Classic Interview with the Late Great Jim Clench of April Wine and BTO
November 8, 2010 – When I heard that Jim Clench had passed away I immediately went to my basement to find one of my favourite April Wine albums, “Electric Jewels.” More than any other LP from the group, this one really showcased his talents at such an important time in their incarnation.

The second thing I did was dig up an old interview I did with the band from May 27, 2000. I spoke to leader and lead singer/guitarist Myles Goodwyn, guitarist Brian Greenway, then drummer Jerry Mercer and Clench. Clench and I talked for almost an hour about his Rock'n Roll journey, golfing and goofing off to London in the early seventies.
There's a strange thing that happens when one transcribes an interview with someone who recently died. Though the interview is over ten years old I couldn't help telling myself over and over during the 4 hours of transcribing that Jim Clench was a revised, happy musician at this period. I was filled with conflicting emotions because as I heard both of us speak in this moment in time he was, at least for this session, very much still alive.

April Wine has been my favorite Canadian band since 1972 and Jim's passing easily made me stop in my tracks with a sense of appreciation for how much he contributed to who I am, musically, today. I hope you enjoy the interview. I will be posting the segments from the other members soon. - by John Beaudin.

John Beaudin – Hey Jim. It's Great to finally meet you in person.

Jim Clench – Thanks John. I hear you have been following the band for years. Is it ok if I smoke?

John – Go for it. How did you get back with Myles and the guys?

Jim – I was living out west when it happened.

John – Were you here (Vancouver)?

Jim – I was in Calgary and then went back to Montreal, it was under heavy circumstances since my parents past away.

John – Sorry to hear that.

Jim – Thanks and so I decided to transplant myself back and it was just at the time that all this was happening.

John – Did they (April Wine) call you?

Jim – Yeah, Myles called me up and said I hear you're in town and blah, blah, blah and here's what's happening.

John – Had you talked to him recently before that?

Jim – We talked once a year but we never talked about this and it just so happened things had to come to a head.

John – Did you know the songs. What I mean is did you remember the songs that you played on?

Jim – Sure.

John – You didn't forget them?

Jim – No, you don't really forget them.

John – Elton John sometimes says when he revisits older tunes from the first 3-4 albums he forgets chord changes or some words.

Jim – Oh sure, you forget little nuances and arrangements. Like I could play “Drop Your Guns” but I couldn't remember the middle part, I had to work that out. “I'm on Fire for You Baby” was the same thing, I couldn't remember the middle but the basic chord changes for instance on “You Could Have Been a Lady,” you can't forget that one. We've done it so many times.

John – That song changed my life in 71-72. I was listening to sugary poppy crap before that and then I hear that guitar and that was it. Let's move to the album “Electric Jewels (1973)” you were such a big part of that album of the singer/songwriter thing on that album. In fact you had half the tunes on that album.

Jim – It was an interesting for the band since at that time the band had broken up. The two Henman brothers (David and Ritchie) were leaving, we had partially recorded the album, so hear we are in the middle of recording and we decided it wasn't going to work so it was just me and Myles. So I decided to screw off to England for a month and then Myles came over and we decided to try to do some recording there but that didn't happen so when I got back is when we got Jerry and Gary in the band.

John – So you tried to record in England.

Jim – Yeah, it was in the Abbey Road area and not far from Apple and it was in a basement.

John – Were you in awe being so close to major Beatles history?

Jim – Oh yeah, I was doing the whole tourist thing and this was the early seventies too and we had just come off the road so I decided to take a month off and that when everything was falling apart and we were not getting along with David and Ritchie. When I got back we just dove in, he was writing a lot I was writing a lot and then Myles and I would get together and just bang everything together. I'd have a piece, he'd have a piece and we'd jam them together and that's how half of them came together in “Electric Jewels.”

John – I know you left the band after “Stand Back.”

Jim – Yes

John - When “The Whole World's Goin' Crazy' came out after that one and you were not on it. Did you miss being in the band?

Jim – Well I wasn't really happy about leaving and I wasn't bursting out into something else so it wasn't a real thrill and it was time to move on to the next things and then I got the call from BTO.

John – They called you?

Jim – Yeah, Bruce Allen and told me Randy (Bachman) had left the band and they wanted to get back out but I said “I play bass not lead guitar” but then I found out Fred (Turner) would play guitar and Blair (Thornton) lead guitar. I said I would give it a try and everything happened so fast. I flew out there and we started rehearsing and then touring and they wanted to do an album right away.

John – Yeah, the thing I remember that it all happened so fast.

