DAVE GALLANT by Dave Lee Wilson
In
the early eighties the last thing that record companies, or the public
for that matter, wanted was another Progressive Rock supergroup. Since
the advent of Punk all of that pomposity and pretense was right out the
window and replaced with tight two minute ditties that barely allowed
three chords and a scream but then along CAME a grand exception to the
rule, ASIA.
ASIA, originally Geoff Downs (YES, THE BUGGLES), Steve Howe (YES), Carl Palmer (ATOMIC ROOSTER, ELP) and John Wetton (UK, KING CRIMSON, URIAH HEEP), confounded the experts with a mix of Pop and Progressive Rock that had not previously been considered and it was an unfathomable hit. In all the confusion over what they were exactly the band managed to storm the charts, right up to number one, and tour the world selling out the largest halls available in each town. For a time, ASIA was the biggest band in the world but then as quickly as began it all ended. Recounting the rise, fall and continuing rebirth of one of Rock music's most intriguing anomalies author David Gallant gives us the only authorized account of the who, where and why of ASIA in "ASIA: THE HEAT GOES ON."
"ASIA: THE HEAT GOES ON" is Gallant's first book but one that no other author could have come more qualified to write. For the last five years Gallant has edited the official ASIA newsletter and the group's official website and that access allowed for the writing of a book so detailed that even the most knowledgeable ASIA-phile will keep a copy handy if only for reference. For all of its detail Gallant manages to organize a narrative that entrances even the casual Rock music fan. Here you will learn details previously known only to the actors themselves, for instance, you will learn the complete story of why in 1999 the proposed reformation of the original ASIA band floundered and why "AURA," ASIA's latest disc, took nearly four years to release. Completing the book are intricate discography's, tour dates, bootleg reviews and archival photos that are printed here for the first time.
From his home on Prince Edward Island, Canada author and ASIA confidante David Gallant phoned in to explain just how this book project came together and gives us a piece or two more that didn't make the book's final cut.
DAVID LEE A bit of a turnabout here, you being interviewed instead of doing the interview?
DAVE GALLANT It is strange to have the tape rolling on me instead of me rolling the tape on someone else.
DL Of course you are Canadian and ASIA actually did quite a bit of recording in Canada, did that help with your putting this book together at all?
DG They did record part of "ALPHA" in a sound studio in Toronto but I believe by the time that they got to that point it was mostly just overdubs and a few vocals but the majority of that album was recorded just North of Montreal.
DL Was this the house on the lake that was described in the book?
DG It was called Moran Heights and the studio was called "Le Studio." It is a beautiful spot right next to a lake and I know that RUSH have recorded several of their albums there as well as a lot of other Canadian bands. There is a neat little story that Geoff (Downes) told me that he was one of the first people to ever have heard "Every little thing she does is Magic" by THE POLICE because THE POLICE had just been in there recording just prior to ASIA going in to do "ALPHA" and the sound tech on THE POLICE album was still in the studio and he rolled the tape for Geoff.
DL You are actually not a full time music journalist, you are a teacher, right?
DG Yes, I have just finished my tenth year and except for a few nervous facial twitches you can hardly tell.(laughs)
DL Was teaching your planned avocation or did you kind of fall into that profession?
DG That is a good question. I have an older brother of mine who teaches music and it just seemed like a cool thing to do. I never saw myself wearing a three piece suit and working in an office eight hours a day and I must admit that having a bit of time off in the summer always appealed to me. I can't say that it was actually my calling in life but he kids seem to keep you young and on top of things that are going on.
DL Did your decision to write the biography of ASIA grow out of your running the official band website?
DG Yes. It was a natural extension really. I was doing the web site for a couple of years and I was always getting requests to post interviews with the band on the website and through the Armada newsletter and as a result I compiled hours and hours of tape and, you know, after you talk to these guys long enough you eventually cover all of the bases from their inception through their musical roots and all of their successes and failures right up until today and after a couple of years of doing this it turned out that I basically had their entire history on tape, it just flowed naturally. If you read the book you will see that my voice is basically just linking the bands quotes together which allows the band to tell the story. It was a long process to write and compile the book but I can't say that it was all that creative or imaginative because it really is just the band telling their own story and history in their own words.
