This interview was first published in 'King Of The Universe'
Fanzine in the summer of 1999.

In this 'King Of The Universe' Fanzine interview, Dave talked about his early days in the music business, the time he spent with ELO, his first ever meeting with Jeff Lynne, his association with the Chantelles, his solo career, the 'Secret Messages' sessions including the unreleased ELO track 'Beatles Forever', and his new album 'Long Way Home'.

Alan Heath:- So Dave let's start at the beginning of your career, where, when and how did your musical career start?

Dave Morgan:- In Birmingham, somebody got a group together and I got dragged into it. And then I kinda discovered I could write songs, I played a song I'd done to somebody and they liked it. In fact the first song I ever wrote, we did it with this group I was in. One thing led to another, people used to have me in groups because of my songwriting, they didn't want me to play, they wanted me because they wanted the tunes!

AH:- I read that Carl Wayne invited you to work in his 'Penny Music Publishing Company' is that correct?

DM:- Yes that's correct.

AH:- Subsequently The Move recorded your compositions 'Something' and 'This Time Tomorrow'. Were these songs your first musical breakthrough?

DM:- In terms of writing yeah, but the first ever record I ever had out was by the Ian Campbell folk group, which was an epic song called 'Private Airman Harris', you'll remember of course Alan! 'Private Airman Harris' by Dave Morgan came out and went back in again! Carl did 'Something' with The Move, that was pretty good, and was on the B side of a number one record 'Blackberry Way'.

AH:- Who were your main early musical influences?

DM:- The Beatles, full stop, followed by The Beatles.

AH:- Good choice.

DM:- I just liked The Beatles. Well my dad used to like Al Jolson, and he used to black his face and pretend to sing although he could actually sing really good. My dad used to really like Al Jolson records. So I heard a lot of those records when I was a kid but I had no musical pretensions, it kind of went past me really. I didn’t take much notice.

AH:- Can you remember the first record you ever brought?

DM:- I can’t, it may have been The Beatles. No wait a minute, I think it was ‘Picture Of You’ by Joe Brown, when I heard those chord changes, I thought isn’t that fabulous. Have you ever heard that? A to G!

AH:- Yes.

DM:- I’d never heard that before, and I thought that’s lovely that, I’m going to nick that and put it in a song. I remember really liking that song, lovely song.

AH:- I remember my older brother buying the record, actually he brought the LP with the song on when we were on a family holiday in Jersey in the sixties. I think the album cost 19s/11d!

Mark Dodsworth:- Were you self taught, did you teach yourself to play?

DM:- Yeah.

AH:- You played with Richard Tandy in both Paradox and The Chantelles. What do you remember about these early days in your career?

DM:- Well both Paradox and The Chantelles had this drummer whose name was Pank, he’s now a big advertising executive in a radio station somewhere, but Pank was the only one who had a house where we could rehearse in. He had this house in Marston Green, and we all used to congregate up there. He had a bedroom all kitted out and a garage as well. Today probably that isn’t so strange, but then it was, as we all lived in council houses. Cupboards we lived in! But Pank had all this room, and he was in those groups.

AH:- Was Jeff Lynne in The Chantelles at the same time as you?

DM:- Yes he was, I’ve got a photograph to prove it!

AH:- How did your association with Jeff first start, was it in The Chantelles?

DM:- Yes. As a matter of fact, no! I met Jeff for first time at St. Peters Church, Shard End. We were playing there with a group called Jeff Silvas and The Four Strangers. And in the interval this kid came up and said “Can I play your guitar mate?” and I said “Yeah”. When I came back after he was still strumming away, with another mate looking over his shoulder. He was doing a song by Dave Clark ‘Bits and Pieces’. I don’t think he had a guitar of his own, so he used to have to borrow other peoples to practise on. Anyway, that was Jeff.

AH:- I’ve heard Jeff mention in interviews, that he went round asking to play other peoples guitars when he was about fifteen, before he actually owned one himself!

DM:- Well, that must be it then, because he came and asked me, and I remembered him then when he came into The Chantelles.

AH:- I have heard mention of the ‘59 Club’ which was going in the mid sixties. Was this some sort of music cellar and Birmingham’s answer to Liverpool’s ‘Cavern’?

