Steve Winwood: English Soul

# Keep on running

# Running from my arms... #

One of the true masters of British rock'n'roll,

Steve Winwood scored his first number one as a teenage prodigy

with the Spencer Davis Group.

To see him singing the way he sang, seemed to me to be impossible.

I was stunned.

# Make me feel so bad... #

It's wonderful. This guy sounds black!

Everything I wanted!

And wasn't achieving!

# Keep on running... #

By the time he was 20, Winwood turned his back on pop fame

and formed Traffic,

who famously got it together in the country.

# Dear Mr Fantasy

# Play us a tune... #

I think living together - there's no substitute for that.

You'll grow together as a musical group.

When Steve stepped into Traffic,

they took it to a new level.

Mind-expanding kind of lyrics.

It was a great experience.

# They've hired men with their sharp pitchforks... #

Traffic defined the '70s rock album.

I love that thing with Traffic mixing all these different types of music.

There was jazz, there was folk, there was rock and there was soul, R'n'B.

Very English sounding, I think.

# Think about it... #

In the '80s, Winwood became a chart-topping superstar

more successful than ever.

# ..in the stars above... #

He jumped into the '80s and made his mark as a new pop star,

recreating himself.

Now in his 60s, Winwood's come full circle,

doing what he does best - playing and singing his heart out.

# Every nation

# But at times we do

# Forget about them. #

CHURCH ORGAN PLAYS

I love the sound of the organ and the harmonies,

the timbres of the pipes.

CHURCH ORGAN PLAYS

When I used to sneak a few plays at St John's Perry Bar

when I was a choirboy,

I think somehow that sort of got engrained.

CHURCH ORGAN PLAYS

I like to try and include elements like plainsong

and older church melodies to make

English soul music,

whether it's Brit rock or ancient choral music.

HE PLAYS FINAL NOTE AND STOPS

I was born in Birmingham

in Handsworth.

My mother and father then moved right out

to a suburb of Birmingham called Kingstanding,

which was really Warwickshire at the time.

It was right on the edge of the expansion of

the '30s housing developments.

At the back of where I lived were

fields, farms,

duck ponds and woods.

We were just told to go outside and play.

We would explore wonderful old farms

and fields and quarries,

all sorts of things.

Yeah. We used to have a good time.

My father was a semi-professional musician.

He'd left school at about 14.

He was mainly a saxophone and clarinet player.

And then he worked in the big heavy industry

foundries and then

worked as a musician as well.

There were always instruments in the house

so it was a very natural thing that I would be

expected that I should be able to carry a bit of a tune.

I was really motivated

by my tiny brother,

who I could immediately see

had some fantastic musical intuition.

So I thought, "I've got to get going here because

"I've got to keep up with him."

So I got involved in playing the guitar.

Of course, the minute he got a guitar I decided I wanted a guitar as well,

like most little brothers.

"If he's got one, I want one as well."

Steve had never touched my guitar before

and all of a sudden he said, "Hang on a minute.

"Why don't you try it like this?"

He picked up my guitar and he just did it.

In no time at all,

he'd overtaken me by miles.

BIG BAND MUSIC PLAYS

The Winwood brothers often joined their father Lawrence's dance band

and were given a showcase.

As the '50s came in and young people would come,

my dad used to get us along to play the rock.

ROCK'N'ROLL MUSIC PLAYS

Steve would play all the Duane Eddy kind of things

and I'd back him up and, of course, they'd go down an absolute storm.

This tiny little chap would stand up in this dance hall

and play this great new rock'n'roll.

When my brother was about 16 or 17,

he had a band with friends at school

that played this kind of Dixieland New Orleans jazz.

I begged them to let me play with them.

Of course, 17-year-olds didn't really want an 11-year-old

hanging around with them

But they let me play and then, I think, probably when I played,

they thought, "Well, he's not bad."

# Georgia... #

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

# Oh, Georgia... #

Just about when Steve's voice was breaking,

somebody somewhere played a Ray Charles record.

And that was the key for Steve.

Just at the moment when his voice changed.

# Keeps Georgia on my mind... #

He became my model. The minute I heard that,

I wanted to try and sing as much like Ray Charles as I could.

# I said Georgia, no, no

# Georgia, yeah

# A song for you

# Comes as sweet and clear

# As the moonlight through the pines... #

The thing that always sticks about Steve is seeing him do

Georgia On My Mind.

