Tony Mantor interviews - Alan Warner the founding member of The Foundations.

You and the Foundations enjoyed an incredible run during the late 60s, creating songs that have become timeless classics and continue to resonate with audiences around the world.

Can you take us back to the beginning? How did the band first come together and what inspired its formation?

Sure, yeah.

Basically, I

was

doing like a freelance, well, what I called freelance at the time.

I was trying to get into the session business.

I put an advert in and I was starting to get calls, you know, and I was getting a few gigs here and there.

But then also I was getting into the more of the soul kind of stuff, soul and R&B and Tumblr.

And I thought, hang on a minute, you know, I'd like to be in one of these kind of bands, you know.

So I kind of put that aside and then put an advert in for, you know, to join a soul band.

I got a couple of calls and I went along for an audition for a band.

They were doing quite a lot of work as well, a lot of clubs and stuff in and around London, past the audition.

And I thought, well, that's that for the moment.

But then I then got another call from another band.

They were called the Ramones, which was soul and bit of ska and reggae and stuff as well.

And they said, you know, we'd like you to come along for an audition.

And out of curiosity, I'll go along to this one as well.

Okay.

And now the thing is with this one, they didn't have any work, but they had big ideas.

And also they were a mixed race band as well.

Okay.

Whereas the other one, they were all, you know, black guys, you know.

So I thought, well, yeah, this is quite interesting, you know.

And, you know, we had a run through, went through a few songs and so on.