer. Trucks. Derek Trucks. He has a huge band and somebody asked him why he had it. And he said, “Well, I can afford it. What else would I want to spend my money on?” Although I can think of other things I’d like to spend my money. I’m the same way if they’ve got extra cash, my first thought is get that extra into the band.

More production, girls, singers, another musician, sort of put it back into the show. So, that’s an element that I don’t know what’s going to happen because the longer this goes on the finances go more to shit and that’s getting to be an element that I don’t want, but you can’t ignore.

Rick: Yeah. So, when you’re picking people to join you in a group, I would think that they need to bring something in addition to being great musicians. And you’ve always been with great musicians. I mean, look at Tull, there’s phenomenal musicians in it. I would think that now you’re also saying, am I going to get along with this person on the tour? Are they going to be a team player or are they going to be the person who makes us laugh. So, what do people bring that you like to form that type of a unit?

Martin Barre: Yeah, exactly. You want to know who does what? Well, you know what? I don’t like any of them, I really don’t like them. I’m teasing, they all bring their own personality. And I want personalities, I don’t want zombies. I don’t want people who just go through, they’re learning off a page. I want them to bring that personality and their ideas into the band.

It’s a band, in a very old fashion sense, where we have days off together, we will go out and eat together. We travel together like the old days and I quite like it. There’s a lot to be said about it. It can go wrong. We’re adults and we’re sensible, we’re not crazy people. I love working with other musicians, but they’ve always got something. And it’s very rare, maybe once or twice in many, many years where there’s somebody who just doesn’t quite fit.

I can tell straight away, but you’re not going to get on with everybody. And everybody isn’t going to like me, that’s just taken. But, if they don’t like me, then they’ll move on.

Rick: Maybe they don’t like the manager you, but they like the Martin Barre guitar you. The different roles you’re playing!

Martin Barre: Well, I hope there’s not a difference. I don’t become this sort of huge ego, no. Oh, I would hate that. I’m sure my wife would tell me that I’m the same. I probably got a bit of an ego going, but I guess we all need something to make us do it. But, I guess we all need something to make us do it, but I wouldn’t like to be that Jekyll and Hyde person.

I know people like it, and I really don’t understand that in a distance, bar any sense or logic. No, I think it’s a 24-hour job. And the way you behave and communicate with people is around the clock. Experientially, you don’t suddenly become nice and then distant the next minute. It’s a family.

Rick: Yeah. Yeah. I think it has a lot to do with your core values as well that you’ve just shared.

Martin Barre: Sure, and it’s maturity really. And politeness and good manners and ethics. Musicians, some have a different set of rules for no reason that they think they can behave that way because they sell millions of records and people scream and adulate them, but they’re wrong and I’ve met them and I don’t like them, but I learn that I don’t ever want to be like that.

Rick: Yeah, that’s good. I’ve met a lot, just talking to people during interviews. There are very few that I found that weren’t agreeable. I mean, they’re doing an interview and I know this is business and all that, but then we’re talking guitars and stuff, as well. But, there’ve only been maybe two out of maybe 200 interviews that I was like, “I don’t think I like that guy.”

Martin Barre: Well, funny enough. I can think of two with me. One, two. Yeah, two of my heroes, people I really admired and I got to meet them both. And I really didn’t like them, and I stopped listening to their music. I heard their music, I just thought, “I don’t like him.” In effect, it’s a shame, so I try and avoid musicians then.

Rick: So yeah, that’s interesting. I’ve kind of done the same, at least with those two. I only had met them both for interviews and those were the last interviews we did, but yeah. So, that’s just the way it is.

Martin Barre: Yeah. I mean, I know you won’t say it, I know I won’t say it, it’d be very funny. Like two guys just go like, “I knew it. I knew I was right.” [Both Laugh]

Rick: You might. So what other projects do you have? I mean, you’re kind of in your house, you run into stuff and you’re doing… Are you doing any Zoom music? Like a lot of people are doing?

Martin Barre: What I did…I deal with Facebook and for the immediate fans, I put a bit of music on some of them. I didn’t use to, but I have an instrumental called “Palladio”, by Karl Jenkins, which is just me playing all blows and guitar parts and Darby played drums on it, just because I want to put that into the set next time we do a gig. It’s just a cool piece of music.

And I decided I had the engineering studio, I was doing recording for somebody else. And we finished that fairly quickly and I said, “Do you fancy putting this piece of music down?” And we had so much fun doing it. And it was so interesting to deconstruct this piece of modern classical music, and it’s an orchestra string parts and just to learn them all and some quirky things in there.

So it was a lot of fun and I learned something from it and it’s up on YouTube, but no, because I don’t sing, I can’t get my guitar out and do, “Okay, I want to do a 15-minute set for everybody.” And I’m not one of those party please musicians that can sit down and play Star-Spangled Banner with tapping and ] whatever, making it to appear, “Wow. It’s amazing.” I don’t know why, I’m just not interested in doing it. So no, but I play a lot. I’m playing the flute a lot.