To see him singing the way he sang,

seemed to me to be impossible,

with the amount of experience he would have had as a human being.

And so... I was stunned.

# Georgia on my mind... #

This young white boy playing that with all the power that

Ray Charles would bring to it

was...

..was awe-inspiring.

# Keeps Geo-rgia

# On my mind. #

So now I had a little brother who

could play the guitar better than any of us,

he could play the piano better than any of us,

and now we had to bring him out the front cos he could sing

better than any of us!

So he became quiet useful, really!

HE LAUGHS

The vibrant Birmingham music scene

was made up of young bands hooked on American rhythm and blues

and soul music,

all wanting to escape what life otherwise had in store for them.

Birmingham was a very different place back then.

It was a very industrial city.

And with pretty tough people.

You were factory fodder.

An amazing load of bands came out of that.

It was a way out of going into a factory.

I was making £15 a week - twice as much as my dad made in the factory.

# I'm sitting here thinking

# About nothing, baby on my mind... #

We were probably playing somewhere near the Birmingham University,

and Spencer Davis was in the audience.

He was ten years older than Steve,

and five years older than me,

so he was a real bloke.

He'd been there and done it all.

He sat in and played with us.

# Just one, pick one good reason

# You treat your daddy so unkind... #

When we played together, we identified something in each other

that would make

the music that we were playing just that much more rich,

a more urban, Chicago type of blues.

# Oh, baby, baby

# Don't you do that thing to me... #

Spencer was the main singer, really.

And Steve was the lead guitarist.

Spencer knew a very good drummer, Pete York.

So I switched to bass and then, as we realised

how good Steve was with his singing,

he more and more took over as being the singer.

I went to see him at a place called The Whiskey, in Birmingham.

It was a blues club,

which they did quite regularly then.

I think he was 15 and I was blown away.

# I love the way she walks

# The way she walks

# I love the way she talks... #

We'd all heard about him.

There was this black kid. He sounded black.

He played like black.

And he was a white kid from Birmingham.

Where did that come from?

There was something magical about him.

The first time I got to see him live,

having heard about him,

was at The Twisted Wheel in Manchester.

I made a bookmark in my head that one day

I would love to play with him.

# She never makes me cry

# Yeah, yeah, yeah

# She's my... #

But Steve was still at school.

Things weren't really going too well then with my school work.

HE BLOWS WHISTLE

People at school - teachers, headmaster -

would read reviews

and see where I was playing.

And then teachers suggested to me that it would probably be

just as well if I didn't come to school.

From then on, I was a professional musician.

In 1964, Chris Blackwell, future founder of Island Records,

Steve's label for the next 25 years,

became the group's manager and got them a record deal.

I hadn't heard the Spencer Davis Group before.

What a great band!

And that kid!

He is amazing!

# You got dimples in your jaw

# You got dimples in your jaw

# You got dimples in your jaw

# You're my babe I got my eyes on you... #

I was staggered by his performance and his voice

and his playing and everything.

Particularly his voice because at that young age,

I just thought, "Oh dear, when he does get to London,

"It's all over for a whole bunch of us!"

# Oh, I'd love to see you switch

# You're my baby... #

This was mainly blues but I very quickly realised that

I had to bring something else

into the music Spencer Davis group were playing.

We attempted to do that with Keep On Running.

# Do, do, do, do-do, do-do... #

They made great sounds. They had a great bass player, Muff Winwood.

# Keep on running

# Keep on hiding

# One fine day I'm gonna be the one

# To make you understand

# Oh, yeah

# I'm gonna be your man

# Hey... #

When we had our number one with Keep On Running,

Steve was a real pop star.

The older blues fans were muscled out

by a new wave of teenage girls screaming.

Steve had this particular furry jacket on that he like to wear.

To our horror, the girls in the audience

all leaped on stage and started ripping chunks of the fur

out of his coat.

I don't think he was too impressed by being a teenybop idol.

Hey! Come on!

Keep On Running, a song written by Jamaican singer Jackie Edwards,

knocked The Beatles' Day Tripper off the number one spot

in January 1966.

Steve was just 17 years old.

When we had our hit with Keep On Running,

there was money to be spent on other things.

So Steve bought his first Hammond organ.

Now, all of a sudden, he COULD be Ray Charles.

You have to...

