The Heavy Heavy on new album and David Crosby

The harmony-filled British group, The Heavy Heavy, has Will Turner and Georgie Fuller as the nucleus of a quintet of musicians performing on tours throughout Europe and the U.S. Their debut album, ‘One of a Kind,’ is inspired by David Crosby, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, and more music that they grew up listening to. Goldmine spoke with Turner and Fuller about a David Crosby flip side, their new album, and their name, which was inspired by a David Bowie quote.

GOLDMINE: Welcome to Goldmine. Congratulations on the new album. You let me know that David Crosby was one of your influences. I interviewed David just weeks before he passed away and I had no idea that he was ill. He was so nice. I thanked him for his music, we bonded over “Ohio,” about the sad event where I grew up, and he thanked me for being a fan.

WILL TURNER: David Crosby’s mysticism was offset by his boisterous personality and outrageous humor, too. He was the only one of The Byrds, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and the other people he played with, who went down a dreamlike road that inspired me. There is an intimate BBC live show of just David with Graham Nash performing “Traction in the Rain,” stripped back, versus the studio version, where you can hear his beautiful voice.

David Crosby

Fabulous Flip Side: Traction in the Rain

A side: Orleans

Cash Box debut: 1971

Peak position: No. 101

Atlantic 45-2809

GM: My friends and I saw Crosby & Nash live at Blossom Music Center in Northeast Ohio in the summer of 1976. A couple of the songs recorded that night made it to their live album the following year. The concert was outdoors, relaxing, and filled with harmonies. Your harmonies come through so nicely on your album. I am reminded of The Cowsills, from the ‘60s, on my favorite song of yours, “Wild Emotion.” There is also a touch of Fleetwood Mac bounce on the song. You sing about a white dove crying, which is certainly Stevie Nicks’ territory.

GEORGIE FULLER: That song was driven by Will playing guitar in a Mark Knopfler style.

WT: It took a while for the song to come together, centered around the lyrics, and is the most emotional song on the album. It is rare for us to have a narrative in a song. The recording has a relaxing backdrop, leaving space for singing the verses and chorus.

GM: I shared “Happiness” with my daughter Brianna, and she compared your harmonies to yet another ‘60s group, The Mamas & The Papas.

GF: Well, like the lyrics for “California Dreaming,” we were six months into a grey, foggy winter. We were dreaming of getting the album done and getting back on the road. “Happiness” was the final song to make the album, and this is the one that felt like the anchor to pull all the songs together.

GM: “Because You’re Mine” is edgier than the other songs. When I was listening to the lyric line, “I love you because you’re mine,” I was reminded of the rock and roll classic lyric, “I put a spell on you because you’re mine.”

WT: I never thought about that, and I am a huge fan of “I Put a Spell on You.” It was my intention to create something with a guitar sound like The Rolling Stones’ song “The Last Time.”

GM: Well, “Miracle Sun” sounds like mid-‘60s Rolling Stones to me.

GF: That song is groovy. Something amazing happened when portable cassette players and the CD Walkman were cool, but when the iPod came around, and you suddenly had access to every single song you liked to listen to, a lot of people felt like they were in their own movie when they were walking down the road. That is how I feel about “Miracle Sun.” I want people to feel that this is the soundtrack to their life. When we play it live, people instantly move their bodies, which is nice to see how it has translated from our studio session to the concert setting.

GM: The drums on “Lemonade” hold the song together so well.

WT: Those are the drumbeats of Joe Bordenaro, our full-time drummer. That is another psychedelic track, with a Beatles influence and mellotron strings.

GF: We had been looking for the right drummer for quite some time and our manager suggested Joe, who had his own band and then moved onto a Rolling Stones cover band.

GM: I was in my home office the other day when I heard some wonderful music around the corner. I walked over to our family room where my wife Donna was watching The Kelly Clarkson Show, and there was your video of you the performing the slide guitar driven “Feel.”

WT: We had heard that Kelly Clarkson was a fan of the band.

GF: We were on tour in Wisconsin. There was no time to get to New York City to play live on the show, so we sent a video. If I could have told my thirteen-year-old self that I was going to be on Kelly Clarkson’s show, she wouldn’t have believed me. The next time we are in the U.S., we do want to meet her.

GM: Donna asked me the obvious question, which I couldn’t answer, “Why do they call themselves The Heavy Heavy?” a name that sounds more like the heaviest of heavy metal bands to her.

GF: It is a point of conversation and intrigue. A lot of people have said we should have called ourselves The Lighty Lighty and they’re not wrong. We were listening to an obscure BBC interview from the early ‘70s with David Bowie when he was releasing Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. The interviewer asked him to describe the sound of the album, and he said, “It’s heavy, heavy man.” We thought that was cool.

WT: We liked the alliteration and since then we have caught it being used in the 1985 film Back to the Future a few times. Also in the 1983 film Local Hero, with music by Mark Knopfler, there is a scene where the Dallas traffic is described as heavy, heavy. It’s a cool phrase and we are happy with it as our name.

GM: We started our session today with David Crosby’s dreamlike music. Well, your album ends with the dreamy finale, “Salina,”

WT: This one is deliberately dreamy and cinematic as it builds, with a ‘60s style key change at the end. Lee Hazelwood and Phil Spector’s wall of sound are great inspirations to me. There are two pedal steel guitar parts, played in stereo, one for each ear. I asked Joe Harvey White to play the steel guitar like the sound heard on David Crosby’s recordings, which were played by Jerry Garcia. It was a fun way to end the album, with a sound in line with what was created in California by the masters.

GF: We performed in Los Angeles this year on our tour and that city always stands out with its musical history. Pittsburgh, Boston, and New York City were also very fun, as were Austin and Dallas.

GM: You are returning to America next year for the Moon Crush Pink Moon ’25 Festival, here in Florida at the end of April with Blackberry Smoke, Duane Betts, Wilco, Guster and more acts. It will be great to have you back the U.S. with the new album behind you.

GF: Thank you so much. It has been a pleasure talking with you and an honor to be part of your weekly Goldmine series.

WT: Cheers. Thank you so much. Happy holidays to the readers.

Related links:

theheavyheavy.com

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