SIMON RITTER/REDFERNS; ELAINE GROENESTEIN
I like concept records – novels, rather than short stories. That particular album was my farewell to the organised-crime syndicate called the music industry! I had signed to Atlantic Records for a two-record deal. The Red And Orange Poems [1994] had done well, but by the time I was ready to do my next album there had been a regime change; the people who signed me to the label were no longer there and the new people were trying to drop me. I wanted to do a record that’s so good that if they don’t back it, it’s gonna be embarrassing to them. And The Blues Chronicles did good everywhere – it was the No 1 record in Germany, I think, for two months.