Patto
Hold Your Fire

John Halsey - a survivor of drugs, the profession of musician, and fate – today manages a pub in Oxford and has a limping leg. He was asked to write a foreword for the booklet of a Patto anthology, “Sense of Absurd” but he isn't very good at writing and thinks he'll get someone else to do it. However, he wanted to try first, and tonight he jotted down a few lines. He's rereading what he wrote:

“I've played with a lot of people in my life, and the desire to be a drummer hasn't left me yet; but I've never had as much fun as with Patto, it's a shame it all lasted so few years! Mike and Ollie…I have to make a small effort to remember their faces…fishing them out as they were from the well of memory...there they are, I've found them. Those two crazy geniuses. Especially Ollie, who had started playing the guitar just a couple of years before our first album came out. Ollie, who kept me awake when we shared a room during tours because he studied his scales at night. Every time someone asks me something or interviews me about that period, they always end up with the usual remark like 'yes, there was the feeling that Patto would soon become really big, that they would break through, but then it didn't happen' and I can only answer: 'Yeah…it didn't happen'. After all, what the hell do they expect me to say? I don't know the reasons, and I don't care much. We were an exuberant group, especially live. When I suggested we try to write some pop songs to attempt to sell them, Mike and Ollie looked at each other as if in shock. No, going back wasn't an option.
Because by the end of the '60s, we were convinced that what we were doing (shall we call it psychedelic-pop?) no longer represented us. So, we changed our name (from Timebox to Patto) and lineup: the leader was Mike Patto (real name Michael McCarthy). His voice?  Roger Chapman crashing into Captain Beefheart; scratchy, very versatile and, believe me, with a high alcohol content. But despite everything, still a clear, limpid voice. There was Clive Griffiths on bass, and me, of course, on drums. But the soul of the group was  Peter “Ollie” Halsall, already at 21 a truly complete musician, in hands, head, and heart. Ollie learned to play vibes at 14 by hitting strips of paper resting on the bed with mallets and was also a professional drummer; then he picked up the guitar for the first time in '67. In 1970 we made “Patto”, which someone defined as a mix of edgy rock and jazz, for Vertigo, who picked us up only to drop us after two albums: in fact, we didn't sell much. “Patto” is rough, raw, we recorded it so that it had a violent compactness, meant to attack the listener. The abrupt tempo changes were somewhat our trademark, Mike's motto was 'never do the obvious'. The beginning in a controlled tone with “The Man”, I warn you, is almost a red herring. The rest is a chase of dense and dizzying pieces (“Hold me back”, “Time to die”, “Red Glow”) culminating in the improvisation of “Money Bag” (my favorite) where Ollie is the master, while “Sittin’ back easy” with its double face, soft and rough, is the conclusive seal.

The following year we recorded “Hold your fire”, which turned out a bit less impetuous but more refined. In just one year, Ollie had made giant leaps, becoming a true virtuoso. He invented and dispensed riffs and solos in “Hold your fire”, “How’s your father”, “See you at the dance tonight”, and “Air-raid Shelter”with such fluidity that made the album's structure much more organic; his dominance is felt in every piece. Among other things, he played the piano throughout the album and the vibraphone in “Magic Door”; but there's something that still genuinely thrills me today, and that's the superb protest ballad “You, you point your finger”: Mike's voice is for once so clear that it sounds heartfelt and almost vulnerable. Sure, the lyrics, with all that generational anger, now seem somewhat laced with rhetoric, but I believe that even new generations could, why not, see themselves reflected in it. After this album, Vertigo dropped us. The producer then tells us 'that's it guys, we're done with all this progressive stuff. Now it's glam rock, Roxy Music'; well, as a band we can't say we adapted easily, we made two more albums, then each went our separate ways (that would often cross again): Mike continued to tour with his legendary voice, Clive Griffiths and I played as much as we could to make ends meet, as did Ollie who eventually joined Kevin Ayers' band but would remain unknown to most, despite being, for me, worthy of standing arm in arm with Hendrix in the guitarist Olympus. That's it, that's how things go. Our formula was one meant to remain immortalized like a freeze frame in the few years it lived, but maybe it still manages to shine brightly today.”

John has finished rereading, and he doesn't like it much: it seems like a romantic collection of memories! The limping leg hurts him. It's the leg he had propped on the dashboard while sleeping on the seat, the night he and Clive Griffiths had that damned car accident. Patto had disbanded long before. He got away with some broken bones, Clive, on the other hand, who was driving, is paralyzed and has shattered memories about his previous life, obviously knowing nothing of a band named Patto. It's unknown if it went worse for the bassist or the others: Mike Patto died one day in '79, of that throat cancer he lived with for three years. And Ollie Halsall passed away, from a drug-related heart attack, one evening in '92. Tonight, just like then, John Halsey realizes he has remained somewhat the sole custodian of Patto's existence. Along with all those who followed them live, and to whom they remained in their hearts. But now let's take our leave from John,  the only one of them to have survived drugs, the profession of musician, and especially fate.
I think that Patto in '70 and '71 were perhaps the greatest of them all. It's difficult to explain why, it's a subjective why. In the sixteen songs of these two albums, there is a throbbing instinct from the original and bizarre seed, an instinct far removed from any naive experimentation and artifice; a soul split into four that vehemently plays with genres and conventions, a devastating chemistry for the early Seventies as for today or future days. A non-ephemeral message, terribly vital, and honest. In short, think about what takes your breath away the most… these two records might be, who knows, a step higher. I adore them.