SS: One of the best loved British bands from out of the 60s with hits like 'Here I go Again', 'We're Through', 'He Ain't Heavy, he's My Brother' and to celebrate an incredible 40 years in the business, they've just released a double CD set; the Hollies Greatest Hits and joining me now is the current lead singer of the Hollies of course, Carl Wayne. Hello Carl

CW: How do?

SS: How do to you mate

CW: Oh aye, how you doing all right?

SS: Oh I'm absolutely fine. Welcome to the show

CW: Aye thank you, it's lovely.

SS: It's a 40th anniversary tour and the greatest hits CD, it's quite and achievement for the band so what do you think it is? Why is it after 40 years, the Hollies still have this huge success?

CW: Well it's the quality of the songs really cause I mean there's very few groups that have a 40 year continuous career, you know the Stones are on their 40th anniversary tour, which'll last for a couple of years. It's just the quality of the songs aided in part by the fact that certain of the hits they had were revived fortuitously by television adverts in the 80s- 'He Ain't Heavy' was used to advertise a well-known beer.

SS: That's right

CW: And it became number 1 again in the late 80s, 15-16 years or whatever it was after it was first released. And also a lot of the Hollies hits you know you hear them on TV Just One Look, Stay, Searchin' and all those sort of things. It's just good the fact that they've never broken up, they've always continued. I mean Allan Clarke was the lead singer, you know from the beginning although he left a couple of times to pursue a solo career and other people have come in. They've managed to carry on and of course they've been aided by that and supported by in that by the quality of their material because you know people want to hear those songs. The thing about the Hollies is they're accessible so we go all over the country playing in provincial theatres and you don't have that problem where these huge groups play the arenas and sell out in an hour and people can't be bothered to get tickets, so you can come and see us live which is great.

SS: Have you always been a Hollies fan?

CW: I wouldn't say I was a Hollies fan, I've always respected them and I've always loved their records. I never actually met the Hollies before joining them which is extraordinary because I met most other people in the business. I went to see them before I was ever in the Move. I saw them in 1963 in Birmingham in a club called the Ritz Ballroom and I remember thinking what a great group this was and like many other people, I've always loved them and I've always respected them. Singers are very often fans of other singers. My people who influenced me or I've liked... people like Donnie Hathaway, Luthur Van Dross, Michael MacDonald but I've always been aware of them, I mean you know, you can't fail to acknowledge the quality of their songs which is, of course, the reason why they are still going now.

SS: When you were in the Move, that favourite one of mine was Blackberry Way of course a very, very popular song. You took over from Allan Clarke, how hard do you think it was for the remaining members of the group to say together?

CW: I think it wasn't so much hard for them to stay and it wasn't much harder for me to join but what was hard was whether or not there would be an acceptance of a group without its lead singer, we still have two of the virtual originals in there; Tony Hicks, who plays wonderful guitar, looks great and Bobby Elliot, the drummer and these days we have 3 other people in there. Alan Coates who's a brilliant singer, does all the Graham Nash parts, Ray Stiles was from Mud, has been the bass player with the Hollies for 15 years and we have a good keyboard player, a guy named Ian Parker. It was really biting the bullet and saying well wait a minute is there a reason for the Hollies to continue after their singer leaves? And I think as long as they felt confident that they could reproduce those songs, fairly closely to the originals on stage that there was a reason to continue. And also what I think was quite clever was they didn't just pick somebody anonymous to join the group their manager said well lets not say that Allan Clarke's left, lets say that Carl Wayne has joined, Carl Wayne from the Move with great songs, as you said, that were written by Roy Wood; Blackberry Way, Flowers in the Rain, Fire Brigade, Night of Fear, I can Hear the Grass Grow. So what he did was he actually brought something to the table and it gave us a broader base from which to select the repertoire.

SS: So you didn't actually feel as if you were filling the shoes of Allan Clarke?

CW: No, I was aware of that and I thought to myself, wait a minute I'm in a no-win situation here, I'm singing another man's hits and people, no matter how well the show goes, are going to compare me, not with the guy that's there now or the singer that's just left but with the records that were made 25-30 years ago. You know and that was hard. If I thought about it again, I might think twice but, no I tell you why I didn't think too much about it because I'm a very experienced session singer because I got into doing television and radio commercials in 1975-76 and I still do them to this day and as a session singer, I mean, you'll know this because you're very experienced in the business, you learn to work as part of an ensemble or a small choir or even a large choir and therefore you learn to sit back in there and to rely on the other singers and be part of a harmony group. And the Hollies is predominantly a harmony group so for 90% of the hits what I've gotta do is not be upfront just sit in there, let the Hollies harmonies and tunes speak for themselves. But, I've got a bit of licence with 'He Ain't Heavy' and the 'Air that I Breathe' because people like Bill Medley from the Righteous Brothers recorded 'Heavy' and Mick Hucknall did a brilliant job of his version of 'Air That I breathe' so it was no-win for the first year and a half. The first tour was trial and error and I think people had their doubts as to whether a singer could be well, not replaced but somebody could continue, but this tour's been a massive sell-out I mean there hasn't been a seat to be got from it er sometimes after the show they're still clapping and cheering 10 minutes after the thing so I'm kind of flattered, honoured, privileged whatever you want to say that they've taken me on board and accepted the Hollies as it is now.

