Remembered by many for their arrangements of ‘Blinded By The Light’, a chart hit in 1976, ‘Davy’s On The Road Again’ and ‘Mighty Quinn’, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band have, since 1971, toured Europe, the UK, USA, Russia and Australia, performing more than eighteen-hundred gigs, recording seventeen studio albums and releasing thirty-seven singles. From 1996, they have toured every year, until the Covid pandemic cut into what was their fiftieth-anniversary year in 2021.

The band now have gigs scheduled for 2022 so when I spoke with Manfred via a video call, I asked him how he felt about going back on tour. “In many ways, I’m looking forward to playing and seeing the guys again but I haven’t done a gig in almost two years. I don’t know how I’ll feel.” Manfred lives in Sweden where almost nobody knows him as Manfred Mann. He is very protective of his privacy. Born Manfred Lubowitz in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1940, he came to England in 1961 to escape apartheid and to make a living as a jazz musician. He had played piano from an early age and, after leaving high school, gigged part-time though not professionally. In the three years before he came to England, he worked in his father’s printing business, which is where he thought up the name Manfred Mann.

“I can almost see it now. I was cutting some paper, and thought ‘Lubowitz is just the wrong name’ [for a musician]. Manfred Mann is my professional name – it’s not my personal name. My friends all know I’m not Manfred Mann. I’ve always known who I am.” This last comment gives an insight into the man and his career. The music scene in 1960s London gave him the opportunity to help shape the Manfred Mann band, which was competing with The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Who at making hit records. 

Something is happening that I can’t put my finger on. Maybe it’s the arrangements when we play live. We’re good musicians. We’re not the best musicians but something happens. There is a kind of magic about that small element of it. “When we are performing, there are certain tricks I have. People should be able to hear what you are playing. If Mick’s playing a guitar solo, I’ll play behind him as little as I can, so I don’t cloud what he’s playing. When I’m playing, he sometimes stops for ages to give me space. So when you hear us play then generally you hear immense clarity of sound.” Are there any songs he likes playing best? “Well, I can’t think there is a particular track but I know there are sections of tracks. Sometimes they come up and I think, ‘I can play this for years.’ We do a funky intro to ‘Mighty Quinn’ and I love playing that. It’s very loose and very ad lib. You can do anything but it’s with a cool groove. I like funk and groove. We’re not known for that but it’s what I like playing most. And actually I’m quite good at that but I’m not known for it. You become known for the successful records.” The successful records for the Earth Band began in 1973 with ‘Joybringer’, an arrangement by Manfred with lyrics by the band. It was based upon the ‘Jupiter’ theme from Holst’s The Planets suite. This was still in copyright and so Manfred had to get permission from Gustav Holst’s daughter, Imogen. She had said ‘No’ to many previous requests but after hearing the song she agreed. Their next and biggest hit, ‘Blinded By The Light’,

was a rearrangement of a song from Bruce Springsteen’s first album. Then came ‘Davy’s On The Road Again’, Manfred’s arrangement of a song co-written by Robbie Robertson. Added to these are their rearrangements of two songs from Bob Dylan, ‘Father Of Day, Father Of Night’ and of course ‘Mighty Quinn’, a much rockier version of the Number One hit record of 1968.

Alongside Manfred’s keyboard and synthesiser skills, singers have always been an important part of his band. When Mick Rogers left, guitarist Chris Thompson joined and it is his vocal on their 1976 hit ‘Blinded By The Light’. After Chris left in 1986, the band took a break and Manfred recorded his first solo album, Plains Music, released in 1991.  Noel McCalla sang on this record and then joined the band to tour. Manfred reflected, “In some ways you would imagine he [Noel] doesn’t have the right voice for the songs that Chris Thompson sang but Noel was so musical and with such good feel so that, even though it wasn’t quite the right voice for

thing I remember very clearly is the opening line, ‘It’s not for me to say to you what you must do.’ I was asking them to sing freedom lines. It was such a paradox.” Apart from this, Manfred kept to his approach of recording good songs by including rearrangements of Bob Marley’s ‘Redemption Song’, ‘Nostradamus’ by Al Stewart, and ‘Demolition Man’ by Sting. He returned to South Africa for his !rst solo album, Plains Music. “I already had the idea of the North American Indian melodies and chords when I went to South Africa to visit my family. I met a guy who plays a hunting bow, an African named Smiler Makana. I liked the idea of that sound and he recommended two others. We rehearsed for two days and then recorded it in two days. I then went back to England and spent probably a year trying to finish it off, adding other musicians and singers.” This album also features the saxophone of Barbara Thompson who took time off from her own band to record with Manfred. This gives the album a special quality. Manfred told me he doesn’t normally listen to his own albums but: “It’s the only album I can listen to without getting irritated by the mixing or the production. Plains Music had something about it that really works. I don’t listen to it that often – maybe once a year.” Manfred Mann released his second solo album, Lone Arranger, in 2014. I suggested that the title is perhaps a good summary of his career. He explained that it was going to be called Manfred Mann The Arranger but his business associate Steve Fernie suggested Lone Arranger. “The play on words is really good. I like that. The bottom line is I managed to succeed because I have an ability to rearrange, to rethink, to treat everything as if it’s clay and you can remimble it around.” I comment that he must listen to a lot of music. “No, I’m not listening – I’m searching for a good song. People send a song through and I listen but that’s searching for a good song, it’s not listening.” As he chats to me from his kitchen at home, I ask him what he does to relax. At this point he seems lost for words, laughs and replies, “I’m not quite sure what the word means. I practise a lot, perhaps not enough. I play piano every day. I wake up in the morning and I go to try and solve a musical problem in my studio or practise and figure out how you should put your fingers. That’s the difference between being a classical musician and being an improvising musician. The classical musician knows what they are going to play and the specific fingering. As an improvising musician, you need to know that at any point in the keyboard your fingers may go in any direction. You don’t know what you are going to do next. It’s a different approach. So how do I practise this? These are the things I do all the time. “I’ve been playing an old keyboard, a Novation X-Station. It’s not really old but in modern terms it’s old. It’s not got the best sound but on the left hand controller you can bend notes and alter the filter with one movement. It’s not on two movements. Most of the modern keyboards are based on the Minimoog where you have two sliders and if you want to bend a note that’s an awkward motion. This is much easier.  “Now I’ve got a Novation Peak, which is an analogue sound. I haven’t yet used it on a gig but I’ve been using it at home here and I’ll be taking it on the road. So I’m trying something new in order to get that kind of Moog-ish sound and to be able to control it easily with the left hand.” Even at the age of eighty-one, and having been prevented from touring for the last two years, it’s clear that Manfred continues to relish playing music and trying new things.