Jim – Oh, yeah it was like overnight, It was like lightning. Our first gig was The Warehouse in New Orleans during Mardi Gras.

John – Did you feel pressure joining that band?

Jim – Oh yeah, it was a whole new thing and they were huge and I was wondering where I would fit in here and they more or left the responsibility of the first album up to me too.

John – Is that right?

Jim – Well Randy (Bachman) would do everything and they would say you'd been in the studio a lot and you know what's going on and I thought well wait a minute, you've been in the studio too but randy never let them touch anything. He would slap their hand if they got close to the control board.

John – Yikes, that is pressure!

Jim – And you know how Bruce (Allen) can be. He puts the screws to you. You either deliver or you know.

John – Did you enjoy that time with BTO?

Jim – Yeah it was actually a thrill. Working with Bruce was very interesting I remember when I first got there (to work with BTO) I had only been there a couple of days and I went to stay at his place to watch the football game and he handed me a questionnaire that he said was for the record company. It was like a profile and questions like blah, blah, blah and questions like what is your favorite color and all this crap.

John – Yeah, if you were a tree what kind of tree would you be?

Jim – (laughing) Almost that bad. So I fill out the pertinent stuff and then I went to bed. The next morning my room door kicks open and he's screaming at me and so I just gave him the fucking finger. He storms off and I got on the phone and started to phone Air Canada thinking this is nuts, I'm going home. So he (Bruce) calls me ten minutes later and he's laughing his ass off and says, “I just wanted to see how you would react.” So telling him to fuck off is the best thing I could have done. (laughing). He said , `We don’t want any doormats around here. I thought Bruce was great. He’s a great manager and he motivates his bands. Nothings ever on paper and you’re responsible for your own accounting and your own lawyers and stuff.

John – When you left April Wine how did you feel? Were ready for the next big thing, did you want to rest?

Jim – I wanted to rest for a while. I was doing demo's with Brian (Greenway) and a drummer I had and April Wine ended snagging Brian.

John – I brought all the April Wine CD's to get autographed today but I also brought an album with Brian from The Dudes and Brian looks likes he's twelve. The degrees of separation with April Wine and certain bands. Like Mashmakhan, Brian, Jerry and Steve Lang of April Wine. It looks like you are really enjoying being out with April Wine again.

Jim – Oh yeah. It's a totally different approach now but it's a little like dejavu.

John – And you’re singing too.

Jim – Oh yeah. “Oowatanite” and “Weeping Widow.”

John – I gotta tell you, I'm sure Steve Lang is the nicest guy on earth but back 1976, I'm in Saint Claire Rink, in Newcastle (now named Miramichi), New Brunswick and then Steve sings “Oowatanite' and I was pissed.

Jim – Laughing

John – Well I really got into the band when you were in it. I liked the way Supertramp had two lead singer and after Roger Hodgson left it was a totally different band, having said that April Wine did go on to huge things. Your voice is also very different from Myles' voice.

Jim – Yeah, really different.

John – So, you left because you didn't have enough say?

Jim – I was limited to two songs an album and Myles was more or less taking over and my nose was of joint about it and then there was more or less a stand off and I wasn't really thrilled about some of the material I was hearing for “The Whole Worlds Goin' Crazy” because I assumed we were going in a tougher direction from “Stand Back”

John – Yeah, “The Whole Worlds Goin' Crazy” shipped platinum.

Jim – It did and before the whole thing with us is that we had never broken the states.

John – Well “You Could Have Been a Lady” had some action in the U.S.

Jim – Well, “You Could have Been a Lady” was our opportunity to strike. We only found out by watching American Bandstand and it was #14 on the TOP 100 on American Bandstand so we should have been down there playing college circuit in the states but bad management from Terry Flood and bad mistake in those days.

John – He represented the band for the most of the big years right.

Jim – That was an awful relationship. Terry was Mashmakhan's manager which was Jerry's (Mercer) band and later April Wine and when April Wine moved to Montreal from the Maritimes and Donald Tarlton said “I'll get you some gigs” so the Henman brothers immediately moved but Donald wasn't ready so they shacked them up north of Montreal at the ski hills.

John – Wasn't there a comedy club thing then.

Jim – Yeah “Laughing” was a club that Terry owned as a partnership with an other guy and he's showcase bands there and I played there a lot too with the trio and they'd bring in acts from New York and stuff. So they wound up on the chalet next door, we used to rent the Ski chalet's in the summer because they were cheap and you could make all the noise you wanted and I had my trio and they were in the next door so we got to know each other. Then my band was falling apart, Jimmy left and I ended up joining that one.