ORGAN WHIRS

That's everything turning over.

It's not actually switched on yet.

And then...

You switch it on,

and you let go...

SWITCH CLICKS

..of that and it should

now be working.

Let's see if it is.

He then started to use the Hammond organ in spots

with the Spencer Davis Group

and we could have a far more interesting sound -

that jazzy feel of things was coming through

into our, kind of, R&B.

HE PLAYS ORGAN

# Well, my temperature is rising and my feet off the floor

# Greedy people rocking cos they want some more

# Let me in

# Don't know what you got

# But you better take it easy

# Cos the place is on fire now

# I'm so glad we made it

# So glad we made it

# Gimme some lovin'

# Gimme some lovin'

# Gimme some lovin'... #

HE PLAYS "GIMME SOME LOVIN'"

# The gh-gh-gh-gh-ghost

# Goes gear! #

We'd had two or three number one hit singles,

and like you do, you get offers to do

bits in movies and stuff.

# I gave you my heart

# Right from the start, yeah yeah

# I gave you my heart

# Now you're tearing it apart... #

Nicholas Parsons was one of the er...

was one of the great actors in that. He was fantastic, he was great fun.

And I think he played our manager.

Come on, then. To the boat!

Oof! Help... Aagh!

Hey...

Hey. Come on - to the boat!

Who'd manage a group?!

He was charming as he could be

when we made the film, but...

we shouldn't really have been making that film.

I'll give you...

I take a rather cynical view of it, and I think it's rather typical of

the way music gets driven into some kind of commercial/popular way

in order to generate revenue.

And I mean to be honest, I've suffered a bit from that

the whole of my career.

Going along with things like that, where

had I been more on the ball,

I would have not done it. You know.

If anything was going to cause the break-up of The Spencer Davis Group -

which we were beginning to talk about -

this movie was the final nail in the coffin!

There was that danger with Steve that maybe he'd...

peaked at the age of 18, and nothing much more was going to happen.

The Spencer Davis Group had just gone up a notch,

just had two big hits in America,

with Gimme Some Lovin' and I'm A Man,

and then...leaving.

If you viewed it as a career

with a revenue stream,

you'd view it as some kind of ridiculous move.

But if you look at the music,

it was an obvious move.

Well, let's face it, folks - it had to end somewhere.

1282, take 1 - The End.

# Ahhhh-ahhh

# Ahhhh...

# Do yourself a favour

# Wake up to your mind... #

1966 saw huge changes in the music scene,

with many bands breaking free from the tyranny of the pop charts

to assert their creative independence.

The cream of the emerging British rock'n'roll elite hung out together,

and jammed in late-night London clubs

like the Speakeasy and the Bag O'Nails.

Steve had recently moved to London.

When I moved down to London, Eric was living in a flat in Soho

and had a group of friends with him,

and they used to listen to stuff and...

introduced me, brought me into his fold.

I remember having conversations with Steve about

getting together one day.

And I think, at the point where I was ready to leave John Mayall,

he at that time was forming Traffic.

# So you think you're having good times

# With the boy that you just met... #

Steve formed Traffic with three friends he had bonded with over jam sessions

at an after-hours club back in Birmingham -

flute and sax player Chris Wood,

drummer Jim Capaldi,

and guitarist and sitar player Dave Mason.

# ..because it's just a paper sun... #

Traffic was really about playing with his mates.

I remember him telling me about the philosophy behind that,

which was music being made in a very unskilled way.

It was important that the music be made from feeling, not necessarily from technique.

# Oh, paper sun... #

Traffic's 1967 debut single, Paper Sun,

was a top five hit.

For all its psychedelic dreaminess,

the song still conformed to pop's three-minute format.

But this, and much else besides,

was about to change.

There was a definite change in Steve

the moment that Traffic began.

He really became a member of the sort of...

'60s flower hippy generation.

We felt that music was part of our lives,

and that was what we wanted to do to the exclusion of everything else.

It was more important that we lived together

and made the music.

Traffic decided to live AND work as a collective.

The band moved to a remote cottage in Berkshire,

isolating themselves from the scene and the music business

to get it together in the country.

I've never been back here since I left in...

1969.

These trees have grown up, I don't think they were even planted.

Goodness me, it looks very...

..tidy and fancy compared to what it used to be.

There was nothing there.

It was just rolling downs as far as you could see,

and this one brick house sitting out in the middle of nowhere.

