The Roy Wood Sound

May 02, 2022

To dwell into the world of the band The Move and that group’s leading light, Roy Wood, is a trip to visit Alice in one’s most maddening state of mind. I love The Move because they are a pop band that rocks and a rock band that does pop. There is a disconnection, especially on their album Shazam. Borderline metal but with a love for pretty melodies and doing covers by Tom Paxton (The Last Thing on My Mind) and a Weil/Mann song, Don’t Make My Baby Blue. Their original lead singer Carl Wayne had a thing for doing pop songs, but Roy and the boys treated that type of material as a force of inner power overcoming the coming sound waves. So, The Move had the talent of selecting great covers, but Roy Wood is a unique and inventive songwriter.

Ron and Russell Mael, Sparks, wanted to have Wood produced Kimono My House. That didn’t happen, still; it makes perfect sense if you know Roy Wood’s recordings. I know The Move hits and Roy Wood’s first solo album, in which he plays every instrument and does all the vocals, including backup singing. What I don’t know until recently are albums like his second solo album Mustard or his recordings with his band Wizzard. To step into that world is truly like going to a universe that seems familiar, but indeed there is something strange going on. Being a masterful songwriter and record maker, but still be able to capture the strangeness of pop music and its history. Roy Wood acknowledges the narration of of that music’s history, but he also uses that platform to combine 1950s rock, British Music Hall music, with touches of psychedelic pop. Wood has a horn section in many of his songs, but they are not only saxophone, but also clarinets, oboe, bassoon, French Horn, and bagpipes. Occasional sitar as well as a cello or two are thrown in the mix. More likely all the instruments are played by Roy.

Roy has that genius ability to over-produce a sound, but actually in an under-played manner which makes the sound rough or lively, but of course, full. It’s a Phil Spector with touches of Joe Meek thrown into the mix. And by no means is Roy Wood a minimalist, when he can approach sound as an overstuffed freezer. There are aspects of baroque pop, experimental mixture of 1940s Swing, big band, but in the context of Roy’s rocking tunes, with additional to the bone bass-heavy grooves. The often thought of eccentric but brilliant Prince is even less more crazed than Roy Wood’s recordings.

At times, Wizzard or his solo material can sound like novelty songs, but this is not a gimmick on Roy’s part, but an involving and much cared for aesthetic. His love for early rock n’ roll, as well as The Beach Boys is sincere, and he uses those sounds as the foundation to do the ‘Roy Wood’ magic. Jeff Lynne and Bev Bevan of The Move were going to join forces with Wood on their Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) project, but Wood left that band after their first album to focus on Wizzard, which became a bizarro version of Jeff and Bev’s band. As ELO is slick and well organized, arrangement wise, Wood’s Wizzard is like a bunch of kids taking over the strings and horns to make a racket set to a rock n’ roll beat. Ever since his work with The Move and afterward, Roy Wood pushes the boundary over the limits of a proper pop song.

There are moments of sublime essence that frames Wood’s recordings that is one of a kind. It’s hard to categorize his music in The Move, Wizzard, and solo. It’s a hybrid of certain points in music’s history, but he flips the stylings into something that is very much his own, and it’s his world. Yes, there is Glam, revival oldies, and baroque string arranged pieces, but it is also uniquely Roy Wood.

The Move Discography:

The Move - Move (Regal Zonophone, 1968)

The Move - Shazam (A&M, 1970)

The Move - Looking On (Capitol Records, 1970)

The Move - Message From The Country (Capitol Records, 1971

The Move - Live At The Fillmore (Not Bad Records, 2014

Electric Light Orchestra

The Electric Light Orchestra - The Electric Light Orchestra

Roy Wood Solo Albums (I thought of when writing this essay)

Roy Wood - Borders (United Artist Records, 1973)

Roy Wood - Mustard (United Artist Records, 1976)

Roy Wood’s Wizzard