Guitarist and singer Andy Powell is the leader of Wishbone Ash, the most influential and significant rock band you may never have heard of. This seminal band have been playing and touring since they formed in London in the Marquee Club days, circa 1969.

I saw them in concert 20 years ago, but this quartet of two guitarists, bass player, and drummer tour through here regularly. Last year, they played The Clyde and I missed it. 

On Thursday, Nov. 21, they’re playing Baker Street Centre, and I’m not going to miss them again. They’ve got a loyal fan base, which they savvily cultivate on social media, and some folks follow them across the country.

Wishbone pioneered a style of rock guitar that inspired a generation of bands that became much bigger names. Members of Thin Lizzy, Judas Priest, and Iron Maiden are on record naming Wishbone as their influence. The style is called “twin lead guitar.”

Wishbone are a band that charted around the world with major label albums well into the ’80s, yet never had a platinum album and nary a hit single. They never seemed to mind; they just kept working.

‘Ahead of our time’

I spoke with founding member Powell from his home in Connecticut; he’s long been an American citizen. Powell wrote the book on slow, steady career longevity: his memoir Eyes Wide Open: True Tales of a Wishbone Ash Warrior, in 2015.

I asked about their 26th studio album, 2020’s Coat of Arms.

“Of late,” he said, “the lyrical themes really are things that strike us as we are traveling.

“We go to so many countries in such short time. Just recently we’ve been in Europe, and you can’t fail but draw conclusions or just keep your eyes open and see what’s going down.

“Being in a band is a fantastic window on the world. Current events, personal relationships, all of that finds its way into our lyrics, just observations.”

The music is hard-driving rock but filtered through the lens of 1970. 

From the start, Wishbone’s heaviness was in the attitude, while the playing was intricate and nimble. Bands in that era had guitars, but also a keyboard player, and a saxophone or flute or front singer. Wishbone dispensed with those.

“I think it was really just a question of economics,” Powell said. “We were poor, we were starving, and we just thought, ‘Hey, let’s see how far we can take things by just using two guitars, bass, and drums.’ And I think we really did take it pretty far in terms of the textures, the ideas, the time signatures, the breadth of material. I mean, we didn’t always get it right, but we were adventurous and we were very, how can I put it? Probably ahead of our time in terms of the technical way that we recorded and played the guitars.”

Startlingly, they burst onto BBC TV in 1970 with a one-time detour into hard-swinging bebop jazz with “Vas Dis,” their cover of a piece by American organist Jack McDuff. Wishbone’s two guitarists slash through torturous, lightning-fast riffs that are actually carefully composed in close harmony, emulating organ and saxophones: that’s the “twin lead guitar” sound that they pioneered.

“We are renowned for having a very precise clean sound live. It’s always been our trademark,” Powell said. 

Around 1971, Powell chanced upon Orange amplifiers and a Gibson Flying V guitar, an unpopular model from the ’60s, and that became his sound and his iconic image. (It’s pure serendipity that the Flying V is shaped like a wishbone.)

If you wonder why metal guitarists play angular, pointy guitars, well, Powell claims to be the trendsetter. Metal, with its crushing distortion from Marshall amps, nonetheless is built on the template of Wishbone Ash.

Leaving an impression

“It’s very important to us to take people on a musical journey in a song,” Powell said. “We’d often start a song like ‘Phoenix,’ for example, one of our classics. It starts very dynamically, almost orchestral in a way, and it goes very quiet and then it builds up and it ends in a frenetic rousing finale.”

“Phoenix,” off their 1970 sophomore album, is one of the pieces that defined British progressive rock. 

Their classic album was 1972’s Argus, with its unabashed sword-and-sorcery lyrics and longer instrumentals. If blues rock is your thing, however, Wishbone deliver that, too. They tempered their proto-prog with blues- and folk-oriented songs.

From 1974, with a contract with a Los Angeles record label and the opportunity to record at Criteria Studios in Miami, Wishbone relocated to the U.S. Powell asserts, credibly, that their guitar style was a formative influence on Lynyrd Skynyrd and Steely Dan.

At Criteria, “we used to rent a house down there,” Powell said. “We’d camp out down there for six weeks and make an album. At the same time ‘Layla’ (Eric Clapton with Derek and the Dominoes) was cut there, the Allman Brothers were recording there. The band that went in the studio after us down there (in 1976) and cut an amazing album called Hotel California was the Eagles. And no surprise, we both had the same producer. And there’s a fair bit of twin lead guitar on that album.”

That producer, Bill Szymczyk, first worked with Wishbone Ash in 1974, then started working with the Eagles, who transformed from country into rock, adding an extra lead guitarist. 

Powell’s bold claim that Wishbone Ash influenced the Eagles rings true.

Taking requests

Powell has been the sole original member of Wishbone since about 1990, bandleader for a long list of mostly British players. At Baker Street Centre, we’ll see him with their bass player of 27 years, Bob Skeat, and “two Yorkshire men,” Mark Abrahams on guitar and Mike Truscott on drums.

Today, among those in the know, there’s a reappraisal of Wishbone Ash’s formative role in progressive rock, culminating in their appearance last March on Cruise to the Edge, the festival at sea. They reached a new audience and hung out and jammed with luminaries like Steve Hackett, Adrian Belew, Nick D’Virgilio, and Big Big Train, artists you’ve read about in Whatzup.

At Baker Street, Wishbone will be playing favorites chosen by their fans. It’s called the Wish List Tour. 

“With a career that spans 50-plus years,” Powell said, “you’ve got to bear all that in mind. And if we can do it live, we will do it.”