Savoy Brown Interview
with Kim Simmonds

continued

TG- "If you weren't a musician what do you think you would have become?"

Simmonds- "I think I would have become a writer or something like that. I've always had an artistic streak. I've channeled into music because growing up in London I was surrounded by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones- people like that and a lot of us. That was the new artistic direction. A lot of musicians would go into art college at the time instead of pursuing that they decided that they could put their artistic talent to music. I love writing and I enjoy writing. Your talking about doing other things. It would be nice to be a writer."

TG- "Why don't you do that as well on the side?"

Simmonds- "Well, because you know. There,'s only so much artistic energy you've got. Emotional energy or what kind of energy and you can only give that energy. I find that I don't want to spread that energy around. The artist energy I've got. I don't want to compromise it. You've got to be committed. I'm committed to music. I have done some writing at times that my career has been slow. I found myself writing but my career has been reasonably productive. So It's like hey! I'm gonna concentrate on this. If ever my career went belly up or the music scene went belly up then yes I would turn my hand to something other artistic pursuit and hopefully that would pay off. And to have to say the most amazing thing to me is here I am still doing it."

TG- "I think that's great!"

Simmonds- (laughs) "Thank you!"

TG- "Have you ever got caught up in the whole sex, drugs rock-n-roll thing?"

Simmonds- "(laughs) Oh! Yeah! Of course! (laughs) Yeah! When I started, the emphases was on music. So I was interested and before that was in the sixties. I was primarily just interested in the music. And then when the seventies came around. The band became very successful and I became very successful. We were rock stars and we had hit records and so forth and the life to me is so fast that there's all sorts of pit falls. I made many mistakes.

But what happens in my life it wasn't a real life in the since I was 17 I was a musician and at that age your not running into girls that was your next door neighbor. In other words- you're not meeting that. You just meeting a certain segment of people. How should I explain this without offending all the wives like that...in a little cocoon. You're in a sort of a little world of your own. It's strange really that you don't get to. It's some what unreal life for the first two years, many years.

The first three years of my life career on those were very unreal years. Where we were separated from the real world. I'm getting off the point of it. But the older you become your able to play music, be a musician and participate in the real world. What I'm saying is there's no separation. I think when I was younger I was always in the unreal world. You just go real fast. Your working continually and traveling continually and you don't have the stability of a normal person. So you get caught up in all the sex, drugs, rock-n-roll stuff that goes on." 

TG- "I think every musician has pretty much has gone through that."

Simmonds- "Gone through it yeah! You pay for it. You pay dearly for it. We all pay for everything. You don't get away scott free from that stuff. When I was in my twenties. I had a blast. But you pay the price later on (laughs)."

TG- "What are your plans after this tour are you gonna take a break or are you gonna continue to jump into another CD?"

Simmonds- "After this tour were gonna take a few weeks off. We'll go out again. We'll finish this tour March 9,10th. We'll take the rest of the month off. Then we'll go back out in April and then were doing the rest of the year. We'll go out on tour, we'll take a break.,"

TG- "Here in the United States or in Europe?"

Simmonds- "In August were gonna go to Europe and do some festivals over there to the UK. That's gonna be a lot of fun. But the rest of the year it's gonna be touring promoting the record and I've written a lot of the new music for the next record so I've already got a jump on that. This past winter we didn't do a match. We're preparing for this year. So we had time off, so I was able to get a jump on writing songs for the next record. So I feel comfortable that I've made progress there. So now I can just concentrate on working."

Continued on next page

2004 Entertainment Magazine