We just ate when we wanted to eat, we woke up when we wanted to wake up,

and we played when we wanted to play.

We built a big concrete stage out in the front of it,

and in summer we'd just set up there.

You know - stack some Marshalls and shit, and PAs...

Blast!

MUSIC: Intro to "Heaven Is In Your Mind"

# Ohhh... #

It was derelict, and it was empty...

So we painted it.

It was just mattresses on the floor, really.

Probably you would say it was a bit squalid, yes.

But I love the idea of that at a certain age -

just four guys get together

and all they do day and night is just play music.

Get stoned and play music. What else could be better, really?

# I'm looking for a girl who has no face

# She has no name

# Or number... #

There was many times when all they did all day was smoke dope.

And that gave them a much different attitude.

I used to smoke weed... and I probably smoked too much weed.

In and out of a dope haze, I would say.

Times out of it - I mean, out of a dope haze -

and times IN a dope haze. Yes, probably drifting in and out.

They said, "You must come down." Now, I'm a city boy,

and it was a...quite a revelation.

And there it was. It was just fantastic. Just heaven.

The middle of nowhere...

Freedom.

It was just a magical time.

There was beautiful summers then as well, I don't know if it was acid or if they were...

the sun was out a lot! You know.

There was an awakening.

That's really...

We were all really young, very...

naive, I suppose.

And inexperienced. But it nevertheless was...

I wish it was still like that.

I really mean that.

Making music is really the memories that I have about this place.

'We somehow felt that there was something

'in the landscape that had some meaning to our music and...

'that it contributed something.

'And so after we would explore these landscapes,

'we'd then go back and immediately play,

'and find that in some way this was affecting us, and affecting our minds

'and affecting the music we were playing.'

# To feel free... #

Chris was at art college,

and I think he was also at the Royal Academy, so he was a very good artist.

But he was passionate about music.

He wanted to transfer from art to painting in music.

He used to study

maps and charts and...

watch birds...

He brought to us music that we'd never heard before,

from Japanese classical music to obscure jazz,

Yorkshire folk songs...

to actually help us to define the music we were making.

In a way he was the kind of spiritual leader.

Along with that went,

erm...

..recreational drug-taking.

JANGLING GUITARS

GUITARS FADE INTO SITAR

# He's thinking that work is all a big joke

# While he looks in the gutter for something to smoke... #

SITAR PLAYS

# Day in the city Oh, what a pity

# I could be in Berkshire where the poppies are so, so pretty

# I could be in Berkshire where the poppies were so pretty

# I wish that I was there

# I wanna make it out of there. #

We really had the notion that we could change the world,

by what we did and what we thought and how we did it.

And one of the things was to be open and be friendly to other people.

You know - we all felt that it was good to give other people a good time.

You know. Dear Mr Fantasy, sing me a song!

Make everybody happy.

# Dear Mr Fantasy, play us a tune

# Something to make us all happy

# Do anything, take us out of this gloom

# Sing a song, play guitar

# Make it snappy. #

As part of Traffic's very free, collaborative methods,

Jim Capaldi, the group's drummer,

wrote many of the band's lyrics.

Jim was half-gypsy, half-pirate

from Worcestershire, from an Italian family.

Jim would jot a few words down on paper,

we would go and play - jam -

and I would stand these bits of paper up on top of the organ or in front of the guitar,

and then whenever it felt that it was right, I would sing

what was written down on the piece of paper.

# Something to make us all happy... #

He did a little sketch next to the words he wrote,

and so we used that sketch for a character on the front of the album.

ORIGINAL RECORD: # Dear Mr Fantasy, play us a tune... #

# Something to make us all happy

# Do anything

# Take us out of this gloom

# Sing a song, play guitar

# Make it snappy. #

These were my very good friends that I

lived here with, you know...

And they're all gone. You know. So of course it's er...

it's a sort of bittersweet,

you know, return to

remembering all these good times with friends who are no longer with us.

More bittersweet than I had... imagined it would be.

# Mmmmm-mm...

# Oh-oh, oh-oh, ohhh... #

We kind of deliberately wanted to remove ourselves from

anything that was pop. We really didn't want to be making pop music.

But not everyone in the band believed as wholeheartedly as Steve

in Traffic's organic and collaborative method of songwriting.

I came up with this goofy song called Hole In My Shoe...

