Article from Intro magazine: 23rd September 1967
Traffic: A New Concept of Pop Music 1967: Home of Stevie Winwood and the Traffic, with no heat, light and gas, nothing could be further from the glitter of the pop scene. But this cottage, tucked away in the Berkshire countryside, is the group’s think-in, play-in, creative retreat, where work comes first.
Why the journey into the wilderness? Security fears about pop espionage? No, says Stevie, one-time Birmingham boy and organist-vocalist with Spencer Davis until six months ago.
Stevie quit the Davis group last April and with James Capaldi, Dave Mason and Chris Wood (all four were friends at school) set to, developing a whole new concept of pop: “live” sound every bit as good as that made in a recording studio.
Rehearsals for the group’s British tour which begins on October 4 produced quiet and reflective stuff, an expression of their personalities, but gradually grew into a big, all-embracing sound.
Traffic: A New Concept of Pop Music 1967
“Sound must be happy and convey something about life. We are trying to make an impression on people; it’s the mood—it’s not easy to describe it in words, only music will do that properly,” says James.(His face is the sort that you’d expect to see in a back-street Birmingham punch up, but he has a contrasting tender quality.)
Sax player Chris calls it: “Music that’s like walking in the rain.”
Four boys, one identity: their own sound, the result of turning their backs on the trappings of a civilized madhouse (telephone, radio, TV, newspapers) and doing what they believe is right.
Cost? Well, £3,500 of equipment and six months of almost monk-like living.
Big sound, big equipment. Traffic concerts will be confined to theatres; a five ton truck will tenderly transport the gear from booking to booking.
Stevie designed a new electronic organ and laid on eight giant stereo speakers that dwarf drummer James (at five ten the tallest Traffic) and two banks of control consoles that look capable of sending a satellite to Mars and back.
These consoles, off-stage during a Traffic concert, will be nursed by a sound engineer taking instructions from Stevie over a kind of Hot Line microphone.
The results, pumped through one of the most powerful systems in the world, are shattering. Beautiful. Stevie can urge more echo, more bass, more mixing, more vocal.
He explained, ““The music we make will progress naturally into something good, with some sort of meaning. It will tie in with the beautiful countryside and the sunsets and flowers and things.
Traffic: A New Concept of Pop Music 1967
We want to make music that will make things happen.
“When I left the Davis group there was a good deal of tension. We just don’t play each other’s music.”
Of James, David and Chris he said, “I’ve known it was only a matter of time before we played together professionally. We can do something new as a group.”
For six months, Traffic have held a pistol at their heads by insisting on anonymity, refusing to give interviews, meet photographers, appear in public.
But James will admit: ‘‘We’ve invited a few special girl friends, but that’s got to be okay. We’ve been here quite a long time.”
When they moved into the cottage, frontage of red, white and blue, the group took a chest of records, a record player and odd sticks of furniture.
“It hasn’t been much of an arrangement,” said James. ‘‘There hasn’t been as much power as we need.” He meant the temporary electric cable linked to the nearest neighbour, half a mile along the road.
all four are placid
If tempers get frayed (hardly likely since the four are pretty placid) one “splits” and walks it off. There’s plenty of space. They painted the eight rooms, all a bit derelict, in yellows, pinks and greens, made one kitchen wall a one-colour whirlpool.
Food is limited to eggs, bacon and beans, and slices of apple pie bought in the nearest village.
“We eat out quite a bit,” says Chris thankfully. He’s twenty-two, oldest member of Traffic, and comes from Stourbridge in Worcestershire.
Besides sax, he plays flute. He seems to wear a two-tone brown leather jacket all of the time.
Dirty clothes and garbage in a home that has only one cold-water tap and no dustbin created problems. Now clothes are packed off in a suitcase to a London laundromat, and rubbish is dumped in a dried-out well in the back yard.
The group hope to keep the cottage as a base, using it to refuel between tours and recording sessions.
Traffic: A New Concept of Pop Music 1967
Stevie’s parents were worried at one time, made the trip from Birmingham to look over the place. ““You know how parents are,” says Stevie. “All the usual sort of thing, like was I eating; but we’ve managed fine on a couple of pounds a week. We don’t really have much money.”
Traffic have a Ford Zodiac that needed a £450 face-lift after it slewed off a motorway, an Austin A30 and a jeep. “We’ll need it when the snow comes. It’s pretty rough,” said James. The grass needs cutting and where the garden ends and the fields take over is anybody’s guess.
Even their friends, thoroughly briefed with maps, tend to lose themselves.
But in this wilderness, four gentle young men have between them mapped an entirely new approach to stage shows, and soon you’ll be seeing the sign-posts.
Their determination means that a paying audience can all but sit in on a recording session. The sound of Traffic, coupled with cottage material, songs like Dave Mason’s Hole In My Shoe, will have justified Stevie’s conviction that pop must not merely be “live.” But great!
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