It all started in the late Sixties, when phrases like "breaking down the barriers" and "musical hybrid" were thrown about as freely as bog rolls at a football match. The barriers in question were those between jazz and rock and the idea of merging the two was considered fresh and exciting. A plethora of young English musicians, tired of the excesses of acid rock, decided to dig out their Mingus and Coltrane albums to pick up a few tips.If only they could marry the musician-ship and imagination of jazz with the adrenalin of rock... these college types minds boggled briefly, before donning cool shades and diving into the rehearsal basement.

Saturday afternoons just wouldn't have been the same without the SoftMachine, augmented by the front line of Keith Tippett's group, blasting away for 20 minutes on the John Peel show (you were really cool if you liked bands that played non-stop for 20 minutes!

Meanwhile across the Atlantic, similar ideas were stirring. Miles Davis was preparing the ground with a whole string of albums -Filles de Killimanjaro, In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew, the ultimate status symbol for sixth formers. The Tony Williams Lifetime decided to mix free jazz with electronic rock, with potentially explosive effect they were largely ignored. Then it happened. Ex-Miles and Tony Williams guitarist JohnMcLaughlin got religion, formed a band of virtuoso musicians and called it the Mahavishnu Orchestra. The Second Wave of Jazz-Rock was born. Eight years later and the idea of a union between jazz and rock isn't so exciting. There's even an established name for it - "fusion". Many of the original innovators have burnt out -McLaughlin seems lost for new ideas, Cobham churns out cliched disco, Chick Corea produces mindless schmaltz and MilesDavis appears to have disappeared up his own back side.

But there are still a few exceptionally talented musicians around who strongly believe that the genre has some creative mileage left, and they're determined to prove it. Some of them regularly get together to form a loose venture called Brand X, and while believing in the positive aspects of the music are perfectly aware of the traps in front of them. As bass playerPercy Jones says:"There's a lot of fusion bands over in America, some of them are so cliche ridden, There's a couple of radio stations in New York that play jazz-rock 50 per cent of the time. Some of it sounds like 'fuzak' it sounds really predictable. We try to get away from that, because that's one of the criticisms we get a lot, that jazz-rock is played out. It's not an unreasonable criticism it's something we're very aware of."

And Peter Robinson, one of Brand X's two keyboard players: "Miles Davis made that breakthrough where you could play jazz tunes through that hard rock thing. It's very hard to keep on coming up with good tunes and present them in that way. Basically it's really masculine music. I wouldn't call it aggressive, it's athletic. There are some sweet things that have come out of it, but basically with the high energy jazz-rock with a lot of technique, generally dazzling the audience, there's a limit to how far that can go, there's not much intimacy. It's really important on stage to display to the audience that it's fun to play, rather than this guerilla warfare."

Brand X have shown on record that it is possible to escape the cliches. Much of their work has consisted of relaxed, atmospheric playing aimed at creating a certain mood -examples include the eerie "Nightmare Patrol" onLivestock and most of the second album, Moroccan Roll, recorded with heaps of space echo - an area largely uncovered by their US counterparts. On the minus side, they are sometimes guilty of substituting flashy playing for ideas dazzling the audience" as Peter Robinson puts it - and pushing their techniques to the limit when the music doesn't demand it. The latest albumDo They Hurt is a clear illustration of the strengths and drawbacks of jazz-rock in 1980. Many of the compositions are inspired and beautifully played, in particular "Voidarama" and "Act of Will", with synthesized vocal from Percy. But there are also a passages of fast playing which shatter the mood that's been built up - or perhaps that's deliberate.

The idea of a band of world-class jazz-rock musicians, coming from Britain, at first seems ridiculous. After all, the major names that have defined the genre have been from the States, virtually all Miles Davis alumni. . TonyWilliams, Joe Zawinual, McLaughlin British born but naturalised American, etc. etc. How can a British band possibly match them for musical pedigree?It may come as a surprise therefore to hear that Peter Robinson had gigs with Stanley Clarke, Lenny White, and master Japanese percussionist StomuYamashta, before joining Brand X. And that Herbie Hancock is only one of a list of wall respected musicians that drummer Mike Clarke has played with.The other members of Brand X have also spent more than a few years "paying their dues", as we say in the biz but more of that later.