DL When you first proposed the idea of writing the biography of ASIA to Geoff Downs there was actually a reunion of the original group in the works which would have been wonderful from a marketing standpoint but that reunion kind of imploded, how did that effect your publishing of the book?
DG Yeah, well, in fact I had an offer from a British publishing house to take on the project and when the reunion collapsed they were still interested in taking it on but the financial arrangements were not motivational, from my perspective anyway. Basically they wanted to give me a little money up front and a pittance per copy sold and it just wasn't worth while.
DL Have you found that just publishing it yourself and selling it on-line has brought the book as much attention as if that publishing house had put it out?
DG More so. In fact, I have had discussions with other publishers over the years since that point and almost all of them wanted to use my web site and my subscription list of people as one of their main selling points which essentially meant that I would be providing them with the book, I would be providing them with the major outlet for sales and I would have to share a large portion of the proceeds with a third party and in the end it just didn't seem worth while. I took a bit of a financial gamble right up front to have the book printed myself but since then there has been no looking back. I have just about exhausted the original run of books and we are looking at a second printing this fall. We are very pleased with it and the nice thing is that if they (ASIA) release another record early next year with another tour next summer I don't see any reason to really update the book and any new fans that would see them on tour could pick up the book next year.
DL There have literally been dozens of people that have come into and out of the world of ASIA through the years, did you have any problem in terms of access to these people? Was everyone willing to speak with you for the book is what I am getting at?
DG Let's just say that anyone that wanted to be involved was easy to get a hold of. There were a few people who, anyone who reads the book could easily figure out who was actively involved and who was maybe not as actively involved. In fact, you can tell a lot about that just from my introduction in the book.(laughs) It was almost like a family really. I would be talking with Geoff and I would say, "You know it would be nice if I could get Steve Howe in on this." And Geoff would say, "Well here is his phone number, give him a call and tell him I recommended you. I called up Steve and it was no problem at all. Then I might be talking with John Young who played keyboards with the band in 1989 and I happened to mention that the band had done a one-time TV spot in 1990 for a Japanese broadcast and their guitarist at the time was Pat Thrall and he wasn't available to come over to do the broadcast so they pulled in a session guitarist just for that one time appearance to lip synch to the song. As it turned out John Young knew the guy and the guy allowed me to interview him!(laughs) I mean, this guy had five minutes of fame with ASIA lip synching on television and I was able to get him to interview through a couple of degrees of separation.
DL Some of the group's former members didn't leave the band on the best of terms, did it seem as though any hard feelings from the past had been let go or are there some people still fuming over their time with ASIA?
DG Well, there is that aspect of it but I also had to take into consideration the fact that I was self publishing the book so there are certain things that I just didn't put in the book, covering one's own posterior you might say. There were some heated words in conversations that I had but there is a lot of water under the bridge but you know people are people and not all wounds heal. A lot of the juiciest history of the band was left on the cutting room floor because, as a fan, I didn't want to see it in there. I think that the book gives the impression that there were parties in the band that didn't get along with each other and it gives the history behind those personal conflicts and it may flesh them out a little bit but perhaps not in Hollywood style. It gives enough of what people need to hear and beyond that they will have to look to someone else to fill in those details.
DL This book caters to both the hard core ASIA fan as well as those who may only be mildly interested in the subject but there are some great photos and clippings that you have included, were these contributions from the band members?
DG About '97 or '98 when I first started mulling over the idea of writing the book I sent out word to the fans and said "If anyone has any really cool memorabilia, articles, reviews, posters, ticket, photos, whatever, would you mind sharing it?" Over the next six months I was just flooded with stuff that was just interesting from a historical perspective some of which ended up in the book. The original ticket stub from the "ASIA IN ASIA" concert, I scanned that for the book, there was just an amazing amount of generosity coming from the fans.
DL How has the response to the book been, both from the fans of the band and from critics?
DG On the fist side of things, the fans, the only negative critique that I have heard is that some thought that it wasn't long enough but most of the fans that I have heard from enjoyed it and thought it was a good read. Actually, the only truly negative thing that I have heard was from the fans who do not recognize the present version of the band as "ASIA." As far as they were concerned the book ended half way through when John Wetton left the group and they are of course free to have that opinion but I don't share it. The last issue of Record Collector Magazine had a very complimentary review of the book so you have to expect to get a little of both I guess.
