'ROCK AHEAD' WEBSITE - OCTOBER 2003
Vinegar Joe grew out of the larger band Dada. When this band split, Vinegar Joe rose from the ashes. Although various members came and went, the core was Elkie Brooks, Robert Palmer, Pete Gage and Steve York. The band recorded three critically well-received albums and were extremely popular on the live circuit. The band split in late 1973 with Robert Palmer and Elkie Brooks going on to solo success, with Robert Palmer enjoying worldwide success from the late seventies onwards. Just three weeks after the re-issue of the band's third album Six Star General, Robert Palmer died following a massive heart attack at the tragically young age of 54.
Elkie Brooks first came to fame in the seventies fronting good time rock band Vinegar Joe alongside Robert Palmer. Following the break up of Vinegar Joe. Elkie worked briefly with American band Wet Willie. From there she recorded her debut solo album Rich Man's Woman in 1975. However it was with the album Two Days Away that Elkie finally achieved solo success. The album, produced by the legendary song writing duo of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller spawned the hit single Pearl's A Singer in 1977. Elkie continued to have success with best selling albums such as Pearls and Bookbinders Kid and singles like No More The Fool and Lilac Wine.
In 2003 Elkie took part in the successful reality TV programme Reborn In The USA. Following this she recorded two completely different albums although both reflected the different sides of Elkie Brooks the singer. One album is a traditional rock/pop album called Shangri-La. The other a more bluesy album with a late night Jazz feel and saw Elkie reunited with Humphrey Lyttelton with whom she recorded in the sixties. This album was called Trouble In Mind.
Jon Kirkman spoke to Elkie on the eve of the album's release as she was preparing to embark on an extensive UK tour.
Jon Kirkman: When Vinegar Joe split I was very surprised that it took you longer to establish yourself as a solo artist than it did for Robert Palmer although to be fair he didn't make the big bucks until the mid eighties, but it seemed the emphasis was on Robert Palmer rather than Elkie Brooks.
Elkie Brooks: Well I'll give you a very simple scenario for that one. Robert already had his career mapped out a year before he told us he was leaving the band. We were just a rehearsal band for Robert Palmer but it never worked out that way. I got picked on by the media and I was the focal point of the band. But a year before he left he had all the songs written, he knew what area he was going to go in and what he was going to do. He basically had Chris Blackwell in his pocket and the rest as you know is history.
JK: Well if I'm honest, and this is no disrespect to Robert, his songs on Six Star General sounded very much like Robert Palmer solo rather than Vinegar Joe.
EB: Unfortunately and in fairness to Robert, because I think he was full of frustration the last couple of years in the band. You have to remember there were a couple of very strong characters apart from myself. Pete Gage on guitar and Steve York were awesome characters the pair of them and both wrote very well. So it was kind of difficult to get his foot in the door a lot of the time when they'd be going off on one. They were all very educated blokes and me you know (laughs) who'd left home at fourteen and it was difficult for me to get anything in there quite a lot of the time as well.
JK: With respect to the other members, wasn't the perception of Vinegar Joe in most people's eyes you and Robert because you two were a pretty unique front line at the time?
EB: I know, but it just kind of worked out that way but really behind the scenes there was a lot of argy-bargy going on. We had a lot of different musicians come in and come out of the band that caused a lot friction between myself, Robert, Peter and Steve which was a great shame but you often find that don't you? People do it for the hell of it There was one bloke one time and I won't mention his name and he was just telling so many stories and I turned round to Pete and I said that I'd much rather believe what Robert says than what this other guy said. I'd rather go with Robert, let's get rid of this other guy.
JK: Vinegar Joe made three good albums and although I like the first two, my favourite is Six Star General which has just been re-issued on CD and I think that is your best album in terms of material and production. Would you agree with that?
EB: Well it's hard to know because I haven't heard the albums for a long, long time. I mean really a long time and I have to say I always liked Circles. I think that was on the first album and I actually recorded that again because I liked the song so much. I don't know what Robert thought of it but it was actually a couple of keys up but I always thought that was a great song. I tell you what, to give you an honest opinion on that I'd have to re-listen to all the albums but I suppose in fairness we had all matured and got a bit older by then.
JK: Well my first brush with Vinegar Joe was the second album Rock 'n' Roll Gypsies. Then Six Star General came out and I saw you on The Old Grey Whistle Test performing Proud to be a Honky Woman and Lady of the Rain and I thought, ooh they're good!
EB: Yeah! I wrote that with the drummer. Lady of the Rain, it was one of the first songs I ever wrote. I always remember Palmer saying to me that I used to come out with all these mad lyrics after a couple of drinks and he said, "Write them down!" I never really had much confidence in myself as a writer but I thought maybe he had a point there, perhaps I ought to and actually after the band folded I started to write much, much more. I wrote very little while I was in the band because there was always so much competition with the other guys in the band so I never bothered.
JK: Well I think you should listen to the albums again because I think they stand up. They're very of their time in terms of production values. Obviously in purely technical terms things have moved on an amazing amount but in terms of the performance and the song writing they stand the test of time.
EB: Well that's nice. We should have been a huge band really and if so perhaps Palmer would have still been alive, who knows? But he had to do all those wonderful albums that he did but maybe he would have taken a different turn, you never know. Things have to be the way they are.
JK: Well I'm a bit fatalistic here but what will be will be…
EB: Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right.
JK: It must have been a dreadful shock for you. It was a shock for most people I think but you've worked with him in the past and so it come a little closer to home I suppose.
EB: Yeah, I was very sad and I hadn't seen him for going on twenty- seven years although I have kept in contact with his parents when I go to York and Scarborough. They've always kept me well informed as to what he was doing and give me the latest CDs but yeah, it really was a shock. When you spend four years together in a band you get to know someone and I feel on a one to one basis I thoroughly enjoyed his company. He was a very, very sophisticated and intelligent guy.
JK: One of the things I want to ask you about, obviously there were two albums out at the same time, did that just happen or was there a deliberate plan to issue the two albums?
EB: I think it really just happened because I was in the middle of making the Shangri-La album with my son Jay, we were half way through that when we sort of like downed tools and invited Humph and the band down to do the album. We'd done all the pre-production before with his arranger Pete Strange and his piano player Ted Beament. We already knew what we were going to do. How it all got started was Humph came along to see one of my shows with my band and we'd kept friends for many, many years. You may or may not be aware that I did an album with Humph in the early sixties and we have actually kept in contact since then. He came along to one of my shows and said, "How about doing another album or doing an album?" I'd only done a couple of tracks on my own album and I said, "Yeah, great idea!"
So he went away and put about fifty titles together, I did the same and we narrowed it down to thirteen and like I said earlier we did the pre-production with his arranger and they all came down to the house and we had three wonderful days of making what sounds like a very, very live album; I feel that it does you know.
JK: I actually thought it was a live album to be fair so there you go (laughs), it worked with that one!
EB: It was recorded in the old, I suppose classic way where we all played together. I did one vocal overdub with was on Yesterdays. I wasn't too sure of my pitching on that, I think I did an overdub on that but the rest of it, everything including me was all done live in fact Trevor and Jay had to build this vocal booth which was quite fascinating out of a load of old windows and things that we had lying around. I'm just wondering if it's still there in the studio because we have quite recently sold the house with the studio so I am just wondering if that old vocal booth is still there.
JK: One of my favourite tracks on that is Every Day I Have The Blues. I like the song. I know you're touring at the end of the year, are you going to be performing some of the songs on this album? (I would have imagined that is it difficult with an ordinary band.)
