Savoy Brown: Kim Simmonds Makes Savoy Brown A New Group

This article originally appeared on Circus, April 1972

SAVOY BROWN is an oddity in the rock pantheon. Never really disappearing, yet never really together they can be compared most easily to John Mayall. 

Not surprisingly, Savoy Brown, like Mayall, has revolved around one person, guitarist Kim Simmonds. And with a flair that Mayall might find familiar, Simmonds has just broken up with his old band (Roger Earle on drums, Tony Stevans on bass, and Dave Penerett on guitar and vocals) to form an entirely new one. Simmonds' new compatriots are Paul Raymond, formerly of Chicken Shack who will play organ, guitar, and sing; Andy Pyle, formerly of Blodwyn Pig, who will play bass; and Ron Berg, also late of Blodwyn Pig, who plays the drums.

Simmonds is blond and boyish looking with a classic pretty English face. He travels with his wife and brother Mike who handles all of his business affairs. He began to lose interest in his recently broken up group when Chris Youlden departed at the beginning of last summer. Youlden had come to be the voice of Savoy Brown, much as Rod Stewert had been the voice that accompanied Jeff Beck's guitar. "You just can't replace someone like Chris Youlden," Simmonds says with a trace of melancholy.

"There's just no one like him." He emphasizes it and you can see that it's important that everyone know there are no hard feelings. "He just wanted to go in his own direction. There's nothing you can do about things like that." As to his problems with the recently discarded group and his hopes for the new one: "It gets like – I want a group that can go with me when I start to improvise – like this group (the old group) are competent and all that but with them it gets to be the same thing over and over and over again. And when I go in a new direction – they just stay where they are." He is looking for musicians who are on the same trip as he is on – but not the ones that are merely on his trip – it's got to be their trip too or it won't work. "You've got to feed off each other. There's a limit to what you can do in a conventional blues structure. I limit myself a certain amount – I'm not about to become a jazz guitarist or anything – but I want to be able to grow every time we play. This going out there and doing a gig and playing what they want you to play – it's really a drag."

Though Simmonds spends nearly half his time in America, he has mixed feelings about the audiences here. "It's not anybody's fault – it's just that in England if we give a concert, people are coming to see Savoy Brown, not because of anything in particular, but because over the years the name Savoy Brown has come to mean good taste and good music. But in America, people more or less expect you to play your album – which I don't mind doing. I think it will be a lot better with the new band, I just want to stay as free as possible."

Savoy Brown, like Butterfield, started out as a blues band. Simmonds admires Butterfield quite a bit and fancies himself a colleague. "Like people go to see Butterfield – they say to themselves, 'Well let's go and see what Butterfield's into now.' That's what we're like, always changing and experimenting around." He is still devoted to the blues framework and over the years has cut a respectable musical niche that distinguishes itself from the more predictable British variations of black forms.

"I used to room with Chick Churchill (organist of Ten Years After) in a tiny pad in London – and now he's just bought himself this incredible 40,000 pound house in England." Does Simmonds feel that Churchill and the rest of TYA have paid a big price for their success? "Well, to get that kind of success you really have to work at that – the success – and kind of stop concentrating on the musical growth so much and really work up an act and stick with it and do your two years of touring and you've got it made in terms of money. I've just never been able to limit myself like that. I think about it a lot, but I just don't know if I could do it. I'm lucky with Mike (his brother and manager) because he does not pressure me to do things I don't want to do."

Simmonds talks without acting. He has been at this for awhile and he doesn't have the brattish star trip of, say, Rod Stewart. But he does have the love of music, and he is an unusually honest embodiment of the problems involved in being in a rock band. He has become a leader of a band not by any driving ego force which made him crave the role, but because of the musical realities of his position in relation to those he plays with. Besides Jeff Beck and Brian Jones, neither of whom are playing anymore, Simmonds is the only British guitarist to totally dominate a band without singing at all.

Asked about his influences, he cited the usual array of black guitarists and then dove into a eulogy of Albert Collins. "There really aren't any musicians playing now who I've said to myself, 'I'd love to make an album with them,' but Albert Collins is the exception. God, he's such a master! I met him when I was in LA the last time and he was quite a nice guy." Simmonds is such an admirer of Collins that he has never thought of asking him to cut an album together. It was suggested to him that many black artists have benefitted commercially from associations with English or American rock groups. Simmonds was incredulous. "Really? You mean that he's not appreciated here? He's so good. Well, far out. It certainly would be fantastic to make a record with him. Maybe I should do it – call him up." At last report, Simmonds still hadn't decided.

Although Lillian Roxon, in her Encyclopedia of Rock, describes Savoy Brown merely as "one of a half dozen English blues bands who borrowed the black blues sound," they have developed, by mere longevity, into an interesting musical entity. One senses that Simmonds has yet to find the ideal people to play with, and perhaps he never will. But as he spoke directly prior to his return to England, he was hungry to record with his new band. "It's such a fine line," he said. "I just want to be able to do what I want to do. I'm not looking to impose anything on anybody. I just want to play with people who want to play."

The saga of English rock is a strange one. As in America, the cross currents of money, sex, and music produce diverse results. Closest perhaps to Fleetwood Mac in image, Simmonds is evolving as a Mayall type figure. But he has the demeanor and talent for whatever may develop out of the new Savoy Brown. At least you can be sure that the music you will hear from him is the thing that he wants to play.