DL Beside the salacious stuff being omitted was there much else that people thought should have been in that just didn't make the cut?
DG Yeah. One minor complaint was that I didn't go into deep enough detail of the creative side of things. I discuss a lot about the personalities and historical events but when it comes to the actual creative side of things I guess I didn't go into as much detail as they think I should have. Who knows, maybe I will interview all of the creatives that were in ASIA again and go through every ASIA album song by song, talk to the engineers, producers and whomever and I think that there would be interest in that as well because that is another whole aspect of the band.
DL Something that I would have liked to have seen, actually expected to see, was a family tree of some sort, was there a reason why you didn't include one?
DG Believe it or not that was a plan when I was going with this British publisher who was going to produce the book in a much larger format. I have one sitting on my computer and I am seriously thinking of producing that just as a poster and it would include everything, what bands Mandy Meyer came from and what bands he went on to after ASIA. It is still sitting there and hopefully it will see the light of day. That may be my project for the next tour.
DL Something that the nitpickers must have found fulfilling are the appendices that you have included, quite extensive and detailed even a listing of bootlegs which was interesting given the fact that ASIA has traditionally been very down on bootlegs?
DG Yeah. To be honest, I don't think that the band has a problem with fans trading concert tapes as long as there is no money changing hands. As with most artists I don't think that they have any great love for the person pressing CDs and Videos for the purposes of being sold and making a profit but I tried to do my best in the wording of that section so that it didn't sound as illicit as coming from actual bootlegs. I thought that it would be a nice companion to the book and people could read the book and look to see if, I don't know, "Did the band ever play 'Without You' on the first tour?" I think that it worked better as a separate entity rather than being included in each chapter, that would have been a bit laborious.
DL Was it hard to find a source for all of the tour dates? I mean, who really remembers each one over the twenty years?
DG Funny that you should mention that!(laughs) Within two weeks of having the book out I received a handful of minor corrections. They were concerning where a venue might have changed at the last minute or a date here or there but nothing major. These were all from official tour itineraries and if there are any glaring omissions I would have to blame the source!(laughs) I mean, you can't really contact every person who saw an ASIA show and say, "Is this the right information for the show you saw?" I think it is about as good as you can get. Once you get past 1982 when they had the big smash hit with "Heat of the Moment" it is uncanny how with a band that has been around for twenty years and huge there are not many dates there., besides '82 and '92 when they came back on the scene with "Aqua."
DL Was there much contact from fans who wanted to contribute facts and memories from the shows that they had seen?
DG One of the most disappointing things with this book came about two years ago when a gentleman had heard that I was writing the book and was excited enough to e-mail me and said he had some photos to send to me from the first ever ASIA show. It just about floored me that here there was a guy e-mailing me and saying that he had pictures from the first ever ASIA concert and the advertisement that appeared in the newspaper advertising the show. I said, "Oh yes, send me copies and I will be more than happy to reimburse you immediately." I got the package and the first thing that I saw was the advertisement, which is in the book and which I think is a great addition to the book but my heart fell to my feet when I saw the photos. They were all distant and blurry and completely unusable and that was the biggest disappointment with the book, I think.
DL There was no other source for photos from that gig?
DG No, in fact he was the only person to have ever responded claiming to have seen one of those really early shows.
DL In addition to the book on ASIA you also did liner notes for the latest ASIA compilation on Geffen records, was that an offshoot of the book project?
DG I have co-credits on the liner notes with a gentleman named Jeremy Holliday. I received an e-mail from him about six months before the record came out and he said that he had been doing a bit of surfing on the web and had come across the ASIA web site and he liked a lot of the stuff there and asked if there was anything that I could send him that would help in writing the liner notes. He was thrilled to hear that I had a rough draft of the book to send and basically what ended up being the liner notes for "THE VERY BEST OF ASIA" from Geffen was a summary of the book.
DL It would seem that you would be a natural to be tapped for liner notes on the live albums that have come out, have you done any of those?