Rick: Oh, you started out with flute, didn’t you? When you were a kid, you’ve had a flute, right?

Martin Barre:  I played flute before I met Ian. And yeah, I was a proper flute player and I’ve always kept it up in the background and I play on my records just a little bit. But, I bought a really good alto flute and just because I thought I need my brain, keep my brain moving, moving, working, working, and bought some music books and it’s been a real lifesaver.

So, I’m practicing every day and I’m getting a technique back and tone comes back. It’s just a diversion. It helps because anything to do with music helps the boiling pot and I’m playing lots of guitar.

I’m motivated musically, but I think like all of us, sometimes I find it hard to stay positive when I’m not busy. I’ll go for a run, I’m really happy. I’m playing my guitar, I’m happy, flute, and then I’m fine. But, then when I put it down, it’s like turning the power off and I’m like, because there’s no end point, there’s no end game. You haven’t got your sort of diary and you go, “Okay, right. We’re playing or we’ve got this New York gig next month.”

And you need that, that’s the icing on the cake if you can do all this work, because you know you’ve got a gig, that’s the payoff, not financially, but just in satisfaction and a year of being that way, it’s gotten a little bit worse, but I think everybody’s going through the same thing.

The dynamics changed a bit, but we’ll be back on the road. I still love playing, I still love music. Nothing’s changed there.

Rick: Do you find when you play, it’s like you going off on a little vacation and then you come back when you put your guitar down? I feel like I go away and I’m like in my mind or something. Same way?

Martin Barre: Yeah, I know what you mean. I can’t analyze it, but I can wake up in the morning and I can go straight into my studio and pick up a guitar and play. I don’t need a cup of coffee to wake myself up. And then, all right, give me half an hour, I go back in there. I go in there and start playing, I’m straight in there. And essentially, I probably couldn’t walk past a guitar without picking it up, I might play for a minute. The most stupid thing was like yesterday. I heard The Supremes on the radio and I was thinking about a couple of their songs. So, I just learned them. And that really kept me hanging on.

Rick: Great. Oh yeah, and Vanilla Fudge did that too.

Martin Barre: Vanilla Fudge. I got a chord, and then that sort of figure at the beginning like, and then E-flat. And there was something about the chords, I said, “Okay. Well, I know they’re right,” but there’s some little subtleties in that music that escaped me. And what it was is that E-flat goes through the whole song. So, every chord has the E-flat in it. And when you put it into the chords, it suddenly becomes complete. And it’s not, I mean, probably everybody, but me are like, “Oh yeah, I knew that,” didn’t you realize that?

Rick: I never thought about it.

Martin Barre: It’s just, I like things like that. I like whoever wrote that song made it, put semi in there, which is routine. And it just started a jigsaw puzzle and I just enjoy doing it. And then other things, I can take Leadbelly and I was watching a DVD of him, he’s phenomenal.

And I thought, “Let’s Dance”, Stevie Ray (Vaughan) on it, great track. I thought, I just want to play it. So, I picked up a guitar and going, “That’s not quite right. No, that’s not right either.” And I realized that that isn’t straightforward either, the chords are really cool and once you figure out what they are, you go, “Wow, that’s something special,” because the brick work, the building blocks are special, as well.

Rick: Yeah. So, on that song, did you play in a standard tuning or did he make any adjustments, or what?

Martin Barre: No. No, standard tuning.

Rick: Do you know Nick Drake?

Martin Barre: I know the name, yeah.

Rick: He was a folk singer who passed away in the ’70s. “He did “Pink Moon”. He was friend of John Martyn and great musician. He would take his cap and he would move it back away from the fret to get just a little bit of unusual tone. He was a brilliant guitar player. If you get a chance, listen to some of his music. It’s like two or three guys playing at the same time, it’s finger-picking.

Martin Barre: That’s like Willie Porter.

Rick: I don’t know Willie Porter, I know Davey Graham from back in the day, but…

Martin Barre: Well, Willie Porter’s from Madison, Wisconsin, and he supported Tull, supported Sting, Jeff Beck. I mean, and they’re all connected with him because the first time I heard him play, he was supporting Tull and I was in the dressing room and I heard he started up and going, “Oh, wow. I didn’t see the other percussionist and a bass player.” And so I go and go check him out and it’s just him, it’s him. And it’s the same thing.

Rick: I like seeing that.

Martin Barre: That’s very, very clever, but I don’t want to do it because I just want to pick up a guitar and play everything on it. I don’t want to have a separate guitar or be fluffing around with it. So I always translate it. If it’s not constituting, I’ll translate it.

Rick: Yeah. Let’s talk guitars. I know that you’ve got some nice, very nice vintage guitars. I went to your site and what drew my attention was your ES-335. That’s a ’61?

Martin Barre: Yeah, it’s a beauty.

Rick: Yeah, what I liked about it is when you can see the wood through the finish, it’s like you get to see a little leg. And then you get to see the wood in it, it’s a gorgeous guitar. So you bought that when, and then you re-bought it, right?