SS: You spent 6 years as the narrator in Blood Brothers.

CW: Aye which has been up there on tour hasn't it?

SS: Yeah, how was it doing the same show week in, week out?

CW: Well, you will know this yourself cause I know how experienced you are and you've just finished a panto season haven't you? It's hard... oh by the way could I just say one thing because I love Newcastle and one of my all time heroes is Alan Shearer. Cool. God

SS: (CHANTS) Shearer

CW: (CHANTS) Shearer! Wonderful, he's the modern day Net Loftes? He puts the ball and player in the net. It's hard, you know the discipline of doing anything the same, for week after week let alone year after year which is why in many ways if I go back just slightly to the other question is, it was easier for me to join the Hollies than them because they've been doing the same songs for 40 years whereas I've had, since I left the Move in 1970, and before joining the Hollies in the year 2000, I've had 30 years of doing other things. But Blood Brothers was something else, 6 years of doing a magnificent script by Willy Russell was a challenge and you have to be enormously disciplined, you've got to keep your voice going for 8 shows a week which in itself is tough because the matinees on the Thursday afternoons and the Saturday afternoons don't give you any time and it's relentless, there's no time for recovery, of course illness spreads through a cast like wildfire but just to have, to have been given that role of narrator which is a phenomenal role you know it's one of the best roles ever in a musical next to maybe Jon vel Jon (?) in Les Miserables and the Engineer in Miss Saigon. It's one of the great roles and I had it for 6 years and I think it's a measure of the quality of the piece that I decided to stay with it for 6 years.

SS: Why leave?

CW: Well there came a time in the end, I took a year off to go and work in America and then I came back because they asked me to come back and I then wanted to do... I felt that I'd... you know when you leave something, this is the problem with the Hollies situation- they've never left which is why they've existed for 40 years and they've been able to carry on. When you stop something and then you go back it's never the same. You can't recreatem, fundamentally, the energy. A great friend of mine an American, very clever director, television director said, (puts on incredibly dodgy American accent) "Carl you gotta have energy and if you don't have energy you gotta stop because energy controls everything" and I felt at the end of that 6 year that I brought as much as I could to the piece and the piece would suffer if I stayed a bit longer and I've always been somebody who wants to dip my toe in the water as I said before I wanna move on, make progress and I joined the Hollies with that in mind, that yes I would reproduce as faithfully as I could, Allan Clarke's hits and the Hollies' hits but it was conditional upon their recording their material and moving on because I wouldn't be happy to stay adding for an item, just singing the hits that they had recorded and that's not in any way to disparage their achievements but it's merely because I just, I'm not a man who takes the money for the sake of it. I feel I've got to bring something to the table otherwise you may as well move on and let somebody else do it.

SS: And I'm sure that you have, let's hear one of the tracks. What's your favourite on this Greatest Hits, the Hollies?

CW: Well my favourites gonna be the one I've just done purely because it's the first and I hope it's the doorway to future recordings which I'm sure it is. We've just recorded a song which is rather aptly called How Do I Survive and it's the last track on the complete package so I hope people like it. It was recorded by and written many years ago by a guy called Paul Bliss who was the keyboards player with the Moody Blues and it was a small hit in America, although it got a lot of radio play, for a girl named Amy Holland who was the girlfriend at that time of my favourite singer Michael MacDonald of the Doobies of course. I hope everyone likes it. It's called How Do I Survive.

SS: And here it is...

Plays: How Do I Survive

Darn Tape player, carried on recording with no tape left!!!!!!!!! Basically, Carl talked for a little bit longer about the Hollies and success! He mentioned how a lot of song writers wanted to write for the Hollies e.g. the guy who penned Kylie's, 'I can't get you outta my Head' and the guy who er writes Westlife's hits. Also he mentioned that people like Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood could use the Hollies as an outlet for their material because they didn't really have one. Carl also mentioned the hope of recording some more albums- 1 is the hits re-recorded with Carl singing and a completely new album. I'll try and remember what else they talked about!! He finished chanting Shearer's name again! Don't let Carl know I live round the corner from Shearer!!!