WORKING FOR THE MANN CHRIS THOMPSON

Rip It Up, Issue 84, 1 July 1984, Page 22

WORKING FOR THE MANN CHRIS THOMPSON

Expatriate Kiwi and singer in Manfred Mann's Earth Band, Chris Thompson, made one of his periodic trips home recently and left with Pink Flamingos' bass player Paul Woolright. Thompson is hoping to use Woolright as the starting point for a band that will enable him to have a successful musical career independent of Manfred Mann. "It's not to say I don't want to

work with Manfred but he takes so long to make an album that I can do lots of things inbetween. It will give me an opportunity to use my songs. Manfred doesn't use any of

my songs and it's very frustrating writing songs and not having them out.”

Thompson already has a solo album out in Germany and had his own group Night several years ago. as well as having written for and played with ex Doobie Pat Simmonds, but the approach so far has been piecemeal. It has been hard to interest record companies in a solo artist and there is a problem with differing public expectations in America (where he is far better known for his work with Night than as Manfred's singer) and Europe.

To help him with his own career, all Manfred Mann recordings will now come out as "featuring Chris Thompson.” "My career's been a nightmare not in the sense that I can never get anything happening but in that I can never really get any unification of thrust in any direction. But for once in my life I do have loads of interest. If I can get people together in a band and get them involved in songwriting it just might work out. "I see my next album as a stepping-off point and so, I think, do my record company, Arista."