Roy Wood was the grandfather of glam rock

Roy Wood, founder of the Move and ELO, talks to Adam Sweeting about his digital rebirth

Connoisseurs of the golden age of British pop will rejoice at EMI's reissue of Roy Wood's solo album, Boulders. It's a solo disc in the most literal sense, since Wood wrote and produced it, played every instrument except the harmonium, and even painted a self-portrait for the sleeve.

Though Boulders wasn't released until 1973, Wood recorded it in 1969 as the flipside of his work with the Birmingham-based rock band, the Move. Whimsical and childlike, it was his way of taking a creative holiday.

"I'd started the Move when I was 17, and I used to spend money buying weird instruments and getting them from second-hand shops," Wood says. "It's difficult to have them in your collection and not want to have a go at playing them."

Hence, When Gran'ma Plays the Banjo displays Wood's prowess on the title instrument, Songs of Praise features a gospel choir assembled entirely from overdubs of Wood's voice, and All the Way Over the Hill mimics his heroes, the Beach Boys. On Wake Up, instead of using conventional percussion, he splashed his hands rhythmically in two bins full of water, mic'd up in stereo. Egged on by recording engineer Alan Parsons, he did this while wearing a yellow sou'wester and a rain hat.

He's particularly proud of Miss Clarke and the Computer, a pseudo-madrigal about a computer falling in love with its female technician. He's still intrigued by its mixture of Welsh harp, electric sitar, cello and string bass, and the song's jazzy middle eight anticipated some of the music he now plays with his Roy Wood Rock and Roll Band.

The release of Boulders was delayed because Wood's then-manager, Don Arden, didn't want it to clash with the Move's material. Without Arden, Wood's career might have taken a very different course, and Arden's recent death left him unmoved. "Unfortunately I seem to have mislaid the number for Interflora," he says mordantly.

"The bloke ruined my career. He enjoyed the image of being some sort of mafioso, but all he was was a crooked manager who couldn't keep his fingers out of the till. I had as much chance of becoming Lord Mayor of London as of getting my money back from Don Arden. But there was a lot of that around in those days."

Now a bulky, bristly 60-year-old, Wood is trying to embrace the digital era by learning to use Pro Logic music software but, even with the primitive machinery of 40 years ago, he achieved several musical breakthroughs. The Move's pop hooks, complex arrangements and theatrical stunts made them more influential than history acknowledges. With Jeff Lynne, Wood went on to create the Electric Light Orchestra, inventing their own genre of orchestral pop.

Wood believes Arden deliberately fermented animosity between him and Lynne so he'd have two bands to manage instead of one, and the ploy duly forced Wood to break away and form Wizzard. That band's preposterous costumes and raucous hit singles (including the indestructible I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday) laid the foundations for glam rock.

If Wood won't quite say it himself, there's a sense that his achievements are due more respect than they are granted. According to him, EMI didn't bother to tell him they were going to reissue Boulders, and he wasn't invited to the remastering sessions at Abbey Road studios.

"Record companies seem to get the rights to put these old tracks out, but why didn't they ring me and say, 'Do you want to be involved in this?', or give me the tapes and let me do the remix myself? I mean, they're my songs. It would be nice to get them to sound the way I want them to."

What irks him even more is the news that his former bandmate from the Move and ELO, drummer Bev Bevan, is going on tour with a band he calls the Move, even though only he and Trevor Burton are from the original line-up. Wood was prepared to put up with the drummer touring as Bev Bevan's Move, but this, he considers, is well out of order.

"He hasn't got my permission, and I want everyone to know that if they buy tickets I'm not going to be a part of it," Wood growls.

"There'll be Move fans who expect me to be with it, and I'm not. I'm calling them the Imposter Move Motherf**kers."

Bevan previously toured with a version of ELO, which he can no longer do following a legal settlement with Jeff Lynne. "Jeff with ELO and me with the Move were the people who had all the sleepless nights, writing all the material and doing all the work," Wood says. "For someone to just come along and go, 'OK, I'm having that now', it's not fair."

But rather than subsiding into negativity, Wood is focusing on writing and performing with his Rock and Roll Band. "We've got a great pianist and saxophone section, and we've got a crossover between jazz and boogie. I'm really proud of 'em. I feel every hour I'm not learning how to use this computer software is an hour wasted, because I want to get in there and write some new songs."

• 'Boulder' is out on Aug 20 (EMI). 'Move' by the Move is reissued on Aug 27 (Fly).