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Q: Let me start by saying it's terrific to see a piano player tear up a stage. It was way beyond fun.

MS: It was great.

Q: When did it all begin for you?

MS: First of all, I was a kid and I grew up wanting to be Elvis Presley. I loved what Elvis had done at somewhere called Sun Records in Memphis. Then I realised there's all these other bands that recorded there and it just opened up this world for me and I went backwards in time. Instead of checking out The Beatles and The Stones in the 60s, I kind of went back into the black American Rhythm and Blues, boogie-woogie. As soon as I left school 44 years ago, we had a little rockabilly band. We'd seen The Stray Cats and I was playing guitar in a trio and we just tried to sound exciting, neo-Rockabilly. When we started hanging out we made a mentor in a lovely guy, Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin - he guested with us last night on several songs He introduced us to his mates who all had huge vinyl collections. Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Little Walter, all the Chicago stuff, all the Texas stuff…The awareness of Rockabilly and the combination of the white and the black and the history. I soaked it all up. I was 18, 19, 20. 1981, I left school. 1984, I'd been three years with this Rockabilly thing. Every town in England had a rockabilly trio. They were all called names like ours, The Rockets. Hanging out with Robert's mates they all had tonnes of blues records. Discovering Roy Brown did the original ‘Good Rockin' Tonight’, then Wynonie Harris took it, then Elvis, years later, did it. Rock ‘n’ Roll had been going on for 20 years before it was known as Rock ‘n’ Roll and I fell in love with that whole world. We formed a band called Big Town Playboys in 1984. I fronted that band for 15 years. We worked with a lot of people and through Robert, we started to do particular gigs. We were his band at the National Exhibition Centre for a big charity event. Then we met another mentor, Gary Brooker, from Procol Harum. He became like some kind of a dad. Him and his wife, Frankie, came up to visit my mum and dad to show that they wanted to try and make a star out of me because I deserved something. He's very special. I had that love from Gary. I miss him very much. Gary fell in love with what we did. He introduced us to Eric Clapton who was knocked out with what we were doing as well as all the other guys. Andy Fairweather-Low from Amen Corner as well, my best mate from high school who was in the Rockabilly, Ian Jennings on double bass, he's now the bass player in Andy Fairweather-Low's band as they're touring, opening up on Europe tour with Eric Clapton. Everything's all tied in. We've become part of the network, the family. I'm just so honoured.

Q: This is some life Mike…
MS: Andy Sylvester was the bassist in Stan Webb's Chicken Shack, another mentor of mine. Stan was the guitarist, Dave Bidwell, the drummer, Andy and Christine Perfect. Chicken Shack had a hit ‘I Would Rather Go Blind’, the Etta James song and Andy had this tie because Chicken Shack were label mates, Blue Horizon, with Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac. I'm honoured to have had Peter Green in my house a couple of times. He's fallen asleep after I've given him pizzas and salad, and he's looked at my records, and when I've asked him, Peter, why don't you do ‘Oh Well’? We were cutting his nails in my living room and he's chucking them out the window. Giggling away, “A lot of people would like to know where my nails have gone”. He'd lost it with LSD, but he still had his shit together. Andy and Mick Fleetwood always kept in touch, even though Andy had an affair with Mick's girl. Mick's girl was Patty Boyd's sister, Jenny, the Boyd sisters. I’m sure you know everyone I'm talking about…

Q: Oh yes!

MS: You understand it so good. It's a shame when there's people that haven't discovered or learnt. Anyway, Andy would hook up with Mick, and they'd be playing three nights at Wembley Stadium on that Tango In The Night tour or whatever the big album was. We'd hook up with Mick at their hotel, which was some real fucking fancy place near Buckingham Palace and we'd all go in a limousine to Wembley. Stevie Nicks would be in her own, everyone else in their separate limousines and we'd be driving through into the arena, the backstage, the area where there's the security, and all the crowd that are gathering up before the concert. There's hundreds of Stevie Nicks lookalikes. It was that time when she was doing that witch thing with the dress. Witches and fairies. It was just bizarre being in the car and seeing all that. We made friends with Mick. He flew us over to America on a few things. Some of them with The Big Town Playboys. We did a national TV thing in Century Plaza, the Pat Sajak show. We were on that live. We played a couple of songs with Mick on drums. Because he wanted to help the band, but he realised that if he played drums, all these other people would come along, Fleetwood Mac people. Andy had put in a good word for me. I never really thought about it, but it must have been him talking to Mick and Peter and saying, Mike Sanchez is really great. I don't know but people recommend. I did 15 years with Big Town Playboys. End of 1999, I left. I got tired. We had a crooked manager. He went to fucking prison and everything and I didn't want to be involved in any of that. I'm anti the music industry. I hate managers. I hate record companies. I hate booking agents. I don't want to be involved with any of them. I'm on the end part of a 28-day UK tour, and there's only three gigs that a booking agent has got me. The rest just came in. I can call up The 100 Club in London. I can call up Huntington Hall in Worcester, and I'll do the same next year. If you can do that on a phone call, why would you want to give an agent 20% to do it for you?