Brand X caught the public eye almost as c soon as they started gigging due to their e drummer being The Very Famous Phil Collins of Genesis. It was a definite advantage, once s they'd thrown off the tag of being "Phil Colins' part-time band". The group was actually s started as an Average WhiteBand-type outfit ii by a singer called Phillip Spinelli and guitarist s PeteBonus, and initially made an album for Island Records which was scrapped.The original drummer, John Dillon, left for personal reasons and PhilCollins was called in on the recommendation of Island A&R men. John Goodsall recalls: "We tried out some really hot drummers, but Phil settled in straight away with Percy Jones, the bass player, into a really tight thing just naturally. We eventually got the band together with Phil, Robin Lumley on keyboards), Percy and me, and the four of us decided that the instrumental passages were a lot more fun. The other two guys started going more and-more into commercial songs and we started going out more into improvisation."

The line-up of the group has constantly changed not because of musical dissatisfaction, but because the idea behind Brand X is that of an informal group of musicians get-ting together to play for enjoyment rather than making money. Robin Lumley spends more time on producing these days, although he did play on a couple of tracks on their latest album Do TheyHurt and gigged on their recent tour with Bill Bruford's band. Phil Collins also played on the same two tracks, although he doesn't have much time to play with the band now see the feature on Genesis in the May 1980 issue ofIME &RWI.

Other members of Brand X have included drummers Chuck Burgi and KenwoodDen-nard, percussionist Morris Part and bass player John Giblin. As current drummer Mike Clarke explains: "It's not like it's my gig, it's like when they want Phil they call Phil, when they feel like calling me they call me, and him and I have been kinda split level the last couple of years."

John Goodsall

John had a pretty far sighted Mum and Dad. At the age of seven, when most kids were playing with their Meccano sets and Scalectrix, the young Goodsall was given a guitar - a Rosetti Lucky Seven semi-acoustic, to be precise. OurJohn just picked the thing up and knocked out "Telstar" by the Tornadoes and"Apache" by the Shadows, and you could say that since than he has never looked back. He left school at about the age of 16 or 17 to play with a band called Babylon with Carol Grimes on vocals and Tommy Ayres on keyboards, and then went on to join Alan Bown, gigging around tiny clubs and halls seven nights a week. "It was interesting, those bands were playing jazz-rock kind of fusion," says Goodsall. "It was soul riffs but sometimes it would get heavy and there would be horn players and stuff."

Life on the road continued with Atomic Rooster, with Vincent Crane on "heavy metal organ" and Rick Parnell on drums, where John started "getting into the more legato sound, screaming sustain and feedback." He mat the founder members of Brand X after that when he hung around in London playing with people in pubs.

He had been listening to people like Sly Stone, Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page, and jazz artists like Coltrane, Charlie Parker and the Charles Lloyd Quartet, which included the young Keith Jarrett, but the real musical turning point came when ha heard John McLaughlin. "I'd heard him with Miles Davis onBitches Brew, but it was Live Evil that killed me, and Inner Mounting Flame, where I was really frightened by what I was hearing," says Goodsall. "It wasn't humanly possible, I was really worried. I'd be staring at the speaker wondering what was coming out of it, I was really quite scared." McLaughlinis still the most obvious influence to be detected in his guitar playing, and in his compositions - the track "Cambodia" on Do They Hurt is heavily based on the Mahavishnu Orchestra's "Dance of Maya", for example.Goodsallset about developing his technique "pretty much by feel, I found myself sitting around a lot improvising a lot with an acoustic guitar," and learned a lot by just playing with the other members of Brand X."Pete and Robin are into Lydian modes and Dorian modes and all this kind of thing, and we've hit all that, diminished stuff, flattened semitones clashing. Since I've bean inBrand X I've learnt a bit more about soloing over those kind of passages, which is like more of a jazz thing."John's preference is for hollow bodied guitars he mainly uses a Gibson E5345 stereo Ia 1974 model, which gives a lot of sustain, and a Gibson E5175 for quieter, s funkier playing because it has a harder sound and "doesn't feed back so much." He also uses a FenderStratocaster about 1974 for louder, rockier passages. "It's got some preamp in it," explains John. "I'm just having it done up by this really good guitar bloke in they States called John Carruthers, who designs a lot of stuff forYamaha and lbanez." His guitar strings are Rotosound Superwound, gauges 009to 042 and his amp is a Burman combo he thinks it's 160 watts. "I like the preamp stages in it, it's all set up in a line, it's no hassle, I can virtually adjust it in total darkness. I find it's very directional, the spread is a bit batter than most." John also uses a selection of Washburn guitars.