# ..was looking at me, from a bubblegum tree... #

Hole In My Shoe, Traffic's second single, reached number three.

In Europe at least, it remains perhaps their best-known tune.

# Letting in water... #

Suddenly I'm writing the hit record, and I'm singing it.

And now this is Traffic's big first hit, a big hit.

But the other members of the group were far less enthusiastic.

They hated it.

And for me it was like,

"Well, I understand it's not exactly the kind of song I want to keep writing either,

"it's just my first attempt, guys."

He was off on another road to us. Which was fine,

but the fact remained, it wasn't the same route that we were going.

It just became those three and me.

He wanted to write completely alone,

and get us as a band to play his composition,

so, we wrestled with that, and then, really, kicked Dave out of the band,

because it was completely opposite to what Traffic had ever wanted to do.

# Seems I've got to have a change of scene... #

Nonetheless, Dave returned for Traffic's self-titled second album.

He came in, sort of as a guest to play a few songs,

but he never really joined the group.

No, Dave Mason, he was nothing more than an invited guest.

I mean, that's how he captured me.

We made the album, you know, what are we going to put out for a single?

Well, we're going to put Feelin' Alright as the single.

# You feelin' all right?

# I'm not feelin' too good myself... #

Now my songs were being picked as the singles again.

I guess that created some animosity somewhere.

The only thing I can think of is jealousy, but why?

With guys so enormously talented, it's ridiculous.

There was a band meeting, and,

"OK, what's going on, guys?" "Well, basically, man,

"we don't like the way you sing or play or write, or do anything.

"We just want you out of the band."

And that's how it ended.

Now a trio, in 1968, Traffic embarked on their first US tour.

We were three English lads from rural Worcestershire,

just landing in San Francisco,

and were met by The Grateful Dead, off the plane.

I vaguely remember going to the airport, picking the guys up,

bringing them back to our place in the city.

You know, it was just sort of a welcome gesture, you know?

"Here, have a little LSD, and let's wig out a little bit."

And they were game, which we pretty much figured they would be.

# See that girl barefooting along

# Whistling and singing She's a-carrying on... #

The Grateful Dead were spearheading the San Francisco acid underground.

They also lived and played together,

though, in their case, at 710 Ashbury,

in the heart of the flowering Haight-Ashbury scene.

It takes commitment to form a band like The Grateful Dead, or like Traffic.

I think, living together, there's no substitute for that.

They were an improvisational band, like The Grateful Dead were.

They were kindred spirits, very much so.

Traffic was heading into sacred dimension land.

Traffic was playing from the heart, and from the gut.

They were very inspirational to us as a band, as well,

because we were accepted as part of that scene,

and because of the way the trio was set up,

it was very easy to improvise.

So we went on without really knowing what we were going to play.

There were so many doors you could go through musically in Traffic.

They left a lot to the imagination, that's what made it a great band.

It was the same thing when Ginger and Eric came over,

you know, when Cream came over.

That particular bubble had burst with Cream.

Being based on virtuosity didn't work, because we all just ended up jamming on our own.

And I thought again of Steve.

This time, Eric was successful in luring Steve away from Traffic.

It was felt by Jim and Chris that there was an element of disloyalty on my part.

They're probably right,

but I thought that I should be free to make music in whatever way I wanted to.

I felt that was a right that I should have,

so, leaving one band and going with another was just part of those freedoms at the time.

I thought we could meet somewhere in the middle of what he'd been trying to do with Traffic,

with the unskilled labour mates kind of experiment,

and the virtuosity experiment that we'd tried with Cream.

If we started with the two of us,

then we could put a band around that.

While we were doing that one night, there was a knock at the door, and there was Ginger.

DRUM SOLO

You know, and he just sort of came in, and made himself a cup of tea.

I do remember feeling a sense of disappointment.

I thought Ginger was a great player,

but, obviously, he has a certain style.

God bless him, I love Ginger dearly, but he did represent something that I was trying to leave behind.

The group was completed with bassist Rick Gretch.

Blind Faith, quite incredibly, gave their debut performance in front of 20,000 people,

at a free concert in London's Hyde Park.

It was a great idea. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon, thousands of people there.

APPLAUSE

# It's already written that today will be one to remember

# The feeling's the same

# As being outside of the law... #

It's very easy to make things bigger and louder,

it's much harder, as the audiences get bigger,

to try and make your music smaller,

and draw the people in.