Martin Barre: Yeah, I think I must have bought it in the ’90s, early ’90s. And I think I bought it from a vintage dealer. It’s Vintage ‘n’ Rare in Bath.
They’re quite well known over here. And then I had it for maybe five years or so. And I sold it. Got no idea why.

And then it was my 70th birthday. And I just saw that as an excuse to treat myself to something extravagant. And I found a guitar in America in Rochester, New York. There’s a cool shop, they had a 335 or a 345, something from the ’80s. And I’ve seen it and I was dealing with it back in the U.K. and I was going in Bath and they didn’t offer me what I wanted.

So I called up Mansons to check on the value of it. I was past exchanging and then we had a conversation. They said, “Why?” I said I’m buying this 335.” So, we’ve got one here. I said, “Okay.” So, I’m considering online and it was mine, exact, mine.

Rick: Magic.

Martin Barre: Yeah, there it was, it was mine. I had completely forgotten about it. And so I went in, and of course it’s beautiful, all but three times the price of the one in the USA, “You know what? This is meant to be and I’m never going to see this guitar for a third time.”

Rick: True.

Martin Barre: Yeah, and it plays incredible, the sound is phenomenal. It’s better than a Les Paul, I’ve had a few and the pickups on this I think are better. I haven’t heard PAFs as good as this or anything.

Rick: Yeah. I had a 1952 Les Paul with P-90s that were killer, the bridge was wacky. So, I ended up selling it, but the P-90s were like monster pickups, even 60 years later, so.

Martin Barre: I’ll show you one.

Rick: Okay. What is it?

Martin Barre: Yeah, a 225.

Rick: 225. Okay. Yeah, yeah. P-90, black P-90. Cool.

Martin Barre: But this pickup is outrageous. I bought this from Gruhn’s too. So I like the look of it and I sort of played it over in the States in a room and then I go at home and played it. And I’m like, “Unbelievable.“

Rick: Did you play it in the Gruhn’s old shop upstairs?

Martin Barre: It was his new shop, yeah. It was his new store, because I was selling some music. So, I’ve got a 330, ’58 330 but with a single PAF. And it’s beautiful. I got that in Yakima.

Rick: Yakima, Washington. Here’s my 1931 L-OO Gibson, 12 fret.

Martin Barre: It’s well played, isn’t it?

Rick: Yeah. It’s an old beast, but it’s got a gorgeous, gorgeous sound.

Martin Barre: Anyway, the 330, it was really nice. Literally, it had been played by a school band twice, the kid in the school band, it had been bought for him. And it had been under somebody’s bed for 50 years. So, it’s unplayed and it’s beautiful. Yeah, it’s in the studio. I’ve got a ’63 Strat that I bought from Mansons. I just saw it in the shop for some other reason, it was on the wall. And then I’m like, because they know me, so if I say to them, “Can I borrow it for 24 hours?” because I don’t want to play it in the shop. I’ll bring it back, put it through my gear here. Of course, it was just beautiful.

Rick: Yeah. What kind of finish is it? Like sunburst, or?

Martin Barre: It’s the Fiesta Red.

Rick: Oh yeah. Pretty, pretty. Maple neck or?

Martin Barre: Rosewood.

Rick: Rosewood. I like rosewood necks

Martin Barre: Yeah. Yeah, must be true. Because I sold a lot of my early personal vintage guitars and it’s only recently that I’ve started getting nice guitars, but this time round I buy them because they’re really special. Thinking the old days, somebody came to a gig with a Les Paul Jr., you just buy it. “How much you want? Okay, I buy it.” Without even playing it just because you collected vintage guitars like you collect posts and stamps. But for me now it’s, I want to play it. It’s going to be incredible. It’s going to sound great. It’s going to be an instrument I’m going to use, and then it means a lot more.

Rick: Yeah. I’ve been looking at and actually buying vintage guitars too, I don’t know, maybe 15. I’ll show you another one real quick. I just got this, this is a single owner, 1964, J-200. It’s a wonderful guitar. And the fellow who I got it from was in a nursing home. He’s 94 years old and he wanted it to go to somebody wouldn’t flip it. And so I worked with his daughter and it was expensive, but it’s got a real balanced sound, but it’s got that metal bridge on it, which is a little awkward. So if I move my hand back a little bit towards the pegs back there, then it’s a little bit more comfortable, but it’s a great guitar. So what kind of tone woods do you like? I tend to get mahogany with spruce or cedar tops.

Martin Barre: See, I don’t question that, I prefer rosewood necks or ebony, but I’ve got maple necks. It’s a great guitar. I think nearly everything I’ve got is rosewood or maple, got a pau ferro one. But, I’m not knowledgeable about woods. So, if Paul Reed Smith very generously built a guitar for me from his cave… I mean, excuse me, we went in there, there’s all these glorious woods, beautiful pieces of wood. And he said, “I don’t know, what you want?”

