Everything’s happening to Traffic. It’s all go, they say. But are they becoming so wound up in their work that they’re forgetting even their fans? RAVE’s Jeremy Pascall thinks so.

Articled published in RAVE magazine, February 1968

Stevie Winwood | Traffic: The 1968 RAVE Magazine Feature | Stevie Winwood has a communication problem. Either he doesn’t like talking very much, or he’s extremely rude. Occasionally he and his group Traffic don’t turn up for interviews. When they do they are often very late, but perhaps it’s excusable when you are musicians totally hung up on what you are doing and living miles from anywhere in a primitive cottage.

Visually Traffic are the least elegant of groups. The word ‘scruffy’ might suitably describe their appearance. Mud-stained boots, unpressed, dishevelled clothing and wild hair give one the impression that they are farm boys out for a spree in the big city.

All that is missing is the straw drooping from the mouth. Talking to Traffic can be a chore. They are not forthcoming, and persuading Mr. Winwood to drop the magazine he is so intently reading for a few minutes to answer fairly simple questions, if only monosyllabically, is a feat that becomes tiresome after an hour.

Stevie Winwood | Traffic: The 1968 RAVE Magazine Feature

Traffic are now only three in number and a very tight-knit group. Chris Wood is quiet and tries to be helpful, Jim Capaldi is the most fluent, and Stevie Winwood is Stevie Winwood. Dave Mason is now out on his own.

RAVE was the first magazine ever to interview Traffic. At the time the members were happy, excited and anticipating great things. They were four young musicians glad to be together and ready to bring forth their own form of commercial music. They spoke confidently of their unity, the way each contributed to the whole.

Traffic was to be something new, a group that believed entirely in its own form of music, not considering the foibles of public taste, and yet creating hits. And that, to a certain extent, is how it happened. Traffic was a success; three hits in a row, two tours and much acclaim.

But barely months after their first hit, “Paper Sun”, Dave Mason, composer and singer of the most popular Traffic disc to date, “Hole In My Shoe”, has gone his own way. Why? Where does it leave Traffic? And where do they go from here?

“Dave always approached things from his own point of view,” Chris explained. “He used to work on his own. We three would work together and he’d do his own work, so that except for the actual recording sessions he’d be independent of us.

I think he wanted to go out on his own because travelling around with the group took up so much time. Dave will still be with Island Records, so we’ll probably come together some time on the recording side.

Stevie Winwood | Traffic: The 1968 RAVE Magazine Feature

His leaving us won’t really affect our recordings. We’ll just have to approach our playing from a slightly different angle. It shouldn’t limit us at all.”

Steve took it up: “Our stage presentation will have to change, though. We’ve lost a limb by losing Dave. We’ll have to try and fill the gap with various sorts of instrumentations.”

“Since Dave left,” Jim interjected, “we’ve taken a closer look at reality.”

“It’s not too much of a problem his leaving,” Steve continued. “I think people should go, move around, bring in new ideas. We’re not completely satisfied with the way things have gone for the group. We’re quite pleased. Lots of things could have been better. The records did better than we expected. We didn’t plan to do such and such when we started out, we just did it!”

Jim carried on. “We’ve covered a lot of ground, but there’s still a long way to go. Losing someone is just a part of our development, an inevitability, a step forward. We’re shuffling around now. It seemed likely that Dave would leave for a couple of months before he actually did.

There were never any bad feelings, it was just a scene that had to happen. When a person feels he has to do something, he must do it. You can’t force him not to. Now there will be a closer sound. Dave was musically developing away from us.

“The future holds lots of work for us, more stage work in particular. We’re still trying to find out how to present ourselves best on stage. Sometimes we feel we’re not doing what the fans want. We find it difficult to adapt to different audiences.

Stevie Winwood | Traffic: The 1968 RAVE Magazine Feature

We communicate with our audiences through our music. The Tremeloes, for instance, communicate in a different way. They use visual movements. We don’t do that. We’re there for people to see and listen to.

We would have liked our record “Mulberry Bush” to have been issued a lot earlier than it was because it was one of the very first that we cut. When tracks have been in the can a long time they tend to get stale.

“Our ambition is to put our own pop show together, with all the acts picked by us. Pop tours have got a pretty crummy image now. We think there should only be two or three groups on a pop tour, and the whole thing should be much more carefully planned.

We don’t want to do a conventional tour again. They’re just thrown together. We feel we’ve got no power to make it a good show. We’re just down to close the first half, close the second half or whatever, and play for so many minutes.

We enjoyed the tour with the Tremeloes because there were a lot of different groups. Those early tours weren’t too bad because they were our first, but we wouldn’t do them again. There have got to be the right groups together, with the right friendly feeling.”

Traffic, they admit themselves, are not interested in things outside pop. You could say they are dedicated only to what they are doing. They seem very incomplete, bound up in their own tiny world, and uninterested, even bored, by others. This, in turn, tends to make them rather boring. They are reticent and enclosed, walking the cloisters of their own creativity.

Traffic interview with disc-jockey Alan Freeman