Charmed to meet ya – in conversation with Paul Hanley

Posted on June 21, 2019 by writewyattuk

Some books come your way with elaborate press releases. Others arrive on your desk in a more convoluted fashion. And the latter was certainly the case with Paul Hanley’s Leave the Capital.

It was broadcaster Pete Mitchell who lent me his copy when I visited his Cheshire HQ in late January to contribute to a Virgin Radio Revolutions in Music documentary celebrating The Clash (linked here). Paul’s impressive ‘history of Manchester music in 13 recordings’ had escaped my notice until that point. Needless to say, it proved a cracking read.

Within, the former Fall drummer tells the story of two renowned recording studios on his patch, Pluto and Strawberry. And his love and affinity of the music he writes about, the recording process, and an innate understanding of his subject matter come over loud and clear in an affectionately-honed tome written with a real sense of voice and carrying a far from showy, conversational style, the book as entertaining as a half-hour conversation with the man himself.

I roughly knew the story, but hadn’t given it too much thought that the major artistes from the North West of England who made the big time in the ’60s all recorded elsewhere, until Keith Hopwood and Derek Leckenby of Herman’s Hermits (Pluto) plus Eric Stewart of The Mindbenders and former WriteWyattUK interviewee and all-round songwriting genius Graham Gouldman (Strawberry) set up studios on their own patch, getting out of London.

As Paul puts it, ‘Against the prevailing wisdom, they opted to plough their hard-earned cash back into the city they loved in the form of proper recording facilities. Between them they gave Manchester a voice, and facilitated a musical revolution that would be defined by its rejection of the capital’.

Thus, we get a meticulously-researched tale of Manchester music through the prism of those two studios, inevitably incorporating portraits of 10cc, Buzzcocks, Joy Division, The Smiths and The Stone Roses en route, but also The Clash, who came to Pluto to record ‘Bankrobber’ in 1980. Oh yeah, plus The Manchester Children’s Choir, who sort of set the ball rolling in 1929 at the Free Trade Hall, and Lowry-loving, unlikely hit-makers Brian and Michael. Rightly so, there’s a chapter on John Peel favourites The Fall too, the cult band with whom Paul memorably served in the first half of the ’80s.

So what of the author himself? Well, he never turned away from music, his most recent stints behind a drumkit being with latest Fall offshoot, much-touted Brix & the Extricated, where bandmates include his older brother, bass player Steve Hanley, who served even longer with Mark E. Smith’s cult favourites.

As it turns out, rock’n’roll has been a part-time passion for Paul these past three decades, the father-of-three working in IT for a living. Yet a new potential career has now surfaced, an Open University degree in English leading to this first publication as an author.

Drum Major: Paul Hanley, still giving it some stick, some three and a bit decades after leaving The Fall

If anything, I put it to him, his book seems more a word of mouth success, not least as it’s come from a smaller publisher.

“I suppose so. It’s not like it’s difficult to find, but you’re right. It’s kind of snuck out in a way. Which is okay. I wouldn’t have expected anything else. I was just delighted somebody wanted to publish it.”

Did you go with Pontefract-based publisher Route chiefly because they put out the book your brother Steve and Olivia Piekarski wrote, 2016’s The Big Midweek – Life Inside The Fall?

“Sort of, although they approached me. I was doing a degree in English and wrote an article about The Who in Detroit, where I occasionally go with work. I wanted to do more than a review, making comparisons between Manchester and Detroit. That makes it sound very grand, but It was about me, basically. I got a fairly decent mark, then approached John Robb with a view to him publishing it on his Louder than War website. And when he did, Ian from Route approached, asking if I’d considered writing anything else. And, ‘Funny you should mention that …’

“I’d wanted to write a book about Manchester studios, and not just the two in the book. There’s a few, like the one where Buzzcocks recorded their first record (Indigo Sound Studios, I’m guessing, where the ‘Spiral Scratch’ EP was recorded), then Elbow’s studio (Blueprint Studios, Salford), and Cargo in Rochdale.

“But when I got into it, researching, it seemed like too much of a tale to miss – I wanted to expand on the story of Strawberry and Pluto. That looked a perfect tale with a beginning, middle and end, and a journey. So Cargo fell by the wayside, because it didn’t fit the narrative.”

Although Cargo was where The Fall recorded early on.

“The second album (Dragnet, 1979) was recorded there … and the third, Grotesque (1980), the first I was on. It’s an interesting tale though, and I definitely think there’s a book in it, one I’d be interested to read … if not write!”

Grotesque Album: The Fall’s third studio album, and the first featuring Paul Hanley on drums

Are you working on a follow-up publication now?

“I am, but I’m not at liberty to say yet! I’m fairly near to a point where I can give it to the publisher though, see what they think of it.”

You’ve clearly known the inside of a studio, from the BBC at Maida Vale for those much-loved John Peel sessions (The Fall recorded a staggering 24 sessions for Peelie between 1978 and 2004, Paul featuring on five of them, from 1980 to 1983) to another in Reykjavik and a converted cinema in Hitchin, Herts (collectively for 1982’s Hex Enduction Hour, and onwards. Were you aware of the history of those iconic Manchester locations back in the day though?

“I wasn’t actually, and unfortunately I never got to record in Strawberry. I’d have loved to. The Fall did after my time. But we recorded Perverted By Language at Pluto. I’d be lying if I said I was aware of the history of the place though. In Steve’s book, he mentions it being owned by a couple of members of Herman’s Hermits, but I’m not so sure he knew it at the time. I don’t want to accuse him of rewriting history, but … he was rewriting history. Ha!”

You mention in the book that your stint there was just a couple of years after The Clash recorded ‘Bankrobber’ there though.

“I was aware of that, as a Clash fan, and if you look at the video, it was filmed in that studio. And it hadn’t changed much by the time we recorded there. But as a 55-year-old I’m much more impressed with Keith Hopwood’s past now than the fact The Clash recorded there, even though I wasn’t at the time. It sounds a cliché, but the story of Manchester musicians giving something back to Manchester is a massive thing for me. That’s really what the book’s about.”

It never really struck me until reading your book that The Beatles never recorded north of Watford Gap.

“That’s right. They did a bit of recording in Hamburg, but it was mainly Abbey Road, with a bit in Olympic in Barnes, and at Apple. That’s pretty much it. They talked about going to America to record, but … There was nowhere else for them to go. Even ‘Ferry Cross the Mersey’ was recorded in London.”

And despite the pioneering work at the Manchester studios mentioned, that was still the case in the ‘80s in some respects, wasn’t it? Despite recording their first album here, The Smiths moved on, for example.

“Yes. The same goes for the second Joy Division album. It wasn’t always a conscious decision for Manchester bands to decide to record in Manchester, but the fact remains that if it wasn’t for these people, we couldn’t have done it. And even if the people who did that didn’t realise they were doing it, I think it still made a difference.”

As far as I’m concerned, there was another key moment in the development of music in Manchester through Buzzcocks recording that debut ’Spiral Scratch’ EP in their home city and then making the covers there too. A proper punk DIY approach, inspiring Belfast’s Good Vibrations and many other indie labels to follow that business model.

Inspirational Fare: The debut EP from Buzzcocks, truly independent, made in Manchester

“I think so. Look at the Sex Pistols and look at The Clash – they were on EMI, CBS … And while Buzzcocks later signed to a major label, that thing with the debut EP – even if it wasn’t necessarily a selfless thing they were doing – was enormous. They made it possible for others to follow in their footsteps, in the same way that they brought the Pistols up to Manchester. They didn’t get £200 and spend it on train fares to see them in London. They decided to bring them up here.”

So what happened to Paul after he left The Fall in 1985? Was that when you moved into working with computers?

“That was a couple of years after. I was in a band who did absolutely nothing, with a couple of others from Marc Riley and the Creepers. Don’t know if you’ve ever heard of them?”

Of course. I reckon he asked that with a smile on his face.

“We all decided to do it ourselves and be massive pop stars … which kind of explains while I’ve been in IT for the last 30 years!

“But I always hated that kind of ‘Smithers Jones’ thing, and 53 songs by Steve Diggle kind of sneering at people working for a living.”

Well, I’ll let Steve Diggle stand up for himself, but I know Bruce Foxton wrote ‘Smithers Jones’ about his Dad. I don’t reckon he was sneering. I think it was done from a place of love.

“Okay. I’ll take that back then. But there is a history of that, from ‘Semi-Detached Suburban Mr James’ (Manfred Mann, 1966) onwards.”

It’s interesting that Paul starts the book talking about the Manchester Children’s Choir and the success of ‘the UK’s first significant recording outside of London’, not least as 90 years on Manchester-based John Robb post-punk outfit The Membranes feature a Manchester-based choir (from the British and Irish Modern Music Institute) to great effect on their mighty new opus, What Nature Gives … Nature Takes Away.

Strawberry Studios: Paul Hanley outside the iconic Stockport location made famous by 10cc.

And that 1929 recording was recorded at the Free Trade Hall, as opposed to the Lesser Free Trade Hall where the Sex Pistols, invited up to Manchester by Howard Devoto and Pete Shelley, famously played and changed lives overnight in 1976. I imagine Mark E. Smith would have played down that show’s overall importance though, I suggested.

“I’m not so sure. It definitely changed something in the air. Mark, Una (Baines), Martin (Bramah) and Tony Friel sat round doing poetry and swapping instruments before, but when they went to that gig, they felt, ‘We can do this, we can actually be a band’. The same with Pete Hook and Barney (Sumner). The leap from wanting to be a musician and being one was smaller then than it ever was before or ever after. There was just something about that moment, the demarcation less than ever between those going to see a band and those who were in the band. And that wasn’t just in Manchester. The same happened elsewhere with Siouxsie Sioux, Billy Idol, and so on, when they saw the Pistols.”

A discussion followed about pub rock before we got back on track, me bringing up the subject of Manchester’s Electric Circus gigs, initially when the Pistols played there on their ‘Anarchy in the UK’ tour, inspiring the afore-mentioned Peter Hook and many more. But Paul was still a schoolboy at that stage.

“The Electric Circus was slightly before my time. From what I can gather it wasn’t the nicest place. It was a rough area around there. But if you think about the gigs that were on there, including The Clash on the ‘White Riot’ tour. And I remember a Virgin 10” vinyl live album  (Short Circuit – Live at the Electric Circus, 1978, also featuring Buzzcocks, John Cooper Clarke, The Drones, and Steel Pulse), and it was on that I first heard The Fall and Joy Division.”

You wrote a ’40 years on’ review recently, again for Louder Than War, about a Bowdon Vale Club gig in Cheshire in March 1979, with Staff 9 – your future bandmates – supporting Joy Division. Was that one of your first gigs?

“I hadn’t been to that many, but the first was Darts at the Free Trade Hall. A kind of doo wop band. Don’t know if you remember them.”

How could I forget them.

“I don’t know why I latched on to them, but I quite liked them, although I ditched them fairly quickly once I got into my brother’s music. The second gig I saw was Blondie at the Free Trade Hall, which was brilliant. By then the line between people I knew and bands was gone, because Marc Riley was in The Fall, and Steve was too fairly rapidly after that, and they were kind of mixing with Joy Division and Buzzcocks, who rehearsed at the same place. So to a callow youth, these people who I thought were absolutely amazing were within reach, if you like.”

Perverted Record: The Fall’s sixth studio album, recorded at Pluto in Manchester

I suppose when it came to its music scene, Manchester was in that sense a small town.

“It was! There was a real sense of a scene. Even people like Mark E. Smith, who defined themselves by not being part of that scene, could only do that because the scene was there in the first place.”

The fact that Manchester also had its co-operative music collective helping put gigs on helped too.

“It did. They put a lot of gigs on. Some of it was terrible though. There was a lot of that folks banging radiators stuff, and putting typewriters through an echo machine!”

Music doesn’t always conform to geographical limits though. A lot of the bands from my South-East roots gravitated towards London, and that was surely the case with your patch, to an extent.

“Erm, I’m not sure really. Possibly. A lot of Manchester bands don’t particularly sound Mancunian, but I think there is an atmosphere, and that whole Tony Wilson thing about Manchester. I don’t think it restricted anybody in terms of what they sounded like, but there was a definite movement from around 1978 onwards. And one of the main points of my book is that there’s a line from there right back to the ‘60s. I don’t think that gets written about enough.”

On to chapter 11, the one where you write about The Fall, centred around the Perverted By Language album. I get the feeling you were reluctant to include that, even though surely you realised it would have to be part of the story.

“Sort of. I didn’t want to write it. It was the last chapter to be written. I’ve described it as being like a Fall-shaped hole in the book. I’d written about Buzzcocks and Joy Division, The Smiths, The Stone Roses … It was Ian from Route who said I really needed something in there about The Fall. I could have been really perverse and written about the album they did at Strawberry after I left, but that seemed ridiculous, so I bit the bullet and wrote that chapter. But it was difficult after writing so much about, ‘Aren’t these people great!’ To switch it to, ‘Aren’t we great!’ didn’t seem right. But I didn’t want to say, ‘Aren’t we crap!’ either, because The Fall were an amazing band.”

You describe how, by the time of Grotesque, Mark E. Smith had been joined by ‘three schoolfriends and a younger brother’, the latter yourself.

“That’s right, and I certainly was a little brother as well.”

There’s five years between Paul and big brother Steve Hanley. Was Steve close at school with Marc Riley and Craig Scanlon?

Part Two: Confusingly the first Brix & the Extricated LP

“Marc and Steve have been mates pretty much all their lives, and I’ve known Marc as long as I’ve known Steve, really. Marc’s parents are my godparents. We kind of grew up together. Craig was in the same school year as Marc, getting to know Steve through him.”

Their original band – before Paul joined – were originally known as The Sirens, becoming Staff 9 before Marc left to join The Fall, the other two soon following, Paul joining later. Was he hearing them banging and crashing from the start?

“Definitely, and it was more luck than good fortune that I ended up playing the one instrument that none of them played.”

Did you play drums at school?

“No, I had no musical training whatsoever. I was going to learn guitar at school, but my Dad wouldn’t stump up for a guitar case. He said we’ve still got the box it came in, so he put two strings on the cardboard box. And there was no way I was carrying that to school, so I never pursued it.”

Whereas Steve was born in Dublin, Paul was born in Manchester, or to be precise, “St Mary’s, the Manchester equivalent of Londoners being born within the sound of Bow Bells. You can’t get more Manc than St Mary’s. it was just outside the city centre then, and is more or less in the city centre now.”

Were there musicians in the Hanley family before you two?

“Not really. My parents and uncles attended parties, that Irish thing, but nobody musical at all.”

It only struck me recently that Mark E. Smith was in his own sweet way as much a performance poet as John Cooper Clarke.

“He was in a way, but I don’t think he ever wrote lyrics that stood up on their own. That’s not to denigrate them. There’s a real difference between poetry and lyrics, and he always wrote lyrics. I’m not saying poetry is a higher calling, but they’re not the same thing. He was a consummate lyric writer. He was brilliant. But he wasn’t a poet, wasn’t a novelist. He was what he was. And he took lyrics to a place others hadn’t.”

Big Moment: Seen as Paul Hanley’s proudest achievement with The Fall, album-wise

One thing I read into your book was that for all Mark’s outspokenness and strong will, you were a proper band, all involved, chipping in with song ideas and so on. You really were ‘Die Gruppe’.

“Musically, yeah. He always had that where he was – sometimes to his frustration – surrounded by musicians, despite not particularly holding musicians in high regard. It was a Catch 22 situation – he always had to work with musicians but didn’t particularly think they were the people he wanted to hang around with. Until the last couple of line-ups. The line-up he had for the last 10 years was his perfect band – they loved him, and he loved them. Maybe he mellowed.”

You’d seen a bit of mellowing yourself when Brix joined the band and he fell in love with her, hadn’t you?

“Well, he wasn’t really that bad. He was always alright. He had his moments, had some mad ideas and could be unreasonable, but bands are often unreasonable. I think he got in a very dark place when Steve left, but I couldn’t say the situation was ever that bad when I was in the band.

“My relationship was with Mark was a little different. As I was a little younger, he was always my boss. He was never my friend in that sense, so I had different expectations of the relationship to what the rest had. As with that last band line-up, he told me what to do from the day I joined until the day I left, and I didn’t have a problem with that. It was a different situation from that with Martin Bramah, for instance.”

I do get the impression from what you write that you didn’t really feel you knew him that well at all.

“Yeah, but that’s not to say we weren’t friendly.”

Did you feel threatened when Karl Burns came back on board and you suddenly had this two-drummer formation. Did you think your time in the band was about to end as soon as it had started?