I said, “I do, I’ll play it. But you’re the master asking me a question that you’re better qualified.” I said, “Just recommend things to me. I would’ve had to write down what the woods were, but essentially, at the end of the day, I could be blindfolded and I would buy a guitar just the way it feels and sounds. And then if I took the blindfold off and it was really ugly, it wouldn’t bother me, I’d still get it. So, I’m going from a different direction, but I love woods. I love the beauty of wood.

Rick: Yeah. So how long have you dealt with Paul Reed Smith and you know Bev Fowler and Jeanne Nooney and all those folks.

Martin Barre: Yes, they’re really nice. Well, I bought my first PRS from Manson’s again, a McCarthy Hollowbody. Just cause it’s a lovely, lightweight guitar and it was my go-to instrument at home. Write music on it, play it, practice on it, just because it was lovely and lightweight. And then I think whatever I was playing, I think it was Fender and I know what happened. I was playing Fenders. If I use instruments, I do a lot of work. I’m loyal to them and I’ll tell everybody about it. So if I’ve got a great, solid guitar, I’ll tell everybody about it because it’s… I’m not being paid to do it. I don’t get them for nothing. People need to know that there’s a great product out there, and I’m proud to use them. All the same with the guitar.

Martin Barre: So I was this event with Fender instruments, and I like playing them. And then they had this huge concert in London where they invited everybody who played Fenders, except me.

Rick: Really.

Martin Barre: I was so upset because they were all people that I knew, the guitar players and like every guitar player who played the Fender was there. And the guy who organized it was the guy I dealt with and said, “Why didn’t you invite me?”. I’d love to have been there. Didn’t want to play necessarily, just sit in the audience and enjoy. He said, “Oh, sorry. I just forgot”.

I said, “Okay”. And then I called Paul Reed Smith. I called the factory and I’d bought another one by then. I said, “Well, you don’t know me. I just thought I’d talk to you about your guitars. I think they’re great instruments,” but I wasn’t looking for anything. I was playing them anyway. And I ended up talking for about two hours with one of the guys, I can’t remember his name. He’s left now. He was a really nice guy.  He was a keyboard player, as well.

I met him (Paul Reed Smith) eventually, and I just thought that these guys are really great, they really care about the artists and they’re really enthusiastic about what they do. And that was it. I just said, “Well look, next time I’m in your area, I’ll give you a call”, which I did. And then we formed a relationship, met Paul and got on well. It’s just born of mutual respect.

Rick: Yeah. Were you playing at the Rams Head club when you were there?

Martin Barre: Oh, yeah, several times.

Rick: I know the area and the folks at PRS.

Martin Barre: He’s just a very cool person. Very intelligent and very aware of people who play the instruments. He said that there’s an English sound. “This is when I hear you” he says, “I know your English”. And I’m like, “Really?”

I can’t figure that out because mainly I listen to American music. He said, “Yeah, take my word for it. I know if somebody is American”. And I guess he does. Probably it’s just in your background, your roots through music, your journey, what you learn, who you listen to. And probably sort of forms in the early days, your technique and your sound and your approach.

The first, maybe five, ten years of your playing life, but really are the most important. Or your good habits there, and what your bad habits are, as well. It’s sort of inherent, it’s conglomeration of whatever you’ve picked up, good or bad. I certainly have bad habits.

Rick: Did you ever play the Grande Ballroom?

Martin Barre: Yeah well, we played with Vanilla Fudge. It was ’69.

Rick: I saw Vanilla Fudge, they were playing with Cream. But that was Carmine Appice was the drummer for them.

Martin Barre: Yeah. I think he was. Yeah, but we played with them. We played there with Led Zeppelin.

Rick: When I went there the stage was so low. And people were sitting on the ground, looking up at everybody. That was cool. 

Martin Barre: Well, I hate high stages, and I hate that sort of barrier.  Yeah. I don’t like any sort of barrier, but a really high stage, that just… You lose the communication. The good thing about clubs is that people are looking at you. Face-to-face and I’m okay with that.

Rick: Hold on for a second. I want to show you something that I’ve got from the Grande Ballroom. It’s pretty cool. Give me a second. This is a brick from the Grande Ballroom. And look at the name of the company. (Editor: The brick reads J.A.M.)

Martin Barre: Oh wow. My God.

Martin Barre: So, what’s there now?

Rick: I think it’s being torn down.

Rick: Oh, yeah, the Cavern.  The Beatles and everybody else. Yeah. Everybody was there. Yeah, cool.

Martin Barre: The one there now isn’t the real one. It’s a replica. But the original one, we played there when it really was a shit hole, and we wanted to play there. We did a… I think we played there with The Coasters. Willie Case’s backing band. We did a sort of all night rave. At the time we just thought this is the Cavern.

Rick: Do you remember the album, Having A Rave Up by the Yardbirds?

Martin Barre: Yeah.

Rick: You where talking about the Supremes and the song that they had the notes going through the whole song. I was figuring it out… I was listening to “Over Under Sideways Down” by the Yardbirds. It’s like one chord. It’s like a single hcord the whole way through, it’s like G. Play a G chord, you can sing the whole song with it.