DM:- It was yes, it was a bombed out building and underneath it was this horrible damp cellar. We used to run this blues - jazz thing down there, and I can once remember once going there and Richard was playing there in a three piece group with Johnny Finchum singing, and somebody on the drums who I can’t remember. No, it was a four piece, they had a sax as well, and Richard played guitar then. He had this great semi-acoustic guitar, and he used to play these chords he’d made up. I remember looking at him, and I had never seen anything like it, you wouldn’t believe these chords he used to make up, that’s how I first met Richard. I said to him after, “what were those chords you were playing?” I hadn’t a hope of learning how to play them without dislocating my fingers.

AH:- You went on to play with Richard in the Uglys as well, and also Stacks?

DM:- Someone else asked me that, I never played with Stacks.

AH:- According to the book ‘Unexpected Messages’ they have you down as being in Stacks!

DM:- This is incorrect, I’ve never heard of them!

AH:- You recorded your own solo album ‘Dave Morgan’ in 1971. This album did not get a release in the UK, do you know the reason for this?

DM:- It got a release in America. It didn’t get a release in England because it was crap! I did that record with Lou Reisner. Lou came up to Birmingham and heard my songs, and he was very interested. It was only my songs that ever got me a job doing anything really. He said, “I want to sign you up as a songwriter, and I want you to make a record as well”. And that’s what happened. And then he got this group called Wishful Thinking to record an album of my songs.

AH:- You wrote two albums.

DM:- Did I? It was only one, wasn’t it?

AH:- Again, according to the ‘Unexpected Messages’ book it was two! The album ‘Hiroshima’, and the second called ‘Wishful Thinking’.

DM:- I’m only aware of the one album, they just recorded about twelve songs. There may be some more tracks.

Mandy Morgan:- Maybe somebody owes you some money Dave?

AH:- When I talked to Trevor Burton a few months ago, he said the ‘Unexpected Messages’ book had been responsible for him finding out about songs he’d forgot about, and he got some royalties from them!

DM:- Really!

AH:- Maybe you should read it again?

DM:- Yes! Anyway, Lou made this record, but he was really interested in that song ‘Hiroshima’, and he was quite certain it would be a success that song. He called the album after the song, ‘Hiroshima’, but he died shortly afterwards, and it was after he died that ‘Hiroshima’ became a hit in Germany by Wishful Thinking.

AH:- You joined Magnum for a short period in 1972, what can you tell us about that period in your life?

DM:- Well, I was working down this building site. I was absolutely broke, and the people who owned the ‘Rum Runner’ club, they were building this new night club called ‘Snobs’, and they got all the musicians that worked at the ‘Rum Runner’ helping out, there were two groups there then. I went to the ‘Rum Runner’ one night, so Tony Clarkin said, “Come and earn some money building this new club.” So I was down there every day helping them build this thing, this night club, and on the night I used to go down to the ‘Rum Runner’ just to see the groups. I was in there one night, and to cut a long story short, the bass player with ‘Magnum’ got thrown out, something happened and he got the sack, and Tony Clarkin said, “Can you play bass?”, I said “Yeah”, he said, “You got the job!” That was it, I just happened to be there when the guy got the sack, so I got his job!

AH:- In 1977 you joined forces with Jim Cleary to record ‘Morgan Cleary’ for Jet Records, with Richard Tandy as producer. Do you know why this album was never released?

MM:- Because he’s really unlucky!

AH:- I’ve never actually heard the album, but I know people who have, and they say it’s a really good album.

DM:- Some of Jim’s songs come out really well.

AH:- The album was with Jet Records who seemed to do some strange things around that time.

MD:- That must have been how you got your connection with ELO through Jet Records?

DM:- No, I already knew Richard and Jeff, as I’d been in groups with them. I knew Don Arden obviously, Sharon and Dave Arden from the days of The Move.

AH:- You had the chance to join ELO in 1981 for the ‘Time’ tour, can you remember how the invite to join the band came along?

DM:- Yeah, we used to get together and play Beatles songs.

AH:- Privately?

DM:- Yes. We used to go round to someone’s house with a bottle of red wine, and we’d end up singing songs. Well I know a lot of Beatles songs, it was a bit like “So Dave how does that one go?”, we used to have a lot of fun singing them songs, and seeing how many we could do. And so, when it came to do this tour, Jeff needed someone to help out with the vocals. And that’s why he thought of me, because we’d been sitting round singing together, that’s how it came about really.

AH:- Your life changed when you joined ELO. I suppose it was nice for someone else to carry all your equipment round for you for a change?

