Supertramp and Rainbow members join Leslie Mandoki on new Mandoki Soulmates album

Mandoki Soulmates have included members of the Bee Gees, Deep Purple, Ultravox, The Animals, Cream, Genesis, Cutting Crew, Jethro Tull, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Supertramp, Rainbow, and many more over the years, in this progressive rock entourage led by Hungarian refugee Leslie Mandoki, who escaped the Iron Curtain in 1975. As Mandoki approaches fifty years of freedom to own and perform rock music, he shares stories with Goldmine along with Supertramp saxophonist John Helliwell and former Rainbow keyboardist Tony Carey about their music and collaboration on the new Mandoki Soulmates album A Memory of Our Future which also includes Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson on flute, former Blood, Sweat & Tears member Mike Stern on guitar, and a dozen more musicians. Sit back and enjoy this special Goldmine musical round robin with Helliwell, Carey, and Mandoki.

GOLDMINE: Leslie, Welcome back to Goldmine. We enjoyed having you as our podcast guest in 2022 talking about the prior album. Congratulations to all three of you on the new Mandoki Soulmates album. Since all three of you are here, we’ll be offering quite a variety to the readers to highlight a lot of your music. John, let’s start with Supertramp’s “Rudy.” This 1974 song from Crime of the Century was also used as the flip side of 1979’s “Take the Long Way Home,” a family favorite that was in the Top 10 when my wife Donna and I were married at the end of that decade. “Rudy” is a wonderful masterpiece.

JOHN HELLIWELL: “Rudy” is one of the songs that first caught my attention when I went to play with Supertramp at the rehearsal on July 19, 1973. I was very attracted to that song. I loved their music, so I just stuck around. They never officially asked me to join but I just stayed.

Supertramp

Fabulous Flip Side: Rudy

A side: Take the Long Way Home

Billboard Hot 100 debut: October 13, 1979

Peak position: No. 10

A&M 2193-S

GM: Tony, for you, I have chosen the flip side “Sing Along,” a beautiful piano and vocal finale from your self-titled 1982 album which was also used as the flip side of multiple singles from the album.

TONY CAREY: I didn’t realize that. “Sing Along” was almost impossible for me to sing because it was low for me, but I didn’t want to rerecord it. There was no autotune back in those days, ha-ha. I wrote love song lyrics for it, which wasn’t typical for me in the early ‘80s. I recorded the album with Nigel Jopson engineering at Hotline Studios in Frankfurt. He was just a kid at that time. I haven’t had a chance to talk about that song for forty years, so thank you for bringing it up. 

Tony Carey

Fabulous Flip Side: Sing Along

A side: I Won’t Be Home Tonight

Billboard Hot 100 debut: March 26, 1983

Peak position: No. 79

Rocshire XR 95030

Also flip side of “West Coast Summer Nights,” July 2, 1983, No. 64, Rocshire XR 95037

GM: I used the word masterpiece earlier, so is “Enigma of Reason” from the new Mandoki Soulmates album. The analog recording sounds great in the double vinyl format. It has such a full sound with John’s saxophone coming out of the left speaker and Tony’s keyboard work playing out of the right one.

LESLIE MANDOKI: Thank you. “Enigma of Reason” is one of the first songs that I wrote for this album. We all feel that the whole world is under a cloud of smoke represented by the Black Swan on the cover. There is a labyrinth of crises, and the compass is lost. We are living in a divided society. On the prior album The Torch, it was about passing the torch on to the next generation from us old rebels. This continues that theme. Musically, “Enigma of Reason” is typical of the Soulmates with British progressive rock mixed with American spirit. That was my teenage vision behind the Iron Curtain where music meant freedom. I had a seventh-generation copy of a Jethro Tull album in Eastern Europe that I played on a stereo cassette player, but I only had one speaker. It was a different world. We never knew what the album covers looked like. A couple of decades later I was told that progressive rock and jazz fusion were the enemies of communism. It made you think freely. When I escaped Hungary and was in a refugee camp in Germany, I said that I love British progressive rock and I would like to start a band that would include Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull and Jack Bruce of Cream someday and I ultimately did that. “Enigma of Reason” is progressive rock featuring John’s soulful playing, Tony’s rock Hammond organ, and a touch of jazz from guitarist Al Di Meola. 

GM: We just touched upon the ‘60s and ‘70s with Cream and Jethro Tull. Now let’s move onto the ‘80s, John, with “It’s Raining Again,” Supertramp’s highest charting single from that decade.

JH: That was from “…famous last words…” which was the last album to include Roger Hodgson as our lead singer before he left to go solo. Supertramp changed direction a bit after that. “It’s Raining Again” is a good pop tune, and I was pleased that the recording began with my saxophone. People play the song here in England a lot because it is always bloody raining.

GM: Sticking with the early ‘80s, Tony, the week my daughter was born in May of 1983, I put together a reel-to-reel tape of the Top 40 and other songs which were new on the radio, including “Why Me?” from your Planet P Project album.

TC: I had free access to a recording studio, and I was unsure of what I wanted to do. I just left Rainbow and began recording a lot of music in Germany. We talked about “Sing Along” moments ago and that song was recorded in the same week as a lot of the Planet P Project stuff. We were faced with a dilemma on how to market the music. My solo album was a rocker, and the Planet P Project album was a science fiction concept album which caught the attention of Geffen Records. John Koladner flew to Frankfurt and signed me to the label, but I wasn’t allowed to be in the videos because at the same time I had solo songs on the charts. That is how Planet P Project was formed and nobody knew that it was really me with a few studio musicians.