DG I haven't been asked to do anything like that and I suppose that I would be interested if I were. I have been asked to do the liners for one or two of the other compilations that have come out in Europe. I did have a request from John Wetton to work on the liner notes for the long awaited WETTON/DOWNS album and I wrote those. Believe it or not I am hoping that the opportunity doesn't come up all that much because they have had way too many compilations, "Greatest Hits," "Best of" and "Live" records released by too many small labels and most of it is inferior product so I am hoping that some of that dries up a little because it really didn't do them any favors.
DL Having been a fan of the group for so long does the release of this book give you a sense of completion, strictly as a fan that is?
DG Yeah, I think so. It has been a long, long journey, probably five and a half years now. I don't know how most people feel when writing a book but after so many years to be able to actually hold this thing in my hand, all the close calls of deals with publishers and the like there is a real sense of satisfaction, that is for sure. I am satisfied with it, the band is very happy with it and it is nice to have that part of my relationship with the band closed for now.
DL I know that there were small problems when ASIA switched cover artists in using the ASIA logo but there it is on the cover of your book, was it a problem getting clearance for that at all?
DG No, Roger Dean was extremely gracious and a gentleman about it all. When I asked for permission to use the logo his response basically was to "Clear it with the band." He wanted to have a look at a draft of the book to see that the person wasn't completely incompetent (laughs) but he was very, very gracious about it all.
DL I say this somewhat facetious but do you have musical interests beyond ASIA?
DG (Laughing) Well of course. Obviously I got into ASIA by way of some of the other giants, YES and GENESIS and that kind of thing. I am a big fan of 80's pop music , Celtic music and a lot of other stuff actually.
DL But you will stay with teaching as opposed to becoming a writer full time?
DG I had my grade eleven class all on the edge of their seats recently telling them all about this Rock band that I was familiar with and of course they didn't care that they had never heard of them it was just neat that here was one of their teachers affiliated with this Rock band who were once well known. They knew a bit more about Geoff and everybody had heard "Video killed the radio Star" so they thought that was pretty cool. Then one of the students at the end of the class said, "Mr. Gallant, you should have told me about that at the beginning of the semester." And I said, "Why is that." And he said, "Well if you would have told us about it earlier I would have had more respect for you!"(laughs)
ASIA, originally Geoff Downs (YES, THE BUGGLES), Steve Howe (YES), Carl Palmer (ATOMIC ROOSTER, ELP) and John Wetton (UK, KING CRIMSON, URIAH HEEP), confounded the experts with a mix of Pop and Progressive Rock that had not previously been considered and it was an unfathomable hit. In all the confusion over what they were exactly the band managed to storm the charts, right up to number one, and tour the world selling out the largest halls available in each town. For a time, ASIA was the biggest band in the world but then as quickly as began it all ended. Recounting the rise, fall and continuing rebirth of one of Rock music's most intriguing anomalies author David Gallant gives us the only authorized account of the who, where and why of ASIA in "ASIA: THE HEAT GOES ON."
"ASIA: THE HEAT GOES ON" is Gallant's first book but one that no other author could have come more qualified to write. For the last five years Gallant has edited the official ASIA newsletter and the group's official website and that access allowed for the writing of a book so detailed that even the most knowledgeable ASIA-phile will keep a copy handy if only for reference. For all of its detail Gallant manages to organize a narrative that entrances even the casual Rock music fan. Here you will learn details previously known only to the actors themselves, for instance, you will learn the complete story of why in 1999 the proposed reformation of the original ASIA band floundered and why "AURA," ASIA's latest disc, took nearly four years to release. Completing the book are intricate discography's, tour dates, bootleg reviews and archival photos that are printed here for the first time.
From his home on Prince Edward Island, Canada author and ASIA confidante David Gallant phoned in to explain just how this book project came together and gives us a piece or two more that didn't make the book's final cut.
DAVID LEE A bit of a turnabout here, you being interviewed instead of doing the interview?
DAVE GALLANT It is strange to have the tape rolling on me instead of me rolling the tape on someone else.
DL Of course you are Canadian and ASIA actually did quite a bit of recording in Canada, did that help with your putting this book together at all?