DM:- Great, it was the easiest job you could ever have being in a top group because you just have everything done for you. If you break a string, one of the roadies give you another guitar, you stick it round your neck and just carry on. Well normally you have to go, “Hold on lads, I’ve bust a string, sorry audience!” But, it’s great with somebody to do everything for you, luxury, all you have to do is sing and play!

AH:- You sang on the Secret Messages album, can you remember which specific tracks you sang on?

DM:- I sang on quite a few tracks, I sang on ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll Is King’. I played on that one, but it wasn’t called that, it was something about something about working at Austin Longbridge! It was full of car plant sounds, you could hear it going clank, clank, clank, like somebody hitting a lathe with a hammer, and Jeff went away and made it into ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Is King’, wiped off everything we’d done, no, there was still some backing left in there, It was much better how he finished it off than it was before. I think I sang on ‘Train Of Gold’, ‘Loser Gone Wild’, I think I was on ‘Bluebird’. Of course there was a lot of tunes that we worked on which didn’t get onto the album.

MD:- My favourite ELO song is ‘Hello My Old Friend’.

DM:- Is that the one with ‘Spatch and Mail’ in the background?

MD:- It’s like two songs, the first one is like electronic drums and goes to a break in the middle with lots of kids singing, a kinda spooky break and then it goes into the second part of the song, it’s brilliant.

DM:- You don’t come from Birmingham do you?

AH:- No.

DM:- We used to have people standing on the street corners every night shouting ‘Spatch and Mail’.

MM:- Dispatch and Mail.

DM:- Dispatch and Mail, that’s right. They used to leave the ‘D’ off and it was, ‘Spatch and Mail’. Well we were all doing this one of Jeff’s records, I’m not sure which one it was, it was a song about the nostalgia of childhood.

MD:- About cooling towers and factory gates?

DM:- That’s the one yes.

AH:- Do you have any knowledge of the track ‘Beatles Forever’, a track which has never been released by ELO, but was recorded during the Secret Messages sessions?

DM:- Yes, I sang on it. I did my John Lennon take off.

AH:- Kelly Groucutt was once quoted as saying, “this was the best ELO track ever made”, do you agree?

MD:- It was quoted as being a cross between ‘Strawberry Fields’ and ‘I Am A Walrus’. It’s the only song that ELO fans have never heard.

DM:- I remember it yeah, but it was one of many songs we worked on. I thought it was a daring thing for Jeff to do. I was doing a John Lennon take off on it, and I was saying “Is that all right Jeff? Shall I do this?” That’s the way it went, it was a Beatles take off as well as being called ‘Beatles Forever’.

MM:- You should start a look-a-like band, you and Jeff!

DM:- Obviously Jeff liked The Beatles he made reference to them in interviews and then there was that song ‘Shangri-La’ which said, ‘Faded like The Beatles on Hey Jude’ which a marvellous, marvellous track, so you can tell Jeff likes The Beatles from that. I guess at the end of the day, Jeff probably didn’t put it out because it didn’t work the way he wanted to.

MD:- I heard Jeff didn’t want it released because around the time of ‘Afterglow’, where all the ‘Secret Messages’ tracks were on, like ‘Hello My Old Friend’ and ‘Mandalay’, and all those, he didn’t want it released because he became friendly with George Harrison at the time.

AH:- He didn’t want to upset George.

MM:- Where do you get the sources from?

MD:- It’s what people say, it’s like Chinese whispers!!

AH:- Internet and magazines articles.

MM:- Does it come from people who speak to Jeff?

AH:- Probably not!

MM:- That amazes me!

DM:- I don’t know why it wasn’t released but I can only imagine it wasn’t up to it in some way.

MM:- Sometimes it’s just a personal opinion with your art isn’t it. Other people like it but it also depends how you feel about it yourself.

DM:- That’s right.

MD:- There‘s meant to be a special edition Cd of ‘Secret Messages’ coming out, which is the original double album, whether or not that will have ‘Beatles Forever’ on it remains to be seen.

DM:- Well I think it was a really daring little song, it was like about The Beatles, and there you are.....

AH:- We may hear it one day you never know!

DM:- I don’t know if Jeff’s rubbed my bit off or what!

AH:- What were your best and worst moments whilst with ELO?

DM:- The best time was the 81 tour which was really good, 81-82, and the 86 tour wasn’t as good, it just wasn’t as good.