It's much more tricky than just straight ahead rock blues,

which a lot of the audiences who went to see us were actually looking for.

# Had to cry today... #

We were labelled as being the first supergroup, someone came up with that.

# ..I missed you there... #

I thought the music flew on its merit.

It didn't have anything to do with hype, or personalities,

and so, I thought supergroup was the absolute opposite of that.

It's all based on everybody's individual fame and achievement up until that point,

and I thought, "Well, here we are again. I'm in Cream, basically."

And the problem then was,

we were rushed into a situation we weren't ready for,

a big world tour.

I'd probably, emotionally, started to quit the band anyway.

# Come down off your throne

# And leave your body alone

# Somebody hold the key... #

I saw them once.

They were very disappointing, yeah.

For me, you know, considering who was up there.

Blind Faith was a failure, in my estimation.

It never became a band. It never got a group mind.

It never became more than the individuals.

# Cos I'm wasted and I can't find my way home... #

We should have carried on. Steve and I needed more time.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Thank you.

The one regret I would have is what effect it would have had on Steve,

because I think he invested a lot of himself into that project,

much more than I did. And, you know, there was a lot of pressure on him to be the front man,

to be the writer,

and I'm sad and ashamed to a certain extent that I walked away from it.

Picking himself up after Blind Faith,

Steve delved deep into the soul of the English countryside.

# There were three men

# Came out of the west

# Their fortunes for to try

# And these three men made a solemn vow

# John Barleycorn must die... #

I felt I still had a lot of music in me.

# ..harrowed him in... #

I embarked on the beginnings of a solo record,

but I still felt that what Traffic had began,

trying to put together all these different musical elements,

was still very important,

and Jim Capaldi and Chris Wood were the people that could help me to do this,

and it became the album, John Barleycorn.

I love that thing with Traffic,

mixing all these different types of music.

There was jazz, there was folk, rock, soul, R&B,

then kind of blending it all up, and I thought that was a really amazing thing, really.

Very, very English-sounding, I think.

You've also got his fantastic bluesy voice on top of it,

which is a great blender.

Of course, the title track of John Barleycorn

was an English folk song,

which was sometimes called The Passion Of The Corn,

and it's a parallel with the passion of Christ,

and the rural cycle.

The winter, the land being dormant,

and then the corn growing, rising,

being cut off, being ground between stones,

and being mistreated...

..eventually rising again,

in the form of alcohol, or bread.

And it was called, historically, The Passion Of The Corn.

# The huntsman, he can't hunt the fox

# Nor so loudly to blow his horn

# The tinker, he can't mend kettle nor pots

# Without a little barleycorn. #

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Through the early 1970s,

Traffic made a series of LPs that put them at the heart of the newly-dominant rock album culture.

# Sometimes I feel so uninspired

# Sometimes I feel like giving up... #

With Traffic's success in America now eclipsing their popularity at home,

the band embarked on another long US tour.

# Sometimes I feel like I've had enough

# Sometimes you feel like you've been hired

# Sometimes you feel like you've been bought... #

I was ill during the tour,

and.. But getting through it.

But, yeah. And I kept visiting various doctors,

who said I was just a bit run down, or something like that,

and no-one could really diagnose it.

Eventually, he was so ill he was sent back home from tour,

and went to bed that night,

and his appendix blew.

Dr Rowland, who still lives in the village here,

he smiled slightly, and said,

"Ah. What you've got is peritonitis.

"I think we'll call this man in Cheltenham,

"and we'll get you down to the hospital straight away."

He was, you know, like a skeleton,

and there was wires all over him, and machines all round him.

I think that the time in hospital certainly made him reflect on what his life had been about,

and how he was going to move onwards.

I suppose it was growing up, really,

albeit a bit late, growing up.

A late developer.

After the Traffic communal experiment had come to an end,

Steve had moved to rural Gloucestershire.

'I then thought, "Well, it's time for me to start experiencing

'"more of the world outside of music."'

What you see here is pretty much all grassland,

which is typical Cotswold country.

We have cattle, sheep,

erm, and we grow mainly wheat barley,

and oilseed rape.

'The countryside and rural events

'were very much part of my discovering the world outside of music.

I was actually getting to know people

who had no idea who Steve Winwood the musician was,

which was, in a way, very refreshing.

