It musn't have been easy to go through early life with a first name of Ulysses, but UK musician/songwriter Roy Wood is nothing if not a survivor, writes Tony Clayton-Lea
He's also one of the great unsung, underrated and uncelebrated songwriters of the past 30 years, a man who once had many chart successes through a succession of pop groups (The Move, Electric Light Orchestra, Wizzard) yet whose last Top 10 hit was in 1974 with Wizzard's Are You Ready To Rock.
Born in Birmingham in November, 1946, Wood soon abandoned Ulysses for the more down-to-earth Roy.
Wood formed The Move, one of the UK's premier pop/rock/art bands of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Continuous tussles with the media (giving television sets a right seeing-to with an axe became a regular occurrence) and stunts that included burning effigies of UK prime minister Harold Wilson put paid to any lasting success for him - although 1972 was surely his annus mirabilis, a 12-month period when he enjoyed three Top 10 hits in three different bands (Wizzard's Ball Park Incident, The Move's California Man and Electric Light Orchestra's 10538 Overture).
In a short space of time he dissolved The Move, formed and left Electric Light Orchestra and founded Wizzard. His aim was to match his fertile pop imagination (which ranged from rock 'n' roll and pop to psychedelia, rock 'n' roll revivalism, heavy metal and classical rock) with musical outfits that were inventive, experimental and quirky. Inevitably, the public tired of his constant changes and by the late 1970s Wood was floundering in bands such as Wizzo, Rock Brigade and The Helicopters, while his erstwhile band, Electric Light Orchestra, sold millions and played all over the world.
Yet, it's his solo material (solo, that is, in that he plays all the instruments: guitar, bass, drums, piano, banjo, trombone, flute, bagpipe, violin, accordion, sitar) that has confounded bargain-bin hunters and delighted pop/rock aficionados. His first pair of solo records, 1973's Boulders and 1975's Mustard, are each undiscovered gems, two albums fit to bursting with the ideas of a multi-instrumentalist, engineer, producer and sleeve designer.
The major irony of Wood's creative career is that he has lived richly off the royalties of his most well-known song, I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday, since its release in 1973. He remains a man with the distinct inability to market himself, a figure from the past who has never made the jump from cult hero to global pop star. Blame his artistic integrity, blame his method of baffling the public, and blame his reticence towards fame. "I don't write about myself," he said in the mid-1970s in a rare interview. "They're not personal songs. I'm basically a quiet sort of bloke, not exciting at all."