GM: You three blend nicely again on “A Memory of My Future” with the theme, “Looking back at tomorrow, will we see what we’ve done?” which is a concept that I was also drawn to at the end of the prior century when I wrote lyrics to a song called “Today’s Souvenirs.” Leslie, I understand and share that important philosophy with you that what we do now impacts how we look back on the times we are in. 

LM: With you being a father, you have the same struggle that the three of us have, thinking about the responsibility for the next generation, and like you said, the things we do now, one day will be history for our children. Do we live up to the responsibility? We are all children of Woodstock. We are all idealistic people, freedom and peace lovers. We all feel that war is not the answer. When the wall came down in Berlin in ’89 and the Iron Curtain was torn apart by the Hungarians on the Hungarian-Austrian border, we thought that paradise was ours with Europe and America, filled with humanity, friendship, love and social balance. Now, we are in a mess that has been created. How are we going to tell our children one day that we messed up? The whole album is circling around this theme. Our generation is facing an incredible responsibility. Sadly, social media has destroyed a lot in our society, which is what “Devil’s Encyclopedia” is about. Our generation of idealistic musicians was born to build bridges and suddenly it is as if we woke up and found ourselves in a divided society. Musically, though, you can take the work that John and Tony have brought to the group and proudly hand it off to the next generation and say this is tasteful, adding a soulful color to these paintings of music. There is no ego in the room, we all serve the music. 

GM: Leslie mentioned freedom and America. John, that spirit was captured on Supertramp’s Breakfast in America album which spent six weeks at No. 1 and produced four Top 40 singles. Even non-singles like “Just Another Nervous Wreck,” the flip side of “The Logical Song,” received airplay. That album is jam-packed with wonderful music.

JH: Thank you. It captured the spirit of us living in California even though the title track was written close to a decade prior, before Roger had even been to America. It was a collection of songs rather than a concept album like Crime of the Century and we were very happy with it.

GM: Speaking about a collection of songs, Tony, your Some Tough City album is a great collection. What a story you shared on the opening track and your Top 40 single debut “A Fine Fine Day.”

TC: Somehow, and I don’t know how it has happened, I have published 1200 songs and the way that I rate them is by the lyrics. I need a good story where every word means something. I might have the basic music track ready for a year while I do a lot of research to make the story right. “A Fine Fine Day” is based a bit on what I knew from growing up but also from researching a lot of criminals and scumbags.

GM: Leslie, it good to hear Mike Stern on guitar, who I enjoy on the Blood, Sweat & Tears flip side “Somebody I Trusted (Put Out the Light).”

Blood, Sweat & Tears

Fabulous Flip Side: Somebody I Trusted (Put Out the Light)

A side: Blue Street

Debut: 1977

ABC AB-12310

LM: We love Mike. We were on a German leg of an anniversary tour and my son said, “You are doing five concerts in five days, are you totally mad? You guys play for four-and-a-half hours. You play drums, percussion, and sing with no break.” There is also soundcheck and media events too. We left a show about 1 a.m. traveling from Munich to Hamburg. Around forty minutes later we thought that we were missing Mike. I walked up and down the bus and then I found an upper area that I didn’t know existed. There Mike was with his guitar, a little light, sheet music, and headphones. He said, “Leslie it is a good thing that you are here because there was a ritardando where it was not smack on and we were not together.” Al Di Meola said, “That’s Mike. I play for a living but Mike lives to play.” We are all music lovers but the way this gentleman loves music is just at another level. While we are hanging out, Mike is practicing. Al plays acoustic guitar and Mike plays electric guitar on “My Share of Your Life.” Mike always tastefully sneaks in his parts in the songs. He is a blessing. 

GM: Tony, you began with a family favorite guitarist who I grew up on, Ritchie Blackmore from Deep Purple, Rainbow, and Blackmore’s Night. My favorite Rainbow song is “Stargazer,” in my Top 5 of 1976, another masterpiece like we discussed earlier with a couple of other long songs.

TC: I loved being part of Rainbow in that mid-to-late ‘70s era, including our live performances. It was such high-energy and I was just trying to keep up. I received an enormous amount of hard rock credibility from “Stargazer” and Rainbow.

GM: Leslie, you and I were first exposed to Jethro Tull music on cassettes, growing up, and now you and I have both spent time with Ian Anderson. When I interviewed Ian in 2022, we discussed a dilemma we all face which is being asked to be involved with many musical endeavors and being selective. He said, “I have done quite a few with lesser-known artists like Mandoki Soulmates. I prefer playing with people with music a bit different from what I normally do, making it more of a musical challenge.” His flute opens the new album prominently on “Blood in the Water.” 

LM: Ian says that the most important thing is that a musician has taste and hopefully everyone will find A Memory of Our Future to be tasteful. I feel so honored having the chance to talk with you and it is a privilege to entertain you. Thank you for having us and your support.

TC: Thank you so much.

JH: Thank you and goodbye everybody.

Related links:

mandoki-soulmates.com

Goldmine 2022 Ian Anderson interview

Fabulous Flip Sides is in its nineth year

goldminemag.com/columns/fabulous-flip-sides

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