DG They did record part of "ALPHA" in a sound studio in Toronto but I believe by the time that they got to that point it was mostly just overdubs and a few vocals but the majority of that album was recorded just North of Montreal.
DL Was this the house on the lake that was described in the book?
DG It was called Moran Heights and the studio was called "Le Studio." It is a beautiful spot right next to a lake and I know that RUSH have recorded several of their albums there as well as a lot of other Canadian bands. There is a neat little story that Geoff (Downes) told me that he was one of the first people to ever have heard "Every little thing she does is Magic" by THE POLICE because THE POLICE had just been in there recording just prior to ASIA going in to do "ALPHA" and the sound tech on THE POLICE album was still in the studio and he rolled the tape for Geoff.
DL You are actually not a full time music journalist, you are a teacher, right?
DG Yes, I have just finished my tenth year and except for a few nervous facial twitches you can hardly tell.(laughs)
DL Was teaching your planned avocation or did you kind of fall into that profession?
DG That is a good question. I have an older brother of mine who teaches music and it just seemed like a cool thing to do. I never saw myself wearing a three piece suit and working in an office eight hours a day and I must admit that having a bit of time off in the summer always appealed to me. I can't say that it was actually my calling in life but he kids seem to keep you young and on top of things that are going on.
DL Did your decision to write the biography of ASIA grow out of your running the official band website?
DG Yes. It was a natural extension really. I was doing the web site for a couple of years and I was always getting requests to post interviews with the band on the website and through the Armada newsletter and as a result I compiled hours and hours of tape and, you know, after you talk to these guys long enough you eventually cover all of the bases from their inception through their musical roots and all of their successes and failures right up until today and after a couple of years of doing this it turned out that I basically had their entire history on tape, it just flowed naturally. If you read the book you will see that my voice is basically just linking the bands quotes together which allows the band to tell the story. It was a long process to write and compile the book but I can't say that it was all that creative or imaginative because it really is just the band telling their own story and history in their own words.
DL When you first proposed the idea of writing the biography of ASIA to Geoff Downs there was actually a reunion of the original group in the works which would have been wonderful from a marketing standpoint but that reunion kind of imploded, how did that effect your publishing of the book?
DG Yeah, well, in fact I had an offer from a British publishing house to take on the project and when the reunion collapsed they were still interested in taking it on but the financial arrangements were not motivational, from my perspective anyway. Basically they wanted to give me a little money up front and a pittance per copy sold and it just wasn't worth while.
DL Have you found that just publishing it yourself and selling it on-line has brought the book as much attention as if that publishing house had put it out?
DG More so. In fact, I have had discussions with other publishers over the years since that point and almost all of them wanted to use my web site and my subscription list of people as one of their main selling points which essentially meant that I would be providing them with the book, I would be providing them with the major outlet for sales and I would have to share a large portion of the proceeds with a third party and in the end it just didn't seem worth while. I took a bit of a financial gamble right up front to have the book printed myself but since then there has been no looking back. I have just about exhausted the original run of books and we are looking at a second printing this fall. We are very pleased with it and the nice thing is that if they (ASIA) release another record early next year with another tour next summer I don't see any reason to really update the book and any new fans that would see them on tour could pick up the book next year.
DL There have literally been dozens of people that have come into and out of the world of ASIA through the years, did you have any problem in terms of access to these people? Was everyone willing to speak with you for the book is what I am getting at?
DG Let's just say that anyone that wanted to be involved was easy to get a hold of. There were a few people who, anyone who reads the book could easily figure out who was actively involved and who was maybe not as actively involved. In fact, you can tell a lot about that just from my introduction in the book.(laughs) It was almost like a family really. I would be talking with Geoff and I would say, "You know it would be nice if I could get Steve Howe in on this." And Geoff would say, "Well here is his phone number, give him a call and tell him I recommended you. I called up Steve and it was no problem at all. Then I might be talking with John Young who played keyboards with the band in 1989 and I happened to mention that the band had done a one-time TV spot in 1990 for a Japanese broadcast and their guitarist at the time was Pat Thrall and he wasn't available to come over to do the broadcast so they pulled in a session guitarist just for that one time appearance to lip synch to the song. As it turned out John Young knew the guy and the guy allowed me to interview him!(laughs) I mean, this guy had five minutes of fame with ASIA lip synching on television and I was able to get him to interview through a couple of degrees of separation.
