Annie Haslam is the vocalist in the most popular line up of the British Rock Band Renaissance. Annie joined the band in 1971 and recorded many hugely successful albums with the band and in 1978 even enjoyed a hit single Northern Lights from the album Song For All Seasons. Renaissance split in the eighties but have since re formed for occcasional albums and touring with the band still led by Annie Haslam and guitarist Mike Dunford.
The interview below was conducted in 1999 when Annie was promoting her live album Under Brazilian Skies and also recording a new Renaissance album.
Annie Haslam:
A Renaissance Woman
During 1999 Annie Haslam was in the UK to record a new Renaissance album with Mike Dunford, John Tout and Terry Sullivan. During this time Annie also undertook a promotional tour to promote her most recent live album Under Brazilian Skies. She was eager to talk not just about the live album but also about her time with Renaissance and her hopes for the new Renaissance album. The hour we spent talking about her life and here career went very quickly and although there was much more we could talk about, we could have carried on forever, we decided a one-hour radio special would be enough. This interview was broadcast in June 1999 and has not been heard since the initial broadcast so here for the first time is the transcript of that radio programme which was dubbed "Annie Haslam Renaissance Woman"
Jon Kirkman
Here we are in May 1999 and there is a new live album from Annie Haslam Under Brazilian Skies, which is a live album. It's been out for a short time in America. How did the album come about?
Annie Haslam
I went to Brazil in 1997 and I just took my keyboard player but I was taken down there by two fans. It was incredible how it happened and what I decide to do was spend the money I got recording it and I formed my own record label White Dove records and put it out on the internet and I thought I'd do that and hope that I'd get a deal elsewhere. I could have carried on and done it through the Internet but its so much work, it's unbelievable.
So I did all that as much as I could and now it's coming out in Japan next month (June 1999) and it's out here and in Europe and in America and Canada which is great. It's done way more than I thought it would and it came out really well and I'm really proud of it.
JK
Well the fact that it has done better than you thought it would do must be pretty promising
AH
Yes it is. When I said I'd do it myself and I started doing it I thought blimey there's so much work to do but yeah it's definitely worth it.
JK
Let's go back if we may over your career and of course we have to start with Renaissance Which is a strange band in the sense that they had a huge amount of success without any of the original members. So how did you come to be involved with Renaissance?
AH
I was singing in a cabaret group called The Gentle People In the Showboat in the Strand and I'd been there for six months. That was my first professional job singing and a guy came up to me and said I've seen an advert in the Melody Maker and you're wasted here you should be in a rock band or something because your voice is different. You shouldn't be doing cabaret. So I went for the job and I got the job on New Years Day 1971 and the rest is history.
JK
It was a very slow build particularly in this country but certain parts of America really took to the band didn't they?
AH
Yeah, I think though in the early days we took a lot of flack from the music papers just because it wasn't the original band. They wouldn't look beyond that; they wouldn't look at the music. The thing was that the band never actually broke up. Somebody would leave and then somebody would be there to take their place so it never actually folded. We were managed by Miles Copeland at that time and that's how we got to America in the early days, as obviously he's American.
JK
It's been quite some time since Renaissance split up and yet there was a period around the late seventies when everyone had heard of renaissance because of the hit single (Northern Lights). That must have been quite a surprise for the band?
AH
Yes it was. In fact we were in America. We were doing an American tour and we got this phone call to say that Dave Lee Travis was playing Northern Lights and we thought "What!" you know. Then we got a phone call saying, "You're on Top Of The Pops" and it was very exciting. We were very surprised.
One of the reasons I'm over here is we have just recorded a new Renaissance album and we're hoping to get a deal and I think it would be silly not to re release that song because its still being played and everybody knows it, because the style of music is still unique. Its like it used to be but we've taken it into the nineties.
JK
The thing I feel about Renaissance is that the band are at the forefront of a lot of bands who are becoming popular again because it's a case of real musicians playing real music again.
AH
Yes it is, you're right. When we were around in the seventies there were very few female singers around. You could count them on one hand really and not much more than that. We were very unique and we're still unique. I guess my voice is part of the whole thing because it is a different voice but think if we get this CD out it stands a good chance. I think it will satisfy a lot of Renaissance fans because it does have that feel to it you know.
JK
Moving back to the mid seventies Renaissance were one of the first bands to fully utilise an orchestra.
AH
Yes that was very very exciting. It was on Ashes Are Burning actually and I remember when the orchestra came in. I remember we'd written the music and Richard Hewson did the arrangements and we didn't hear what he had done until he came in and did it and we were all stood in the control room and it was a tears in the eyes job. I was like "Oh God, that's our music with an orchestra" it was incredible. Then of course we did Scherherazade and Carnegie Hall. The Royal Albert Hall, God that was one of the highlights of my life
JK
The Royal Albert Hall gigs came out, as part of the King Biscuit Flower Hour series didn't they?
AH
I prefer those to the Carnegie Hall tapes. There's a few static things on there and feedback but its got that really exciting live sound on it and of course it has the RPO doing Prologue. A version that Louis Clark arranged and of course I went on to work with Lou on Still Life, which was another wonderful experience.
JK
Renaissance was known for these beautiful big orchestrated records and yet live you never noticed the orchestra wasn't there the band had a very big sound.