“No. Understandably, he got Karl in for that American tour (Paul was too young to get a working visa), and I was of the opinion that he was one of the best drummers I’d ever seen, so he was massively someone to learn from. But I didn’t have to be in a band with him to learn from him. I learned every time I watched him on stage. He was an absolutely amazing drummer. By the same token, to be given the opportunity to play alongside him was worth any amount of fear. it was an absolute joy to be part of a two-drummer line-up with Karl.”

There aren’t many bands known for that formation.

The Smiths: The eponymous debut LP, made in 1984 at both Pluto and Strawberry Studios

“Adam and the Ants, I suppose. And the Glitter Band, but that was double-tracked. They never really played on Gary Glitter records. I think the Grateful Dead had it for a while, but I certainly wasn’t informed by them. I did quite like Adam and the Ants, although we never really tried to emulate that tribal thing.”

There’s a nice line about Marc Riley’s exit from The Fall, where you mention the wonderfully quirky ’Jumper Clown’, the cracking number he did with The Creepers (also memorably covered by The Wedding Present), and how it made a mockery of the reason Mark gave for booting him out. You write, ‘If proof were ever needed that Mark E. Smith’s frequent assertion that ‘Riley wanted to be in a pop band’ was nonsense, then ‘Jumper Clown’ is it.’

“Yeah, it’s funny, that. Mark kind of rewrote history, and one of his big things when Marc Riley went was saying that he always wanted to play the hits and be more poppy. That couldn’t have been further from the truth. I think there was a clash of personalities and with hindsight it was probably the right time for Marc to go. But that doesn’t make me any more comfortable about the fact that I stood by and let it happen when Marc was sacked. It was a rough time (for Steve) – they’d known each other forever. It did affect the relationship briefly, but we got over it.”

There’s a lovely clip of you and Karl playing live with the band on Channel 4’s The Tube, performing ‘Smile’ and ‘2 x 4’, introduced by special guest John Peel with presenter Jools Holland in 1983. One of many career highlights, I’m guessing.

“It was, and it was an interesting process, something we’d never done before. It was a unique programme in that you got to play live. A bit like Later with Jools now, but slightly less slick. And we got to meet John Peel and Mickey Finn from T-Rex.”

Is there a record from your time with The Fall with which you are most proud?

“I think Hex Enduction Hour, which is cited quite a lot now, and I think that’s quite deserved … which sounds quite ridiculous because I’m on it. As Steve always says, I was making an album with the greatest lyric writer in the world and four of my best mates. And for it to turn out as well as it did …  I’m proud of all the records I was on, except for Room  to Live (1982). I can’t stand that, but that was really coloured by the atmosphere when we made it, which was poisonous. I think there was a deliberate attempt by Mark to undermine where we were, because Hex Enduction Hour had been so feted.”

Bringing the story up to date, had you kept in touch with Brix over the years?

“Not really. It was because of Steve’s book. He did this launch for it and decided we were going to play, and basically invited pretty much everybody he’d been in a band with. Craig (Scanlon) was there, Marcia (Schofield) was there, Simon (Wolstencroft) was there … It was a lovely occasion, and after that Steve and Brix got talking about doing something together. I think originally that was with Simon Rogers, but he was too busy to commit. As with these things, Steve roped me in to play drums … and we’ve been doing it ever since.”

Yep, that’s Brix and the Extricated, currently at work on their third album, with dates set up for later this year. And I make it that Paul and Steve have been in at least five bands together.

Signed Up: The second Brix & the Extricated LP

“Ooh … let’s have a think here! One … two … three … four … yeah, five.”

That’ll be Factory Star, (Tom Hingley and) The Lovers, The Fall, Brix & the Extricated, …

“We were in a band called Ark, but we don’t talk about them!”

Well, I was going to mention Staff 9. Are you going to elaborate on that?

“That was a band started by Steve when him, Karl (Burns) and Tommy (Crooks) left The Fall (together with The Creepers’ Pete Keogh). It was a bit of a disaster really. They lost Karl and Tommy and I ended up playing for them. It was good in a way, kind of cathartic for Steve, as if to say he didn’t need Mark to organise gigs or make a record. But I think it was too soon. He should have taken two years off. But anyway …”

Home for Open University graduate Paul is Timperley, ‘the home of Frank Sidebottom’, as he put it, his children having grown up fast, Paul’s daughter now a teacher and his two lads following her to the University of Sheffield for their own studies. And of his own degree, he added, “It was one of the best things I’ve ever done. A brilliant experience, that whole thing of being made to write about things you would never think to in a million years.”

And that inspired his first publication, in a sense?

“Not in a sense at all – 100 per cent! Absolutely. This made me think I was able to write.”

And there’s proof of that in Leave the Capital, for sure.

Band Substance: Brix & the Extricated, working on a new LP right now, and set to play live later this year.

For more details about Leave the Capital by Paul Hanley (Route Publishing, £9.99) and how to get a copy, try his website or head to the publisher’s site.

Brix and the Extricated, currently working on their third album, are set to play Manchester’s Band on the Wall on November 1st, then The Lexington in Islington, North London, on November 30th. For details head to the band’s Facebook page. 

 

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Always have the bus fare hame – going wisely with Eddi Reader

Posted on June 15, 2019 by writewyattuk

Reader Friendly: Eddi Reader, celebrating four decades (plus) of performing (Photo: Genevieve Stevenson)

Eddie Reader already had two Brit awards and had topped the singles charts by the end of the 1980s. But if you suspect this story’s merely a retro affair centred on big hit, ‘Perfect’, think again.

The Glasgow-born singer-songwriter has recorded 11 studio albums as a solo artist since coming out of the shadow of one-album wonders Fairground Attraction, with her first, Mirmama, setting the tone in 1992.

Along the way she picked up a third Brit award, was nominated for an Ivor Novello award, received an MBE in recognition of an award-winning 2003 project feting Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns, and the following year sang at the opening of the new Scottish Parliament building.

What’s more, she’s now celebrating four decades as a professional performer, moving from busking and folk roots – via UK and US tours with Leeds post-punk band Gang of Four – to session work with several big-name artists before carving out that solo success.

Last September’s Cavalier LP was the latest instalment of a career also including brief forays into acting, TV and radio presenting – including BBC Scotland music programme, No Stilettoes – and writing. And was she pleased with the praise for her latest LP?

“Yeah, although I don’t really pay attention to that stuff. I’m just concerned about making records best as I can, letting them fly out into the world. But certainly I’ve nothing to be ashamed about. I really love it and I’m glad that there’s nice words said. Thanks for letting me know!”

If you’ve missed out on Eddi’s more recent output, you’ll find an assured maturity there that’s been building for some years. And to highlight just one track on Cavalier by way of an example, ‘Go Wisely’ is a thing of beauty, her words to a loved one setting off on life’s journey, built around sage Scots advice, ‘Be good to yourself, go wisely; But always have the bus fare hame.’ Is that an old Reader family saying?

“Well, I’m at a stage where I have adult children and it’s a different world from when I was young, but there’s things that are still quite pertinent. I wanted to say things to my children that my adults told me when I was leaving home.

“This list just came to me in the middle of the night. All these things I remembered, like ‘be good to your health’, and the most pertinent, ‘always make sure you’ve got the bus fare ‘hame’ in your pocket. I just wanted to tell them the door will always be open, that sort of thing.

“The adults I grew up with were from the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s. There was a lot of Beatles records around, like ‘All My Loving’, and also the Rolling Stones ‘ ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ … ‘but you get what you need’. I wanted to get a wee bit of that too, those sounds as my backdrop.

“With ‘be good to your health and be good to yourself’, that was my Granny. My Dad, Grandad and the men in my family would be more concerned about making sure you had the money for the road ‘home’.

“My Mum and all those housewives were more concerned about getting enough food and always having some pal you could rely on. I didn’t manage to get it into the song, but my Dad would always say, ‘If you get lost, just look for the pub, because the pub never changes. There’ll always be a pub on every corner.”

If only that was still the case. We seem to be losing so many, not least music venues.

“Yeah … but you have churches turning into music venues, which is a better thing probably.”

On the back of last year’s Cavalier, There’s a five-song EP, Starlight, out now. And somehow the years have crept up, this being your 40th year as a live performer, I understand.

“It’s actually more, but 40 years ago I sat on the side of a river, while busking every day in the South of France, deciding to come home and do something much more serious with my abilities. I’ve been 30 years as a professional, but more than that as I lived off my busking money before.

“Going back even further, when I was eight I sang in front of the class at school for the first time. A major breakthrough. It’s been a long time manipulating my throat, making sure I get across an idea.”

Eddi began playing guitar at the age of 10, her busking days following some years later, initially in Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street. And I put it to her that from Steve Harley to Joe Strummer, many music greats similarly found their way via busking.

“Yeah, there’s a lot you learn. Firstly, about projection – not mumbling, enunciating a little easier. That’s a massive learning curve, doing that without microphones in an open street, and also picking areas of a street where your voice will reverberate.

“You also toughen up the cords, learn stamina and learn what works with passing trade. I was really lucky I had good equipment, but it’s also about the songs you pick. I could tell for example that Van Morrison’s ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ would make me enough money for my dinner rather than a song about the boyfriend dumping me, y’know – that track I wrote last night that I got from my diary.”

Back in Scotland after her early career took her to France, Eddie was working in a factory in Irvine and part-time in a recording studio in Kilmarnock when she answered a music press advert, consequently heading to London to audition for Gang of Four, who were after a backing singer in time for an appearance on for BBC 2 TV show The Old Grey Whistle Test and a UK tour.

She stayed on with the band for a US tour, then became a session vocalist in London, going from radio ad jingles to work with the likes of Eurythmics, Alison Moyet, Billy MacKenzie, John Foxx, Sting, The Waterboys, and The Clash’s Topper Headon. But she never really lost her initial love of folk. In view of her spell with Gang of Four, was she also into punk?

“Well, I was a child of that era. I was 17/18 in the late ‘70s, so that was all around me. But I was a massive folk music fan, and what I liked about folk was that it was a brilliant alternative to Amanda’s Wet T-shirt Night in the local disco, y’know.

““I wasn’t angry enough to hate it all entirely. In fact, I found a lot of solace in folk music. To go in and hear unaccompanied females singing in a Scottish accent, songs of love, murder, death and life, I kind of felt I didn’t need anything else.

“My family were a bit worried – ‘what’s all this folk music?’ They didn’t really get it. But I was I was going to all the folk festivals in 1979 and 1980, when it was all dying. I was there at the latter half of the pre-folk revival and remember how well attended it was then. The first would be Inverness Folk Festival in April and I was there as a young punter. I’d sneak in the back and you’d get a floor-spot. It was a place where you could perform.

“You couldn’t perform anywhere else, unless you had sound equipment and were in a band. If you were in a folk club you could stand on stage and ask if you could sing or play something and there were a lot of people my age who did the same thing.

“That graduated to busking and singing those songs, like ‘Lord Franklin’ and Blues Run the Game’, learning about the alternative music scene. And the alternative scene for me would have been Gram Parsons, Neil Young and Bob Dylan. All of that had been dying a death during the late ‘70s. But the folkies were all for it.”

Initially raised in a tenement slum, Glasgow-born Eddi is the eldest of seven children, her Dad a welder, reminding me of someone else who started out in that line then progressed through the Scottish folk scene before going his own way.

Actually, before I got in touch, I was racking my brains trying to recall when I’d last seen her talking on television, then remembered it was around New Year for a BBC documentary about Billy Connolly, who Eddi has worked with in on TV soundtracks in recent years.

“We came from the same place. He’s older than me, but I think if I’d been male, I think I’d have had a practically identical experience. But being female, I had a different experience, being a Scot. We didn’t get feminism until the 1990s, I think, up here! I wanted to be like my Dad’s daughter. I wasn’t particularly interested in having 20 wains.

“The other thing with the Gang of Four and all that, I would never restrict myself in terms of genre. I loved jazz music, I loved punk, I loved it all.”

She’s certainly not one to be typecast. From folk roots to pop, Robert Burns, and even 1930s’ fare for a project with Jools Holland.

“Yeah, but that’s only because I knew all those songs. He phoned me, saying, ‘You’re the only person I know who knows all this stuff.”

Talking of those you’ve collaborated with over the years, I’ve heard Boo Hewerdine sing your praises live, suggesting you’ve helped pay his mortgage through covers of his songs, most notably 1994’s ‘Patience of Angels’ (nominated for an Ivor Novello award for best song the following year).

“Ha! Well, that’s good to know.”

Do you still work together?

“Yeah. He comes with me everywhere when I’m playing.”

Including these upcoming dates?

“Yeah, he will be.”

So what’s the set-up for these live shows?

“Well, I like to have players who know how to do the folk thing and I like to have players who know how to do the songwriter thing, and I like players who are really versatile. So I have Boo, Kevin (McGuire, double bass), Alan (Kelly, accordion) from Galway, Steph (Geremia, flute) might come, and I have John.”

That’s guitarist John Douglas, Eddi’s husband, of The Trashcan Sinatras, a rather splendid melodic indie outfit – in the best tradition of Aztec Camera – with their roots in the mid-’80s in Irvine, fronted by her brother Frank (bass, vocals), and also featuring John’s brother Stephen (drums). I remember them well, first single, ‘Obscurity Knocks’, leading me to buy the Go! Discs debut LP Cake, on vinyl back in 1990. In fact, I’m revisiting it as I’m typing, and it sounds just as good nearly three decades on. What’s more, they remain a going concern, still recording and touring, as you can find out here.  Anyway, back to Eddi.

“We got married six years ago, but we’ve known each other all our lives. So it was a musical partnership as well. We always got on as mates, and sort of suddenly, about 2001, realised it was more than that. John had written ‘Wild Mountainside’, which was kind of for me to come home from London. I’d been away 28 years, including time in France and having my kids, and was needing to find a home really.

“Also, a lot of people were leaving, and a few were dying, the older ones. I just felt I was removed from something that was authentically mine, and wanted to get back to that. So John had written this song, (including the line) ‘I’ll carry you if you fall’, and that kind of sparked us off really. I put it on my Robert Burns album as an example of the poetry that’s still alive on the west coast of Scotland.”

While Eddi sees the day she moved back from the South of France as key to her career development, heading home for the next part of her adventure, she was back across the Channel fairly soon, working in Paris as a singer for composer Vladimir Cosma, who wrote the music for the movie, Diva. She’s not so complimentary about him, but I’ll hold back. My legal team have yet to return from their liquid lunch. Let’s just say she’s still waiting on a pay-day.

Eddi returned to the UK again in 1984, through a contact with The Kick Horns brass section in London, signing with EMI, making two singles with disco outfit Outbar Squeek. And how does she sum up that period?

“From 1981 through to 1988, just go to Zomba Records or Arista, find any singles that never did anything! One that comes to mind was with A Bigger Splash, which Sting produced. You’ll find my voice on all those.”

I recall talking to Paul Carrack about his days as a go-to session man, someone else who eventually went his own way. Were you frustrated by that experience or was it more a case of learning your craft before going it alone?

“The busking taught me so much, then the live work taught me more, and I was in all sorts of bands in Scotland before I went to France. But when I was working in the studio in the ’80s, for people like The Gang of Four, The Eurythmics, Alison Moyet, and Sting, there was a hierarchy of BV (backing vocalist) work, and I just loved working.

“I’m a real worker. I love hearing something, getting it spot on, getting a harmony right, and for years and years I was probably a bit anally-retentive about it. But I think people liked me because I was fast and I was cheap! You could carry on doing that and end up doing tours with (Eric) Clapton and the (Rolling) Stones, but attractive as that was, I knew I’d be bored shitless, so I needed work.

Busking Roots: Eddi Reader started out as a busker on Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street (Photo: Genevieve Stevenson)

“The work was about falling in love with song, then turning song to other people, so they heard it through you and the way you hear it, something intangible. I could wait at the side of the stage for my moment to come on, sing ‘Ooh ooh, aah aah’, and could do that really fucking brilliantly, but I don’t think it would satisfy me.

“By about 1984/85 I was looking for writers, trying to write myself, and wasn’t very brave about my own writing. I knew I was creative but couldn’t quite rely on that. I made a few demos then found some writers. I was doing work for The Waterboys and met Anthony Thistlethwaite, who (also) played saxophone with The Kick Horns, who (incidentally) now do play with the Stones!

“I was a backroom girl and we’d go out in Anthony’s 2CV, go to gigs. He’d introduce me to anyone who wanted backing singers. One band had a deal with EMI, and another had one with Sony. I signed all those contracts, having about five at one point, all supposedly exclusive!”

