Interview conducted by Paul Gallan during July, 1993. First published in GRAMBO, issue 28

Dick Heckstall-Smith	PG:	How did you choose the musicians that you would work with on "A Story Ended"?
	DH-S:	Well, (emphasis) it was a pretty long time ago! I had a lot of numbers left over from the Colosseum days that hadn't quite fitted the band so we set about organizing them. I used Pete Brown on the lyrics almost exclusively save for two Jon Hiseman lyrics. Graham at the time was a bit battered. This goes back to the last breaths of the GBO when we were musically living from hand to mouth. So many musicians passed through the ranks after I left and that must imply that he was having difficulties. I cut myself of from this and joined John Mayall. I could see that Graham was unhappy, trying to stay alive and feed the various monkeys on his back. Back to the LP though, he was very co-operative and enjoyed doing it. We recorded at the Manor, Oxfordshire. At this time Graham had been to the States and back. There was a period of writing and deciding on musicians.
	PG:	There is a remarkable roster of musicians on the record, Paul Williams, Rob Tait, Caleb Quaye, Gordon Beck to name a few, did you choose these people for their own distinctive qualities?
	DH-S:	Yes. What I intended to do was make an LP of my own compositions with a single group. To that end I asked the drummer Rob Tait if he'd like to come in. It would start off as just a recording group. I was a bit innocent back then and didn't realize just what taking Rob on board would mean! He was extremely shy and gentle, perhaps introverted. A fine drummer though, outstanding. It was hard to reconcile his shyness with such ability. His drum style had an open rock feel that he combined with jazz. His personality however was that he believed himself incapable of playing on "A Pirates Dream". If you believe that you can't from the outset then by God you will not do it! So, we dragged Hiseman out of the recording box to do it. He protested but it was obvious Rob wasn't up for it. I played with vocalist Paul Williams in the Mayall band. He was the only one who could sing in such a natural way. He was similar in delivery to Ronnie Jones who sang with Alexis. Paul had an excellent voice quality and feel. I've always gravitated naturally to people who sang or play black. That's a musical description rather than an ethnic one! Caleb Quaye, God knows whatever happened to him, when it came to putting a group together he wasn't around.

PG:	How did you work with Pete Brown in shaping the material?
DH-S:	I took the music to him and he suggested how to organize it. Put this bit here, maybe do this bit twice to fit the words or something. We ended up with a song on the first side, "Future Song", that I think must have been a bit weird to sing! The words were very good. Also "Moses In The Bullrushours" which I think is one of the best ever. At the time I wasn't so sure about it. I never sat down to ask questions. I just did what I liked doing. I believe that, it's an all time classic now! I never thought about the politics of who's doing what in what, I just asked people for the things that I wanted to hear and they said yes or no.
PG:	The records showcase must be "The Pirates Dream", a remarkable demonstration of instrumental prowess by anybodies standards. How difficult was this to construct and achieve?
DH-S:	Me and Clem Clempson had the musical ideas but we had to low horizons when compared to Jon Hiseman. He would listen to our work, say I had produced the riff and Clempson would embellish it, we'd extend this and honestly felt that we had ground breaking ideas about what to do in the different sections and how to create new sections, new moods etc. but we were much more prone to be satisfied with a piece of work that we thought good, than Hiseman. He wouldn't actually reject anything, he'd just say it's not enough, we need to do more. I'd say for Gods sake how can we? Don't you think that it's going to be too long and top heavy? He would just say, "We have to make sure that it isn't". So it was very much Jon's perseverance that pushed it into such a mammoth shape. It was an enormous vision that has to be given credit. It wouldn't have happened without cooperation from everybody and it's probably the mix of musicians that created something so distinctive.
PG:	What was Graham´s input on this one?
DH-S:	He played most of the complicated bits that sound like a guitar but are in fact synth and Moog. The way he achieved this, and it was a complicated process, was by slowing the tape down to half speed and running through it bar by bar, an octave down. Then we would put it back to the original speed to see if it worked. It wasn't exactly what I wanted but all of the notes were there at least.
PG:	I had noticed that some passages it does fluctuate in speed but this just seemed an incidental to me in the way it was played.
DH-S:	It is exactly because of slowing it down to work on.
PG:	Surely this must have made it a difficult piece to bring off live. How many times did Colosseum perform this?
DH-S:	A few times with Colosseum but never as good as with my own band, Manchild. You should hear one of the live performances with that one. The playing is just incredible, it just goes on and on. We did it exact, live for 13 minutes. No changing or re-arranging!
PG:	Did you make any money out of the LP?
DH-S:	No. We probably got paid for doing the sessions. That was about it!
PG:	When did you start playing two horns at once?

DH-S:	I think between summer of ´63 and summer ´65. Now I think that I was challenged to do it as a gimmick for Ginger Baker. Ginger was keen on us having gimmicks. Undoubtedly Roland Kirk was beginning to get a reputation at around the same time. I dismissed the idea at first but then had a go, it was rather interesting!	Dick Heckstall-Smith
PG:	How difficult is this technically?
DH-S:	It's just natural. You don't work towards it. The only thing that you have to work at is getting them in tune. Depending on which two you use. In the case of the tenor and soprano they are an octave apart. You are obviously restricted by having one hand for each. This can take a little of getting used to but it's not insurmountable. Once you can handle one then why not try two. I'm surprised that more people don't do it. Seems an obvious extension to me! You get a nice noise, very interesting.
PG:	You actually played alongside Roland Kirk. What are your recollection of this?
DH-S:	You want to see it? I have it on video. He was very pissed off that there was somebody else on the stage who could play more than one horn at once. I think that he had heard about me because by the time that I came on he was bristling! We were standing next to each other swapping fours or something and he lent over saying "You're out of tune man!" I didn't answer him because of course I was out of tune but then so was he! (laughs).
PG:	There is no description of the bonus tracks found on the CD issue of "A Story Ended"? Can you tell us the line up of the band relating to these?
DH-S:	The drummer was an 18 year old - Theodore Thunder, now based in the States. The keyboard player was Dave Rose who now lives in Kingston. On bass was Billy Smith and on guitar, James Litherland.