Peter Robinson

Keyboard player Peter Robinson 'never really liked pop music" when he was young "because it was always so atrociously performed," Like percussionistMorris Pert he had a formal training at the Royal Academy of Music, having started playing piano at the age of 11 and "making so much headway that it was decided that I should take it more seriously and get a proper training."

But he soon became disenchanted with the restriction of musical freedom enforced by the Academy. "One of the things I was very good at was improvisation, which was essentially discouraged at the Academy," he explains. "You got two minutes of improvisation - whet they politely called 'extemporization' - at th6 end of the year as an ear test. I thought 'why do I keep doing things by other people?' when I could actually sit down and music would come out. So I tried a sort of semi-jam. I did one jam gig, a bebop thing, and couldn't understand what was going on. So I turned towards Indian classical music, which incorporates improvisation, and found that was more understandable and I could ex-press myself more clearly."After leaving the Royal Academy he spent about three years as a session musician, which helped wean him onto a more electric-based diet. He played with ChrisFarlowe for a while and then joined a band called Quartermass. AfterQuatermass Robinson was with Stomu Yamashta and Suntreader, a sort of avant garde rock bend that also consisted of bassist Neville Whitehead, PaulBuckmaster (of Elton John fame) on cello, Morris Pert, soprano sax playerRobin Thompson and Martin Ford (arranger for Barclay James Harvest) on electric French horn. Peter then played with Sean Phillips for a while and got fed u~ with it, so decided to move to the States.It was a lucky move. Heplayed on Lenny White's Venusian Summer album and then one day received a phone call from Stanley Clarke inviting him to do a European tour, which naturally he accepted. That was how he met Brand X - they were the support band on .the tour, and when Robin Lumley left to concentrate on productionPeter joined. Robin came back to play with the band on their recent tour, and it was a strange sight indeed to see two keyboard players squeezed into one corner of the stage sharing the same set up - a Yamaha CP7O electric grand, a Roland string machine, Sequential Circuits Prophet V and a YamahaCS8O.

"We've virtually never had a collision," claims Robinson. "Basically it's like one keyboard player with four hands, rather than two separate units. Onmost things we've worked out who does what, but on some nights he'll go to another instrument and I'll be going 'what?'."

Percy Jones

You may find this difficult to believe but Brand X's superhuman bass player was always bottom of the music class at school. So there's hope for some of you frustrated pluckers yet, Jones the Bass has a phenomenal technique which is sometimes hard to believe - a tape of Brand X's Venue gig had the IM&RW staff gasping in astonishment at Percy's solo. And not just at his agility - the man has got Funk with a big F, and his solo spots display infinitely more taste than Weather Report's Mr Superbass Jaco Pastorius.

Percy's technique revolves around resting his thumb on the back pickup of his Wal fretless bass. "If I can't anchor it onto something I can't play properly," he explained. Therefore, there are certain types of electric bass that he finds difficult to get to grips with.The Wal bass is made by a bloke called Ian Wailer, nickname Wal, who is based in HighWycombe. One day Wal approached Percy with a bass to try out and he was immediately impressed, "Before I used the Wal I had a Fender Precisionfretless. I could never get enough mid-range out of it, no matter how muchEQ I used it would never come out, and it didn't sustain very well. Thefirst thing that impressed me with the Wal was that I could get all this mid-range response."His amplification is made by Frunt, a small company based in Surbiton. He uses a total a of 400 watts, consisting of two 200watt amps and two cabs, one a reflex cabinet with two 15-inch speakers, the other a 4x 12 the speakers are Fane. "It's a pretty straightforward," says Jones, "Before that I'd used an Ampeg SBT which was good, but it also had a certain roughness in sound, a real second harmonic distortion. I've been trying to get a cleaner sound because with a rough sound I jut play harder on the instrument, This one does the job"

