Get To Know Neil Gardner

Nic: Hi Neil. How surprised were you when Kevin Blyth contacted you about re-releasing Said The Blackbird again?

Neil: There were only 50 copies of the original Said the Blackbird pressed but they ended up being scattered far and wide.  Over the years since 1972 I have been contacted by interested collectors from around the world. This was as much for the rarity of the record as anything else. Hearing from Kevin out of the blue with a proposal to re-release the album was a wonderful and completely unexpected surprise.

Nic: What was the first record you bought? And do you remember where from?

Neil: I bought ‘The Muskrat Ramble’ a 45 by Frank Traynor’s Jazz Preachers, at McKinlay’s electrical store in Smithton, Tasmania.

Nic: Were the record stores good in your town?

Neil: There was only one to begin with.  It sold a modest range of records but you could get stuff off the top 40.  A few years later when the family moved to Burnie, a larger town along the coast, there were a few shops that sold records.  The best was the record bar in Lloyd Campbell’s electrical shop. It was run by a bloke called Russ Tattersall who had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the record industry and a boundless enthusiasm to match.

Nic: Who were your favourite bands or singers?

Neil: To begin with, whoever was charting: early Elvis, Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, Johnny Horton, Frankie Lane, later Peter Paul and Mary, Donovan and Dylan and the ‘British Invasion’ in general but they were all eclipsed by the Beatles.

Nic: Were you a big record collector?

Neil: As a kid, I could only afford singles and EPs. I’ve probably got about 100 LPs now.  I haven’t counted how many CDs I’ve got.

Nic: What was the home stereo/record player like in your house when you were a kid ?

Neil: We relied on the radio for our music until around 1964. We didn’t own a record player but my older brother used to bring home his portable player on Uni vacations. We eventually bought a cheap battery powered player. I discovered that we could play records backwards by putting the batteries in back to front. It was a very basic little unit, but when my little sister and I played Sgt Peppers on it for the first time, the magic still came through.

Nic: What was your parent’s taste in music like? Did they play records?

Neil: My parents liked the pop music of the forties and fifties, particularly The Weavers. In the years before television the entire family would spend every Sunday afternoon listening to the Top 40 on Melbourne radio and a couple of different top 10s in the early evening. Unlike most of Tasmania, Smithton was close enough to the mainland to pick up Melbourne radio.

Nic: In the United States, a lot of budding musicians had their ‘wake up moment’ when the Beatles played on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964. What was yours?

Neil: I remember one Sunday afternoon in 1963, before Beatlemania happened in Australia, a DJ in Melbourne, without any fanfare, played a new single by a band from England called the Beatles. It was their third single ‘From Me To You’. That was the first time I ever heard them. What immediately struck me about them was how happy and excited they sounded.

Nic: I read you were inspired by the folk and protest songs of the Sixties. Did this translate into any actual protesting where you lived?

Neil: There wasn’t a lot in the way of organized demonstrations up on the coast. Some of us sang anti-war stuff, but mostly let the songs do the talking. There would have been more organized demonstrations in Hobart. But that was before I moved south.

Nic: Tell me a little about the Brumida/North West Coast scene you were part of?

Neil: In my final term at school in 1967, I met two new students  David Paulin from Ulverstone and Mike Raine from Penguin. Along with a third associate called Bruce, whom I never met, they had formed Brumida; a collective of likeminded young people with a mission to write create and entertain.  It involved writing and staging plays, writing and printing magazines of poetry and eventually staging folk concerts.  North-West Tasmania was very provincial and we had to make our own entertainment.  Culturally we were quite successful but none of us made a fortune.  In 1968 David began working in Television in Launceston, Mike and others went to Uni in Hobart. Brumida people became very active and influential in the Uni folk and blues music scene in Hobart.  I went apple-picking in the Huon Valley and dreamt of making a record.

Nic: As the 60s turned into the 70s what musical trends inspired you?

Neil: I spent most of the 70s hoping the Beatles would get back together.  I re-discovered bands I’d overlooked in the 60s like the Moody Blues, the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, the Incredible String Band and T-Rex: and new bands like Split Enz, XTC, Ian Dury and Elvis Costello

Nic: Your album was recorded in Hobart. Was that where you were living at the time or was that the studio of choice for you?

Neil: At the end of the apple season in 1971, I moved to Hobart, where Nick Armstrong, a sound engineer with the ABC had set up Spectangle Studio.  I had worked with Nick on a couple of earlier projects and he was my natural choice.

Nic: Tell me about the other musicians who play on a couple of the songs on the album?

Neil: Nick Armstrong had contacts in the Hobart rock scene who were willing to help out: John Russell Lead Guitar and Piano, Rob MacFie Bass, and Phil Stubbs and Robbie Millar on drums.  John Lavery a dear friend from up on the coast joined me for ‘The One Legged Soldier’ and Ian (Gyp) Montague a Queenslander from the folk scene joined John and I for ‘Does your daughter still ramble at night.’

Nic: And finally, how did you get to have the unprinted surplus inners for George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass to use for your album cover?

Neil: For some reason when All Things Must Pass was released in Australia they ended up with a surplus of components from the triple album cover i.e. the blue, mustard and grey inner sleeves. Nick Armstrong put in a successful tender for the mustard sleeves which were used for ‘Said the Blackbird.’ Needless to say, I still treasure this very tenuous link with my all-time favourite band.

How Kevin found Said The Blackbird

Four years or so ago when COVID ruled the world I responded to a Gumtree advertisement for four vinyl records. Three of those records were in the Val Dominican style and the fourth was Judy Bailey’s My Favourite Things… a benchmark of Australian 1960s Jazz.

I drove to the upper north shore of Sydney, excited to be getting a cheap copy of this valuable LP. I handed over the money and the seller handed me the records. At that stage the seller’s wife walked in the room, flung open the record cabinet doors and proceeded to remove 100 or so more LPs. She left the room hurriedly.

I asked the seller, “What was that about?”

“It’s a hint.”

“To sell the rest?”

“Yes” he said, somewhat disheartened.

I looked through and amongst the Jimi Hendrix, Yardbirds, John Mayall and Deep Purple a mustard-coloured cover piqued my interest. Said the Blackbird…Neil Gardner…never heard of it nor seen it before. No idea where it was from at all. I added it to my by-now largish pile, handed over the $$ and was on my way.

A quick check on Discogs told me it was from 1972 and from Tasmania. Further investigations led me to Neil’s website and detailed notes about the record I had by now on the turntable. A bit of Dylan, Donovan and progressive rock elements came to mind.

Facebook revealed the man himself…alive and well – writing and recording until this day.

The record was pressed up by PYE in New Zealand at the suggestion of Nick Armstrong, who owned the studio in which Neil recorded the LP. Nick Armstrong – this was an early incarnation of the Basket and Candle label.

50 copies were pressed up and housed in leftover (unprinted upon) sleeves from George Harrison’s All Things Must Passtriple album. They were screenprinted by an art school friend of Neil’s. His printing workspace limitations meant only one side of Neil’s album was printed.

Neil sold the Said The Blackbird by word of mouth and at his performances.

Even more remarkable is the fact that this was Neil’s second album. His first Anthem for Wednesday was produced in the same fashion a year earlier. Finances were so tight it came with white labels only, a white paper sleeve and an 8″ x10″ black and white photo of Neil. The first Tasmanian LP released consisting of entirely original songs.

Neil is truly a remarkable artist and a true independent who produced a work of subtle beauty in the pastoral surrounds of The Apple Isle.

– Kevin Blyth, June 2024