Martin Barre: That’s clever. It’s simple. But, it doesn’t sound simple. And in some ways, songs that are ridiculously complicated for no particular reason are just very annoying.

Rick: Yeah. Well, sometimes I think simple songs are the most sophisticated songs. And some of the songs that you guys did were pretty complex, but you knew how to phrase stuff and when to leave some space between things. And then you emphasize something. It was… Even Ian would emphasize his breathing, when he’d go…(Rick grunts).

Martin Barre: They’re punctuation marks, really important. Could be like a slide, not the deliberate one, but just sort of going from there to there. And that punctuation mark is nice, or just a gap. Just something that gives it space. And Bill Harkleroad [Zoot Horn Rollo] was a big innovator. He always said to me, “Don’t worry about the notes you play. Concentrate on the spaces you leave between them, they’re more important.”

And of course, that’s the blues as well. When you listen to Freddie King or Albert King, the reason why most people can’t play like them is because they don’t understand exactly where the note is. You probably can’t write it on a stage. It’s just where it ends and where it begins. The whole pronunciation of that phrase is so unique and it’s simple, three notes maybe, or four. But, it isn’t simple at all. And you can’t learn how to do it. You can get close. And a few people have got close to it. Stevie Ray probably being one of the closest of all. Yeah, there has to be space and simplicity for music to work.

Rick: Yeah. So you’ve played with some other folks. You played with Paul McCartney didn’t you for a while?

Martin Barre: Yeah.

Rick: So how was that? What was the collaboration that you guys did?

Martin Barre: He was trying out lots of lineups, each with a different producer. And I was part of one of the lineups. So it was like a week at the studio. It was incredible. He’s an amazing singer and he would just sing everything, not run through the song. “Okay. Let’s go back to the first verse and play again.”

He’s sang it every time. And then we get to the end of the song and he’d go, “Okay.” And he’d go into singing, “Good golly, Miss Molly!”

Rick: And he can be a rocker. Yeah.

Martin Barre: And underneath, he had so much vitality, and still does. I was very privileged to be there and it was an amazing experience.,

Rick: Yeah. So, what’d you think when you first heard Jimmy Hendrix, cause he made it first kind of big in England before he came back to the States. Were you riveted when you first heard the way he played or…

Martin Barre:  Completely. I think we’d all heard “Hey Joe”. I think “Hey Joe” was more sort of straightforward. It was…

Rick: It was a cover song. Yeah. But he did it differently.

Martin Barre: Yeah. But it had a sound, and it was great. But I was in Rome. We were playing this nightclub in Rome for about six months, living over there. And somebody had this acetate, like 45, no writing on it. I wish I had it now, but they’d been given it at the studios in London where Hendrix had done his demo of “Purple Haze”.

And he said, “You’ve got to hear this!” and I’m like, “Oh, okay”.  And it was a one-off acetate. And we played it. And just like… The sound was… What is it? You couldn’t analyze it, you couldn’t say, “Oh, that’s…”. It was such a departure from anything we’d ever heard before. We were just totally in awe of it. It changed the world to me. And then the fact that if he re-recorded it and couldn’t get a better version. So, he used the demo.

Rick: Oh did he? How do you know that?

Martin Barre: Yeah, he used the demo. He re-recorded it, because the demo is what I heard. And then they went back in to the studio, but they couldn’t get that feel. And so that sort of roughness and all the phasing, and it’s all sort of tumbling along. It’s this cloud you almost… You’re in a dense fog cloud of music. It’s because it’s a demo just got it down in 10 minutes. But it just changed everything.

And in some ways, Clapton… Suddenly you listened to the way they played and you think, “Oh, I wonder how they played that riff?”, and you learned it. With Hendrix, I never learned it. I just listened to it and enjoyed it because it didn’t need to be analyzed. In a way it was so direct. He wasn’t playing things that you thought, how the hell does he do that? It was so great, but you sort of understood where he was.

I did a gig in a local gig with Dave Pegg. It was on the road with some band. And he said, “Ah, come along and play.” And I said, “Oh yeah. What you want me to play?” He said, “Oh we do “All along the Watchtower”. “Great”, that’s all he said. So I go in the studio and I put on Hendrix and I learnt everything. And I thought, just play. I want to play it exactly how he played it. So I actually learned all those phrases. And again, it’s different. You’ve got to get into the feel of it. So it’s not an easy task to really give it it’s due respect. And so I got to the gig and there’s no rehearsal. And I knew it’s in the same key because they start playing, and because they played the Bob Dylan version.

Rick: Oh, really?

Martin Barre: And I’m like, “No.” But Dave turned around. And suddenly he said, “Play a solo.” And so I went into the Hendrix version.

Rick: Oh good, hilarious.

Martin Barre: I’d gotten my little bit in. That was hilarious, I couldn’t believe it.