Around then she also met Mark E. Nevin, guitarist and songwriter with Jane Aire and the Belvederes, asking him to write for her, the pair subsequently fronting Fairground Attraction (also featuring Simon Edwards and Roy Dodds), signing in 1988 to RCA/BMG. Soon, debut single ‘Perfect’ became a UK No.1, going on to win best single at the 1989 Brit Awards, while debut LP, The First of a Million Kisses, reached No.2 in the charts and won best album at that same awards do.

How did that story end? Well, it seems that during a break – in which Eddi had the first of her two children – there was a fall-out, ultimately leading to a split, just one more LP following, 1990’s Ay Fond Kiss, a collection of B-sides and live tracks. And Eddi still seems somewhat raw about the whole episode.

“There was all sorts of shenanigans going on before Fairground (Attraction). Then I met Mark, my biggest mistake – not that I made many – acquiescing to him to turn it into the name of the band. I just picked a name of one of the songs of his that I liked. But mostly it was my demo money. I paid for it all and was the one who got the interest from the record company. I had all the contacts.”

She added more, but I’ll leave that out. As I’ve explained before, I’m a one-man band and don’t have a team of hot-shot lawyers to go over my interviews. Some of what comes out in conversations inevitably ends up on the cutting room floor, so to speak. I’ll carry on from there though.

“I’ll still stand by it (‘Perfect’), because it was a choice of mine, it was something I loved, and the whole album was something I did with good heart. The reason we didn’t get a second album was greed and someone having a power struggle. We ended up in a place where, ‘You do as I say, or you don’t do anything’. I had to get away from that … run away from that, as fast as possible!”

And Eddi’s advice for the next generation of performers (again, I’ve left out a bit)?

“If you do it with love, you’ll attract enough people and will survive. The Jaguar, the boat in the Mediterranean and the Caribbean is not particularly the best thing to aim for, but you can aim for loving what you do, and if you do love what you do you’ll always survive. Without fail.

“I like to think that maybe in my older age I’ll get to do little workshops and teach that stuff. Because nobody taught me. I had to learn that.”

Take a page out of Boo Hewerdine’s book. He’s involved in songwriting workshops, this summer working alongside Dean Friedman and Chris Difford.

“He’s very good like that and with that. He’s a self-made man, gets himself together, picks up his guitar, gets on the train or drives anywhere to do a gig, wherever he’s asked. He’s vital like that.”

Before embarking on her solo career, Eddi tried her arm at  acting, highlights including her role as singer/accordionist Jolene Jowett in BBC Tv comedy-drama Your Cheatin’ Heart in a career that has also seen this outspoken advocate of Scottish independence working on a book about her great-uncle, Seamus Reader, who headed the Scottish Brigade of the Irish Republican Brotherhood when the Irish War of Independence broke out in 1919, later becoming a founder of the abortive Scottish Republican Army, which attempted to replicate the Irish struggle in Scotland between the wars. But I ran out of time to get on to that.

Getting (tentatively) back to Fairground Attraction, it was inevitable that at some stage I’d get on to that song, and here’s as good a place as anywhere to drop it into conversation, mentioning to Eddi her Gaelic take on ‘Perfect’.

“I did that for the Barnardo’s charity. It’s called Coel, and they get successful musicians in Ireland to do their hits in gaelic, so I donated that. It was great learning it. It’s in Irish Gaelic, not Scottish. I’ve betrayed my Scottish roots! It would be good to try that though. I’d like to find someone who could teach me. Honestly though, it was like ‘listen and copy.”

While that song takes me back to that late ’80s era and mostly good memories, it was somewhat played to death, and still gets lots of local radio spins. Are there nights when Eddi takes a deep breath at the mere thought of having to sing it again? For all the songs she’s recorded, people probably still think first of that 1988 No.1. Does that frustrate her?

“Never. No, if I don’t want to do it, I don’t do it. I’ve never felt beholden to a set. I don’t have sets. I just do whatever I feel like on the night, and every gig is different in that way. On this tour I’ll be wanting to sing some of the new ones, because they need an airing and I want to show people their beauty, but beyond that I’ll do everything and anything that comes to mind.

“But ‘Perfect’ comes out more now than it did. For 10 years I didn’t sing it ever. That was only because I was broken-hearted, giving my whole energy for something that … I kind of ended up feeling abandoned and didn’t want to look at any of those songs. But that was way back in the ‘90s. Since then I’ve been singing it because I love it. I love it the same way as I loved it when I first heard it. I don’t have a problem with it.

“It’s great when you go to places like Prague, Japan, Spain, or America, sing it, and someone says, ‘Oh yeah, I remember that!’ There’s no connection to me and only that. I do two hours of everything else as well.

“And it’s such a ticket for getting in doors, soon as you mention that song. It’s an odd thing to carry about. It’s not like I’ve got it tattooed on my head or anything. But it feels like I’m responsible for it, like a child or a doggy I’m looking after in the park.

“The only time is if people say there was only one hit. But I know there was ‘Find My Love’, ‘Patience of Angels’, ‘A Smile and A Whisper’, ‘Clear’, ‘Town Without Pity’ … I also know Mirmama, my first solo album, won an award in 1996 in America for best alternative independent record.

“Nobody sits in a crowd in front of me when I’m singing who ever pressurises me to do anything other than what I want to do. I find real affinity with people who haven’t seen me before, haven’t seen me for 30 years, or bring their Mum, Dad or Granny and their wains. Lots of people just want the experience of someone singing to them and it being a unique and personable experience. And I enjoy the connectiveness and humanity.”

It’s been 30 years now since that initial Brit award double, Eddi adding another in her own right – best female – in 1995. And where does she keep them?

“My sister’s got one, and the other’s under the kitchen sink. I use it to hammer in nails sometimes. But I need to start looking after it a wee bit.”

She adds at that stage something about her MBE too (the mobile phone reception wasn’t great at that stage), that accolade awarded for ‘outstanding contributions to the arts’ in the New Year’s honours list of 2006, in light of her Robert Burns project. I also mentioned how Eddi has a big birthday coming in late August – her 60th. Any plans?

“I might go down South and see my friend Angus, from Kilbarchan.”

That’ll be Angus Aird, with whom Eddi toured Scotland – along with fellow guitarist Dave Dick – under the name Pigmeat in the early days. In fact, he added guitar on 2014’s Vagabond album.

“I left him in the South of France, at the side of that river 40 years ago when I decided to get up and walk away. He’s still down there, fixing tractors and playing his guitars. So I might get down there and reconnect.”

And of all your recorded work, which album are you most proud of?

“Mirmama, my first (solo album), because I had to be very brave. And nobody mentioned it. RCA swallowed it and didn’t promote it, but it was me coming out, and I adored my bravery. And when I listen to that now I think it’s still a completely beautiful album.

“Beyond that, the other ones are great, but there’s something about the first time when you stand up and say, ‘I don’t care what happens – this is me and I’m going to do it!”

Eddi Reader’s five-song EP, Starlight, is available via Reveal Records, featuring three unreleased songs from 2018’s Cavalier sessions, plus double-A single ‘Starlight’ / ‘My Favourite Dress’, released as a limited-edition gatefold CD or digitally via this link.

Touring Schedule: Eddi Reader and her band, coming to a town near you, I reckon (Photo: Genevieve Stevenson)

Meanwhile, Eddi and her band are touring throughout this month, having started out back on May 24th at Kendal’s Brewery Arts Centre and reaching Stamford Arts Centre tonight (June 15th), followed by Taunton Brewhouse Theatre (June 16th), Cardiff Tramshed (June 18th), Manchester Stoller Hall (June 19th), London King’s Place (June 21st), Harpenden Public Halls (June 22nd), Cambridge Junction (June 23rd), Bury St Edmunds Apex (June 25th), Coventry Warwick Arts Centre (June 26th), Pocklington Arts Centre (June 27th), and Durham The Gala (June 28th). For ticket information head here.  

 

 

 

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Fylde under nature – talking The Membranes’ new record and much more with John Robb

Posted on June 5, 2019 by writewyattuk

Nature Lovers: Peter Byrchmore, Nick Brown, John Robb and Rob Haynes, causing a stir with their new double album

It’s 35 years since music writer, Louder Than War founder and Membranes/Goldblade bass player/vocalist John Robb left the ‘Tatty Seaside Town’ later celebrated on 1988’s Kiss Ass … Godhead! LP. But he clearly still has plenty of time for his old patch.

One of the first songs to be publicly aired from acclaimed new Membranes double LP, What Nature Gives … Nature Takes Away is the evocative ‘A Murmuration of Starlings on Blackpool Pier’. And it just so happens that John is currently working on a new arts project in the resort, helping chronicle the history of the Fylde coast’s musical legacy (with more details about that project here).

What’s more, The Membranes are set to play Blackpool pub venue The Waterloo on July 5th, and return again for the Rebellion Festival at the nearby Winter Gardens in early August.

Born just up the coast in Fleetwood, John grew up in Anchorsholme, barely four miles from Blackpool Tower, the iconic location from the top of which The Membranes launched 2015 LP Dark Matter/Dark Energy (becoming the first band to play there). And he played a key part in the Fylde resort’s more recent story, forming his band in 1977 – aged 16 – while at Blackpool Sixth Form College. But he knows full well the area’s cultural heritage goes way back before punk rock inspired this Tangerines fan to get involved.

“Blackpool’s got a really interesting musical history. People tend to forget what came out of there – like Jethro Tull, (elements of) The Pet Shops Boys, Soft Cell, and a great post-punk scene. We were around then, and Section 25.

“And there are lots of other interesting stories, such as the Jimi Hendrix gig you see clips from, setting fire to his guitar on stage at the Opera House, when he was touring with Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd.”

I understand there was a Gene Vincent link to Blackpool too (the feted rock’n’roller based on the North Shore while appearing there in the mid-‘60s, by all accounts).

“I think he was living there a bit, and Johnny Kidd and the Pirates had a club there. It was a showbiz town then. George Formby was the biggest pop star before rock’n’roll, but chose not to move to London but Blackpool, because that was the epicentre of showbusiness, which you can’t imagine now. What Manchester has now would be the equivalent now.”

Incidentally, North Londoner Johnny Kidd, died aged just 30 in a road accident near Bolton in October 1966. He’d been a regular visitor to Blackpool, including a summer spell with The Pirates in the summer of ’64 at the Rainbow Theatre, on a Larry Parnes bill topped by Joe Brown and his Bruvvers and The Tornados. It was around then that he bought into The Picador club (strip joint, say some) near the railway station. But that’s another story (and brilliantly told on Adie Barrett’s website).

Getting on to Manchester, that’s where John Robb’s at these days, having moved there in 1983. And this Saturday, June 8th, he’s hosting the third annual Membranes and Friends Festival there, a five-hour multi-band event – nap-handed, in fact – also acting as the official launch party for his band’s new record, taking place just across the road from Oxford Road station at the Ritz on Whitworth Street West. But how would John compare his adopted city’s scene in the early ‘80s with how it is now?

“It’s massively different now. There are more venues, with 30 or 40 in the city. It too has become an acknowledged musical epicentre. In the post-punk era it had key game-changing bands, but you have to remember Joy Division weren’t that big.

“Now if there was an Ian Curtis hologram or something, he could play stadiums and be bigger than U2. I’ll go to Russia and every kid there loves Joy Division. But before Ian died, they were playing clubs to 100/200 people a night. It was a brilliant scene, but for not that many people.”

Joy Division famously supported fellow Manchester outfit Buzzcocks on their Autumn ’79 UK tour, and I seem to recall my brother and friends missing them in favour of the usual pre-show pint at the nearby Angel Hotel. That was probably the case for a fair few support bands over the years. Is that why we need to get down by four o’clock for this joint-Membranes and Friends and LP launch event at the Ritz?

“I think so. I know for a lot of tours the support band are by and large just an afterthought, but we don’t even use the term ‘support band’. They’re just bands sharing a space. Every band’s equal. It’s not a case of padding the bill out. There’s a reason why everything is there.

“Each band on that bill is a band I’m really into. I don’t know if that’s a measure of anything, but they’re there because we really like them. We could quite easily flip the bill round the other way. It wouldn’t make any odds to me.”

Of his hand-picked guests, John describes Henge as ‘Hawkwind on acid … more acid, if you can imagine that!’, Queen Zee as ‘pretty amazing, sort of warped sex-punk’, and Glove, who have put out releases on his label, as ‘amazing, sort of Slits crossed with Patti Smith’.

He was also full of praise for late additions Liines, back for a second straight year, late replacements for Lawrence from Felt’s Go-Kart Mozart.

Breaking Through: Liines have come a long way since their last Membranes and Friends show

“Last year, from the first band all the way through people were discovering stuff they’d never heard before, and the big breakthrough was Liines. They were amazing, and (subsequently) a Sleaford Mods tour got them out around the country. It was great to see the rest of the country catch on.”

The same goes for recently-reformed The Pack, the pre-Theatre of Hate and Spear of Destiny punk band of past WriteWyattUK interviewee Kirk Brandon.

“Yeah, great. In a weird way he’s become one of the undiscovered talents. He has a cult following but really should be doing things like Stiff Little Fingers do every year at the Academy.

“He’s one of the greatest singers, he’s operatic, he’s like nothing else. He’s on our new album, and just did that in one take. You hear elements of punk in there, a bit of Johnny Rotten, but Pavarotti at the same time. I don’t think there’s many people in that corner! Ha!”

I enjoy talking to John Robb. his best quotes often followed by a laugh that those who know him well will hear as they read this. A true entertainer.

As well as added strings, the new Membranes LP also features a Manchester-based British and Irish Modern Music Institute (BIMM) choir, who are also set to feature this weekend, their latest appearance with the band.

“Because it’s local we can make this one work. It’s a pretty epic set and the Ritz is fantastic for doing this. It perfectly frames what we’re trying to do. It’s my favourite venue in Manchester.”

I agree. It’s fairly big but somehow retains its intimate vibe.

“Yeah, big and intimate at the same time. A contradiction, but right in this case. And in a weird way a lot of rock music suits the old music hall type places.

I recall The Subways’ lead singer, Billy Lunn, jumping off the balcony there for a spot of crowd-surfing. That great leap forward still haunts me. You have to have a lot of faith in your fans to try that.

“Ha ha! It’s amazing how often that doesn’t go wrong!”

Hanging Around: 21st century boys (from left) John Robb, Rob Haynes, Peter Byrchmore, Nick Brown

When I called John, I’d only got as far into the new album as the splendid ‘Strange Perfume’ promo video and a brief taster of the ‘Murmuration of Starlings’ track, so asked him to tell me more about the record.

“It’s a double album about the beauty and violence of nature, and it’s been getting pretty amazing reviews. Every time I look at my emails something else has pinged up.

“You never know when you make a record whether it’s gonna just shoot across everybody’s heads. You just try and make the record you want to make yourself, but this time it’s ‘Oh fucking hell, people actually understand what we’re trying to do here!’ Ha ha!”

And that builds nicely on the positive reception you got for the last record (also released via Cherry Red Records).

“Yeah, and with the nature of The Membranes we always try to move forward. No point in repeating ourselves. This album’s more about the choir and the amazing harmony of the human voice. When you get 20 people sing the part at the same time, it’s a transcendental experience … quite beyond … at the highest level of sound as possible … pure harmony. And in these discordant times we’re living in, pure harmony is an interesting concept.”

When Public Service Broadcasting released their Race for Space album in 2015, I asked J.Willgoose Esq. where they could possibly head next after tackling the moon, stars and planets. As it turned out, they chose deep underground and the Welsh coalfields for 2017’s Every Valley. And you too seem to have come back down to earth this time after exploring the outer universe last time – channelling the world of nature.

“Yeah, we’ve brought it back down to earth, but in a sense it’s just another corner of the universe. We all talk about the universe being somewhere else, but we’re in the universe. The chair you’re sat in now is actually part of the universe.

“It’s the same with nature. You think it’s outside your window, but you are nature. We’re just animals who build caves and wear clothes. We’re not above or below. We’re just part of the whole thing. And it’s quite good to grab yourself back in with that reality.”

Environmental Troublemaker: Chris Packham, an honorary Membrane band member as of 2019 (Photo: BBC)

Quite right too. And while they didn’t manage to get Sir David Attenborough on this record, they did entice self-styled ‘Environmental troublemaker’, BBC nature presenter, music fan and all-round good egg Chris Packham along. The next big thing, yeah?

“In the context of what we’re doing he is the best thing, because Chris is a massive fan of punk and post-punk, and that’s how I met him. I interviewed him about his 10 favourite punk gigs for the website. It worked out we were both born on the same day. We’re also both massively into nature, so you can see there’s an inevitability that this was going to happen at some point.

“He didn’t really want to do it first. He said, ‘I’ll leave making records to the professionals.’ He’s such a worrier, such a perfectionist, but sent me the part, and I said, ‘That’s amazing’. He got the gist of the album in one paragraph. We spliced it into a track, and it sounds ace.”