MM:- For you?

DM:- For all of us I think.

AH:- It was the end of the band as well as it happened.

DM:- To be honest Jeff wasn’t really into it. In 81 we had good fun and we all had a lot of laughs. In 86, it was a bit more strained as you got the feeling that Jeff had something better to do.

Paula Morris:- Is there any particular moment in your time with ELO that really stands out?

DM:- I always remember all the laughs we had, we had such a tremendous time. The day Kelly fell off the stage! We practised on this sound stage in LA on a film set, an enormous hanger completely empty with our stage set at one end. The whole reason for us being there was to practice the lighting, so they could do all the movements with the lights. So while they were doing that, we were practising our songs, which we already knew, but we kept going through them. We were at the end of this one song all the lights went off, and the place was completely sealed in such a way that it was pitch black, you couldn’t see a thing. And the next thing we heard was this sound like a piano falling downstairs and hit the bottom of the stairs and it gives that lovely chord boinng!!! We were all looking round in the blackness saying “What’s that?”, and when the lights come back on Kelly is laying off the front of the stage with his guitar and all, on the floor. And for a second we all think he’s dead or something, and then he starts moving and then laughing, the sound was just unbelievable, it was really funny.

AH:- It’s a pity you hadn’t got a video!

DM:- Jeff might have recorded this and called it boinng!!! Anyway I guess you had to be there!

AH:-You recorded with Richard Tandy once more as the Tandy Morgan Band, and completed the brilliant ‘Earthrise’ and ‘BC Collection’ albums.

DM:- Brilliant, brilliant, thank you.

AH:- These were really fine albums, are you not tempted to produce a similar type album or has your direction gone away from this type of music?

DM:- It’s gone away really, because that was really production music studio stuff which you can’t do live very well. I used to really like that sort of music where you craft this piece of art, where you’d spent years tinkering with it in the studio without a thought for doing it live.

MM:- He’s a perfectionist, he can work for several hours on something, just one little note.

MD:- It’s like ELO, they couldn’t do a lot a their studio work on stage.

AH:- Incidentally, what does BC stand for?

DM:- Before Christ. Just to carry on with that question, what’s happened recently is that I really enjoy playing live, never used to record songs with the thought of ever playing them, I thought I’d just do this record and make the record as good as I can. So now I try to make the songs things that I play. I’m less interested now in production although I still get involved.

MM:- It’s a shame from the listeners point of view that’s the only thing, because it doesn’t sound as good as the previous stuff.

DM:- Well thank you, a word of encouragement there from my wife!! (Laughter).

AH:- The Tandy Morgan Band also did several tracks for the film Distortions with some incidental music along with ‘Catalina’, ‘Run Little Girl’, ‘Action’, ‘Tequilla Moonshot’ and ‘Zero Zero’, all great tracks. I can remember the film ‘Distortions’ though, it was a pretty dire affair and did not do justice to the music? Was it some sort of B movie?

DM:- ‘Zero Zero’ was not in the film. Don’t have that one as well as all the others, it’s very embarrassing. ‘Zero Zero’ was not included. Where did you get that information from?

AH:- Again, it was included in the book ‘Unexpected Messages’.

DM:- Oh yes. The guy did such a great job on the book, but with all that wealth of information you’d expect him to get a few things wrong.

AH:- Moving on to Jeff’s ‘Armchair Theatre’, how did the invite to sing on the album come about?

DM:- I was round his house one day, and Jeff said “While you’re here Dave, sing on this will you?” It was like that, anyone who came round was roped into singing! The roadie, anyone. A big gang of us.

MD:- Was that recorded at Walsh Hall?

DM:- Yeah.

AH:- Jeff produced ‘God’s Good Time’ which is a really fine song which Jeff really brought to the fore in his production. Was his production involvement a reciprocal arrangement following your work on ‘Armchair Theatre’?

DM:- It’s correct what you said, I’d done some work on his album, and he said “Would you like me to do a song for you Dave after you’ve worked on my album?”, I said “All Right”, and played him all these God songs which I’d got going. He liked a couple of them, but he plumped for that one, he got an idea for that one straight away as I was strumming through, he’d got some production idea’s straight away as I was strumming through, so we worked on that one.

AH:- Your album ‘Call’ was released in 1997 and is a really uplifting and fine album with some strong Christian songs. You became a Christian in the 80’s.

