Former
Trooper keyboardist Frank Ludwig says he started singing in church choirs when
he was a mere toddler. He discovered the piano when he was about nine, and as a
teenager he was the organist for several churches. By grade 12, he was
conducting choirs for both children and adults, and had started his first band.
“When I started my first band it was ‘cause I got excited about the Beatles and it was like, ‘wow, there’s music like that out there!’”
A year
later, he headed to the University of British Columbia where he spent the next 4
years earning his Bachelor of Music degree. Throughout university, Frank became
increasingly involved with the rock music scene and, after earning his degree,
he jumped into the career full-time.
By the mid
70’s, Frank was in Toronto where he says things were coming to a dead end for
him. He left the band Brutus and returned to Vancouver with plans to join a new
group, which ultimately never materialized. Then he heard that Trooper was
looking for a guitar player. Frank knew Brian and Ra from early years, when he
toured with his band, Self Portrait, and often shared a bus with Winters Green,
Brian and Ra’s early group.
“I went into the office and talked with [Trooper manager] Sam, and Smitty happened to be flown in from somewhere on tour. I said, ‘Sure I play guitar but you could probably use a keyboard player better.’ The next thing I know, I was on a plane trip to New York, ‘cause they were on tour backing up BTO.”
That was
in February 1976. By March, he was back in Toronto at Phase One Studios,
recording the Trooper album “Two For The Show.”
Frank left
Trooper in August of 1979, just weeks before the release of “Flying Colors.”
He worked on a solo project at Randy
Bachman’s studio and joined Bachman’s group Ironhorse, recording on their
1980 album “Everything Is Grey.” Shortly after, that band broke up and Randy
formed a new band, Union, with Frank and Ironhorse drummer, Chris Leighton. They
released several singles in 1981 and the album “On Strike”.
“Fame never meant anything to me,” he claims. “The ego thing of being a rock star never meant anything to me. It was kinda like a thorn in the side and it was just so hard on your family. Ultimately I made the decision that family was more important.”
Frank put
his education to use and became a high school music teacher. During the summer
break in 1986, Trooper found themselves at the last minute without a
keyboardist, so Frank happily returned to work with the group for a few weeks as
a temporary replacement on their summer tour. The Anniversary Show on November
4, 2000 in Vancouver will be the first time he’s played with Trooper since,
and the first time in over 20 years that the original band will be together.
Nowadays,
Frank continues to teach and he also conducts a full-string orchestra as well as
a community band. The rest of the time, he runs his own recording studio called
Quantum Sound, and co-produces a wide variety of artists, including some former
students. Jazz, rock, Cuban, beat poetry… it’s a pretty eclectic mix of
stuff.
“I love it all. Well, I love everything in small doses… can get bored really easily. I’m still basically a rock ‘n’ roller, kinda pop guy. So what I do, I’ve got a couple of artists where, as a songwriter, I will steer them in a slightly more commercial vein. I don’t think that’s a negative word. ‘Commercial’ just means somebody else might like it.”
And he has
experience with “commercial” ventures. He says that he’s writing a lot,
for different venues, including co-authoring a whole series of method books for
young string players.
Other than
Trooper, his most famous work is the theme for the TV show “The Urban
Peasant.” I asked him how that happened.
“I had been recording out of a place called Studio 1200
where we did a lot of the music for political parties, and did commercials, and
we did TV… where we’d do the music and record the dialogue and everything
for a documentary or something. And I was doing music for Sesame Street New
York… smaller private projects. And I had a friend who happened to be putting
together this cooking show with James Barber and, he had known me for years, so
he asked me to do the music.”
“I just wanted to make music and I liked recording and
I always hoped that throughout the rest of my life that I would always be able
to be creative in writing and recording.”
“I’m probably not terribly a people person that much,
but I love performing. I become a different person when I perform. All that
aggression…”
Frank is no
stranger to strong emotions. “I love gospel. As a singer, I
like stuff that’s got feel.” Well,
there’s plenty of “feel” in the songs he recorded with Trooper. He talked
candidly about the many angry songs he’s written including Mr.
Big, which he explains is “sort of” about Bruce Allen.
“I had been a very good friend of his and I saw him
getting more power and becoming sort of more arrogant. It wasn’t just about
him. It was a little bit about how success can go to your head and you can be
pretty ruthless. I don’t think of that as an emotional song though, maybe just
because I’m angry all the time.”
He says that
he feels the more poignant ones are:
Quiet
Desperation
- “That’s a neat song because… when I wrote it, there’s an
implied conversation there”
and
Back To You – “That’s
a funny one. I always liked the thing from ‘My Fair Lady’ of ‘the rain in
Spain falls mainly on the plane,’ and Round, Round
had been a hit at that time.”
So with all
that appealing alliteration in mind, he penned the lyrics “Going
[Ground] round and round, I'm down in downtown nowhere. No planes, no
trains, it's plain small change, ain’t carfare.”
“‘Ground round’ was like a joke, because we would
call Round, Round the hamburger song. It was like a little in-joke, and
it was also just that whole thing of playing with words and sounds and internal
rhymes. To me, that’s the fun of it.”
He says that
when he writes, he tries to be honest and catch a feeling. Years ago, he heard
an interview of The Eagles about song writing, where they said that they used to
create a postcard in their minds for every song.
“I think if you have a picture in your head like that,
then your song is connected to reality and imagery at the same time.”
So is song
writing easy for Frank?
September 2000
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