By 1973, the year in which Nektar made their most celebrated album, Remember The Future, the four virtuoso Brits who comprised the group were honorary Germans. They lived in Germany, they’d recorded three LPs for the German label Bellaphon/ Bacillus, they had German girlfriends or wives, and German artist Helmut Wenske painted their album sleeves. Thanks to their mind-expanding live shows and LPs, such as their 1971 debut Journey To The Centre Of The Eye, Nektar sat at the epicentre of a vibrant, bohemian scene that drew hip young German devotees.
“The UK scene at that time was mainly based on pop music,” says Nektar’s bassist Derek ‘Mo’ Moore today. “That was all you heard on the radio. But in Germany people weren’t very interested in pop music – they wanted to listen to something new, something fresh. We loved people like Vanilla Fudge and The Moody Blues, but we tried not to listen to too much of other people’s stuff so that we wouldn’t be influenced by it.”
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1625747790/1703838123/articles/uLzBc2lJl1703850372611/7223322471.jpg]
Together with frontman/guitarist Roye Albrighton, keyboardist Allan ‘Taff’ Freeman and drummer Ron Howden, Moore had formed Nektar in Hamburg four years earlier. Quickly scoring a month-long residency at the city’s famed Star Club in 1969, they trod boards previously played by The Beatles and countless other luminaries, playing from 6pm-2am every night, one hour on, one hour off. This punishing schedule lent itself to improvisation, something at which Nektar soon came to excel. They performed to packed, relatively small-capacity crowds, writing fabulous new music on the hoof, and later adapting it for their recording sessions.
“It was an incredible time and Black Sabbath, Spooky Tooth and Ace Kefford from The Move were passing through, too,” says Moore, recalling the band’s early club dates in Germany.
“We’d take a kind of speed called Captagon to keep going, and we played so much that we didn’t have to think about it. Cozy Powell was the drummer in Ace’s band [The Ace Kefford Stand], and we had a lot of fun with Cozy! If we weren’t sleeping we were partying – and there wasn’t much sleeping…”
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1625747790/1703838123/articles/uLzBc2lJl1703850372611/3042220227.jpg]
Nektar had a secret weapon, too: lighting tech and honorary fifth member, Mick Brockett. Previously employed by Pink Floyd, Brockett was a maestro of the liquid light show, manipulating colour wheel slides with an oil or liquid dye solution trapped inside to create trippy, outlandish backdrops that chimed with Nektar’s deliciously far-out music.
“I’d tell club owners that it would be another 300 Deutsch Marks if they wanted our light show,” says Moore. “They’d say, ‘We’ve got one.’ I’d say, ‘Not like this one, you haven’t!’ They always paid up once they’d seen it.”
Chatting to Prog from his Lexington, North Carolina home, Moore is now the only surviving member of the original Nektar line-up. Roye Albrighton died in 2016 and Alan ‘Taff’ Freeman passed away in 2021. Prog had been due to interview Nektar’s drummer Ron Howden too, but sadly he died in September, just days before we were due to speak.
“It was awful, because me and Ron had been out playing dates together with the current line-up of Nektar here in the US,” says Moore. “And just a week before Ron passed, we’d been jamming on new stuff and it sounded great. On the Sunday he said, ‘Let me take a thumb drive of the new music and I’ll get on it.’ Then on the Tuesday his wife Anne called me to say he’d been rushed into hospital, where he’d suffered a brain aneurysm.”
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1625747790/1703838123/articles/uLzBc2lJl1703850372611/1210472114.jpg]
Though Moore was obviously shaken by Howden’s passing – “You have to remember we played together for 60 years,” he notes – he seems admirably stoical about being the last man standing. Now 77, and originally from South Yorkshire, he tells of how he and his wife Nicky are still close to Roye Albrighton’s German-born widow, Catrin, one of many in Nektar’s inner circle who attended Ron Howden’s Celebration Of Life ceremony in the US.
Moore also mentions the new Nektar live DVD, due out later in 2024, which documents some of Howden’s final shows. Nektar will continue, it seems, but we’re here to talk about Remember The Future: its trippy, part environmental concept, its intricate lattices of taut, hooky prog, and the recently released four-CD box set that celebrates this wonderful record’s 50th anniversary. As Prog and Moore strap in for a journey back to 1970s Germany, his eyes light up.
“I can talk as long as you want,” he says.
Nektar knew from the outset that they were onto something special with Remember The Future. But with loads of other new music already written and not yet committed to tape, a palatecleansing exercise was required. “Our third album, …Sounds Like This, was decent stuff we had to get out of our system,” says Moore. “We needed to clear our heads for the main project.”
The band’s confidence was such that they decided to record …Sounds Like This live in the village of Stommeln, near Cologne at the studios of famed Tangerine Dream and Scorpions producer, Dieter Dierks. Dierks’ first taste of recording a British rock band had been Nektar’s debut, Journey To The Centre Of The Eye, then its similarly lysergic 1972 follow-up, A Tab In The Ocean. Now, with Nektar and Bellaphon Records head Peter Hauke producing and Dierks engineering, Dierks Studios opened its doors to the 40-odd competition winners Nektar had selected to witness proceedings, Mick Brockett light show and all.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1625747790/1703838123/articles/uLzBc2lJl1703850372611/2222042073.jpg]
Job done, Nektar then relocated to the tiny Black Forest village of Wembach, where work on Remember The Future began in earnest. Another graphic artist friend, Klaus Holitzka (who designed science-fiction book covers and sold artworks at Nektar’s gigs), had alerted them to a village hall rehearsal space directly opposite his home, which was available rent-free.