There’s a great recent video clip of him, introducing his (and my) favourites The Undertones recently at Southampton’s Engine Rooms, while plugging socio-political movement Extinction Rebellion. He seemed fairly nervous in that stage announcement, but I guess it was nervous energy.

“I think for him those punk bands were so iconic in his life that he would be nervous in that situation. I don’t think he would be nervous in any other situation. That thing that affects you when you’re 16 affects you your whole life. It’s such a big deal.”

It’s a double album this time. Had you set out for that to be the case?

“No. but there were just so many songs that actually worked. In an order as well, so we kind of trapped ourselves into it having to be a double album. It would be far easier to make a single album with two instruments, but somehow this set its own course really.”

Does that mean – as a big Clash fan – you’ll be carrying on down the ‘40 years on’ line, moving on from a double album to a triple album, Sandinista! style – next year?

“You can only let the music dictate really. Sandinista! was flawed in parts, but kind of works and has to be what it is, y’know. And the idea of doing a triple album in the middle of punk was great as well. – when there were rules as to what you were allowed to do and not so.”

These days, co-founder John – his distinctive bass a cornerstop driving their distinctive ‘dark matter post-punk’ sound – is joined in The Membranes by long-time bandmate and fellow Blackpool lad Nick Brown (guitar, on board since 1982), plus Peter Byrchmore (guitar) and Rob Haynes (drums, both ex-Goldblade, from Birmingham and Manchester respectively), the latter pair joining in time for a My Bloody Valentine-led 2009 All Tomorrow’s Parties reunion.

We’ll also get the BIMM choir on Saturday, but what about Kirk Brandon – will he be joining them for an on-stage cameo?

“I’m gonna try and talk him into it.”

Last time I bumped into John was after a spectacular Mott the Hoople Class of ‘74 show at Manchester Academy, Ian Hunter’s Rant Band joined by 70-something legends Luther ‘Ariel Bender’ Grosvenor on guitar and Morgan Fisher on keyboards. And it just so happens that Ian turned 80 this week. He’s a lesson to us all about living life to the full as long as you can, right?

“He’s amazing, isn’t he. I interviewed him before that gig, and there’s no sign of slowing down. For many 80-year-olds, just getting out of a chair is difficult. The way he talks too. Some people pause because they lose track, but he’s not like that. It’s like talking it to someone who’s 40.

“He seemed totally on it. And at the gig, he was stood up nearly two hours. It’s quite intense doing a gig, and that’s physically powerful. And that gig was fucking amazing for what it was. I don’t care if he was 80 or 40, that was great! A proper rock’n’roll show with songs he did really passionately.”

Was there an element of you – like many others – reliving your youth in there? I recall you talking about Mott’s influence in our last conversation, not least getting to meet bass guitar hero Pete Overend Watts, who died shortly after, aged 69.

“A little. I was in the moment, and even though they were old songs it didn’t feel like a nostalgia thing. You can see a new band about for three months or you can see an old band playing 50-year-old songs and they’re just gigs. If a band plays in the moment with a passion, that’s what it is. You can’t get around that.”

It’s about doing it for all the right reasons, I guess, like a lot of the early punk and new wave bands still doing the rounds. The Undertones – who in recent years have engaged The Membranes as a support act – are just one great example of that.

“I think that generation of bands finally learned how to deal with their legacy. And ‘Teenage Kicks’ is a great song, so why not play it, y’know? Whereas with what I do, we just play one old song, changing that around. But we’re not lumbered with any hits! We don’t have 10 hits that people want to hear.

Choral Treat: The Membranes with the BIMM choir and BBC 6 Music’s Marc Riley in January 2016 (Photo: BIMM)

“It’s a disadvantage in that it makes life harder, but it’s an advantage because it gives us the freedom to do what we want. For bands like us and our ilk it’s all about the quest to move forward. But I don’t think either has got any moral higher ground. It just depends what works for your band.”

Finally, at a time when regional newspapers and the music press seem to be really struggling, your own Louder than War website and magazine provides a positive indicator that there really could be a future for independent sub-cultural writing after all. As a fellow writer who came from the fanzine world (Rox in his case) originally, I take something from that. It’s far from rosy surviving as a freelance writer, but you seem to do just that, bucking the trend.

“Yeah, but it’s not easy. You don’t make money out of websites. They’re a passion really, like instant fanzines in a sense, with larger, worldwide readership. But that doesn’t mean you can survive off the back of it. The passion is trying to get those ideas out to as many people as possible. We’re living in an odd time where people don’t get paid for working. The fuckers won, didn’t they!”

I’ve seen that in sports journalism too, for writers and photographers. People with good enough cameras and a desire to scribble off match reports are often just happy enough getting a byline on a story or photograph. As a knock-on effect, the chances of getting paid for those services are far slimmer.

“And as with music, once people don’t pay for something, they’re not going to start paying for it afterwards. Sustaining any kind of creativity in the 21st century is difficult. You feel for people who come into all this from less privileged backgrounds. How do they start?”

That seems a dispiriting line to end on, but all the time there are impassioned ‘doers’ on the scene like John – TV and radio’s go-to cultural talking head, author and musician – I reckon we’ll be okay. The DIY punk spirit lives on, against all odds.

Album Launch: The Membranes, on the door at The Ritz this weekend, hoping you’re down early enough

For December 2016’s feature/interview with John Robb on this website, head here. The Membranes, Henge, Queen Zee, Liines, The Pack, and Glove, play The Ritz, Whitworth Street West, Manchester, on Saturday, June 8th (4pm-10pm). For details try The Membranes website or the event’s Facebook page. And for tickets try SeeTickets or Skiddle.  

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Pip Blom / Talk Show / Jacob Slater – Band on the Wall, Manchester

Posted on June 4, 2019 by writewyattuk

The Venue: The Band on the Wall, Swan Street, in Manchester’s Northern Quarter (Photo: https://bandonthewall.org)

Champions League Final? Well, there was no way that could ever live up to either semi, and perhaps this was my show of support for Ajax, nipping down to Manchester, erm, City to catch another Amsterdam outfit with youth on their side and the promise of great things to come.

In fact, they’re already there on this showing, Pip Blom on stonking form on Saturday night in the intimate setting of the Northern Quarter’s Band on the Wall. What’s more, they mentioned mid-set how they’ve now played Manchester more than Amsterdam and London … the venues getting that little bit bigger each time.

I’m not sure if it was because there was a big match going on in Madrid, those who couldn’t make it there watching it elsewhere, but I somehow reached Swan Street within 45 minutes and was thus early for a gig for the first time in an eternity, with time to spare before the first support. And we youngest daughter and I were truly treated for our loyalty, by all three bands.

First Up: Hertfordshire’s Jacob Slater and his band impressed (Photo: lilylytton_photography)

We hadn’t realised there were two guest acts, but each impressed. There weren’t so many in for Jacob Slater, but the frontman enticed us to move closer, seizing the moment, a mighty seven-song, half-hour salvo showing true range and future promise, with plenty of big, wide soundscapes provided.

The first of three two-guitar acts, Hertfordshire-based Jacob and his band were good ’n’ loud, the throbbing bass and Thom Yorke-like lead vocal leaving a big impression on early song ‘Butterflies’. They carried a passion found in early U2, but with more catchy tunes for these ears, closer to The Stars of Heaven or Grant McLennan, voice-wise, with a few Cure-esque chord progressions thrown in, and real maturity in those melodies. And you couldn’t fault Jacob’s full-on passion throughout.

Not having checked stage times, I assumed the first support were actually the second. But next we got Talk Show, and they too impressed, the floor busier as we were treated to a South-East London outfit offering something different again but no less enthralling, stand-outs like the single ‘Fast and Loud’ carrying early Stranglers menace.

Think Happy Mondays with Flowered Up-like vocals, built on a Stone Roses-like rhythm section with plenty of raucous guitar. Frontman Harrison Swann certainly has stage presence, in our faces from the start, his bleached cropped tresses just visible in the front row as he jumped down with his highly-strapped guitar.

Second Service: Talk Show also went down a storm

His prancing struts with the bass player also entertained, the latter mooching around like Shaggy from Scooby Doo, while the lead guitarist preferred the moody approach and the first of the night’s eye-catching female drummers wore a smile as wide as the stage at times, loving every moment yet as good as collapsing on her kit after their most frenetic number. Another band to watch.

After those dynamic sets, Pip and her band had something to live up to, but did so in style, on a night that underlined that they’re a band on the cusp of big things. When they do hit those heights, we risk it not being half as intimate, but that’s not the point. It’s about the moment, and this show was perfect, not least in its occasional imperfections.

I get the impression Pip’s a reluctant or at least slightly self-conscious frontwoman, even if her band do take her name. And that’s neatly illustrated by her lining up on one flank while her brother, fellow guitarist and backing vocalist Tender, takes a mirror position. Yep, back to those football analogies. These are no wingless wonders.

Meanwhile, in the middle is the beating heart of this band, with Darek Mercks out front – in baseball cap and Beatles t-shirt – and Gini Cameron keeping it all together from the rear, Pip’s bass and drum duo giving the Blom siblings room for those Cruyff turns. And on that foundation comes not just raw guitar to make the heart surge, but also distinctive vocals, the blend of the pair often spot on.

At times they remind me of Blur, at others The Primitives, and occasionally The Breeders, Girls at our Best, The Sugarcubes, or even Elastica or Lush somewhere. But this is no retrogressive outfit. It’s more about an infusion of quality influences given a fresh twist, and thankfully all still rather raw.

Besides, perhaps I only bring to mind such acts because Pip Blom make me feel like I’m in my early 20s again, their music and presence with the power to pull that off. And it’s not just the Dutch roots setting them apart. There’s more to it than that, the love and excitement they inspire out on the floor working both ways, the band raising their game throughout.

They started without drama, just getting down to it, the wire flamingos on each side of the stage lit up in pink as the Wedding Present-like slow-build of Boat’s side two opener ‘Tinfoil’ took hold, pathing the way for one of my early favourites from that long player, ‘Don’t Make It Difficult’, then angular wonder ‘Tired’, with barely a half-beat lapsing before Pip strummed out the intro of lo-fi larrikin ‘School’ and they were off again, Darek’s chugging bass and Gini’s drum patterns laying down the foundation upon which the Bloms could carve out that gloriously scratchy guitar and vocal blend.

Ragged early single ‘Babies Are A Lie’ charmed next, the band fully warmed up, ready to tackle the wondrous ‘Ruby’, which grows on me with every play, bringing to mind early Catatonia or The Sundays.

Live Presence: Tender, Darek, Pip and Gini, proving a big hit on this side of the North Sea (Photo: Phil Smithies)

Harmonies remained a factor, Tender’s lower register perfectly complementing his sister’s lead vocal again on ‘Sorry’ -her personal favourite from Boat right now, she suggested – before familiar off-kilter bendy guitar ushered in playground bruiser ‘Come Home’, the band stoking up for a big finish.

Pip’s beaming smile at the crowd interaction was a joy to see, performance levels still rising, the band nothing short of electric as they tore into ‘I Think I’m In Love’, their first great pop indie pop exclamation mark – playing in my head on the lead-up to the LP’s release – followed by their next, the similarly-mighty ’Daddy Issues’.

For me the highpoint followed, our Dutch masters paring down, just Gini’s percussion and Pip and Tender’s harmonies there at the business end before they all stormed back in for a final no-holds barred chorus. Sublime.

And where from there? I kind of hoped for at least a couple more Boat selections, maybe with the splendid ‘Set of Stairs’ followed by the brooding ‘Aha’. But instead themoggy-licious ‘Pussycat’ served that same ‘big canvas’ purpose, providing a gloriously-grand, rip-roaring finish. All power to their fretboards, and here’s to the next visit, which can’t come soon enough.

Boat People: From the left, Darek Mercks, Pip Blom, Gini Cameron, Tender Blom (Photo: Raymond Van Mill)

To catch up with WriteWyattUK’s recent interview with Pip Blom, head here.  And for more about the band, new album Boat, remaining early summer dates, festival appearances and newly-revealed details of autumn European (and yes, the UK is still part of all that, he adds huffily) and US tours,  try their official website and follow the band via Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.  

You can also check out Jacob Slater via his Facebook and Soundcloud pages and find out more about Talk Show here.

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The Rutles – The Continental, Preston

Posted on June 1, 2019 by writewyattuk

At the risk of patronising several accomplished acts, there have been some quality Beatles copyists treading the boards or taking to the studio to emulate the Fab Four over the past five decades, and I’ve a lot of respect for many carrying on that missionary work.

From The Byrds and The Monkees to Badfinger and the Electric Light Orchestra, and from Squeeze and XTC to Crowded House then Oasis and Ocean Colour Scene, all added extra colour from the original palette.

We don’t even need to talk tribute acts here, gifted as past WriteWyattUK interviewees The Bootleg Beatles have proved to be. Because for me just one act truly honoured Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr’s creative legacy then took that premise on, even if their co-creator, Neil Innes, suggests the whole concept was merely ‘a good idea at the time’.

If you’ve seen The Rutles live you’ll know they still have that ‘Something’ about them, 44 years after initial small screen retrospective recognition in a Rutland Weekend Television sketch. And while that link goes back to 1975, the band’s history suggests it all really began 60 years ago at 43 Egg Lane, Liverpool, when Ron Nasty and Dirk McQuickly first bumped into each other, Ron inviting Dirk to help him up, the pair soon joined by ‘guitarist of no fixed hairstyle’ Stig O’Hara and drummer Barrington Womble, the others persuading the latter to shorten his name to save time and his haircut to save Brylcreem.

It can get a tad confusing with so many overlapping moments in the timeline, not least as Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band maestro Innes, aka Ron Nasty in this guise, pays tribute to legendary fifth Rutle, George Harrison, during their live show, recalling how the youngest Beatle was so impressed with their work that he formed his own Rutles tribute act, the Traveling Wilburys.

But he repaid that compliment by covering ‘Handle With Care’, and we later experienced an emotional take on Harrison’s gorgerous ‘All Things Must Pass’, the original band pastiche long since replaced by something far more durable and inspired.

Neil Desperandum: Ron Nasty’s alter-ego, Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah legend and genius songsmith, Neil Innes

Innes’ own Beatles links go back some distance, Paul McCartney producing ‘I’m an Urban Spaceman’ and the Bonzos guesting on Magical Mystery Tour. Meanwhile, newest recruit David Catlin-Birch, once with World Party, was the original Paul in The Bootleg Beatles and also featured with the Bonzos (as well as with WriteWyattUK Slade hero Jim Lea), while John Halsey, aka Barry Wom, has his own impressive history, drumming credits including Lou Reed’s Transformer and past tour credits including those with Joe Cocker (as was the case with Catlin-Birch) and The Scaffold (yep, both with Beatles links).

I won’t go too deep into the back-story, but apparently the first album was made in 20 minutes and the second took even longer. You probably know that already though. And if not, read up or sit back and marvel at 1978’s All You Need is Cash, for whom George was executive producer, wondering why you’ve not seen it before. For me, it leaves This Is Spinal Tap standing there (whoo).

While Monty Python’s Eric Idle, who played Dirk, wasn’t part of the touring band, Innes (vocals, guitar, banjo, ukulele, keyboards) and Halsey (drums, vocals) were from day one, and with Catlin-Birch (bass/vocals), Rutling Ken Thornton (guitar, vocals), and Phil Jackson (keyboards, vocals), there’s amazing musical pedigree here.

This ‘occasional supergroup’ of sorts were certainly on toppermost of the toppermost form for this Get Up and Go Again tour outing, the Prefab Four launching straight into the hits, classic Parlourphone single ’I Must Be in Love’ – the song most of us knew first – just as fresh all those decades on.

‘It’s Looking Good’, memorably part of the Che Stadium set and a cornerstone of the influential Rutle Soul album, and the Twist and Rut EP’s ‘Baby Let Me Be’ saw the band step up a gear, while ‘Major Happy’s Up and Coming Once Upon a Good Time Band’ gave us a first taste of the benchmark Sergeant Rutter’s One and Only Darts Club Band, Bob Dylan having by then introduced them to a substance that would have a huge impact on their work, tea, that track neatly segueing into ‘Rendezvous’, Barry leading from the rear.

‘Questionnaire’ and ‘Piggy in the Middle’ reminded us of the jewels within the major flop that was  Tragical History Tour, the music outshining the critically-slammed concept of four Oxford history professors on a walking tour of English tea shops, while ‘Ouch!’ saw the band revisit happier cinematic times, the follow-up to A Hard Day’s Rut – this time shot in colour – another hit for zany Rutland director Dick Leicestershire.

