BLOODROCK - Stevie Hill Interview Page 3
by Martin Popoff

Excepting the low possibility of having the band actually playing live, there's still Bloodrock on CD - that's even become a bit of a patchwork of availables and not availables. "I don't think most of them are in print," muses Hill. "There is some European company doing them, I think. They're out of print in the US. One Way Records was doing them, but we haven't heard too much from them lately."

One of the coolest things to have happen with this band is the release of Triptych, for which Hill did the liners. Triptych was a reissue of the band's last two more progressive and jazzier albums, with an unreleased/shelved last Bloodrock album called Unspoken Words or sometimes, Bloodrock 8.

"The last incarnation of the band, we did an album, and yeah, Capitol didn't want to pay us for it. If they would have released it... we had advances in our contract. And that thing sat on the shelf for, I don't know, for whatever the time was, between, I guess 1974 and whatever year Triptych came out (2000). And that's the big deal about Triptych, because the third album that is on that, was one of those albums that was just sitting in the vault, and nothing was ever going to come of it. And Ed and I were talking to those One Way guys, and we sort of alerted them that there was a master, so they licensed it from Capitol."

"You know, every musician has stuff that is still in the vault. I mean, every musician I know has stuff that, not only that he played on, but wrote... you just go through all the steps of getting an album to the finished point, and it's ready to be released, and then something comes in - I guess it's the fickle finger of fate - and next thing you know, you've got an album that may or may not ever see the light of day. Speaking of shelved albums, I was watching this documentary that Eric Clapton was on, and he said he did an album with Phil Collins that was really good, and the label listened to it and thought it wasn't commercially viable. Eric Clapton was a big name 30 years ago, and he never stopped being a big name. But some of the geniuses at the record company decided that this wasn't going to sell very much. When I heard that, I didn't feel so abused. I wish I can remember what that was. When he talked about it he had sort of a dazed look on his face."

BLOODROCK - Stevie Hill Interview Page 4