Rick: You know on “All along the Watchtower”, who’s playing 12-string on that in the beginning? It’s Dave Mason.

Martin Barre: Oh, right. Yeah, I’ve heard that before, but yeah I’d forgotten that.

Rick: Yeah. I interviewed him a while back and he said, “Yeah, I played that. I had my black 12-string”, that he still has. And it was pretty wild just to understand. Now I listen to it differently. It’s like, Oh, that’s Dave Mason. So that’s pretty cool.

Martin Barre: I didn’t know, but it rings a bell. Yeah, that’s cool. And the great thing about that track is that there’s so many elements. To have a rhythm solo, was so unique. And it’s just pulling back from all the pyrotechnics. It drops and it’s just Hendrix playing the chords. It’s great. That’s all you need. It’s perfect. It just shows you that behind the curtains it’s rock solid.

Rick: Yeah. And he had a great… He was with the Jimmy James and the Flames, I think. And with, yeah, I think he played with Little Richard and the Isley Brothers. So, he had a long history before he made it on his own.

Martin Barre: Yeah, you could hear that funk and that rhythm.

Rick: And I don’t know if you’ve seen videos on YouTube, but he’s playing with the Isley Brothers, so he’s in the back because he’s not the lead guy. And he’s doing this, he’s moving his hand up and down all around the fret board. It’s like, “Yeah. It’s Jimmy Hendrix”. He’s pretty wild. It’s pretty cool. When I was listening to Tull yesterday, I was trying to think who else is doing music like you guys are doing? There’s really nobody. And the only group I could come up with, and surprised you talked about Rick Wakeman, is Yes. They were kind of the same, as far as the complexity, and then they’d go into this melodic stuff. And then they had… not the same phrasing, but they knew when to stop and when to start again on their stuff. So did you know those guys very well?

Martin Barre: Yeah, indeed. We played with them a lot, but they were our support band for the whole American tour. Yeah. Now I see Steve Howe every now and again, and I’ve hardly seen any of the others, but yeah. We were very close, and I think there was that musical connection all the way through.

And the other band that we played with, Fleetwood Mac, with Peter Green a lot. We played with Joe Cocker. There were connections and that they didn’t have to be obvious ones. And you could think that us and Led Zeppelin had nothing in common, but we did. We’re from England and knew Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis and Eddie Cochran and Buddy Holly. It’s all those roots.

And sometimes I envy American musicians that know that their roots are all in the bluegrass and country and blues and Delta. Sort of Doobie brothers, The Allman brothers, Leon Russell. A great heritage of American music, which is superb. But in some ways, English music got more press than American music, in my mind. But the people thought it’s English.

Rick: British Invasion, yeah.

Martin Barre: And I’m thinking, no it isn’t because you guys have already got all the stuff. You got all that information, because we got it from you years ago. Go listen to all your old rockabilly and country and your old records. And there’s all that music, came over to England. We repackaged it, said, “Thank you very much.” And brought it back.

Rick: Well, you had Skiffle though, didn’t you?

Martin Barre: Skiffle, yes we had Skiffle. Thank you, yeah.

Rick: Well, and also a lot of your folk musicians were just phenomenal, like John Martyn and Fairport Convention and who else? Richard and Linda Thompson, just phenomenal. And we didn’t really hear about those folks too much in the States, until maybe the eighties and nineties, but they were phenomenal in the sixties and seventies.

Martin Barre: Fairport, who I know, most of Fairport, I’ve played with. And I’ve literally played with Fairport and Dave Pegg I know really well, but they never made it in America. They toured America in the back of a camper van and lost money, but they could never break through. And why? Here they’re big in England, they’re consistently successful from this heritage of their legacy. And they’re really powerful, not powerful, but have a strong following. The first time we went to America, we met up with Pentangle.

Rick: I saw them at Warwick University (U.K.) back in the Seventies. Yeah. They were great.

Martin Barre: Well, we met them in Boston, in ’69. The second gig, we did in America. But, I guess that I never really heard much of them after that. It was all about English rock music, and everybody wanted Led Zeppelin and blah, blah, blah. But the focus was on that genre of music and it didn’t spill over into the folk.

Rick: Yeah. Who was the group that did “Lay Down”, Strawbs. Remember Strawbs?

Martin Barre: Oh, I know yeah, Dave Cousins. He was literally a neighbor. And I’ve met him many times over the years. Yeah. But there’s a lot of great stuff there, but it didn’t all translate across the Atlantic like maybe we did, and why we did, I don’t know. That the audience sort of something in the band that they liked. They liked that quirkiness. We kept it on the boil where we changed things all the time. But, from what I was saying earlier, people didn’t know what they were going to get. I think people quite liked that. They’d turn up for the concert, they’ve got no idea if they’re going to like it or not, or what’s going to happen.

Rick: Yeah. You ever play with Danny Thompson?

Martin Barre: Oh yeah. I played on stage with him when I did one of the Fairport festivals. So, yeah, I knew him.