Wom Direction: John Halsey, aka Barry Wom, the Rutles drumming legend who famously once took to his bed for a year as a tax dodge

Shabby Road’s ‘Eine Kleine Middle Klasse Musik’ saw Catlin-Birch take lead vocals, while ‘Nevertheless’ and ‘Joe Public’ again showed the true depth of this band’s influential Rutolver era, before Meet the Rutles’ ‘Between Us’ took us back to simpler days and ‘Living in Hope’ saw Barry back on lead vocals, that song playing in my head for the next couple of days, searching the house for my dog-eared copy of Rutles for Sale.

After Sergeant Rutter’s evocative ‘The Knicker Elastic King’ we were back to the early days via ‘Number One’ and ‘Hold My Hand’, reminders of a spell when Rutlemania was taking the world by storm. And while ‘Love Life’ perfectly encapsulated the band’s hippie era, ‘Let’s be Natural’ again proved the might of Innes’ songcraft beneath the parody. A classic in his own write, you could say.

After the first of two great sets, it seemed that many of the better-known numbers had already been ticked off. But there were many more highlights to come, the band returning with ‘Doubleback Alley’, ‘Good Times Roll’ and early ballad ‘A Girl Like You’ on the lead-up to Barry’s ‘Easy Listening’ (‘Why don’t we do it in the middle of the road?’), the Conti‘s main room soon awash in a sea of lit-up mobile phones for a modern twist on the anthemic ‘Shangri-La’. Altogether now, ‘Lah-de-doo-dah, lah-de-dah, here we are in Shangri-La’.

Talking of anthemic … do I have to spell it out? Yep, ‘Cheese and Onions’ made me wonder if I’d supped too much tea on the build-up, the iconic Yellow Submarine Sandwich honoured. And they were building momentum again, later Innes masterpiece, ‘Imitation Song’ painting that bigger picture, the main-man admitting pride at his own wordplay with ‘Blue Suede Schubert’, a number I seem to recall they were belting out in those seminal Rat Keller days in Hamburg (when Leppo was still in the band, before Bolton retail chemist Leggy Mountbatten took them on, attracted by the tight trousers).

Next came a timely dedication to newly-homeless Theresa May on ‘Goose-step Mama’, a track first laid down on the Silver Rutles’ demos, and soon the set reached its dramatic finale, Rutles Corps-era rooftop wonder ‘Get up and Go’, melding into Lennon/McCartney masterpiece ‘The End’, Barry once more taking a tour around his kit, while Catlin-Birch, Thornton and Jackson took their own instrumental lap of honour.

And there was none of this shuffling off stage and back on again business. Instead they hung around, Halsey leaning on his stick and heading to the side of the stage to accompany fellow 74-year-old Innes and their bandmates on ‘Back in ’64’, a lower-key, contemplative end to another special night in The Rutles’ company. Pure genius.

With respect to Rob Talbot, for managing to book The Rutles, who next turn up at the Brudenell Club, Leeds (Saturday, June 1st), The Gorilla, Manchester (Sunday, June 2nd), Robin 2 ,Bilston (Tuesday, June 4th), The Lemon Grove, Exeter (Thursday, June 6th), Komedia, Bath (Friday, June 7th), The Assembly, Leamington Spa (Saturday, June 8th), Norwich Arts Centre (Sunday, June 9th), and Colchester Arts Centre (Monday, June 10th). For tickets and details of all those shows and more Rutles happenings, head to their Facebook events page. And for further info about the band, head to this website.

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Whatever floats your Boat – the Pip Blom interview

Posted on May 30, 2019 by writewyattuk

Band Substance: Pip Blom are heading our way again, this time with their debut album tucked under their arms. From left – Darek Mercks, Pip Blom, Gini Cameron, Tender Blom.  (Photo: Raymond Van Mill)

In a sense, perhaps it was almost inevitable that Pip Blom would follow her parents into the alternative music market.

It’s now three years since this Amsterdam-based singer-songwriter first shared her somewhat raw, lo-fi brand of indie guitar pop with us, the voice and her style leading to arguably lazy comparisons with Australian singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett, as well as established US alt-rock outfit The Breeders, with whom they later toured.

But this is not a band just happy to follow. They’re more about finding their own distinct shipping lane, as Pip and her brother/bandmate Tender’s father, Erwin Blom did with his band, post-punk John Peel favourites Eton Crop, back in the ’80s. And the band that share Pip’s name certainly remain as fresh and exciting now as on day one, judging by my initial listen to debut album Boat, which is out tomorrow (Friday, May 31st).

These days, they’re recognised as being at the forefront of a number of emerging outfits from the Netherlands turning heads on this side of the North Sea, including friends Canshaker Pi and The Homesick. And it just so happens that Pip and Tender’s Dad and Mum – Leonieke Daalder, the ex-Eton Crop sound engineer who set up a successful alternative music blog with Erwin – have in recent years pitched in to help get the band off the ground.

And right now, Pip, fellow guitarist/vocalist Tender and bandmates Gini Cameron (drums) and Darek Mercks (bass) are on this side of the water, part-way through their latest UK tour, your scribe tracking them down in Milton Keynes on Monday – ‘day five’ – after their Sheffield debut the previous evening. So how was The Leadmill?

“It was so much fun. We’d never played in Sheffield before, so weren’t really sure what to expect. But it was very busy and full of enthusiastic people. It was amazing.”

After dates in Milton Keynes then a sell-out at Cambridge, tonight they’re at Reading’s South Street Arts Centre (Thursday, May 30th, also now sold out), with an official album launch date at Rough Trade East in Brick Lane, London E1 (Friday, May 31st) following, before they come closer to my patch the following evening, giving me Champions League final complications as they pitch up at Band on the Wall in Manchester’s Northern Quarter (Saturday, June 1st). Remember that episode of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? where they try to avoid seeing how the match panned out? That could well be me late on Saturday night.

Anyway, I digress. You’ve played Manchester a few times before, haven’t you?

“Quite a few times. We’ve played The Castle, The Night and Day (Café), and the Soup Kitchen.”

And now we’re awaiting the release of the debut LP, Boat, largely recorded on this side of the water, at Big Jelly Studios, Ramsgate, Kent.

“Yeah, released this Friday! Really exciting!”

Indeed. Tell me why it’s called Boat.

“Now that’s a good question. It hasn’t got anything to do with the songs. I just really like the word. It’s a cool word, it suits us, it’s not too difficult or too fancy. We came up with the name before we made the record. With my boyfriend we always talk about cool names for bands or records, and I loved it as a name. deciding our first record had to be called Boat.”

And hopefully it will turn out to be a ferry good vehicle for you (sorry, I couldn’t resist that).

“Yeah, and we use it quite often when we come over to the UK.”

As well as the album launch at Rough Trade East, could we persuade you to do a northern launch too? Either at Action Records in Preston, who recently successfully hosted Fontaines D.C., or perhaps even Preston Docks would be perfect.

“Well, first we planned to do launch parties on boats, but it was very difficult and very expensive. Maybe when we get a bit bigger. Ha! Then maybe we can afford it.”

Your Manchester show signals a tour mid-point, with great reaction so far on this side of the North Sea, by all accounts … including a few sell-outs.

“Yeah, it’s amazing, and the ones that don’t sell out are also very busy. I think that’s a good sign, isn’t it?”

Park Life: Pip Blom and the band that take her name modle their boating apparel: (Photo: Phil Smithies)

Park Life: Pip Blom and the band that take her name model their boating apparel. From left – Tender Blom, Darek Mercks, Pip Blom, Gini Cameron (Photo: Phil Smithies)

Absolutely, and having seen Robert Forster at the Band on the Wall recently, it should prove a winning venue for pip too, I’d say. Getting back to Boat though, how long would you say this album’s been in the making? It seems that most of the songs are unreleased in any other format.

“We’ve got two singles out – ‘Daddy Issues’ and ‘Ruby’ and finished the album at the end of October. I think I’d been writing for half a year to a year max. We then practised the songs together over a month and recorded it in 16 days.”

I understand you made your first recordings at home.

“Yeah, and I still do that with demos, for example ‘School’ was a home recording. It’s something I really like doing, and we used lots of the tracks I recorded – like guitar or vocal parts – for the album, so it’s a combination of both.”

Her first two bandmates were schoolfriends, adding bass and drums, but they didn’t stick around long, the band evolving into what Pip has now, interest and support from BBC 6 Music helping spread the word. And home is still – between numerous live shows – central Amsterdam?

“It is. We call it Watergraafsmeer, but that’s a difficult name for you guys to pronounce!”

Indeed. You put us to shame when it comes to language. Of course, it’s your name on the records, but clearly there’s a team, band vibe to everything you do.

“Definitely. It’s really nice. We are four people and one is my brother, which is nice. I really like being in a band with him. It’s so much fun. Then we have Gini and Darek, the new bass player, although we did record the album with him so it’s our album – the four of us, and it’s such an amazing asset to the band.”

Out of interest, Pip is 22, with her brother turning 21 two days after the Manchester show. And who would Pip consider major influences on this side of the water?

“I think Micachu and the Shapes are my biggest influence. They’re London-based, I don’t think they exist anymore, but Mica Levi is the brains behind them and makes music for movies. They’re so cool. At the minute I’m also really into Sorry, although I started listening to them after writing the songs on this album. There are so many really cool bands.”

In fact, Sorry were one of the London outfits featuring on a Holly Whitaker-directed video for the band’s ‘Babies Are A Lie’ release, also involving cameos for Shame and past WriteWyattUK interviewees Goat Girl.

And there’s been a strong UK link from the start, the band only having played three shows in the Netherlands before three more over here, publicising an initial Spotify release Pip put together at home, at which point there was no band, initial social media interest stepping things up. Apparently, they toured here seven times in 2017 alone, starting to build a following. I’m guessing it’s now their second home, having spent so long here.

“Yeah, we’re here almost once a month, so you could say that!”

Were you aware of what your Dad was up to with his band when you were growing up, or did Eton Crop’s cult following and support from legendary DJ John Peel only really become apparent later?

“Well, I did know what he did with the band, because he always told stories about that, but it was really nice recently playing with them at the John Peel Centre (for Creative Arts, Stowmarket, Suffolk).

“That was so much fun, our two bands together and lots of people who knew each other. A very special moment. I really like seeing them touring as well, and playing gigs in the UK. He’s showed us lots of videos and pictures, all that kind of stuff. I thought it was so cool.”

That shared bill was organised for 2019’s Independent Venue Week, and came just a few short years after Pip made her own live solo debut supporting … Eton Crop, actually.

The latest appearance was the idea of Peel’s widow and close family friend Sheila Ravenscroft, Eton Crop having recorded five sessions for BBC Radio 1’s John Peel Show from 1985/88, becoming close.

Crop Tops: Eton Crop’s Corne Bros, Erwin Blom and Ingmar van Wijnsberge lead from the front in the snug at the Conti for Un-Peeled 2016 (Photo: Erika Gyökér)

And I was certainly impressed with Eton Crop when they played Tuff Life Boogie’s UnPeeled celebration at the Continental, Preston in late October 2016, I told Pip.

“Ah, that’s cool!”

Your Mum was a big influence on you too, I believe.

“Yes, she was sound engineer for Eton Crop, my Dad’s band, and also started a Dutch music platform with my Dad about alternative music, both Dutch and international, working there for around 15 years. She’s always been very passionate about music.”

There have been notable shared bills along the way, such as you supporting The Breeders.

“Yeah, we did. That was a dream come true. If we’re talking about influences, Kim Deal was definitely one of the coolest people on earth, so to play 14 shows with them, being able to see them play every night, that was really cool.”

Pip’s first live experience came playing her Dad’s three-string guitar in a songwriting competition in Amsterdam. On progressing to the semi-final stage, she realised she had to write more songs to fill a half-hour set, the die cast for a career of her own in music. So did Pip, who has also expressed an appreciation of fellow late ‘80s and ‘90s successes Blur and Pavement, come straight into all this from student days?

“I finished high school, but none of us studied after that … except for Darek, who studied music, so he’s the one who knows what he’s doing – the rest of us are just kind of fiddling around!”

And does this feel like a full-time job yet, or is that pinning too much on it?

“No, it definitely is. We’re not getting paid like it’s a full-time, but we invest our time in it like it is, and that’s all fine because it takes us to places we otherwise would never have seen. I think it’s one of the most fun things to do. It’s really cool.“

After these dates, it’s summer festival season, including the Deer Shed, Leeds and Reading appearances, the latter in particular a big name over the years.

“Yeah, definitely, and also we are set to play Mad Cool in Spain and Nos Alive in Portugal (both early July), travelling all over, not just the UK. All fun, we can hope!”

Are there more UK dates later this year?

“Yeah, with one really big tour planned, to be announced after this tour is done, and quite a few festival dates that haven’t been announced yet.”

She was being a little Secret Squirrel there, I might add, the following day announcing that they were in fact the opening act on the John Peel stage at Glastonbury Festival at the end of June. Very apt considering the band’s and the family’s history.

And while that promises to be another dream come true, I guess there have been venues they’ve already played where it’s suddenly struck Pip and her band that this is what they appear to be doing for a living now.

“Mmm. Well, when we got to support The Breeders we got to play huge venues, and when we played the Roundhouse it was really weird. But it’s not about size of venue. The most important thing is that there are people. You can play a 600-cap. venue, but if there’s no one there …”

I don’t reckon that will be an issue now. This band are clearly on the up. And rightly so.

Frequent Visitors: Pip Blom, back in the UK and bringing their own Boat this time. From left – Pip and Tender Blom, Gini Cameron, Darek Mercks (Photo: Phil Smithies)

Pip Blom’s debut album, Boat, is out this Friday, May 31, with pre-orders available here. For full details of the remaining dates on this tour, festival appearances, and more, try their official website, and follow the band via Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.  

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Robert Forster – Band on the Wall, Manchester

Posted on May 27, 2019 by writewyattuk

I missed out on The Go-Betweens live during their defining 1978/90 spell and the 2000/6 second coming, that latter period providing three LPs now nestling among my favourites of all time.

But I had the pleasure of witnessing Robert Foster in the unlikely setting of Lancaster Library in late 2008, and – a decade and a bit later – he remains an iconic live performer as well as a master songwriter judging by latest album, Inferno, and this intimate Manchester appearance.

When I say performer, he’s still the somewhat gauche artist I expected, seemingly apologetic to be up there at times, yet truly engaging and personable, all the more likeable for that slightly off-kilter demeanour, understated presence and low-key small talk.

Like last time, the quirky setting was rather apt, and I say that despite having snuck in too late to muscle through to the front, making do behind a pillar with a shelf on which I could balance my Cheshire Cat. I don’t mean that in a ‘not enough room to swing a cat’ way. That was my pint of choice on a pleasant early summer evening, and from my location I could gaze upon the star guest and his Swedish rhythm section (Jonas Thorell on bass guitar, Magnus Olsson on drums),  occasional cocking my head around to catch Karin Baeumler (violin, vocals) and Robert’s fellow Queenslander, Scott Bromiley (lead guitar).

The Band on the Wall has been at the heart of Manchester’s Northern Quarter scene for nine decades, yet this was my first visit. I’ll certainly return though, making a mental note to get in earlier next time (hopefully starting with Pip Blom’s forthcoming visit).

Northern Quarter: Robert Forster in live action at Band on the Wall in Swan Street, Manchester (Photo: Phil Reece)

The depth of the new LP Inferno only properly struck me the week or so approaching Robert’s visit, my preferred ploy of playing albums the first few times in the background – letting them soak in – paying off, our visitors easing  in via ‘The Morning’ – Robert and partner Karin’s harmonies assured – and ‘Crazy Jane on the Day of Judgement’ – his ‘William Butler Yeats co-write’ – those numbers already every inch established parts of the set, the band at one with each other.

At that point, Karin left the others to it for the sublime ‘Born to a Family’ from The Go-Betweens’ final – best ‘til last, I’d venture – record, Oceans Apart, cranking up a notch or two. Well, I say that, but technical glitches surfaced, Robert a laid-back guiding presence as the lead guitar cut out, suggesting to a fretting Scott (sorry) that their friendly clientele had plenty of patience and understanding. We were all rock’n’roll friends after all, and after a couple of false starts they were up and running again.

On a roll, from previous LP, Songs to Play, we got an all-empowering, head-strong ‘I Love Myself (And I Always Have)’, Robert marching to his own beat, before the first of three choices from 1986’s Liberty Belle and Black Diamond Express, a dynamic ‘In the Core of the Flame’. Karin took to violin for 2017’s the building almost early Waterboys-esque ‘A Poet Walks’, while the poignant ’Dive For Your Memory’, from the 16 Lovers Lane album – 31 years young – that first turned me on to The Go-Betweens and prompted me to dart back and forth through the catalogue from there, sounded as good as I dared hope.

