Soul Survivor Geno Washington

by Sam Beattie, Evening Gazette

RAM Jam, Soul Man, covering Stax and number one tracks. Soul survivor GENO WASHINGTON speaks to Sam Beattie on a storming career that began in the heyday of Hitsville

S.B: After coming to Blighty with the US Air Force, you stayed and became the UK’s soul man. Did you feel like our first ambassador for that kind of music?

G.W: “You don’t think of yourself as a pioneer. There were so many bands going on. Mostly my stuff came from the Stax catalogue. I’d always tell fans who’d done the original, so they checked out Otis Reading and Sam and Dave and all that. But we always said ‘we’re goin’ to do it our way’.”

S.B: Fronting the Ram Jam Band, you racked up two of the UK’s biggest selling albums of the 1960s - both recorded at manic live gigs, which you became famous for. What have you got against studio sessions?

G.W: “The studio is just half of my armoury because I respond and play off other people. When you go to the studio it takes that away.”

S.B: So does today’s I-pod and MTV culture make it too easy for artists to dodge the stage?

G.W: “A lot of people now don’t know how to play an audience. You can’t go out and sound like you’ve done it 300,000 times. You need that personal touch - it’s not just about posing.”

S.B: Dexy’s Midnight Runners paid homage to you and your legendary performances with their 1980 number one, Geno. How did you react to that?

G.W: “I told my wife, who’s also my manager, that they wrote a song about me and it was shooting up the charts. She told me ‘I think you ought to sue them for making you look too good!’ I laughed so hard I had tears coming out of my eyes.”

S.B: If you could share the stage with any other ’60s soul act, who would it be?

G.W: “Tina Turner. I know we’d get along and I know we’d rock the house.”

S.B: Unfortunately there can’t be that many left to choose from...

G.W: “Yeah, you put a tour together nowadays based on who’s alive. You’re naming names and they’ll say ‘Nope, he’s dead, he’s dead’. It’s hard to put a tour together.”

S.B: So will people still be into soul music in, say, another 40 years?

G.W: “Oh yeah, it’s always going to be around because there are too many good songs and too many good groups. If you want your party to be jumping, you can’t beat it.”

Geno’s new charity single I’m Doin’ 99 Years is out now. See www.genowashington.com

GENO WASHINGTON, PP ARNOLD and JIMMY JAMES:

Darlington Civic Theatre Wednesday, Feb 11 Tickets: £19.50/ £17.50. Tel 01325 486555