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Wishbone Ash can trace its origins back to Torquay, a seaside resort in the south west of England. It was here that Martin Turner and Steve Upton first performed together; Turner on bass, Upton on drums, before moving to London in 1969 to seek fame and fortune. It was in the capital that the decision was made to place an advert for a keyboard player and a lead guitarist. The resulting audition threw up 2 guitar leads but nobody could decide who to choose and the trademark twin lead sound of Wishbone Ash was born.
Ted (David) Turner and Andy Powell soon went through the poverty and growing pains of a new band but were fortunate that Miles Copeland was championing their cause and a fairly rapid progression was achieved. The first Album - Wishbone Ash was released in Dec 1970 and their second - Pilgrimage surfaced just 6 months later to reach no 6 in the NME charts. Great things were just 11 months away with the release of Argus - possibly the band’s best Album - certainly their most commercially successful - reached no 2 -in the UK charts and went gold. The next album Wishbone 4, again only 12 months on, went silver.
After these early highs, Ted Turner decided that he had had enough and left the band to be replaced by Laurie Wisefield. Although Laurie?s style was not to everyone?s taste, he was generally well liked by the fans and brought a slightly harder edge to the progressive rock tinged with folk that was the Wishbone Ash formula. |