This was always going to be about more than mere nostalgia though, ‘Life Has Turned a Page’ carries on that great story-song tradition, reminding me of my turn-of-‘90s Aussie adventures, a woman near the front whooping at the mention of Noosa, Byron Bay and Wurtulla, on a night when Robert told us his brother was catching him live for the first time in the UK. The band also shimmered and shimmied on fellow new LP cut ‘Remain’, while the mighty ‘Inferno (Brisbane in Summer)’ ramped it up further, the latest ‘why is this not a hit?’ from an artist it’s fair to say Joe Public never truly understood.

Before we knew it, we were treated to a five-piece Velvet Underground-like treatment of 1983 single ‘Man O’ Sand to Girl O’ Sea’, Scott riffing to his heart’s content, memories rekindled throughout the room, the mood music swiftly taking a major turn, and I swear you could have heard a badge drop during The Evangelist’s heart-rending ‘Demon Days’, Grant McLennan’s haunting lyric and melody still piercing – again Velvetesque – and with no explanation offered nor required from the singer, his intuitive treatment of the song enough. And talking of understated power, new album closer ‘One Bird in the Sky’ further showcases Robert’s continued songcraft.

Back we went to the Liberty Belle for the angular, expressive ‘Twin Layers of Lightning’, Robert’s guitar cast aside, before a delightful D minor riff signalled rapture throughout, ‘Spring Rain’, our star guest’s hymn to mid-‘80s London living, never so refreshing to these ears. I think they were set to head off for a breather then, but our ownership of the moment was mirrored on stage, Robert telling us, ‘This is feeling so good!’ and ploughing on into Oceans Apart’s chugging introductory masterpiece, ‘Here Comes a City’.

On returning, he expressed concerns about nights when he might not get called back, but wasn’t fooling anyone, 16 Lovers Lane’s emotive ‘Love is a Sign’ including his sole guitar solo, a song with its roots in Oslo in ’88 still possessing the subtle power to captivate.

The highlights continued, with hardly a dry eye in the house during an upbeat yet naturally wistful delivery of Grant’s ‘Finding You’, Robert then changing the mood again, shedding his Bob Dylan, Lou Reed and Tom Verlaine skin, treating us to something more Talking Heads-like for Songs to Play’s ‘Learn to Burn’, his dance moves enthusiastically received, channelling his inner Iggy Pop with added mic. swirling.

When they returned for a final time, the strings were heart-searing and the spirit of early Bowie was worn with pride on Tallulah‘s ever-atmpospheric ‘The Clarke Sisters’, before a trip back to 1979 – yep, 40 years, count them – for ‘Don’t Let Him Come Back’, the semi-ragged B-side of the mighty ‘People Say’ another treat for The Go-Betweens purists, Robert even pitching in with a little gob-iron solo.

And where to finish but the life-affirming ‘Surfing Magazines’ from triumphant Go-Betweens 2000 comeback LP The Friends of Rachel Worth, an inevitable crowd singalong bringing matters to a joyous conclusion. A final characterising moment followed, Robert referencing surf hotspots at the climax, losing his thread while trying to recall a few apt UK locations, Fistral, Sennen and the Vortex lost on the tip of the tongue, our esteemed visitor instead offering ‘Cornwall’, somehow perfectly illustrating what he’s all about. Nothing over-waxed here.

He wasn’t likely to disappear to a private function backstage, promising to return shortly to sign anything, even Pavement records. And he did, your scribe there with his already well-thumbed copy of Inferno. So how did that conversation go? Well, anyone who’s been in that situation possibly already knows, questions evaporating in the air as the moment arrives.

Finding myself at the right end of the queue when a familiar accent piped up behind as I headed towards the bar seemed to throw me. I switched direction – nonchalantly of course – towards the merch stall, my friend Jim’s ‘Want a pint, fella?’ ignored, prising my copy of the CD from a back pocket. And soon we were eye to eye, my blurting, ‘Great show tonight … loved it!’ suggesting I might as well have been requesting a song on Steve Wright’s Radio 2 show. Yet his response was genuine.

“Thank you! Who should I sign it to?’

“Erm … Malc …that’d be great!”

Still gushing, somewhat lost, Robert looking blank too, leading to a needless explanation.

“Malc … as in Malcolm McLaren.”

Malcolm McLaren? Why him, I thought? He looked me square in the eyes, searchingly.

“But you’re nicer than him … right?”

“Oh God, yeah!”

Borderline self-congratulatory this time. Over-thinking it, as if I was being interviewed for a job I didn’t really want. I tried a weak smile. He smiled back, our conversation as good as dead, neither of us more enlightened for the experience. I thanked him, shook hands again and moved on so the next punter could take my place, doing my best not to smudge the signature.

All the subjects I could have brought up soon flooded back. Something about his writing partnership with Grant, how he manages to split his time between Australia and Germany, how much those last three albums meant to me, how I loved Grant and I, or maybe how entertaining he was in conversation with Marc Riley – as always – during his latest BBC 6 Music live session. I might also have mentioned my 1990/91 travels Down Under, The Go-Betweens a key part of the soundtrack in my head, those lyrics all the more real in those settings. And as I couldn’t see Scott, I wanted to mention how I too had family around Wynnum, and that it was in Brisbane that a mate and I bought a VW Kombi in which we clocked up 10,000 miles in a few months. That’s why when I first heard it I almost mistook ‘Surfing Magazines’ for a self-addressed, late-arriving postcard (see what I did there) I must have sent a decade earlier. But no, instead I mentioned Malcolm McFuckingClaren. Even mention of Malcolm McDowell or Malcolm Turnbull might have made for more interesting discourse. Nothing though … till next time.

The Venue: The Band on the Wall, Swan Street, in Manchester’s Northern Quarter (Photo: https://bandonthewall.org)

For more about Robert Forster, his live schedule (including dates in Australia in July, then the USA and Europe from November, including shows in Dublin and Birmingham) and new album Inferno, head to his Facebook page here. 

 

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Out of the shadow of Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine – the Jim Bob interview

Posted on May 25, 2019 by writewyattuk

Wild Wood: Jim ‘Jim Bob’ Morrison, takes to and talks to the trees (Photo: Paul Heneker)

Don’t expect hyperbole when talking to Jim Morrison. Despite that rock star name, this was never an artist seemingly at ease at being on pop’s top table. In fact, he’s been known throughout his career as plain Jim Bob; not even the best known of the Waltons.

He made his name, after a spell with indie also-rans Jamie Wednesday, as half of Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, alongside Les ‘Fruitbat’ Carter’, the pair breaking through in the late ‘80s, garnering a few tabloid headlines and music press front pages en route.

But amid the wider media interest, raucous guitar, of-the-moment samples, drum and bass sequencing, the deeper quality of the songs was often overlooked, not least Jim’s evocative lyrics, a barometer of those troubled times. These were vivid illustrations of life on the edge, exposing the not so far beneath the surface underbelly of Thatcher’s Britain, as best conveyed on first three albums, 101 Damnations (1990), 30 Something (1991) and 1992: The Love Album (1992).

With that in mind, it makes sense that Jim Bob has more recently been able to prove his worth as an author. For starters there’s recently-reprinted band autobiography Goodnight Jim Bob: On The Road With Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine, and newly-published sequel, Jim Bob from Carter: In the Shadow of my Former Self, both via Cherry Red Records, which is also responsible for a number of impressive Carter USM retrospective releases. There are also three novels from Jim Bob. Accordingly, however, his live outings are more limited now. Does he have a busy summer ahead?

“Not really … not by anyone’s standards! I’ve not done that many gigs at all these past few years. I haven’t toured for two years. I find myself doing quite a few of these odd all-dayers though.”

The ‘odd all-dayer’ he’s alluding to is Gigantic Vol. 5, running from 1pm to 11.30pm this Saturday, May 25th, at the Academy, Oxford Road, Manchester, slotting in on a bill – headlined by Echo & the Bunnymen – just below contemporaries The Wonder Stuff and The Bluetones.

This South Londoner hasn’t strayed far from his old patch over the years. Born in Streatham, he’s lived no further from there than Mitcham, and is these days based in Crystal Palace.

“I’ve been here quite a long time, and it’s changed radically. In terms of poshness. I remember it when it was a shithole, and now it’s on those things they do – y’know, ‘the 10 most desirable places to live’.”

It’s nice to still hear a healthy dose of cynicism from him. And he always did seem a little removed from many of his contemporaries. Then again, when Carter USM broke through with first hit ‘Sheriff Fatman’ (1989, possibly one of the last cassette singles I bought) and the 101 Damnations album that followed, they were older than many of the acts around them.

“Yeah, if we made one mistake it was naming a famous album 30 Something! But you can’t really go back on that. I remember around then a meeting with a lawyer or accountant type, advising us to get pensions, saying nobody in the music business would work beyond 50. That’s massively untrue now. But at the time the idea of anyone being in a rock band beyond that age …

“I had little to do with the financial side. I’m the same now. I switch off when anybody’s talking about all that. My manager now seems obsessed with spreadsheets, but there could be anything on them. I have to pretend I read them!”

I recently rediscovered two Stephen Dalton interviews with Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine in back copies of former NME offshoot monthly magazine Vox, from September 1991 and April 1992, the latter revealing how Les bought a house in London with part of his Chrysalis advance, while Jim stayed put in his council flat. That suggests contrasting  outlooks.

“Yeah, we still do. He’s not a planner, I’d say. If he had money, he’d spend it and not really worry about it, whereas I’d probably be more wary of it running out. I’m still like that now, wondering what’ll happen if there’s no money coming in. . His approach probably made more sense though. I don’t know.”

You got a bit of a backlash from the tabloid press, journalists suggesting you were raking it in. But those who understood the way the industry works would have realised you were ultimately borrowing from yourselves.

“When we signed to Chrysalis, that was bought by EMI, and it’s been through various ownerships over the years and is now owned by someone else, who just licenses stuff out. We had a statement a week or two ago and we still owe them, I think, almost £900,000.” We wouldn’t have to pay it, but …”

They made a big thing about you being a millionaires at the time.

“Yeah, and certainly by the way things are going today I’m sure people in bands would love to have the money we got when we signed a record deal. They’ll say someone’s been signed by Simon Cowell for a million pounds, but they don’t get any of that money, do they? Whereas we got the money.”

I recall a decision you took to turn down an impressive advertising deal … only for former support act EMF to take up the option.

“Yeah, maybe they did. We were very principled in a way you couldn’t really be today. That was for either ‘Sheriff Fatman’ or ‘Shoppers Paradise’. It didn’t make any sense in terms of the song. I think they just wanted to be attached to us while they were at that level.

“We turned it down because the company that owned them were testing on animals.  We did an advert for KP Peanuts though. That was for ‘Shoppers Paradise’. Even then, they came to us with storyboards to check we approved. It would be harder to turn the money down than it was then.

“I suppose when everything‘s going well, you don’t necessarily see an end to it. You just think you can afford to turned that kind of money down, £60,000 to do nothing. But if someone said that to us now, it would be, ‘Oh no, what a dilemma!’

My diaries suggest I first saw Carter USM live on October 24th, 1991, at hometown venue, Guildford Civic Hall, then two weeks later saw them at Kilburn National with Mega City 4, then the following year at Preston Guild Hall on the 1992: The Love Album tour, supported by the Band of Holy Joy.

“Ah, that was one of the bands that were a big influence on us when we started as Carter.”

But what surprises me is that I somehow missed out on seeing Jamie Wednesday, his previous outfit. I was a regular gig-goer at most of the pubs and small venues they played, probably just a few days before or after their appearances. I was definitely aware of them, but somehow missed them. In my fanzine, Captains Log, days, I interviewed a few of their contemporaries, including Mega City 4, was in touch with the Senseless Things and followed others on The Pink Label, like The June Brides, That Patrol Emotion, Wire, McCarthy and The Wolfhounds.

I’m guessing you just got – after that initial hard slog – too big, too quick for me.

“Yeah, once it got to that point, I suppose it was kind of quick. But even for the first year or two of Carter there were a lot of false starts. We put a single out and nothing happened. It came out in the middle of a postal strike and so we couldn’t get it to press and so on. Well … that was out excuse for it not doing well. Then our first label weren’t pleased that we wanted to leave more or less straight away. We’d signed a contract to make an album with them, so that kind of stalled. It felt like a long time that we couldn’t really do anything.”

But then, around the time of ‘Sheriff Fatman’, the stars seemed to align for you.

“Yeah, although I don’t really know why. We used to do quite a lot of gigs before anybody knew who we were. But we tended to get asked to go back to places, so built up this following at specific places like Harlow and Bolton. Every time we went back there’d be another 10 people there. We also made a decision not to play London anymore, playing the same pub gigs to the same people we knew.”

That came over in one of those Vox interviews, being quite dismissive of some of those London watering holes, keen to move on from all that.

“Yeah, and it’s a shame now, because they’re probably all gone! But I think you can almost get into a routine.”

Fulham Greyhound was one such regular venue that springs to mind.

“Yeah, although that was one we did come back to when we finally did play London again, and it sold out. That was when things started to come together. I think it was then that Steve Lamacq couldn’t get in to report for the NME. That was perfect in a way. They had to write about how busy it was instead.”

There were several moments like that in your career that suggest you were capable of pulling off masterstrokes of marketing. I’m not sure they weren’t accidents, to be honest, but they worked.

“Yeah, semi-accidental really. Our manager at the time, Adrian (Boss), liked mild controversies, like putting condoms on the posters for The Only Living Boy in New Cross single. He wanted someone to complain.”

Those big moments notably including Les’ headline-grabbing rugby tackle on Phillip Schofield at the live BBC-aired October 1991 Smash Hits Poll Winners Party, the moment Jim reckoned the band became pop stars – ‘known by milkmen and postmen’. As Stephen Dalton put it, ’17 million viewers witnessed a highly intoxicated Fruitbat assault Britain’s favourite children’s TV presenter’. Les had taken exception at the host’s on-air remarks, later reflecting, ‘It occurred to me we were just playing the game, and being treated like shit. Even Dannii (Minogue) and the New Kids (on the Block) were being treated like shit, just like another product’.

Squeaky-clean Phillip hadn’t helped himself, introducing the band miming ‘After the Watershed’ with a string of insults, telling his young audience, ‘With bad teeth, naff shoes, a really weird hairdo and your own very individual style, you too can be a pop star’. What followed was a performance faded early ‘to allow time for more patronising banter’. At which point Jim stormed offstage, while furious Les overturned his amps, provoking the presenter to add, ‘Blimey, that was original. Jimbob and The Fruitbat, pushing back the frontiers of music …’ As Stephen Dalton put it, ‘Five seconds later ‘The Fruitbat’ was knocking him sideways, with cameras panning wildly into space as the Dockands Arena crowd erupted into the day’s loudest cheer.’

“Yeah, but that was never deliberate, although that was the one everyone thought was deliberate. I didn’t enjoy that at all, any of that experience.”

Ever get a chance to talk to Philip Schofield about that in later years?

“Not directly, but there has been interaction. Even when we were still going. We met someone doing the lights for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, when he was in it, and he wished us luck for a gig. And years later when we reformed, we were on BBC 6 Music about to do our last gig, when we got a message. I kind of feel sorry for him, as people on Twitter seems to constantly reference it. So I should imagine that’s worse for him than me.

I suppose. He was a bit of a prat, but I suppose you could argue Les was too at times back then.

“God, yeah! At the time he was very much the villain as far as I was concerned.”

Do you and Les move in the same circles now and again today?

“Well, I’m still in London and he’s in Folkestone, so I don’t see him much. And he’s off permanently on tour with various bands. But every now and again we meet up and go to the pub, and e-mail each other now and again.”

I seem to recall you already had a daughter by the time you broke through.

“Yeah, she was born in ’86.”

Has she followed you into music?

“She’s a teacher … which is better! She went to the Brit School, doing theatre for two years or so. She wanted to act at the time, then got a bit disillusioned with it all and ended up via a series of accidents working in a school,and is now a qualified teacher. And I prefer that to her being a singer or something like that.”

I seem to recall back in the day a rather adulatory Carter USM fan-base. I knew a fair few of the words, but so many more clearly know every line. That’s something I’m sure that left you feeling proud.

“That can be pretty extraordinary. When I played Shepherd’s Bush Empire last year, just me and a guitar and a few songs with a piano, they more or less sang along with every song. And they were crowd-surfing as well, which I think freaked out the security at the venue. I wasn’t prepared for that!

