Carl Wayne: This is a great song and it features one of the greatest voices of the rock era. Ace Kefford, known as "Ace the Bass," "Ace the Face," "The Singing Skull," all sorts of things. This is The Move's incredible "I Can Hear the Grass Grow."
Carl: "I Can Hear the Grass Grow," The Move and the voice of Ace Kefford. I'm just reading something here, it says... "In April 1968 during a Move rehearsal, Ace Kefford in a fit of frustration hurled his beloved bass guitar at the wall and went home to bed. 'Charlie Wayne came to see me as I lay there,' recalled Ace, 'I said I'd had enough and I was through. Charlie nodded, gave me a bunch of grapes and agreed that it was for the best.'" (Laughter) Is that how it was?!
Ace Kefford: Nah! They always get these things wrong don't they? Really! No, you were the only one that came to see me in hospital, but that's a different thing, isn't it? No, you were the only one that came to see me. Mind you I don't blame them, because we know the story of what we used to be like in those days.
Carl: Amazing that we should be sitting here thirty years later.
Ace: It's great.
Carl: Let's go back to the beginning. I've always said, when people talk to me about The Move, that as far as I'm concerned, The Move was about you and Trevor. People always say The Move was Roy Wood and Carl Wayne, but the Move was about you and Trevor. Just take us back and from your perspective, how did it all start?
Ace: Well, first and foremost, I think The Move was all of us. As Tony used to say, it was chemistry.
Carl: Secunda?
Ace: Yeah, he said it was five elements. You take one of them away, and you fall to pieces. And that's exactly what happened to the band, really. I was with you and the Vikings. And I was happy with the Vikings, man. Trev was with Danny (King), and obviously he was happy with Danny, but we used to keep meeting at the Cedar of a night, me and him, because we were the same age.
Carl: So had you and I come back from Germany then, or was it before that?
Ace: We'd come back from Germany.
Carl: Me, you and Bev (Bevan), of course.
Ace: Yeah. But me and Trev; it wasn't that much of an age difference, but in them days you and Bev to us seemed too old.
Carl: We were!
Ace: No you weren't, but that's what we thought when we were going to form this band. Our idea was to be like the Shakedown Sounds, do you remember them? Well, that was me and Trev's idea. We'd got as far as me and Trev - then there are two - you know what I mean?
Carl: So the idea really was to form a young band?
Ace: Yeah, that was the idea. We were going to approach Jess Roden because that's what you did in them days, get people from other bands. It wasn't trying to split people up, just trying to get yourself on into the style of a Mod band. The Vikings weren't a Mod band, we both knew that, and that's why you were, at that particular time, unhappy with the Vikings anyway.
Carl: Tell me about Davy Jones, which is where it all started.
Ace: When you played that "Starman" track, it sounds the strangest, weirdest coincidence in the world, but this is the pop business and you have to be in the right place at the right time. Yeah, well, he was on as Davy Jones and the Lower Third at the Cedar where we all went. Me and Trev were just there, I don't think any of the rest of us were. Anyway, we saw him and he just blew us away. It was fashion, style, the way he looked. Like I say, we were 17, 18, and all the kids in Birmingham were Mods. Of course with the image we had with the Vikings - as much as I loved every guy in the Vikings, especially, God bless him, Johnny - it was an image, that wouldn't work. What happened was me and Trev approached Roy, but you know what Woody was like in those days. We didn't so much approach Roy as Roy drew us to him like a bloody magnet, he was that good. So Roy drew me and Trev to him, really.
Carl: It's interesting you talk about image because we had Danny King in earlier. Of course you and I and everybody else acknowledges that Danny was the greatest singer of them all. The reason Danny probably didn't crack it was image, and Danny is quite open about that. Apart from Norrie Paramour and how he basically ruined the music business in Birmingham.
Ace: Yeah. The thing that got me and Trev together, and then got us together with Roy, was that night when we met Bowie. He said we were enthusiastic and suggested the two of us form our own band. That was the only impetus, the catalyst we needed to go off and look for somebody else. Then that was it. We looked around and all that, and there was just nobody.
Carl: Where did Roy come in?
Ace: Roy came in because he was with the Nightriders at the Cedar. He was that good that me and Trev were drawn to him like a magnet, to join us.
Carl: He was also young, of course.
Ace: Yeah, we were about the same age. But you and Bev weren't old. You were only about 2 or 3 years older than us.
