Richard Clapton Prepares For The 50th Anniversary of His Debut Album ‘Prussian Blue’

Richard Clapton is marking the 50th anniversary of the release of his first album ‘Prussian Blue’ with two shows in Sydney and Melbourne.

Richard started his first band in the UK before relocating to Germany and then back to Melbourne. ‘Prussian Blue’ tells stories of the journey.

Richard tells Noise11.com, “The first two or three years of my career in Australia were quite odd really. I started out in bands in London and got deported because the American band I put together were importing pot into the UK. I had already made friends in Berlin so I headed there. I was in bands in Berlin and really believed we had a shot with the original Warners. That would have been ’69 or ’70. We were just hippy bums driving from Berlin to Munich and invested a lot of money we didn’t have to buy equipment. We had the same name as an American band called Sopwith Camel. We were sent a legal letter, a cease and desist. Regrettably the record company in Munich got cold feet and didn’t go ahead with the deal”.

The first songs started in German. “I began to write about being booted out of the UK. I was on a train, hence the song ‘Last Train To Marseilles’, which is probably the first serious song I ever wrote,” he says.

“I wrote ‘Southern Germany’. It virtually 50/50,” he said.

“‘I Wanna Be A Survivor’ was a Kings Cross, Sydney song when I was living in a rat infested dump in Kings Cross looking over the harbour.”

“I had been in the folky scene in Berlin and Munich. There were really great folk clubs in Sydney then and I was doing the rounds of them. I accepted an invitation from one of the folky guys to move in with him in Chippendale, which is Redfern. I came straight from Southern Germany to crashing out at a pad in Chippendale. The ‘Prussian Blue’ album is not a transition. It was straight out of Germany into Sydney. The album is 50% very German and 50% very Australian”.

Richard has two shows for Sydney on 15 April and Melbourne on 19 May to mark the milestone.

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