“Holly, as we called him, was a great guy and we’d play there about 12 hours a day, record everything roughly, then listen back and piece together the bits we liked,” says Moore. “There was a little Gasthaus/restaurant next door, and we’d have a bratwurst there and discuss concepts.”
Even at this relatively early stage, Helmut Wenske – very much Nektar’s Roger Dean figure – had already b...
“The UK scene at that time was mainly based on pop music,” says Nektar’s bassist Derek ‘Mo’ Moore today. “That was all you heard on the radio. But in Germany people weren’t very interested in pop music – they wanted to listen to something new, something fresh. We loved people like Vanilla Fudge and The Moody Blues, but we tried not to listen to too much of other people’s stuff so that we wouldn’t be influenced by it.”
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1625747790/1703838123/articles/uLzBc2lJl1703850372611/7223322471.jpg]
Together with frontman/guitarist Roye Albrighton, keyboardist Allan ‘Taff’ Freeman and drummer Ron Howden, Moore had formed Nektar in Hamburg four years earlier. Quickly scoring a month-long residency at the city’s famed Star Club in 1969, they trod boards previously played by The Beatles and countless other luminaries, playing from 6pm-2am every night, one hour on, one hour off. This punishing schedule lent itself to improvisation, something at which Nektar soon came to excel. They performed to packed, relatively small-capacity crowds, writing fabulous new music on the hoof, and later adapting it for their recording sessions.
“It was an incredible time and Black Sabbath, Spooky Tooth and Ace Kefford from The Move were passing through, too,” says Moore, recalling the band’s early club dates in Germany.
“We’d take a kind of speed called Captagon to keep going, and we played so much that we didn’t have to think about it. Cozy Powell was the drummer in Ace’s band [The Ace Kefford Stand], and we had a lot of fun with Cozy! If we weren’t sleeping we were partying – and there wasn’t much sleeping…”
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1625747790/1703838123/articles/uLzBc2lJl1703850372611/3042220227.jpg]
Nektar had a secret weapon, too: lighting tech and honorary fifth member, Mick Brockett. Previously employed by Pink Floyd, Brockett was a maestro of the liquid light show, manipulating colour wheel slides with an oil or liquid dye solution trapped inside to create trippy, outlandish backdrops that chimed with Nektar’s deliciously far-out music.
“I’d tell club owners that it would be another 300 Deutsch Marks if they wanted our light show,” says Moore. “They’d say, ‘We’ve got one.’ I’d say, ‘Not like this one, you haven’t!’ They always paid up once they’d seen it.”
Chatting to Prog from his Lexington, North Carolina home, Moore is now the only surviving member of the original Nektar line-up. Roye Albrighton died in 2016 and Alan ‘Taff’ Freeman passed away in 2021. Prog had been due to interview Nektar’s drummer Ron Howden too, but sadly he died in September, just days before we were due to speak.
“It was awful, because me and Ron had been out playing dates together with the current line-up of Nektar here in the US,” says Moore. “And just a week before Ron passed, we’d been jamming on new stuff and it sounded great. On the Sunday he said, ‘Let me take a thumb drive of the new music and I’ll get on it.’ Then on the Tuesday his wife Anne called me to say he’d been rushed into hospital, where he’d suffered a brain aneurysm.”
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1625747790/1703838123/articles/uLzBc2lJl1703850372611/1210472114.jpg]
Though Moore was obviously shaken by Howden’s passing – “You have to remember we played together for 60 years,” he notes – he seems admirably stoical about being the last man standing. Now 77, and originally from South Yorkshire, he tells of how he and his wife Nicky are still close to Roye Albrighton’s German-born widow, Catrin, one of many in Nektar’s inner circle who attended Ron Howden’s Celebration Of Life ceremony in the US.
Moore also mentions the new Nektar live DVD, due out later in 2024, which documents some of Howden’s final shows. Nektar will continue, it seems, but we’re here to talk about Remember The Future: its trippy, part environmental concept, its intricate lattices of taut, hooky prog, and the recently released four-CD box set that celebrates this wonderful record’s 50th anniversary. As Prog and Moore strap in for a journey back to 1970s Germany, his eyes light up.
“I can talk as long as you want,” he says.
Nektar knew from the outset that they were onto something special with Remember The Future. But with loads of other new music already written and not yet committed to tape, a palatecleansing exercise was required. “Our third album, …Sounds Like This, was decent stuff we had to get out of our system,” says Moore. “We needed to clear our heads for the main project.”
The band’s confidence was such that they decided to record …Sounds Like This live in the village of Stommeln, near Cologne at the studios of famed Tangerine Dream and Scorpions producer, Dieter Dierks. Dierks’ first taste of recording a British rock band had been Nektar’s debut, Journey To The Centre Of The Eye, then its similarly lysergic 1972 follow-up, A Tab In The Ocean. Now, with Nektar and Bellaphon Records head Peter Hauke producing and Dierks engineering, Dierks Studios opened its doors to the 40-odd competition winners Nektar had selected to witness proceedings, Mick Brockett light show and all.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1625747790/1703838123/articles/uLzBc2lJl1703850372611/2222042073.jpg]
Job done, Nektar then relocated to the tiny Black Forest village of Wembach, where work on Remember The Future began in earnest. Another graphic artist friend, Klaus Holitzka (who designed science-fiction book covers and sold artworks at Nektar’s gigs), had alerted them to a village hall rehearsal space directly opposite his home, which was available rent-free.
“Holly, as we called him, was a great guy and we’d play there about 12 hours a day, record everything roughly, then listen back and piece together the bits we liked,” says Moore. “There was a little Gasthaus/restaurant next door, and we’d have a bratwurst there and discuss concepts.”
Even at this relatively early stage, Helmut Wenske – very much Nektar’s Roger Dean figure – had already b...
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Prog (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 146