Carl: But in fairness to the three of you, there were other options. Danny was the better singer and probably Bonham was the better drummer. I suppose the reason Bev and I got in was we had the image that went with the package.
Ace: Yeah. And we all got on great, didn't we?
Carl: We did.
Ace: That was the point. We were all bloody mates anyway. I'd been mates with you in the Vikings for years. So there was no problem. That's as easy as The Move was formed. Next thing we knew we were rehearsing in your garage, weren't we?
Carl: We were, down at Bromford Road, Dorothy bringing in the tea.
Ace: And I've got a correction about yesterday. Listen! "Stop and Get a Hold of Yourself" was one of the albums I used to have, remember, I used to have stacks of albums?
Carl: It wasn't Danny's collection, then, it was yours?
Ace: Nah, it was mine! (Laughter from both) I've still got the album, what a great song. People used to ask me, 'where can I get a copy of "Stop and Get a Hold of Yourself?" Trevor sang it, didn't he?
Carl: The importance of you and Trevor to the Move can never be underestimated. We go from "Night of Fear," which is where we cracked it, basically. And then we're into "I Can Hear the Grass Grow" which we've just played, which was a great record. And then, of course, the problems start because we get to "Flowers in the Rain" and the profound effect the Harold Wilson law suit had upon us. I have this vision of you in the Madison Hotel, which is a hotel we all stayed in, in London. You were sitting on the windowsill, I was in bed, and all the papers had dropped on my chest.
Ace: I threw them at you!
Carl: ...which said that The Move were being sued by the Prime Minister.
Ace: I'd started packing my bag, I said "I'm leaving the country!"
Carl: Do you remember where you said you were going? The Isle of Wight! (laughter)
Ace: That's probably the only place I could afford to get to with our wages!
Carl: Do you think with all that you were unsettled mentally, emotionally?
Ace: I've been unsettled since I was a kid. Our fame was instant, really. Within about a year we were in the charts, weren't we? I think similar to a lot of people who were growing up and described as sensitive children, I was like that.
Carl: We were. Do you think we were insensitive to your needs in The Move?
Ace: No, I don't think you understood, people didn't understand then. I mean, if I was having a panic attack on the Hendrix tour - which is what we call it these days - a panic attack, people wouldn't understand. If I'd got a panic attack on the Hendrix tour or on Top Of The Pops and I've got to get out of that place as fast as I can, people don't understand. So really, that 's what it was, but I've been in and out of mental homes, and drug rehabs and all sorts of stuff all my life to get myself to here.
Carl: But to us it wasn't apparent that you were in any need of that when you were with The Move. We thought you were just off the wall.
Ace: But I'd already got a bit of a reputation, hadn't I? I'd always throw my bass. I remember when we were in Sweden and I threw my bass up in my air and walked off.
Carl: But it was all part of the image wasn't it, that's what it was.
Ace: I lost my temper, that's what is was! Because they'd give us amplifiers about as big as cornflake boxes and we were playing to about 20,000 people, but it was a ridiculous thing to do, so I lost my temper.
Carl: Let's go back, Ace, to the end of The Move when you actually left. I've heard some of the interviews you've done, they are very lucid, you speak a great deal of common sense. Tell me about that time, how traumatic it was, when The Move went out of your life.
Ace: It devastated me, man. I loved all the guys. I know there've been words about me and Roy not getting on over the years. I'm not worried about that and I promise on the microphone here, Roy, I love you man, I love you the same as this guy sitting opposite me. And that's it, that's all I can say.
Carl: Tell me about that effect of you leaving The Move.
Ace: Well, at first I had to go into hospital, I think about 3 or 4 weeks after I left the Move.
Carl: You were with Jenny then, weren't you, your first wife?