AH
Yeah, considering what you can do nowadays. I think John used a CS 80, which was this gigantic thing but the strings on that were really wonderful and any parts John couldn't play on that he was playing piano and I'd sing. My role was to become an instrument but it did sound really full considering. Now ideally I'd like two keyboard players if we go out on the road. We'd have one person that would concentrate on the grand piano parts and another concentrate on the synths.
JK
Is there a chance that Renaissance may do some live dates?
AH
If we get a deal yeah absolutely. I'm very positive we will get a deal but it's got to be somebody that will give us tour support. Its no use saying just put it out. It's got to be supported properly. We'd have to rehearse because we'd have to do some older things as well like Mother Russia and things like that so it's going to be a lot of rehearsal.
JK
When Renaissance finally called it a day in the early eighties it seemed that the band ended with a bit of a whimper was that the impression within the band as well?
AH
Yeah, it was very sad we kind of lost our way when we did an album called Azure D'or. That was the beginning of the change when we tried to come up with music that because Northern Lights was a hit we were under a little bit of pressure to come up with something that was more commercial and Azure D'or came out of that and it was ok but that was the beginning of the change. Jon Camp was very radical in his thinking. I'm trying not to be judgemental because we've all got our choices and Mickey as well went along with Jon's different ideas with regards to where we should take the music but it was so radical that we lost our unique sound. With Camera Camera and Timeline it went out the window as far as I'm concerned. They didn't do too well those albums. Azure D'or was ok but didn't do all that much and then Jon left and we kept going to America and doing these small tours and we kept writing stuff but it wasn't right we'd lost it because the best music at that time was the combination of Terry, John Tout, Jon Camp me and Mick. It was magic you know and once John and Terry had left in 1980 everything was different. It was never the same again
JK
Those two albums you mentioned, Camera Camera and Timeline were radically different. I remember hearing them and thinking it was a totally different band.
AH
I know. It was a big mistake
JK
You then moved on and recorded a solo album. Was that strange doing a solo album as opposed to a band project although you had done a solo album in the seventies with Roy Wood entitled Annie In Wonderland.
AH
Yes that was very useful to me because I learnt a lot from Roy. Different techniques and stuff, which I still use and when I do them I still, think of Roy (Laughs). That was an incredible experience to work with him. You've heard the album and its Roy; it could be nobody else really (Laughs) That happened because at that time John Tout was sick for two or three months and that was the ideal time to do a solo album.
The next one was Still Life and that came about when I was doing the housework one day and Air On A G String came on and I started making up words. At that point I wasn't a writer of lyrics and I was just messing around and I called up Betty (Thatcher) and I said why don't we see if we can do an album of classical pieces and you write the words and that's when she said I'll call Lou. So she called Lou Clark and he put the money up for it and we went in and did it with the Royal Philharmonic, which was amazing.
JK
There was a time when there were almost three Renaissance bands on the go. There was the original Renaissance band that was operating under the name Illusion then there was Annie Haslam's Renaissance and Renaissance with Mick Dunford and Stephanie Adlington. Were you aware of these other bands?
AH
Well I knew the Illusion thing was happening. The reason I called mine Annie Haslam's Renaissance well it was probably not a very good move but the reason I did it was because I'd had breast cancer and I thought it was my re birth so I'd use that in the double meaning of the word. Michael's band I was very upset with the Other Woman thing coming out because people were buying it and thought it was me. There was nothing to say on the cover that it wasn't me. He could have called it Michael Dunford's Renaissance at least people would know what it was and we had a bit of an argument over that but there's nothing you can do now its done. She's got a lovely voice.
JK
It was a totally different sound particularly the voice that sounds more suited to the stage
AH
She's very good at it. She was classically trained I believe
JK
But it wasn't the same
AH
No it wasn't the same.
JK
Mike Dunford has written a stage adaptation of Scherherazade will you be working on that at all?
AH
It's done, in fact they've got the backers and all the money's in place but they're just working on the re writes at the moment. They were hoping to finish it to be on the stage this year but its probably going to be the spring now. I'm not in it. I was asked to be in the showcase last year and I turned it down because I had too many other things of my own to do and its not me. I don't want to be on the stage
JK
Your latest album Under Brazilian Skies has some interesting cover versions on it. Nature Boy I believe you performed because it was a song your dad used to sing to you but there is another famous song on here Mike Oldfield's Moonlight Shadow. Why did you decide to do that?
AH
Well I did that on my self-titled album that came out on Epic records which is an album I'm quite proud of because everyone said I'd never do it. I didn't have a manager when I went solo and I went to America and I toured and contacted everybody that I'd ever met in the music business and used all my contacts until I got a record deal and I got it myself without a manager. Unfortunately it was at a time when Sony was changing over and Epic was changing around and I got lost in the shuffle but you've been able to buy it for the last ten years in America and it came out in Japan but it never came out over here so I'm trying to work on getting that released.
Anyway the story is the guy Malcolm Caplin who signed me up like a lot of people thought that it was me singing on Moonlight Shadow rather than Maggie Reilly and he said I'd love to hear you do that song so that's why we did it.
© Jon Kirkman 1998 and 2011
Buy Annie Haslam CDs and DVDs direcly from the Gonzo Website
http://www.gonzomultimedia.co.uk/artists/6410/Annie%20Haslam
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