I had never heard of Steve Winwood or Traffic.

I'm not a rock lover, as such.

Well, he's matured, shall I say, into a country squire.

He's got, sort of, two, er, existences -

music, when he plays to all the masses and that,

and a lovely retreat, where he can walk his dogs.

Traffic had split up

and Steve's first solo LP sold disappointingly.

The music world beyond Steve's estate was changing.

Punk rock was emerging,

which was directed

right at the likes of me.

And of course,

I didn't realise how...

cyclical music was going to be, then.

I was thinking this was the end, you know.

"I'm finished now."

He had already lived two lifetimes by the time I met him.

I'd sussed a little bit of what, you know, he was going through -

a transformation.

Leaving one thing and going to another.

Sort of new direction. And I could feel that, you know.

We would go for long walks

through the countryside.

And then, just...

The words started writing themselves out of the landscape.

There was a lot at stake.

You know, I was very aware that this was

a bit of a make-or-break project with Will Jennings.

Stand up in a clear blue morning,

until you see what can be.

Alone in a cold day dawning.

This affirmation - while you see a chance, take it,

cos it's all on you,

and everything lies before you.

# Stand up in a clear blue morning

# Until you see

# What can be

# Alone in a cold day dawning

# Are you still free?

# Can you be? #

While You See A Chance was a real departure.

I could feel Steve just going into the future.

It's a lot of rebirth in that song.

All but unrecognisable as the Steve Winwood of the '60s and '70s,

While You See A Chance and the 1981 album Arc Of A Diver

both went Top Ten.

I was proud of Steve for doing that. I thought it was marvellous

that he'd lifted himself out of that slough of despond

of the late '70s, when things did look a bit gloomy

and were going downhill.

So it was marvellous that he jumped into the '80s

and made his mark as a new pop star. He was recreating himself.

# While you see a chance, take it

# Find romance, fake it

# Because it's all

# On you. #

Real change came about with Arc Of A Diver,

because I played everything,

wrote it, produced, engineered.

I literally did everything on that record.

The whole grammar of music was changing in the 1980s.

Steve's solo career was positioned

to capture the emerging adult-orientated rock audience.

To seal the deal,

a top producer was brought in.

The one thing I did ask him to do -

"Let's make this record in New York,"

to take Steve out of Gloucestershire and out of that comfortable...

country-gentleman setting,

and...and plop him down on the streets of New York.

Cos there's an energy that you get from the city.

# Think about it

# There must be higher love

# Down in the heart or hidden in the stars above... #

To promote the chart-topping single Higher Love,

Steve, now in his late 30s,

took steps he'd never have contemplated in his laid-back youth,

not least embracing the new MTV video culture.

-TREVOR BURTON:

-I WAS surprised to see him dancing.

TREVOR CHUCKLES

He was wearing a suit,

and just singing and dancing.

I thought, "That was a one-off!"

It was very much an '80s production sound on it.

As far as the music's concerned, I was still combining

bits of world music with jazz and rock and folk.

MTV, to me, was a sort of necessity,

you know, of the industry - so I was led to believe,

and so I was constantly being told.

So, that was... That was fine by me.

Well, I mean, I went along with it, I should say.

I don't know how fine it was, but I went along with it.

-MUFF WINWOOD:

-I remember saying to him, you know,

"You can't be a star unless you do these things.

"You've got to do the TV shoots and the interviews."

Hi! I'm Steve Winwood.

I'm glad to be here on Top Pop

and I hope you like my new single, Night Train.

Steve Winwood of the '80s

kind of fitted the '80s.

Er, I'm not sure it fitted HIM.

To me, it looked uncomfortable,

cos I knew that he would be struggling with it.

But it was a very lucrative period for him.

Going Top Ten on both sides of the Atlantic,

the 1987 album Back In The High Life

received no less than three Grammy awards.

# It's so hard to just slow down

# So don't be surprised to see me

# Back in the bright part of town

# I'll be back in the high life again

# All the doors I closed one time

# Will open up again... #

But while Steve had made his own luck in the '80s,

another of his Traffic cohorts had not fared so well.

He always had a thing about Traffic and wanted it to be Traffic forever.

So when Traffic actually did finish,

it was quite a crushing blow to him.

Er...

And something from which he didn't appear to recover.

In 1987, Chris Wood died of liver failure.