Ace: Yeah, I was with Jen. It was a real old Victorian hospital where they locked the metal gates after you went in, you know, like a prison. They gave me electric convulsive therapy, electric shock treatment, and I had six of them. Came out and Dennis Ball and Cozy Powell - only a nipper but played like Johnny Bonham - got onto me and that was the beginning of the Ace Kefford Stand. The effect that The Move had on me, you can say it was The Move or you can say it was just the way I'd been living and the drugs and the things I'd been doing, but through therapy I've worked it out to the exact point in The Move were it did all go wrong for me. The exact point where it did go wrong was when me and someone else - mentioning no names - bought a bottle of LSD and went back to my flat and drunk the lot. Of course we didn't know how much LSD we took because it was all inside the bottle. So I'd overdosed on LSD without knowing it and finished up at the Cedar. We got there by taxi because we couldn't even drive the car. When we got there it was a bleedin' fancy dress party! So I'm tripping out of my head and people are coming up and speaking to me, dressed up as pirates and I couldn't understand what was going on! But because of having had slight mental problems as a kid, overdoing the acid like that finally did the trick, I think. Remember Upsy, remember John (Move and ELO road manager John Downing.) God bless him. He managed to get me into the back of the van and get me home. I sat up all night with little figures sitting round me with pointed heads and long fingers. They were there, sitting all around me. I'd got the horrors all night long... Then when I went out again to do gigs with The Move, well, my head had gone by then, do you know what I mean? That was the drugs. So, the answer is children, don't take the drugs!
Carl: Well, it is, I've heard you speak very profoundly about this.
Ace: The answer isn't in drugs, the answer isn't in the bottle of whiskey. The answer is in you and getting yourself to therapy. I mean, I'm manic-depressive, so I have to take Lithium anyway, but that keeps me stable. Otherwise I wouldn't be stable. But for a lot of other people, therapy is marvellous really.
Carl: So, you've worked it out. You've been to hell and back, but you really have worked it out. You and I have stayed in touch and it is extraordinary how you've come through it. But the answer, quite clearly here on air, is not in drugs and it's not in drink.
Ace: No, it's in rock 'n' roll music, man! (Laughter from both) Look at you for your age, man! Charlie looks fantastic here looking at me and he's asking me what the answer is! You're kidding ain't ya, it's rock 'n' roll music that's kept you alive!
Carl: Yeah! Tell me about Inkborough, why did you go there, did you want to hide away?
Ace: Yes! To escape. You know what it was like, I was the worse one out of us lot. When we walked down the street, it was like The Beatles, people always wanted my hair. Amongst other things, half the time!
Carl: Were you married then?
Ace: Me and Jen weren't married then, no. Me and Jen got married just before the Stand broke up. That's another story. That was a good band, but my head was all over the place.
Carl: And you had children with Jenny.
Ace: Yeah, but I couldn't stop acid flashing. That used to happen to me all the time and that can't have done my brain any good, to be honest. I think afterwards when me and Jen split up years later I finished up in hospital again. But you can laugh at all this now. Imagine this: I'm in this hospital for the first night. They've got me on drugs, so the whole room looks red to me, I'm that f*ckin' drugged up. On the television comes a programme with Dave Lee Travis. This is the first night in the nuthouse, I'm watching telly with all the other patients sitting round, dressing gown and slippers on, and this thing comes on where they're doing old songs but putting new videos to them. And I'm sitting there watching this thing and people who are schizophrenics hear voices and get messages all the time off the telly. Well, I ain't schizophrenic, but I'm sitting there watching this thing and Dave Lee Travis does "Flowers in the Rain" They put this video on that they'd made - which was an absolute packet of rubbish - it was a bloke in a mental home, trying to get out, and push his bed out with all the white-coats trying to grab hold of him and drag him back into the mental home. I'm telling people "That's my life!" but they all think I'm getting messages off the telly and tell the doctors who then give me more bleedin' drugs! (Laughs)
Carl: And after that you went up to Bradford. How long were you in Bradford?
Ace: I went to Bradford about 11 years ago now. I'd got to that point in my life where I'd lost my wife, lost my children, my home, lost everything through alcohol and drugs. I can't blame anybody else.
Carl: But you've got back your relationship with your father, haven't you?
Ace: Yeah, that's through a lot of therapy and lot of talking and understanding where my Dad came from as a boy in Birmingham. So me and him are alright, anyway.
Carl: What about your mother?
Ace: Mum died.
Carl: But your father and you, it's a good bond now, I believe.
Ace: A great bond with me and the old man, yeah. I don't say anything to him about his bookies any more! (Laughter) So he's all right with me now. He's a great old fella, I love him to death, man. Same as you with your mum, it's good stuff, you've got to keep them as long as you can and love them. They are what made you.
Carl: I want to play another track which features your voice, this is another incredible track from The Move, the first hit back in late 1966, early 1967, "Night of Fear"...
