By Martin Popoff

John Lawton is best known as belter for URIAH HEEP in the late ‘70s as well as for his work with LUCIFER’S FRIEND, especially the crunching proto-metal debut from back in 1970. But the man is still making music prolifically, through solo projects and other collaborations, most recently finding (F)ocus with a concept called OTR.

And the result is a vocal showcase across various pop and rock styles, unsurprisingly featuring that golden throat. How good is he? Well, here’s what ex-bandmate Trevor Bolder had to say about him, coincidentally in an interview a few days after I spoke to John himself. “John is fantastic; yeah, he really is. He’s in a Paul Rodgers vein, I would say. But the power in his voice is just terrific. You don’t want to stand next to him when he opens up his mouth (laughs). He’s very loud. But I mean, I love PAUL RODGERS, and John is one of my favourite singers as well. Just great ability, great tuning, and great ideas when he has to ad lib. He was a very good all-round singer.”

And what are the specifics around this thing called OTR? For that we have to go to the silver-haired soarer himself…

“Well what this is, is… I met up with Jan Dumee, the guitar player with Focus. He joined Focus after Jan Akkerman left, and I met up with him going on 18 months ago now, via a mutual friend Rodrigo Werneck, who lives in Brazil. So he hooked me up with Jan, who had some material, although he had written it purely for guitar, so it was kind of… listening to it I thought hmmm, I might have to change a lot of things around here. But I liked the stuff, so I changed it, and did some melodies, and because he’d written it for jazz guitar, I added the melodies that suited vocals, did some lyrics for it. We teamed up with three guys from Brazil, Xande, Marvio and Ney - drummer, keyboard player and a bass player - and Jan went over there and recorded the basic backing tracks with these guys, came back with it, and to cut it short, I went over to Rotterdam and did the vocals in Holland, so that’s the way we put it together. I mean, I haven’t physically met the guys from Brazil yet. But yeah, it’s worked out well. It’s kind of blues rock with some jazz influences in it, with a touch of the old Lucifer’s Friend somewhere along the line, someone keeps telling me. So it turned out good. It’s not rock by any means. It’s stuff on there that probably people wouldn’t expect from me. But hey, Martin, I’m at that age where I can afford to take a risk (laughs). But the reviews we’ve had up until now have been positive, so that’s a good thing.”

Biz-wise, the album, entitled Mamonama, has been issued through Lion Music, with a South American deal pending. But will it be toured?

“Well, we’re hoping to. The economic climate right now is not very good for live bands - it’s not the healthiest of times. People are keeping their money tight to their belt. But yeah, we’re looking to do some live dates with it. It will probably be in the new year now, I imagine, but yeah, we’re definitely looking to do that.”

And the voice? Still hitting those notes, are you?

“Well, I mean, yeah, the trick is, Martin, when you do it live, stuff that you did 30 years ago, obviously they are in different keys and you have to drop the keys slightly by half a tone, something like that. But the new stuff, on OTR, it’s not screaming rock or anything like that; it’s more in keeping with the style that I am right now, vocally, anyway. But yeah, I feel OK. People tell me I’m still cutting it, so I don’t see any problems right now.”
“The lyrics on here are different,” muses Lawton, who had just told me a fair bit about his simpler, rock ‘n’ roll-ish writing for Heep back in the day. “The title track, ‘Mamonama’, it’s about catching a train to… I would say, something like utopia, where everything is good, nothing is bad, and once you get there you just don’t want to return. Everything is good. There is a track on the album called ‘Hello’, which is a very slow track, which I wrote because my mother died a few years ago now, from Alzheimer’s, and the last probably ten years of her life, were basically in limbo land, for want of a better word. You know what the disease means. She didn’t recognize anybody, she didn’t recognize me anymore toward the end, and I based the song around how she would see the world from inside her, looking out, the fact that she probably… we couldn’t get through to her for many, many reasons. But really, on the inside these people are still capable of having thoughts of their own, but have not been able to project them to people that they love, their own family. So the song ‘Hello’ is basically based around that. And there’s a song called ‘The Corner Club’, which is basically a track, lyrically, about a club on any street, could be anywhere in the world, where guys can go and hang out and go and have a drink with the guys, talk sports, talk everything they want to do. That’s ‘The Corner Club’. And the rest of the tracks are straightforward, nothing outrageous lyrically there.”

Into the future, John is continuing to stay active. “Yeah, I’m doing a lot of guest stuff. We’re going over to Brazil, hopefully in the new year and doing three or four dates with some Brazilian musicians that have nothing to do with the new CD. I’ve been invited to go over there and sing with some Brazilian musicians, doing basically John Lawton stuff, Lucifer’s Friend, Uriah Heep. There seems to be a call for it, so that’s the next plan, and I’ve got some things coming up next year, Germany again, stuff like that. I do a lot of special guest appearances with European bands. Yeah, it works out well - good fun.”

See www.johnlawtonmusic.com for more information, and as one final tidbit, part of John’s future plans just may include some manner of Lucifer’s Friend reunion!