“I’m doing a couple of gigs this year where there might be a few who don’t know me, though, so that might be where it all comes unstuck! But I did Gigantic before and that was brilliant.”

Next Chapter: The live outings are comparatively rare these days for Jim Bob (Photo: Paiul Heneker)

There have been some memorable moments in the past, not least playing to huge crowds at Reading Festival, touring America with EMF, being taken to court by the Rolling Stones, and appearing in the former Yugoslavia just as the civil war was about to come to a head.

“We went there twice, playing Zagreb, and also Croatia and Bosnia. For a while it was sort of calming down, but there was still tension. It’s a terrible thing to say, but it was quite exciting at the time. We also played in Eastern Europe pretty much just as the Berlin Wall came down, playing in East Germany for a few weeks, and the Czech Republic. Interesting times.”

Now, 30 years on, it seems that everything’s breaking down again, politically. You still have plenty to write about. Or is that down to the next generation of musical artistes?

“To be honest, I haven’t written a new song for quite some time.”

Because you’re concentrating on your books?

“I suppose it’s that, but if I write songs it would be to record and release them, and I find all that quite depressing – it’s all about what format, how you’re going to sell it, and will it be on vinyl or just on Spotify. That stops me doing it. You’ve really got to want to do it. If it involves a proper recording studio with other musicians you’re instantly going to lose money. I’ve never done the kick-tarter type thing. I never wanted to. And even that’s gone all tits up. It was bound to happen, I suppose. People set up a business that was a good idea, doing really well, but then it’s a case of ‘how can we make this bigger for us? Let’s invest the money’.”

And what will we get at Manchester Academy for Gigantic – a greatest hits show?

“Yeah, that will just be Carter songs. But I played London last month, and it was about 60% Carter songs and the rest solo work. At these all-day events I don’t think there’s room to be clever. And I’m quite happy playing either.”

For those who have missed out on your post-Carter USM recording career, is there a record in particular you’re most proud of that you’d point them towards?

“Quite a few to be honest. The album I did before the last one, What I Think About When I Think About You, which I recorded with an orchestra. That was some people I’d met rather than the Royal Philharmonic, but sounds great to me. I think that’s another reason why I’ve struggled to make records since. Once you’ve played with an orchestra …”

I don’t suppose you could have afforded to take them out on the road with you.

“No. we did one gig. For the last gig I did in London we had a five-piece band for about 40 minutes, and as a result I’m doing four gigs in October, again with a mix of solo and Carter songs. It was an exciting thing to do, but financially it was a mistake!”

Going back to pre-Jamie Wednesday days, did your band, The Ballpoints, get what they deserved, or was that all just part of getting to where you eventually found success?

“Yeah, I don’t think The Ballpoints were ever that great. I suppose it was heading towards something, changing band members. When Les joined that was us heading towards Carter. There was a band before that, Jeepster, who did just one gig, musically totally inept, but … I’ve got some recordings that very few people have ever heard, and there’s …. I dunno … something legendary about that band.”

Where was that gig?

“I can’t remember what it was called, but it was in Southgate. A youth club or something. It was the first proper gig I got, and I left my job before, thinking, ‘This is it … here we go! I’m going to be a pop star!’ I was working at an advertising company in the West End. I was a messenger. I think that was 1978.”

Who was the first band you saw that made you think, ‘This is what I want to do with my life’?

“The first band I ever saw was Queen. By that point, around 14, I was really into music, but it changed a lot, into what my older sister’s boyfriends brought into the house. But I always think of David Essex in Stardust. That’s kind of what I aspired to, even though it’s got a sad ending, I kind of wanted to be David Essex. I was into him and Buddy Holly, then got into Queen and Bad Company. Then punk came along, and I genuinely hated them all of a sudden, overnight. I don’t think that was fake. But then time passes, and you think maybe I do like them again. The Jam and Elvis Costello were my favourites around that time.“

Carter Days: Jim ‘Jim Bob’ Morrison and Les ‘Fruitbat’ Carter, in demand from 1988-98 and 2007-14

I’m guessing that’s the songwriter in you.

“I suppose so, yeah. And I saw The Jam and Elvis Costello quite a lot, and saw The Clash a couple of times. There was sort of a connection between me and Les and The Clash. We used to hang around in a rehearsal studio in South London, full of inter-changing band members. One was Paul Simonon’s brother Nicky, on drums, and Les went to school with Mick Jones. Also, Joe Strummer once said to me – I would say quite early on – how brilliant Carter was. That blew my mind at the time. Even more so now, in a way.”

I can see that there was a similar spirit there, having seen you live. There was definitely an energy to your sets.

Am I right in thinking Jamie Wednesday were booked to play with The Men They Couldn’t Hang, and while you then split up you honoured the gig with Les in your new format, for what turned out to be Carter USM’s debut gig?

“Yeah, we’d sort of had enough of the band but were too pathetic to tell the rest of the band. We did eventually, but decided not to tell the promoter. We still wanted to do the gig. So we started out of necessity really. We wrote a few songs then decided to just do them with a drum machine.”

Did any of those songs make it to the first album, 101 Damnations?

“Yeah, although some of them were slightly rewritten. I think we had around seven songs, including ‘A cPerfect Day to Drop the Bomb’, ‘Everytime a Churchbell Rings’, ‘The Taking of Peckham 123’, and  Wire song, ‘Mannequin’.

“Jamie Wednesday were more cowpunk, as they called us, with acoustic guitars and a horn section. So the people who came to see us … I don’t think they liked it. But we did loads of gigs with The Men They Couldn’t Hang. In a way we didn’t really fit in, but for some reason ended up with them quite a lot. And The Boothill Foot-Tappers, and we did quite a few gigs with The Pogues. Yet we were also connected to the twee indie scene, maybe through The Pink Label link – otherwise it doesn’t really make sense.”

I also remember seeing (and interviewing) International Resque (later just Resque), another band you were linked with, not least when Wez joined on drums in 1994.

“Yeah, they did a lot of gigs with Carter in the early days. It was a very diverse scene, I suppose. Interchanging bands who didn’t all sound the same.”

What did the ousted members of Jamie Wednesday make of your breakaway?

“Erm … I’m not sure at the time, to be honest with you. But I know Dean (Leggett) quite well, the drummer.”

I knew him first from Bob, another band I loved. So I guess it worked out pretty well for him after all.

“Yeah, and in more recent years Simon (Henry) and Lindsey (Lowe) – our horn section – have played on my solo stuff after we reconnected. But at the time they probably weren’t too pleased.”

That story will make for a good film, perhaps.

“Yes, although there’s no documentary evidence of anything we ever did. Hardly anything. Nobody ever filmed us!”

Well, you say that, but you’ve got the books out there.

“Well, that’s true.”

Metal Detector: Jim Bob, still searching for true value, all these years on (Photo: Paul Heneker)

Jim Bob plays Manchester Academy on Saturday, May 25th (1pm-11.30pm) for Gigantic Vol. 5, the bill also featuring headliners Echo & the Bunnymen, plus The Wonder Stuff, The Bluetones, The Juliana Hatfield Three, Jesus Jones, and Crazyhead, with Graham Crabb (Pop Will Eat Itself) as DJ/MC. For more details and tickets try the event’s Facebook page or the venue website. Jim Bob is also set to play the Darwen Live free festival on Sunday, May 26th (on stage 6.45pm). For more about his shows, books and records, visit Jim bob’s website or head to the relevant Cherry Red Records artist page, where you can also find details of a deluxe Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine: The Studio Recordings 1988-1998 collector’s edition vinyl boxset and the Hello, Good Evening, Welcome, and Goodbye 2014 live recording on CD, vinyl and download.

 

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All Night Party People – in conversation with A Certain Ratio’s Jez Kerr

Posted on May 19, 2019 by writewyattuk

It promises to be a busy year for industrial punk-funk pioneers and indie-dance survivors A Certain Ratio, currently playing a series of UK dates to coincide with new Mute collection, ACR:BOX.

After 2018’s acr:set compilation and their LP reissue campaign, the new boxset – remastered by the band’s Martin Moscrop at Abbey Road Studios and including A and B-sides, alternative versions and more than 20 previously-unreleased tracks, available in 7 x coloured vinyl, 4CD and digital formats – follows the band’s delve into their vaults, with various hidden gems unearthed, among them tapes from a session recorded for a shelved collaboration with Grace Jones.

The new release coincides with the 40th anniversary of ACR’s Martin Hannett-produced debut single, ‘All Night Party’, Factory Records’ first single artist 7”, in later days described by Record Collector as ‘a statement of future intentions: to set funk off against nervous angst’.

That single – FAC 5, followed by Orchestral Manoeuvres’ ‘Electricity’, FAC 6 – was released in September 1979, with 5,000 copies pressed, soon selling out, the band recording their first session for influential BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel within a few weeks.

As it turned out though, it was their next single, a 1980 cover of Banbarra’s ‘Shack Up’, that opened things up, not least after its early ‘81 US Billboard Dance chart breakthrough. Not bad for something that cost £50 to record, that song represented on the new boxset through a radio edit by Electronic, featuring New Order frontman Bernard Sumner and Smiths guitar legend Johnny Marr.

By the time of that initial stateside success, they’d already scored their first UK indie top-10 hit with next single ‘Flight’, a band in more recent times described as ‘cult punk funkateers’ (Uncut) and ‘mould-breakers’ (Mojo) soon expanding to a six-piece.

While embracing the ethic and culture of late ‘70s post-punk from the start, it’s fair to say ACR sounded like little else, yet went on to influence a diverse number of acts down the years, from LCD Soundsystem to Happy Mondays, managing nine UK indie chart top-30 hits from 1980/86 on Factory, including seven top-10s.

They made five albums for Factory, initial cassette-only compilation The Graveyard and the Ballroom followed by May 1981 debut studio album To Each…, featuring the expanded line-up and recorded in New Jersey, Martin Hannett again producing. That was their first UK indie chart-topper, and by June that year they’d recorded a second John Peel session. And before 1981 was over next single ‘Waterline’ had provided another top-10 indie hit.

Although early influences included Funkadelic, Parliament and Earth, Wind and Fire, their bass-heavy industrial/funk sound was not easily pigeon-holed, in time introducing more avant-garde elements of funk, jazz, electronics, tape loops and technology to pop, ‘wrapping it in a post-punk aesthetic, adding great clothes and the coolest haircuts’.

But let’s go back a bit here, their story with its roots in 1977 in Flixton, Greater Manchester, the band name taken from a 1974 Brian Eno song.

Initially a duo, comprising singer Simon Topping and guitar/electronics player Peter Terrell, they were then joined by bass guitarist/vocalist Jez, then guitarist/trumpeter Martin, the band without a drummer initially, Donald Johnson there in time for that first Peel session though. But while things hadn’t truly started to come together until Jez joined earlier that year, he had little musical grounding at the time, having taken a very different career path.

“My life had come to a bit of a crossroads. I was a footballer from a very early age. My uncle – my mum’s twin – played in the ‘50s, so I was following in his footsteps. He played for Everton, his main club, for about 11 years, then Derby County, Swansea (still Town at that stage) and Leyton Orient. A really good player, who scored lots of goals for Everton.”

That was Eddie Thomas, his Mum’s twin, Jez following his lead, playing in Manchester United’s youth team, his contemporaries including future England international Mike Duxbury.

“Football was my life really. All I wanted to do was play for United and play for England. And I was lucky enough to play for United until I was 17, signing schoolboy terms at 15, becoming a ball-boy. But at 17 I broke my ankle badly, was at a loose end, and finally found myself in A Certain Ratio.”

There are inevitably comparisons drawn between your band and fellow Factory act, New Order, who also happen to be stablemates these days at Mute. Also, Bernard Sumner hadn’t started out as the front-man of his band, albeit down to different circumstances.

“That’s true. I was the bass player. But I got the job … unfortunately!”

What inspired you to get involved in music?

“My Mum did a bit of acting and I joined Manchester Youth Theatre. That’s where I met up with Gordon the Moron (Jilted John’s arch-nemesis, real name Bernard Kelly). I left home at 17 and shared a house in Rusholme with him. I was actually there when he (Graham Fellows, aka Jilted John) wrote that tune on my sofa.

“I was asked to play bass on Top of the Pops with them, but I was so shit I couldn’t mime! I’d bought myself an amp and bass guitar, but couldn’t play and wasn’t in a band. At this house in Rusholme, John Cooper Clarke was always coming ‘round, and The Freshies, people like that.

“I didn’t know anything about it. It was only through Gordon the Moron and the Youth Theatre that I met up with these people, finding out about Rabid Records. And when they had a hit … ‘Fucking hell – people I know are on Top of the Pops!”

That memorable number reached No. 4 on the UK charts in the late summer of ’78, re-released via EMI after a Rabid release a month earlier, the self-titled hit originally lurking on the B-side of ‘Going Steady’. Readers of this website may recall me talking about that late ‘70s Manchester scene in January with C.P. Lee, reliving his Alberto Y Los Trios Paranoias days. And there’s a link for Jez there too.

“The Albertos were the first band I saw – after Status Quo, then David Bowie at the Hard Rock. That must have been one of the first nights at the Russell Club.”

if online records are right (try this great link), the Albertos headlined at the Russell Club, aka The Factory, in Royce Road, Hulme, in August and September 1978, with A Certain Ratio going on to play there at least three times in 1979 as a support band – on April 6th third on the bill to The Teardrop Explodes and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark; on May 11th to third on the bill to Joy Division and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark; and on June 18th second on the bill to Public Image Ltd. They then featured twice more as headliners, in September ’79 and then April 1980, on the latter occasion with support acts including The Durutti Column and Section 25.

“I didn’t see myself as a musician, but all this was going on. I used to go to Pip’s a lot, seeing A Certain Ratio there – just Pete and Simon – and chatting afterwards. Nothing came of it, but I told them I knew people at Rabid Records.”

Ah, Pips, according to the Manchester Evening News’ Matthew Cooper a four-room club in a basement under Fennel Street (behind the cathedral, now concreted over, with the Corn Exchange on top), which opened in 1972 – 10 years before Factory opened FAC 51, the Hacienda – and hosted Joy Division’s first gig, the night they changed their name from Warsaw.

Anyway, carry on Jez.

“Then about three months later I bumped into Simon in the street. I was waiting for this girl called Lisa, and they ended up going out together. He mentioned they had a gig at Band on the Wall and were looking for a bass player. I said, ‘I’ve got a bass’. So I basically joined the band that minute. We had a rehearsal at my place, playing the gig the next day. And that was it.”

Ah, the Band on the Wall, Swan Street, in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, first used as a jazz venue in the 1930s, this scribe writing this just a couple of days after seeing Robert Forster’s sell-out show there, having only learned before via Marc Riley that he played his first show with The Fall there, the venue also hosting Buzzcocks and Joy Division. Historic, geographic links, I’ve got ‘em, pop kids.

Sorry, back to Jez. They obviously thought you looked the part.

“Yeah … well, you know … I had a bass!

That line was almost delivered Spinal Tap style, I might add.

“Actually, I’ve got a cassette of that first rehearsal, and we did ‘All Night Party’, ‘The Thin Boys’, ‘Genotype Phenotype’, and a track called ‘Intro Talking’ which we never recorded, but I made into a tune called ‘Terry’ for the album Mind Made Up (2008). Neither Pete not Simon could remember who wrote it, but from that cassette I deciphered the lyrics, using a verse from that that and one from another tune.

“We started the set with that for the first six months … although we only had about six tunes. Anyway, the reason the band were playing Band on the Wall was that the Arts Council used to fund a night there, through Manchester Musicians Collective, run by a guy called Frank, an old hippie who lived in Didsbury, and his mate. He booked the night, with six or seven bands playing, a Monday night. They had meetings on King Street, and if you went along you got a gig.

“The Fall, Joy Division, all the bands really started there, the ones trying to make their name. And we played there three or four times and were very fortunate to do so. It was Rob Gretton (New Order manager and Factory director) who spotted us there, telling Tony (Wilson) about us, They’d just opened the Factory in Hulme – the Russell Club – and Rob got Tony to ask us to play there. So it was Rob who really discovered us, if you like.”

And Tony Wilson famously labelled you ‘the new Sex Pistols’.

“That was Tony gobbing off! After playing the Russell Club, he asked us to do a single. We did that at Cargo with Martin Hannett, just carrying on from there, Tony sort of managing the band really. He was a great talker. You didn’t actually believe most of what he said, but punk opened up so much. We thought, ‘We can run a club, we could be a record label, we don’t need a proper manager – our mate will be our manager!”

When you go back and listen to tracks like ‘All Night Party’, does it take you back to a certain place and time?

“Yeah, that’s exactly it. When I joined, they had that tune, and I just put some bass on it, y’know.”