Rick: He’s played with a lot of people, like John Martyn and Tim Buckley and Nick Drake and a number of other people, he played bass for.

Martin Barre: I knew John Martyn. Nick Drake, I’m not sure we played with him.

Rick: Roy Harper?

Martin Barre: Oh yeah, Roy Harper we played with. Yeah. Ian was very influenced by Roy Harper.

Rick: I was at Abbey Road Studios with Roy and a couple of guys from when I worked for Virgin Records, and he’s doing his, I think it was the HQ album, if you know that.

Martin Barre: I don’t, but yeah. We did a benefit concert in London with a load of people. But it was him and his son, moreso at the end of his life. But yeah, he’s great.

Rick: Let’s wrap this up, because this is going to be a long interview and it’s been great.

Martin Barre: It is.

Rick: It’s been great. I’m not even looking at my clock.  It’s interesting that you’re the manager of your own group now. What kind of advice would you give young people who are trying to get into the music industry, which has changed drastically since when you first started. What should they watch out for? Lessons learned?

Martin Barre: I could probably answer that five years ago with something that might pass muster, but now I really don’t know because success, the route to success, is one that I’m totally unfamiliar with. It sounds like I’m totally unsuccessful, but, however, I arrived at where I am or where my band is, doesn’t happen anymore.

When you’re on the road, it’s the same. Same hotel, same venues, same flights. I could tell or I could give any amounts of advice on the mechanics of what you do, like we were talking about earlier. But as a new artist, I don’t know. You get on YouTube, you get on Twitter, you get on Facebook, you play. I know some young musicians and they play anywhere. A place with three people. Those three people will tell another three each, and then the next time they’ll play to nine. That’s how it happens. It sort of expands.

Rick: Yeah, sort of word of mouth.

Martin Barre: Yeah. But I don’t know. I’ve never been down that route, so I can’t give any advice at all. It’s a bit of a dangerous thing to do. I just think that everything in music, just slow. To take everything slowly in music. Don’t try and get ahead of yourself. Just save every element of learning how to play from the very beginning.

Just really get inside of what you’re doing. Why is a chord? What is a chord? Where is a chord? Why is a chord? Why is it those notes? Why are scales important? Find out for yourself. Don’t ask anybody. Don’t look on the Internet. Figure out the relationship between all these elements of music. It’s like a magical journey and it’s a “Eureka!” moment when you… It’s like me talking about that Supremes song. You still get that “Eureka!” moment.

Sometimes it’s there and you don’t see it. A new music. Something simple. Learn to play 12 Bar Blues. YouTube, I got that, moving on. No, no, no. Really listen to 12 Bar Blues. Hear other people play it. Try and understand why, how, where the history of it. There’s a lot to discover and it’s not all going to be on a computer screen. You’ve got to look behind it, that I know.

But, how to be successful? There’s so many people with great voices. You hear them daily. Somebody was cleaning out windows, a window cleaner, and I went to playing. He said, “Have you heard this girl? She lives down the road, though, eight miles away.” I’m thinking, Oh really? Am I going to listen to this? So he goes and gets his phone. This girl, really pretty young girl, starts singing. Wow. I’m like,”Oh my God!” He says, “What do you think?” Yeah. She’s another young person with outrageous talent, confidence, projection. The things that I found the hardest to do.

Rick: And they’re all over. They’re everywhere.

Martin Barre: They’re everywhere. I was painfully shy, painfully shy, and it held me back. But they don’t have that. They have all of that in aces, and they’re really good at what they do.

I said, “I don’t know what to say.” It wasn’t her song. I could say, “Well, if you can write a song and sound that good, you’ve got a lot going for you. Don’t do covers. Stop.” That’s what I’ll tell musicians. I say, “As soon as you start learning an instrument, start writing music hand in hand.” It doesn’t matter if it’s got one chord like you said. Just write it. Throw it away, but start hand-in-hand with learning an instrument how to write music, how to write a song.

Rick: Yeah. What was the first song you wrote?

Martin Barre: I did an instrumental version of it on A Way With Words, and it’s called “Long, Long Ago,” I think. I’ve found a version of it. I’ve archived all my quarter-inch tapes, and there’s me singing it. Nobody’s ever going to hear that. But yeah, this is from ’68. That’s from ’68, and it’s not good, but the music was fine. I made it into a piece of music, which worked quite nicely on that CD.

Then the next thing, I wrote the besides to “Living in the Past”, it’s called “Driving Song” I wrote that, but I didn’t write the lyrics. I wasn’t a lyricist at all. I’d write instrumental music, until all the way through Tull’s career, and then do my own albums. They’d be all instrumental. It may be one vocal thing as a gesture. Then slowly it’s changed around, where I want to write songs and lyrics and get better at it. So the whole dynamic’s changed for me, but it’s all recent.

So, I’m new as a songwriter. I’m a beginner. But, it’s exciting. It’s nice. I’d rather be a new song writer than an old song writer. A lot of old song writers, they’ve lost the fire.