DM:- 1988.

AH:- This must have had a big impact in your life, do you feel more fulfilled because of your Christian beliefs?

DM:- I became a born again Christian in 1988 after I had this meeting with the Lord. I had this experience, God tracked me down and made me take notice of him. After that, I kind of felt he wanted me to write songs for him which I found very difficult to do, but he sent a little miracle to help me get started, so now I write mostly God songs. Yes I find what I’m doing now much more fulfilling than what I‘d done before yes, because before I could never really sell the stuff I was doing. I could never really get up and sing it to people. I think the reason was, the bottom line was, I didn’t really believe I was selling myself and I didn’t really believe in myself , but now I’m selling Jesus I find it really easy to do that.

AH:- You are in the throws of recording your new album, is that going to be in the same vein as ‘Call’?

DM:- It’s going to be in the same cupboard, yeah I guess so, similar.

AH:- Have you got a name for the album yet?

DM:- We are thinking of calling it ‘Long Way Home’.

AH:- And when do you hope to have the album out?

DM:- We hoping to have the first cut of it out later this month.

AH:- Are there any plans to release any of your songs not previously released?

MM:- There’s about sixteen stacks which we eat our dinner off! Piles of tapes!

DM:- Cardboard boxes that we sit on! I have a few songs that we want to release, they are love songsy. We feel like it’s probably better to keep them separate because the people who want to buy the Christian stuff might not want to hear love songs.

MM:- It’s more the other way round, I think the people who like to buy the other songs don’t want to hear Christian songs.

AH:- Tell us a little about your passion for Flying?

DM:- I told you not to mention that in front of the wife! (Laughter). I learned to fly many years ago and now I work as an instructor part time.

MM:- Tell them how you started flying.

DM:- Oh yeah, this girl let me down.

MM:- She dumped him!

DM:- She let me down flat she did (cue for a Beatles song! Ed), I went to the airport and was going to jump out of an airplane without a parachute, but the parachute club was closed! So there I was at Halfpenny Green airport standing by the parachute club, which was just a little shack with a sign which said closed. Over the way was another sign that said pleasure flights. So I went over there and had a flight. I thought this is good isn’t it, and discovered I didn’t really want to jump out of one anyway.

MM:- So learning to fly saved his life didn’t it.

AH:- You have a great internet site. How do you feel about this new means of communication?

DM:- I think it’s really exciting because it’s put me in touch with people who I would never have met. Normally when you if you’re in a group, you just snatch a few words with people after a gig or something. You don’t really get to exchange much information it’s not that kind of environment, but with the internet, folk who are interested in my records from all over the world have been able to contact me and it’s a much better medium really for speaking to people.

MM:- It’s nice that they are not knocking on the door every five minutes, there’s a privacy to it as well.

DM:- I think it’s great, because it enables an artist like myself to be directly in touch with people who buy records, which really speaking before that did not happen. People could send in fan letters but they would’nt have a dialogue going both ways. My wife maintains that more than I do. I tend to get involved with other things, making records and stuff , but even so, I read everyone that comes in and we discuss the reply, so I’m in the loop there, it’s great to hear off these people, the other day we got, this is slightly off the beat and track, but an e-mail from the guy who is the lead singer in Iron Maiden, Bruce Dickenson. So we struck up a dialogue with him which is another thing which we would never have done in a million years.

MD:- It’s brilliant for me because when I got on the internet I didn’t know anything about ELO, but then the knowledge just expanded, and the people you meet and the memorabilia and stuff you collect is unbelievable, it’s brilliant. Even thought it’s such a big thing, everyone is so tightly knitted together with similar interests, that it’s brilliant.

DM:- I think it’s good. I’ve had good fun doing the web site as well, I think that’s good fun, it’s like an area of publication or promotion that’s taken off. I’ve been able to use my little cartoons for example which I hadn’t done any for years, but I suddenly had a opportunity to use them.

AH:- Do you have any message to the readers of King Of The Universe?

DM:- Like a secret one you mean?

AH:- Why not!

DM:- Like, stop picking your nose! It’s good to hear all the people out there are still interested in Jeff’s music, even though it’s such a long time since there’s been any product out. We are all looking forward, myself included to Jeff getting something out, and I’d just like to say a thank you to the people for staying interested.

Interview and photo ©Alan Heath and is not to be used without prior written permission.