DL Some of the group's former members didn't leave the band on the best of terms, did it seem as though any hard feelings from the past had been let go or are there some people still fuming over their time with ASIA?
DG Well, there is that aspect of it but I also had to take into consideration the fact that I was self publishing the book so there are certain things that I just didn't put in the book, covering one's own posterior you might say. There were some heated words in conversations that I had but there is a lot of water under the bridge but you know people are people and not all wounds heal. A lot of the juiciest history of the band was left on the cutting room floor because, as a fan, I didn't want to see it in there. I think that the book gives the impression that there were parties in the band that didn't get along with each other and it gives the history behind those personal conflicts and it may flesh them out a little bit but perhaps not in Hollywood style. It gives enough of what people need to hear and beyond that they will have to look to someone else to fill in those details.
DL This book caters to both the hard core ASIA fan as well as those who may only be mildly interested in the subject but there are some great photos and clippings that you have included, were these contributions from the band members?
DG About '97 or '98 when I first started mulling over the idea of writing the book I sent out word to the fans and said "If anyone has any really cool memorabilia, articles, reviews, posters, ticket, photos, whatever, would you mind sharing it?" Over the next six months I was just flooded with stuff that was just interesting from a historical perspective some of which ended up in the book. The original ticket stub from the "ASIA IN ASIA" concert, I scanned that for the book, there was just an amazing amount of generosity coming from the fans.
DL How has the response to the book been, both from the fans of the band and from critics?
DG On the fist side of things, the fans, the only negative critique that I have heard is that some thought that it wasn't long enough but most of the fans that I have heard from enjoyed it and thought it was a good read. Actually, the only truly negative thing that I have heard was from the fans who do not recognize the present version of the band as "ASIA." As far as they were concerned the book ended half way through when John Wetton left the group and they are of course free to have that opinion but I don't share it. The last issue of Record Collector Magazine had a very complimentary review of the book so you have to expect to get a little of both I guess.
DL Beside the salacious stuff being omitted was there much else that people thought should have been in that just didn't make the cut?
DG Yeah. One minor complaint was that I didn't go into deep enough detail of the creative side of things. I discuss a lot about the personalities and historical events but when it comes to the actual creative side of things I guess I didn't go into as much detail as they think I should have. Who knows, maybe I will interview all of the creatives that were in ASIA again and go through every ASIA album song by song, talk to the engineers, producers and whomever and I think that there would be interest in that as well because that is another whole aspect of the band.
DL Something that I would have liked to have seen, actually expected to see, was a family tree of some sort, was there a reason why you didn't include one?
DG Believe it or not that was a plan when I was going with this British publisher who was going to produce the book in a much larger format. I have one sitting on my computer and I am seriously thinking of producing that just as a poster and it would include everything, what bands Mandy Meyer came from and what bands he went on to after ASIA. It is still sitting there and hopefully it will see the light of day. That may be my project for the next tour.
DL Something that the nitpickers must have found fulfilling are the appendices that you have included, quite extensive and detailed even a listing of bootlegs which was interesting given the fact that ASIA has traditionally been very down on bootlegs?
DG Yeah. To be honest, I don't think that the band has a problem with fans trading concert tapes as long as there is no money changing hands. As with most artists I don't think that they have any great love for the person pressing CDs and Videos for the purposes of being sold and making a profit but I tried to do my best in the wording of that section so that it didn't sound as illicit as coming from actual bootlegs. I thought that it would be a nice companion to the book and people could read the book and look to see if, I don't know, "Did the band ever play 'Without You' on the first tour?" I think that it worked better as a separate entity rather than being included in each chapter, that would have been a bit laborious.
DL Was it hard to find a source for all of the tour dates? I mean, who really remembers each one over the twenty years?