I suspect that’s a little under-statement. Either way, dad-of-three Jez – his daughters aged 14 to 24 -kept his job, and now the modern A Certain Ratio line-up – completed by Martin, Donald, fellow bandmates Denise Johnson, Tony Quigley and most recent addition, Matt Steele – continue their 2019 UK tour on Thursday, May 23rd at Jacaranda Records, Phase One, Seel Street, Liverpool, before a two-day festival at Yes, Charles Street, Manchester, on Friday May 24th and Saturday May 25th, special guests such as Section 25, Shadowparty, and The Orielles joining the band for a celebratory takeover of all four floors of the venue, marking the 40th anniversary of all that.

“Yeah, that and the subsequent 40 years, working with people and making music.”

You’ve already played a few shows, including shows in Islington, North London, Wolverhampton and Belfast, the first ACR visit to the latter. And Barrow-in-Furness was an interesting starting point for these dates.

“It was really good. It was like someone’s front room. Really nice people, and we’ve got quite a few gigs at places we haven’t played before, something I really enjoy. And it’s a conscious decision. We always used to play Manchester, London, Glasgow, Edinburgh … for a while now we haven’t gone around the places we used to play. So we’re playing Cardiff, Nottingham, Leamington Spa …”

You always had a loyal underground following. Was this part of the reason to reach further out to those fans?

“Well, people think we’ve just got together for this 40th thing, but while we had a break from 1994 to 2002, I don’t think we ever had the intention of never doing it again. But real life intervenes, takes over – kids, etc.”

Going back a bit again, there were many chops and changes before ACR’s final Factory LP, Force, surfaced in 1986. A move to A&M then followed for Good Together (1989) and acr:mcr (1990). How was the latter experience different?

“Ha ha! Completely different! “

Those were the latter days of big money being thrown at bands by major labels.

“Ha! Yeah, we were witnessing the very death of the music industry. I felt sorry for all the geezers who were there, set to lose their jobs, with a mortgage in London they’d been paying 10 years, or whatever. The gravy train was coming to an end.”

No doubt you learned from that experience, in time becoming truly independent again.

“I think we’ve always been slightly outside it all, yet fairly insular. In the early days, After a while Tony was more the director of Factory, so we were managing ourselves really. Then when we left Factory, we were on our own. We’ve been sort of self-sufficient for a long time. Even at A&M we felt this wasn’t going to last. But we made quite a bit of money out of them, and with that bought a studio and rehearsal space in Manchester where we could carry on making music. So when we did leave, after only about a year, we made two more albums for Rob’s Records.”

Those albums were Up In Downsville (1992) and Change the Station (1997), Rob’s Records set up by Rob Gretton. Speaking of whom, did you ever feel slightly aggrieved that the likes of New Order proved the bigger band?

“You’re going to feel a bit aggrieved, but we knew what we were doing was good, and business-wise, while we’ve always lived in their shadow a bit, fair enough. They’ve sold more records than us. It would be great not having to worry about money, but then again I think that brings its own problems.”

Indeed. They don’t seem to get on at all now, as opposed to your situation.

“I think that’s really unfortunate. I don’t know the ins and outs, and haven’t read any of the books, but it’s the same in our band. We’ve had big fallings out, but luckily we managed to plough through and come out the other side.”

I guess there’s always a danger at that level if you end up communicating entirely through lawyers and reading each other’s interviews and social media, rather than have face-to-face arguments that would possibly clear the air.

“Well, we don’t really see each other outside the music. We don’t socialise, particularly. But I think we realise we all need each other. All of us have got a part to play. Why bands split up is often about ego and money. We’ve come close quite a few times, but …”

You’re hanging on in there.

“Yeah, I’m really enjoying it. It’s better now than it’s ever been. There’s no pressure on us. The only pressure we’ve got is through writing new stuff – making that as good as all the other stuff.”

I love the string version of ‘Won’t Stop Loving You’. Does this signal a fresh direction, or is it something that’s always potentially been in your arsenal?

“A friend of ours, Jason Brown, has a partner in a string quartet (Parent’s Sarah Brandwood-Spencer) who did this arrangement and played it to Donald. It sounded great, so we thought we’d do it as a special for this acr:box. We have done acoustic versions before, but not a string arrangement. And if someone’s passionate enough to come up with something, we’re not going to turn around and say no.

The boxset looks impressive. Is this like your life flashing in front of your eyes when you first set eyes on the finished product?

“It’s funny. I’ve not listened to it in its entirety yet, but I’m going to. Our tour manager, Pete, says that with all the different styles that are there you get a real sense of 40 years.”

Was this latest collection more down to Martin?

“Martin did a lot of work on it, but we all got together to listen to stuff. The first part – the B-sides and singles – was easy. They hadn’t been on the albums. But the second half was where we … all the stuff from the SoundStation, our studio, we were looking at DATs, and a lot were deteriorating and unplayable. It took us about three days to go through those. But we found (Talking Heads cover) ‘Houses in Motion’, which we didn’t think we had, a tune called ‘force’ which was suppose dot be on that album which we’d all forgotten about.

“There’s a lot stuff we missed. For one, virtually a complete album that we never recorded. We were in New York and played a gig at the Ritz, possibly the second time we went to New York. A guy called Tyrone Downey, the keyboard player in The Wailers, leant us loads of equipment as we had a lot of gear missing from our flight.

“We did a soundcheck at the Ritz and it was our worse one ever. There was a lot of pressure – it was our gig and a 3,000 capacity, our first big gig in New York. After the soundcheck Michael Schomberg, tour managing us and a friend of Tyrone, said ‘Let’s go back to Tyrone’s’.

“We went to Brownstone and this studio, and Tyrone was standing outside. I was handed a big bag of grass and Donald a big bottle of Southern Comfort. We walked in this room with this backing track going on. There was a drum kit, a bass, two guitars, keyboards and loads of percussion, and this Tom Tom Club-like backing tape of claps and so on. He said, ‘There you go – enjoy yourself’.

“We spent the next three hours jamming, and no one fucking recorded it! I tell you, there was a complete album there of new stuff. If someone had just turned the tape on, we’d have had at least four or five tunes from that three-hour jam!”

Great story. And what about that proposed collaboration you had with Grace Jones?

“We recorded the tunes with a view to her singing on it, but Chris Blackwell got wind of it, thinking, ‘No, I’m not having this’. It would have sounded great. There’s two versions – the one we brought out was our version, us learning the tune, and the other version is Martin Hannett’s, ready for Grace’s vocals to be put on.”

Taking of female vocalists and different approaches, I like Nouvelle Vague’s version of ‘Shack Up’.

“Yeah, I quite like that, but prefer their version of ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart‘. That’s my favourite. There you go again, see – we’re always being compared to them!”

And you just happen to have Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr – as Electronic – doing a version of ‘Shack Up’ on this boxset.

“Yeah, I quite like that.”

And what’s next after this tour – is there a new LP on its way?

“Yeah, there’s still more to come on Mute – a live album, then there will be a remix album. And hopefully after that we’ll be ready with the new album. We’ve already got six or seven tunes together. And we want to make it a really good one, in between gigging and all that.”

And there are lots of gigs coming.

“There’s quite a few, yeah. Last year we did maybe 20, but prior to that we’d only been doing about 10 a year.”

I seem to recall you doing a solo set at the Continental in Preston a couple of years back too.

“Yeah, I did a solo thing for a few years. I really enjoyed doing that, but I’m busy with doing this now.”

And long may that continue.

Celebration Ratio: A Certain Ratio, celebrating four decades of pioneering recorded material (Photo: Kevin Cummins)

ACR’s next UK dates: May 23rd – Jacaranda Records, Phase One, Liverpool; May 24th/25th – Yes, Manchester; May 30th – Sheffield, The Leadmill (Steel Bar); May 31st – Newcastle, Riverside; June 1st – Edinburgh, The Voodoo Rooms; June 2nd – Leamington Spa, Zephyr Lounge; August 16th – We Out Here Festival; Cambridgeshire; August 17th – Green Man Festival; August 18th – County Durham, Hardwick Live Festival; November 2nd – Dublin, The Sugar Club; November 8th – Cardiff, Clwb Ifor Bach; November 9th – Birmingham, The Crossing; November 15th – Stoke-on-Trent, The Sugarmill; November 16th – Glasgow, King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut; November 17th – Huddersfield, The Parish; December 6th – Stockton on Tees, The Georgian Theatre; December 7th – Nottingham, Rescue Rooms.

For more about the band, keep in touch via their Facebook, Instagram and Twitter links, their website, or Mute Records.

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The Undertones / The Neville Staple Band – The Ritz, Manchester

Posted on May 17, 2019 by writewyattuk

Ritz Cracker: The view from the stage at the Ritz, Manchester, as snapped by the singing one (Photo: Paul McLoone)

An early start caught me out, my train arriving after seven, The Neville Staple Band already in charge by the time I’d made it from nearby Oxford Road station. And to channel ska inspiration Prince Buster and fellow 1979 breakthroughs Madness, even if I kept on running, I’d never have crossed Whitworth Street West in time.

By the time I’d wandered through the foyer into the main hall – stopping only to shake hands with Mickey Bradley – this dynamic octet (Mr and Mrs Staple accompanied by bass, guitar, drums, keyboards and two-man brass) had already revisited May ’79 debut Special AKA single ‘Gangsters’ and The Slickers’ ‘Johnny Too Bad’, and were part-way through ’Monkey Man’, Nev’s missus Sugary’s smile infectious as she gave us the knees-up treatment on a Toots Hibbert number as good as adopted by her hubby after all these years.

Next was a splendid take on Bananarama and Fun Boy Three adapted ‘60s soul staple (so to speak) ‘Really Saying Something’, Sugary out front, then the mighty ‘A Message to You Rudy’, Dandy Livingstone’s dancefloor smash hitting the spot. And another Specials’ debut LP highlight, Rufus Thomas’ ‘Do the Dog’, kept the place moving. Yep, the Spirit of ’79 was truly captured, the line drawn in the sand for tonight’s headliners.

Another Fun Boy Three excursion followed, ‘The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum’ increasingly apt given the current UK and US political climate. Then, after a plug for the band’s charity rewrite of ‘Rudy’, ‘Put Away Your Knives’, Sugary led on a ska-licious ‘Rude Girl’, her other half toasting at her side.

The jukebox kept cranking out hits, The Pioneers’ Long Shot Kick the Bucket’ showcasing late ‘60s Trojan gold and the roots of the ska revival a decade later, while a multi-speed take on Symarip’s ‘Skinhead Moonstomp’ from even earlier kept the groove going, the joint jumping.

Time was always going to be against this accomplished band, but an extended ‘Ghost Town’ took us all back to a place and time, the musicianship never in doubt, the brass supreme. Alas, there’s only so much you can shoehorn into a support slot, and – individual introductions done – we got a further delve back with Lynval Golding’s ‘Do Nothing’, more a celebration on this occasion, before a glorious closing run through The Skatalites’ version of ‘Guns of Navarone’.

All Together: The Undertones and The Neville Staple Band join forces, the Spirit of ’79 well and truly intact.

Few will have left the Ritz not wishing to catch Nev and his band again sometime soon. Satisfaction guaranteed. And it was a perfect bill – a punky-reggae party of sorts, both sets of fans with ears wide open and hearts responding. A later show of hands from the headliners suggested several punters hadn’t seen them before, and that worked the other way too. New fans won over by each set.

I’m not sure whether I could fail to be cheered by the sight of The Undertones either, and this proved another perfect venue to catch Derry’s finest. What’s more, 38 years after my Positive Touch debut, 36 years after my final sightings of the Feargal Sharkey-fronted band , and 19 years after first clapping eyes on the refurbished Paul McLoone-led five-piece at the Mean Fiddler, the revival party continues apace. And as John O’Neill recently put it, they’re, ‘definitely getting better. I don’t know how or why’.

That wasn’t in doubt as they took to the Ritz stage with an introductory treble from their eponymous first LP, released 40 years ago that week, ‘Family Entertainment’, ‘I Gotta Getta’ and ‘Jump Boys’ ensuring the sprung dancefloor was properly utilised from the off, old-time punk and new wave values writ large.

While they had every right to turn this into a show solely about celebrating ‘the greatest record of all time’ (© Neil Waite, Rocking Humdingers Club), this was never an outfit to sit back and crow on past achievements, and 1981’s ‘It’s Going To Happen’ sounded fresher than ever … even if I’d have loved to hear Neville’s brass duo let loose on that middle section.

Similarly, the gorgeous ‘Tearproof’ never falls short of the mark, while 2009’s ‘I’m Recommending Me’ gets better with every outing, now fully appreciated by the faithful, one of several Mk. II classics penned by Mickey (‘using a really nice crayon’ , as he put it).

The better-known songs always go down a treat of course, and ‘Jimmy Jimmy’ was afforded a rousing crowd singalong. And this being weekend Manchester on the eve of the Premier League season finale, ‘When Saturday Comes’ was inevitable, Mickey doing his bit for diplomacy with a shout-out for local heroes Bury FC.

Sound Check: The Undertones’ Paul McLoone, Billy Doherty and Mickey Bradley limbering up before their Newcastle’s Boiler Room show, clearly saving their excitement for later (Photo: Kate Greaves)

‘Girls That Don’t Talk’ from 1980 was next, Dee and John’s guitars still tugging this boy’s heartstrings all these years on. Also inevitable was the tribute to Pete Shelley, Paul dedicating mighty comeback single ‘Thrill Me’ to his memory, recalling the band’s chat with him in Sunderland last summer.

‘Love Parade’ is another song reborn in recent years, and here – as it on Damian O’Neill’s stunning Refit Revise Reprise LP – it was more as it was intended from Dee and Mickey’s Wesleys’ side-project days.

And ‘Male Model’? What can I say? Still the perfect tongue-in-cheek punk exclamation mark, the band’s enthusiasm for their own material neatly encapsulated by Mr Bradley’s ‘I love that one’ pronouncement.

Again, we felt the strength in depth of the more recent material with Monkees-esque 125-second neo-classic ‘Here Comes the Rain’, succinct and to the point, further proof that John never forgot how to craft a perfect song.

Speaking of which, you’ll have heard of ‘Teenage Kicks’, kids, that nugget preceded by the raw original version of ‘True Confessions’, as explosive today as in ‘78. And the hits kept coming, ‘Here Comes the Summer’ similarly crowd-pleasing before ‘Dig Yourself Deep’ again showed the depth of the 21st Century ‘Tones.

From the first long player we got ‘I Know a Girl’ and from the second ‘Nine Times Out of Ten’, Mickey admitting to another Buzzcocks steal on the outro, then paying tribute to fellow Manc Paul Hanley, praising his splendid Leave the Capital book, the Fall legend and current Brix & the Extricated drummer there with bass-playing brother and bandmate Steve on the night.

The last of the McLoone-era selections was 2003’s ‘Oh Please’, and who could resist those backing vocals and melodious riffs? There was still plenty of credit in the jukebox too, with two of the finest singles ever made next, ‘You Got My Number (Why Don’t You Use it?) and ‘Wednesday Week’, the latter something of a breather before ‘79’s ‘Girls Don’t Like It’, ‘(She’s a) Runaround’ and second single ‘Get Over You’ closed the main set. Every song a classic.

A 10 o’clock curfew was nearly upon us, my last train closer to departure, but they still managed to squeeze in five more glorious numbers, the encore kicking in with Doherty the drummer’s esteemed ‘Billy’s Third’, a storming ‘There Goes Norman’, the wall-to-wall fervour of final debut LP choice ‘Listening In’, and second record title track ‘Hypnotised’, another track exuding evergreen status.

And then the floor was sprung once more, our treasured quintet going out on ‘My Perfect Cousin’, penned 40 summers previously and never failing to please.

Yes, 30 songs all told, and each bringing sunshine, smiles, nostalgia and inspiration, The Undertones carrying on where Neville had started the evening, the Spirit of ’79 refitted, revised, reprised, revitalised, and revved up good and proper.

For this website’s recent interviews with The Undertones’ Damian and John O’Neill (where you’ll also find links to plenty more Undertones-themed interviews, features and reviews), and with Neville Staple, follow the links.

Post Sharkey: The Undertones. From left: Billy Doherty, John O’Neill, Paul McLoone, Mickey Bradley, Damian O’Neill

The Undertones and Neville Staple Band’s UK tour concludes this weekend (doors 7pm, tickets £25 advance) at Bexhill De La Warr Pavilion (Friday, May 17th, 01424 229111) and Southampton Engine Rooms (Saturday, May 18th, 0800 688 9311 ). For more details of The Undertones’ 2019 schedule, including US tour, UK and Irish festival appearances, head here, try their website and keep in touch via Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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