I was very close to Chris,

and I was very affected by his death,

and, er, it was a very tragic loss

and a great loss.

This kind of music has always had a tie-up with heavy drug taking,

and it, er...

takes its toll.

Steve, and Traffic drummer Jim Capaldi,

decided to go out on one last great Traffic jam.

-Ready for the gig?

-Yeah, we're ready.

See you later.

Traffic began to gain meaning, somehow,

as time went on.

It seemed to be getting MORE valuable.

It was obvious that, you know,

Jim Capaldi and I had this strong bond.

Suddenly thought, "Just you and me ARE Traffic now."

"There's no longer Chris."

Chris was really...

He was... He was important in what he was as a person -

he was pure...artist.

# And the sound that you're hearing

# Is only the sound

# Of the low spark of high-heeled boys... #

Great reunion.

But kind of nostalgic.

You know, and you can never get back 1967.

They were slick in 1994,

and in 1967 they were kind of...Traffic.

# ..a new car

# From the profit he's made on your dreams

# But today you just read... #

Traffic's enduring legacy was underlined in 2004,

when the band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame.

Even original member Dave Mason was invited.

# ..was the low spark of high-heeled boys. #

A few months later, Jim Capaldi succumbed to stomach cancer.

I was very glad to have had that last...fling of Traffic.

And it was great that it happened before Jim's untimely death.

It was very fitting.

Since that last great jam,

Steve's music has increasingly recaptured the organic feel

of Traffic's creative methods.

Well, I made a decision

to create a different kind of a band -

a kind of band I'd never really had before.

# Well, the world's

# A perfect place... #

It was based, really, on a kind of '60s organ trio,

but then we added percussion and a horn player.

# ..at times we do

# Forget about them... #

And the two albums we've made have been

based on the live music that we've played together.

It's been a very fulfilling time.

But one big question mark has remained in Steve's career...

last left hanging 30 years ago.

It felt like we had never really resolved what we'd started.

It just was waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting

all down the years, until now.

And me pulling out of Blind Faith

was an act of infidelity, in a way.

And over the years, you know, we've repaired that

and we've become very good pals.

Joining forces for a series of concerts,

Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood's career-long attempts

to form a partnership have finally found a home.

# It's already written

# That today will be one to remember... #

The decision was made very early on

it wasn't going to be a Blind Faith reunion.

Eric, now, is a great singer and a great band leader.

and he never did any of that in Blind Faith.

-ERIC CLAPTON:

-Still feels like it's fresh. It's very creative.

And he's great to be around. He's great to play with.

Oh, it was great to see Clapton and Winwood.

You know, it's the dream team, you know.

Steve was shining bright and I was so proud of him.

It was glorious.

Eric had a... You know, he had to keep up.

Yeah, no kidding.

-CHRIS WELCH:

-It sums up all that they wanted to do, all those years.

Everything's floated away - all the problems, all the personalities,

all the things that interfere with music making.

It's a wonderful, heart-warming thing to see, I think,

and it's made it all worthwhile.

-ERIC CLAPTON:

-There are very few of us left

who were weaned in the same way.

You know, that grew up making our bones in the clubs,

seven days a week, learning how to play the hard way.

You have to be a musician, in a way, to understand how important he is.

When people look back at what's gone on over the last -

you know - 50, 60 years,

the people that will stand out will be people like Steve.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

-TREVOR BURTON:

-It wasn't that we looked up to him,

but we admired him a lot, for being something special.

He hasn't changed at all.

No, he's just...the same Steve.

Bit older, bit wiser, as we all are, you know.

But, er...we're still here, and that's the main thing.

-MUFF WINWOOD:

-There's no outside pressure any more -

except paying the bills, I suppose -

on how he runs his career any more.

There might be a six-month period where he's doing nothing and, er,

I phone him and where is he? In the studio.

He's always, always playing.

I am semi-retired,

in as much as I've got the luxury

of being able to pick and choose a bit what I do.

But in terms of where I want to go musically,

that, I think, is an ongoing quest,

and it's something that will never really be resolved.

Headless Horseman, you see.

That's what Traffic used to call its sound.

# Well, I turned around

# And 40,000 headmen hit the dirt

# Firing 20 shotguns each

# And man, it really hurt

# But luckily for me

# They had to stop and then reload

# And by the time they'd done that Heading down the road... #

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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# Heading down the road. #