It was Jaco Pastorius who provoked Jones' interest in bringing out the mid-range on the bass guitar. "I think he's done a lot for the electric bass, not just technique and playing but the sound too, It's still basically the same instrument, a Fender Jazz fretless. But with Fenderbasses before that all you could hear would be the fundamental, I always thought they sounded a bit characterless. So he revolutionised things in that respect, he made the Fender bass sound more interesting."Another bass player that has influenced him is, surprise, surprise, StanleyClarke. "I thought that when he first came out he was quite phenomenal."And an early influence m was Charlie Mingus because of his "tremendous feeling for his music."

Percy's musical career began when he was studying electronics at LiverpoolUniversity. He started playing with guitarist Andy Roberts and they teamed up with Adrian Henri to form the Liverpool Scene remember the "FleetwoodMac, Chicken Shack, John Mayall, Can't Fail Blues"?. He became frustrated with the band, did a short tour with the Scaffold and then dropped out of music for a period.Jones' nimble bass playing seems even more incredible when you consider that he J had not touched the instrument for two years it before joining Brand X. He was working on I building sites and was thinking about which musical direction he wanted to go in. It was during this period that he started listening to early Weather Report and Miles Davis' jazz-rock experiments which motivated him to get back into music again.

Mike ClarkeAsking drummer Mike Clarke what bands he has played with before Brand X is like asking Yahudi Menuhin if he has done anything before getting together with Stephane Grapelli The man's musical pedigree is simply phenomenal.Mikeis the only American member of Brand X, although Percy Jones now lives inNew York. He has played drums since he was a child, and has been a professional musician since he left high school. When Clarke was in his early twenties he played with such respected names as trumpeter Woody Shaw,vibist Bobby Hutcharson and blues singer Mose Allison around San Francisco.He went on the road and played "a lot of different blues and jazz gigs" and then met up with bass player Paul Jackson.

"In our desperation to find enough work playing jazz we were starving, so we started playing funk because it seemed to be the next best thing you could play and use some creative energy. We were living in East Oakland, it was like a breeding ground for all kinds of funk that were coming out ofCalifor-nia at the time. I got to do a lot of it."The Jackson and Clarketeam auditioned~ for Herbie Hancock just after the best sellingHeadhuntersalbum and got the job, Mike stayed for four years, playing on Thrust, Flood,Man Child and a couple of other albums that he can't remember, "I still had a great love of jazz, I wanted to play jazz or something I could get creative on," says Mike. "So I went to work with Eddie Hender-son for about a year and played with a few cats like Pharoah Sanders, David Liebman andJulian Priester."

He got together his own band but found work difficult to come by, and teamed up with British born organist Brian Auger. His association with Brand Xbegan shortly after he played on a few record dates with Peter Robinson,when he was invited to play on the Product album.

Mike's drum kit is Gretsch, consisting of 24-inch bass drum, 8x 12 and 9x 12mounted toms, 14", 16" and lB' floor toms, a deep Ludwig snare, K. Zildilan22" ride cymbal, A. Zildjian 18" crash, and sometimes another 18" or 20". A.Zildjian crash and at other times a big Chinese cymbal.

Why Gretsch? "They just have a certain sound," he says. "I can't explain, a certain ring to them that I like, and I can really hear the separation in between the different drums." Drummers that have influenced Clarke includeElvin Jones, Art Blakey and Philly Jo Jones. But there are only two drummers that "I really love in the universe and they are Tony Williams andAlphonse Mouzon. What Alphonse did with McCoy Tyner I thought was the most amazing drumming I'd ever heard in my life, and some of the most amazing music as well."