DG Funny that you should mention that!(laughs) Within two weeks of having the book out I received a handful of minor corrections. They were concerning where a venue might have changed at the last minute or a date here or there but nothing major. These were all from official tour itineraries and if there are any glaring omissions I would have to blame the source!(laughs) I mean, you can't really contact every person who saw an ASIA show and say, "Is this the right information for the show you saw?" I think it is about as good as you can get. Once you get past 1982 when they had the big smash hit with "Heat of the Moment" it is uncanny how with a band that has been around for twenty years and huge there are not many dates there., besides '82 and '92 when they came back on the scene with "Aqua."
DL Was there much contact from fans who wanted to contribute facts and memories from the shows that they had seen?
DG One of the most disappointing things with this book came about two years ago when a gentleman had heard that I was writing the book and was excited enough to e-mail me and said he had some photos to send to me from the first ever ASIA show. It just about floored me that here there was a guy e-mailing me and saying that he had pictures from the first ever ASIA concert and the advertisement that appeared in the newspaper advertising the show. I said, "Oh yes, send me copies and I will be more than happy to reimburse you immediately." I got the package and the first thing that I saw was the advertisement, which is in the book and which I think is a great addition to the book but my heart fell to my feet when I saw the photos. They were all distant and blurry and completely unusable and that was the biggest disappointment with the book, I think.
DL There was no other source for photos from that gig?
DG No, in fact he was the only person to have ever responded claiming to have seen one of those really early shows.
DL In addition to the book on ASIA you also did liner notes for the latest ASIA compilation on Geffen records, was that an offshoot of the book project?
DG I have co-credits on the liner notes with a gentleman named Jeremy Holliday. I received an e-mail from him about six months before the record came out and he said that he had been doing a bit of surfing on the web and had come across the ASIA web site and he liked a lot of the stuff there and asked if there was anything that I could send him that would help in writing the liner notes. He was thrilled to hear that I had a rough draft of the book to send and basically what ended up being the liner notes for "THE VERY BEST OF ASIA" from Geffen was a summary of the book.
DL It would seem that you would be a natural to be tapped for liner notes on the live albums that have come out, have you done any of those?
DG I haven't been asked to do anything like that and I suppose that I would be interested if I were. I have been asked to do the liners for one or two of the other compilations that have come out in Europe. I did have a request from John Wetton to work on the liner notes for the long awaited WETTON/DOWNS album and I wrote those. Believe it or not I am hoping that the opportunity doesn't come up all that much because they have had way too many compilations, "Greatest Hits," "Best of" and "Live" records released by too many small labels and most of it is inferior product so I am hoping that some of that dries up a little because it really didn't do them any favors.
DL Having been a fan of the group for so long does the release of this book give you a sense of completion, strictly as a fan that is?
DG Yeah, I think so. It has been a long, long journey, probably five and a half years now. I don't know how most people feel when writing a book but after so many years to be able to actually hold this thing in my hand, all the close calls of deals with publishers and the like there is a real sense of satisfaction, that is for sure. I am satisfied with it, the band is very happy with it and it is nice to have that part of my relationship with the band closed for now.
DL I know that there were small problems when ASIA switched cover artists in using the ASIA logo but there it is on the cover of your book, was it a problem getting clearance for that at all?
DG No, Roger Dean was extremely gracious and a gentleman about it all. When I asked for permission to use the logo his response basically was to "Clear it with the band." He wanted to have a look at a draft of the book to see that the person wasn't completely incompetent (laughs) but he was very, very gracious about it all.
DL I say this somewhat facetious but do you have musical interests beyond ASIA?
DG (Laughing) Well of course. Obviously I got into ASIA by way of some of the other giants, YES and GENESIS and that kind of thing. I am a big fan of 80's pop music , Celtic music and a lot of other stuff actually.
DL But you will stay with teaching as opposed to becoming a writer full time?
DG I had my grade eleven class all on the edge of their seats recently telling them all about this Rock band that I was familiar with and of course they didn't care that they had never heard of them it was just neat that here was one of their teachers affiliated with this Rock band who were once well known. They knew a bit more about Geoff and everybody had heard "Video killed the radio Star" so they thought that was pretty cool. Then one of the students at the end of the class said, "Mr. Gallant, you should have told me about that at the beginning of the semester." And I said, "Why is that." And he said, "Well if you would have told us about it earlier I would have had more respect for you!"(laughs)