John – I hear all you guys golf a lot.

Jim – Yeah, we're all hooked on it now.

John – So is this the official golfing tour? As I was talking to your manager as you were heading to Vancouver, trying to set this interview up golfing would come up a lot.

Jim – Since we have gotten back together it's been tremendous because that's the one thing now that everybody's interested in. Myles is the most serious because he played a lot on his break. He lived in the Bahamas a lot so he played seriously. So we all got hooked on it and instead of sitting around the hotel room we play a round of golf.

John – God, getting out into nature it's really good for you.

Jim – Well Exactly. We would sit in a hotel room and watch TV, that's what we used to do. We would party all night and sleep all day.

John – So you guys never do that any more.

Jim – We can't.

John – Well I think of Aeromsith and how they cleaned up and Steven Tyler said he could have died so many times. So were they partying stories of April Wine just more hidden?

Jim – Well, we partied hardy when I was with the band but I wasn't with the stage when it got to the huge heyday. They went pretty wild in the eighties and they never bus-toured they took planes everywhere.

John – You guys have the huge bus now right?

Jim – Yeah they are huge and leased out of a company out of Toronto. It's 45 feet. We do a lot of overnights on the bus,

John – That's gotta screw up your golf game.

Jim – (laughing) Yeah it really screws up your golf if you don't get enough sleep.

John – Have you ever beat Myles?

Jim – God no.

John – So he's that good.

Jim – His handicap is that much further a head of us. I'm getting close.

John – How long have you played?

Jim – Dabbled with it years ago but seriously since 1992.

John – So it's as a result of getting back with the band.

Jim – Oh yeah.

John – Anne Murray I hear is like that too. Fred Turner was talking on the BTO site about the band and he was talking bluntly about how difficult it is for a record company to take them seriously as anything more than a gold band.

Jim – Yeah, well we are not having problems with the distribution so that's a good thing but what it was when we got back together in 1992 was just an experiment. We thought we would try it for a couple of weeks and the first gig was in Portage La Prairie and it was funny that night we even helped the crew set up that night and that was the first time we'd done that in a long time but it was like 30 thousand people and they were on the rooftops and everything and the night was the Saddledome in Calgary opening for Kim Mitchell and it went nuts that night because we didn't do an encore and they wouldn't let Kim take the stage. So that was two in a row and we winded up doing 86th street here and it was just working so well. Every gig was just nuts so we thought let's go in a try an album. The only deal we got was with Terry Flood at Fre so we did “Attitude” and that worked really well but they screwed up distribution in the states. We were selling in the states and went gold in Canada then “Frigate” was a little more rushed and it was manhandled by the record company and they sold that to Keystone and then everything went wrong so that's when we turned around and said we haven’t seen a dime from those so we thought we'd do it ourselves.

John – I did a show called “The Cross Canada Report” in the eighties and when talking to Doug Bennett he said something that's been said many times and that's “You can go gold and ride the bus in Canada.”

Jim – Oh yeah and we are proof of that. We are serious litigators, we have been litigating for years even with Aquarius. We are just coming to the table and settle old score now. For the first three albums we have to go after Much Productions which is CHUM and Moses Neimer. The first three albums were on Aquarius but leased out to MUCH.

John – I had no idea.

Jim – So that was it. We finally hit the wall and said with this album we need to have complete control so we started building a studio at Myles' place, you know buying better boards, and we started recording.

John – So Myles is obviously not in the U.S. Anymore.

Jim – He lives just outside Montreal and Brian lives in Vermont which is south of Montreal.

John – So you guys all speak french.

Jim – Well a little bit. Jerry speaks the most. Myles, not very much at all.

John – That's interesting. I was born in Montreal and left in 1967 but I can barely speak french and my family is french.

Jim – I was brought up in Quebec, I was born in the Maritimes but grew up in Montreal and we had our french class where they teach you Parisian french and on the street if you use that...

John – They laugh at ya.

Jim – (laughing) Exactly.

John – Then they'll beat the shit out of ya!

Jim – (Laughing) Yeah and they say you're not speaking french.

John – I bet a lot of folks assume the guys in April Wine all speak french since the move from the Maritimes to Quebec.

Jim – Well Jerry's wife is french Canadian and his family, his kids are totally bilingual.

John – You have kids?

Jim – No I never had kids.

John – You escaped that.

Jim – (laughing) I was too chicken.

John – Well that's gotta make it easier in Rock'n'Roll.

Jim – To an extent and my ex and I are great friends. In fact she lives out here. I say her a few days ago. She lives in Abbotsford.

