GET
TYG
round-breaking TV music
program The Old Grey Whistle
Te s t had been on air for only
a year when Focus arrived at
the BBC TV studios in mid-December- That week’s edition was already
pretty solid – film clips of Marc Bolan and
John Lennon, a live set from The Crickets
- but it was the relatively unknown Dutch
band who stole the show. Their scintillating
performance of two instrumentals – Sylvia
and Hocus Pocus – had everybody talking.
For presenter Bob Harris, Focus were
Whistle Test’s ‘big bang’ moment. “They
were an absolute sensation,” he remarked.
“We discovered that we had an audience
out there and it numbered in millions.”
With the band’s third LP still new in the
shops, their label Polydor quickly rush-
released Sylvia as a single. By the new year,
both Sylvia and parent album Focus 3 were
in the upper reaches of the UK charts.
Sylvia was a stunning expression of the
band’s virtuosic talent. Led out by
Akkerman’s terse guitar riff and the
tempestuous rush of Thijs van Leer’s
Hammond organ, it’s both breathless and
measured, alternating between blazing
rock and a more melodic kind of European
prog-jazz. Van Leer’s wordless Tyrolean
yelp is thrown in for added pizzazz.
The majesty of Sylvia contrasts with its
beginnings on the Dutch stage circuit
some years earlier. Van Leer wrote the
song in 1968, when he was a member of
a theatre group. Originally a lovelorn piece
of drama, with lyrics by Linda Van Dyck, it
was presented to singer Sylvia Alberts for
her solo spot in the show. “It’s actually
a cabaret song,” Akkerman explains. “He
wrote it for Sylvia Alberts and probably
had something going on with her.”
However, Alberts didn’t care for the song
at all. Van Leer, who co-founded Focus the
following year, decided to store the music
away for the time being. When it came
time to start work on Focus 3, he dusted it
down and asked Akkerman to shape it into
something fresh on electric guitar.
“In my younger years I used to listen a lot
to marching bands,” Akkerman explains.
“I heard some guy on trumpet in one of
these bands, and he had such a beautiful
tone, such beautiful phrasing. So the song’s
timing and phrasing come from there. The
first and second verses were both done in
five minutes, so altogether it took ten.”
Van Leer decided to call the finished
version Sylvia as a teasing reminder to
Alberts of a missed opportunity.
By the time Focus recorded it at Olympic
Studios in Barnes during the summer of
1972, they were already breaking through
on the international circuit. Their first UK
tour coincided with that year’s energy crisis,
when the miners’ strike resulted in a series
of power cuts and the three-day week.
“Our manager had a stroke of lucidity,”
Akkerman recalls. “He brought a power
generator over with us, and we were
playing at London University when the
strike was on. There was nothing else for
people to do, so the only possibility – was
to go and catch the Focus drift. At the
show, they were
exposed to all this
yodelling and other
stuff. They didn’t
know what the hell
was happening. It
was an eye opener!”
Through a
combination of
serendipity and sheer
aptitude, Focus had swiftly established
themselves as a new hot property. They
played at the Reading Festival in August ’72,
followed by a Melody Maker Poll Awards
show in London, where they very nearly
upstaged Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Second
LP, Moving Waves inched up the charts, NME
voted them Best Talent Of 1972, and Melody
Maker crowned them as the year’s Brightest
Hope. All of which meant that Focus were
well primed by the time The Old Grey Whistle
Te s t broke them on a national level.
“I knew this band was going to be huge,”
states Mike Vernon, who took over as
Focus’s long-term producer with Moving
Wa v e s. “But it happened so quickly. One
minute they were a band you’d never heard
of, then the next you couldn’t get into the
gigs. Jan Akkerman and Thijs van Leer were
two very strong characters, both incredibly
good musicians and very creative. Thijs
would play these extraordinary flute solosand play the organ at the same time. I don’t
know how the hell he managed it. Then Jan
would rip hell out of his guitar and
completely destroy what Thijs had just
done. So Thijs would respond by doing the
same thing on the organ.”
Focus consolidated their status with
extensive tours of the UK and America
throughout 1973. They enjoyed another
huge hit single that year with a reissue of
Hocus Pocus, and readers of Melody Maker
voted Akkerman the world’s greatest
guitarist. But the band ultimately couldn’t
sustain two forceful egos. The run of
commercial ended when Akkerman and
van Leer clashed over musical direction
following 1975’s Mother Focus.
“In the heyday of the band I had a hunch
that Thijs van Leer would take the name
Focus for himself,” says Akkerman, who
has since released over a dozen albumsunder his own steam. “I was quite famous
by then myself, so that solved the problem
for me [about going solo].”
He and van Leer aren’t exactly on each
other’s Christmas lists these days, but
Akkerman nevertheless remembers the
early 70s as “a fantastic time. Of course
there was some aggravation as well, but
that goes with the nature of the animal. I’m
grateful that Thijs van Leer started to yodel,
because it drew attention to my specific
way of playing. I’m proud of the music we
made as Focus.” And Sylvia is up there with
his proudest moments. It’s all the more
curious for the fact that, despite being a van
Leer composition, it’s arguably Akkerman’s
dazzling guitar that makes it what it is.
“Yeah,” he says with a chuckle. “Though
he doesn’t think so!”Jan Akkerman’s album Close Beauty is
out now via Music Theories Recordings.Originally a lovelorn “cabaret song” written for a singer called Sylvia Alberts, reworked as a rock
song, driven by guitar and Hammond, it helped paved the way for the band’s rapid rise to fame.Focus
Sylvia
“The first and second verses
were both done [written] in
five minutes, so altogether
it took ten.”
Words: Rob HughesPRODUCER MIKE
VERNON ON
FOCUS’S
VOLATILE
CHEMISTRY
“I was tipped off about
Focus by [Sire label
boss] Seymour Stein,”
recalls Mike Vernon,
who produced the
band’s biggest-selling
albums in the 70s.
“I first saw them play
in a farm storage unit
in a small venue
somewhere in the
north of Holland, and
I was completely and
utterly floored. I’d
never seen anything
like it in my life.
“I had a lot of fun
with Focus, but it was
really sad the way the
band broke up.
Jealousy, I think, was
the biggest problem.
Jan Akkerman was
jealous of Thijs van
Leer’s ability to write
music, and Thijs was
jealous of Jan’s ability
to create something
special without
knowing how he did
it. But that’s what
also gave them their
unique chemistry.”20 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM
THE(^) STO
RIES
(^) BEH
IND
THE
(^) SON
GS