Rick: Yeah. Well, I think that’s true.  I asked  Steve Postell of The Immediate Family a question. I said, “Have you ever thought about taking your music,” which are all mostly vocals, I guess, “And then making instrumental versions of them, and then putting them both into music libraries and seeing what you can get in movies?” He says, “I’ve been doing that for years. Every song I do, I do an instrumental version.” So I was wondering if you would do the same thing, which kind of gives you a double whammy, dual opportunity to get stuff in the media?

Martin Barre: I thought of it because I’ve got a lot of riffs and motifs and little instrumental… Which in my mind, stood for themselves. But then I went to some people who did library music, and they said, “Yeah, we’d be interested in getting your stuff placed.” They gave me some CDs that the in-house guy had done. He said, “Oh, here’s an idea of how we format it.” I played it and I just hated it.

It’s got a horrible acoustic guitar atmosphere music, and I just thought, I can’t be associated with that wallpaper. I never did it. I wouldn’t do it with my music, and I don’t know why. In my mind, it’s the song or an instrumental. But I did it with Tull’s music, on that same A Way With Words. I think I could more, too, with somebody else’s music. I don’t know. It’s a step backwards to me. To go back and look at what I’ve done and reinvent it, I’d rather just write a new piece of music.

Rick: What about doing something like that for flute music?

Martin Barre: Yeah. No. I think I’d rather, I just want open up a new page. There’s the book. I’m not going to go back to page two yet. I want to open up a new blank page and keep on using the brain. I love writing and I don’t want to lose that thread of writing, because that inspires me to play, and playing inspires me to write.

Rick: Okay. Throughout the years, who are maybe a few people that you would like to thank or shout out for being so supportive of you and your career

Martin Barre: My wife. Everybody says that and go, “Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.” But really. I think, especially the way we are now, you think about what you did in your past. Essentially, being a musician is one of the most selfish jobs on the planet, on a par with being a policeman, in the armed forces.

I don’t know. Just jobs that take you away from your family. In some ways you might say, if you’re… I don’t know. I don’t want to say any one career. But if you ran through something like that, you shouldn’t have a family because, you’re not giving them what they need. You’re unable to because you’re never there. You’re not there for them.

So I’ve lost the loss of time, that other people have had with their families, that I never had. At the time I wasn’t aware of it. I was just thinking I’m a musician, this is what I do. I’m out there, I’m on the road, I’ll see you in a couple of months. But that’s all lost time.

My family never complained and never said anything or prevented me from doing what I’m doing. They are truly the people that I owe everything to, because they let me do it. The other musicians I played with, I either paid them or they paid me, so it was a different relationship. It was a working relationship.

Rick: Yeah. Transactional.

Martin Barre: Yeah. So, I don’t really owe them anything. So to say that so-and-so was my mentor, if it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t be where I am now. Probably there’s an argument in that favor, but really, you give and you take.

I think everybody I’ve worked with, I hope that I’ve given them what I’ve taken from them. So it’s a nice exchange where we come out at the end with no regrets, musically, or business wise. So I can look back and tell, and I think, well, I took a lot from it but I gave it. I gave 43 years. I think they got a good deal as with me, and I got a good deal as to them. So, the accounts closed. Zero balance.

I’m not interested in that balance, but that’s the way I look at it. That we all helped each other, and they did what they did because I was doing what I was doing. And I was doing what I was doing. It’s all had a knock-on effect. But essentially, on a lifestyle on that level, it’s your family that are at the front line.

Rick: Are you working on any more albums at the moment?

Martin Barre: Well, I will. I’ve got music. I’ve written a lot of music, but I don’t want to do it right now. When I feel it’s too much backlog, I feel like I need to get on the road and get all these gigs done and dusted, and get back into the routine. I could do it, but something inside just says, “No, just hold back.” The last album, Roads Less Traveled, didn’t really get much of an announcing. So I’d still like to get back on the road and play some of those tracks that we’ve never played. So I’m on pause at the moment, but I’m still rising.

I’ll show you one before you go. (Martin walks into another room with a troupe of his guitars and I spot his beautiful Gibson ES-335.)

Rick: Okay. Oh, nice. There it is.

Martin Barre: Can you see it?

Rick: Yeah. Yeah. Gorgeous.

Martin Barre: There is the great strap, pink strap.

Rick: Yeah.

Martin Barre: ’58 Gold Top. Then on the wall, they’re all Gibsons.

Rick: Yeah, but the acoustic. The acoustic looks like an L1 or LO, with the round bottom.

Martin Barre: Yeah. A three-quarter size, yeah. Yakima.

Rick: That reminds me of a guitar Leslie West played. A Les Paul Junior.

Martin Barre: Oh yeah. Oh, I had one. Yeah. I had one. Well, I bought one because of him.

Rick: Yeah. Monster player. Wow.

Martin Barre: Yeah. God bless him. Right. I better go and make a cup of tea for everybody else, as well.

Rick: All right. Hey, thanks Martin.

Martin Barre: Well, thank you as well. It’s been fun.