John – Is it easier now then it was then?

Jim – Well it's harder now because of family and that's why we try not to do long runs (touring) but with an album we know we have to go out and promote it we know we have to knuckle down. We do half of the states and half of Canada. They haven't forgotten down there so touch wood. We have the whole south west and mid west, the east coast is a little soft in the U.S. They keep offering us Florida but we can't tie in enough dates in that area. We do Texas a lot, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon and every time we go to the Midwest we go to these bizarre towns that I've never heard of …

John – And they love you.

Jim – And they know the tunes but they only know the stuff from “Harder Faster” and beyond, they don't even know the stuff. Some of them get the imports.

John – So what's the story of the back cover of “Electric Jewels” of the boy looking for his father and that's his dad bent over in that picture.

Jim – Yeah, it was a girl. What it was on “Electric Jewels” is that we had different facets and it turned out was “Electric Jewels” was a character.

John – As in Jules.

Jim – Yeah, but it turned out to be Jewels. For the back of the album we had the idea to find some washed up person and that's one of our stage shirts that he's wearing and this guys was apparently a professor and now he's a homeless alley guy who's drinking lots and it so happens his daughter and his son in law were visiting him that day and on the back that's the son in law with the dog and we took the shot and that's why they are in that shot. That's his daughter and that's her husband and their dog.

John – God, what are the chances?

Jim – (Laughing) Yeah the odds, exactly. So that's how it all worked out and when you talk to Myles He'll tell you the story even clearer. It's just funny how it all worked out. We got a guy, we said we will pay you to take the picture.

John – Wow! (as I look at the back cover of “Electric Jewels”) You're name is all over here!

Jim – We did that as a McCartney/Lennon thing. Even if I only had a couple of lyrics in it. We did everything Lennon and McCartney but with the tunes you can hear what I’m singing is what I write and what Myles sings is what he wrote and then we married. On “Just Like That” the part I write is the part I sing. ( He grabs the LP) “Come on Along” those have trade-offs.

John – I thought you were English when I first heard you sing.

Jim – (laughing) Yeah everybody thought that. It's like McCartney sounds American.

John – Well I think Elton John sounds American sometimes.

Jim – I think its the inflections that you go for.

John – I'm looking forward to seeing you guys tonight. I've seen April Wine more than any other band live. I think seven times so far and only once with you. Must have been the “Stand Back” tour.

Jim – We used to tour the Maritimes every summers. We even did the “Live” album at Queen Elizabeth High School in Halifax.

John – What's the most fun you've ever had with another band on the road?

Jim – Oh Man, there's tons of them. We're good friends of the band Nazareth. We toured with them for three weeks last summer and that was a tremendous time like both bands belong together (laughing).

John – They're coming here in a couple of days.

Jim – Yeah. We wind up doing the same routes every year in Canada and I hope we hook up again.

John – It was sad to hear their drummer Darrell Sweet died.

Jim – So sad. I think it was in Tennessee and he just walked off the bus and that was it.

John – Heart attack right?

Jim – Yeah, heart attack he hit the ground and never knew anything.

John – I had all their albums. “Razamanaz,” “Loud N' Proud,” “Rampant” “Hair of the Dog.” Is Pete Agnew still with them. I know Danny (McCafferty) is still there.

Jim – Manny (Charlton) is not there anymore. Pete's son is now thew drummer.

John – How well did Steve Segal know April Wine's stuff when he joined on?

Jim – Well he worked with Myles on his solo album or rather the solo tour so he brushed up on the stuff. Back then we all went into serious rehearsals for that first album “Attitude” and slowly added the set material. We went home with the album “One For The Road” which was a live album. There was a lot of stuff I never played on. They would tell me you're going to have a hell of a time learning “21st Century Schizoid Man.”

John – (laughing) Really?

Jim – There is another story that they tell me, I wasn't there at the time, Tony Levin the bass player for Peter Gabriel also played with King Crimson for a while but he didn't do that song in the set and when he used to play with them in England he would come and see April Wine play it because he never played it.

John – Yeah I remember him with the Chapman stick.

Jim – He's got his own three string PV. And uses little drum sticks on his fingers and all these things going on. He's very imaginative. The stick is an incredible instrument and he's really got it down.

John – It's such a hard instrument to play.

Jim – It really is. I don't understand it. I've seen one but I've never been able to touch it. I'll try it one day. You don't touch the frets, you just place your fingers, there's no fret board really.

John – Jim, it was such a pleasure to finally meet you in person.

Jim - Thanks so much John