Q: You were with Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings after Big Town Playboys…

MS: Bill Wyman he asked me to join, to replace Gary Brooker and so I joined this super group with Albert Lee, Beverly Skeete, Georgie Fame…I bloody love Georgie Fame. I love the whole thing. I was always into the Elvis rock and roll and stuff but Georgie - Clive Powell - he started life as a child digging all that. But then he discovered this other thing with the jazz, and Mose Allison, and all the stuff he was doing. Everything, the influences that he got from Blue Note and scat vocalists, such as Lambert, Hendricks and Ross. He'd be doing stuff, and I fell in love with all that. I was in the band for three years with him where sometimes Georgie drank a little too much and we had to help him up to his room, get the key out, and put him on the bed and undo his collar, and leave him there, and the following day he'd be the first person with a fucking newspaper and attitude down at breakfast. (laughs) He’s still alive bless him.

That was really good because it opened up places and interest in France, places that I hadn't played so often and then, just under my own name, Mike Sanchez and his band. I had the Mike Sanchez Rhythm & Blues Review, which I tried to create, you know, like Johnny Otis Rock & Roll Circus with the Three Tonnes of Joy and all these different singers and like a review where you have “And now it's time for the Platters with ‘Only You!” and a bunch of people come up with us, the house band. I wanted to try and create something like that but it was difficult because it needed money and no one wanted it because I didn't belong to a booking agency or a management.

Q: Coming to your present band, those two guys you've got on stage on sax are really good.

MS: Yeah. If I continue with them, they'll probably end up in Jools Holland’s band. Jools always had his eye on me and what I'm doing so he's got some of my sax players and stuff because Jools will pay them 20 quid more. It's not personal, it's business, I accept that. I love Jools to bits but that's what happened with Imelda. I had an unknown girl singer from Dublin called Imelda May in my band for six years and she wanted to record and write some of her stuff. She put an album together and she was swooped up by Jools Holland for his TV show the following day with management. The management was a guy that used to set up all the parties at Buckingham Palace. We played for him many times, private events and stuff and la-di-da bollocks. I'm a bit socialist. I wear this (points to his beret) because my quiff's faded now but also for the fucking Black Panther movement and Citizen Smith (laughs) but, yeah, Imelda spent six years with us and then she took a couple of the guys from my band. Everyone suddenly disappeared to be with her. The next thing, she's on TV and I started to feel like John Mayall’s Blues Breakers. In the Big Town Playboys, we had one drummer, Clive Deamer. Clive, after he was with us for four years, went off with a guitarist who we also had in the band who formed Portishead.

Q: John Mayall is a very good analogy of your own career.

MS: A little bit but he's much uglier than me you know. (smiles) I never liked that side of the British Blues…there’s a staleness in British blues. I used to see in a lot of bands when I lived in Kidderminster for many years, I'd sometimes go into Birmingham and see The Trevor Burton Blues Band and they've got the same piece of paper with the same 14 blues songs that they've had for the same for 15 fucking years. Roll a spliff in between each song and just…British blues has got a lot to be desired. I fell in love with the style and shit that came out with people like Kim Wilson and Jimmy Vaughan, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, ZZ Top as well. Jimmy Vaughan, with his hair, he looked beautiful. We went to see him a few times whenever they played in London and we just wanted that style even though we never would. Those bands that come from Texas sound like they're from Texas. We don’t sound like we were from Kidderminster as I'm good at emulating American style in my voice.

Q: Well, when you did ‘I’m Ready’ today, you were almost channelling Fats.

MS: Thank you.

Q: We’d better wrap this up.

MS: Yeah. Let me say I've got plans to put together another five, six albums; it keeps me alive. Last night we did the Kidderminster town hall. Yeah. It was a Mike Sanchez: The return of…and 500 people were there. Then Robert Plant, a couple of weeks ago, said he'll get involved and sing a few as well and Robert just turned two days ago, he turned 78. The reason he keeps busy is it just keeps your keeps your fruits going, man.

Q: Mike, thank you very, very much for doing this.

MS: A pleasure to talk to you.