In which author/writer Malcolm Wyatt jealously guards his own corner of web hyperspace, regular feature-interviews, reviews and rants involving big names from across the world of music, comedy, literature, film, TV, the arts, and sport.
This time last year, Swansea Sound were reflecting on a happening few months, this indie-pop supergroup of sorts, founded remotely mid-lockdown, not even having met in person until their late August 2021 debut at Lancashire’s Preston Pop Fest, yet soon proving as fast-paced as some of their punk-influenced numbers.
They saw out that year with acclaimed if not over-honestly titled debut LP, Live at the Rum Puncheon, with more dates lined up before spring, those buying the album also receiving a vinyl and digital-release alternative Christmas single, the limited edition 7” version selling out very quickly.
And now they’re not far off a follow-up long player, while the tracks on the festive single – ‘Happy Christmas to Me’ and ‘Merry Christmas Darlings’ – are newly out in CD format, a three-track EP led by a fresh composition called ‘Music Lover’. What’s more, those buying via Bandcamp have the option of the included Christmas card being signed by the band, or left blank so they can write their own festive messages to loved ones.
The band has (rather complicated, if I’m honest) links to indie darlings The Pooh Sticks, Tallulah Gosh and Heavenly, with vocalists Hue Williams and Amelia Fletcher joined by guitarist/bass player Rob Pursey and drummer Ian Button, the latter three also key these days to The Catenary Wires, another band I first caught (at that point featuring just husband and wife Rob and Amelia) treading the boards at the same venue that hosted Preston Pop Fest, supporting The Wedding Present at The Continental in the summer of 2017, Amelia well known to fans of the latter for her winning contributions to a fair few of their seminal late ‘80s tracks.
For Swansea Sound’s first live shows, they were joined by Kent-based guitarist Robert Rotifer, seeing as Rob played guitar and bass on the first recordings, and even he can’t manage both on stage. And it’s Bob Collins adding guitar on ‘Music Lover’, this anti-corporate outfit’s ‘punkpop tribute to Daniel Ek’, releasing the song ‘as a festive gesture’ on Ek’s Spotify digital music platform among other streaming services, ’so he receives most of the financial benefit.’
For those that missed it first time around, ‘Happy Christmas to Me’, described elsewhere as ‘the Christmas song the Buzzcocks would have written’, sees the band’s yuletide feelings to Ek also dedicated to Twitter boss Elon Musk, Facebook/Meta co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, and Amazon chief Jeff Bezos. Meanwhile, ‘Merry Christmas Darlings’ is their glam-rock cover of a song by Cheap Trick, its closing party sequence seeing ‘the four billionaires reunited, jovially exchanging corporate mission statements with each other.’ Have you spotted a theme yet, readers?
So how did Rob, speaking to me from his Kent base, think 2022 went for the band. What were his highlights?
“It’s mainly consisted of writing and recording songs for our second album, which will come out next year. We did finally play Swansea though! And Newport and Cardiff.”
Wise Up: There’s a rocket with these fellas’ names on it, and Swansea Sound may have plans for them
Yes, I should point out at this point to the uninitiated that Hue has links to that part of South Wales – the Vale of Glam, as he likes to put it – and they took their name from Swansea’s lost radio station after it was re-branded by new corporate owners, even using its abandoned logo, what they see as part of their ‘wider protest about the culturally stultifying effect of corporatisation’.
As for ‘Music Lover’, well, that’s another breath of fresh air, in typical Buzzcocksy-Wiresque style … with the kind of anti-corporate sentiments we expect from Swansea Sound. Go on then, the floor is yours, Rob. Have you got a problem with Spotify?
“Yes, we have a problem with Spotify. Not with the technology – there’s nothing wrong with digital music. The problem is with its ownership and control. It’s not just Spotify who have perfected a ‘trickle down’ corporate model on the back of digital technology.
“If you’re a cab driver you may have a similar feeling about Uber. If you’re a retail worker you’ll maybe feel the same about Amazon. If the CWU don’t get their way the same thing could happen to Royal Mail. It would be naff to make songs about that – we aren’t cab drivers and we aren’t postal workers – but Spotify is something we can talk about, because it affects us directly. Not all our new songs are going to be on that theme – I realise it can get a bit dull banging on about the same thing too often. But it needs to be said.
“Another group recently claimed it was only ‘old bands’ like us who complain about Spotify. And that ‘the kids’ like using it, which somehow means it’s all fine. It’s worth noting that the group in question are even older than us. But I don’t buy that, it’s a geriatric argument. It’s like saying ‘stop moaning about the water companies, a bit of sewage never did us any harm.’”
And yet you’re releasing the single on that self-same platform. Isn’t that like flicking vees to Elon Musk on Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook? Or buying a toaster from Amazon and leaving a rude note for Jeff Bezos?
“Yes, this time I thought it would be good to have a song that’s directly about Spotify on Spotify. We obviously didn’t make the decision for the money. You’re right, all gestures are compromised these days – the single is advertised on Facebook, and on Twitter. That’s the problem with digital oligarchy. You can’t operate outside it.”
Like all good Christmas singles, this has been (at least two-thirds of it) out before. How many of those original 7”s are out there now? And will Record Collector coo about the price of them in years to come?
Live Substance: Swansea Sound’s (from left) Hue Williams, Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey
“The two Christmas songs came out a year ago on a Snowflakes 7” single. They sold out quite quickly. So it seemed fair enough to put the songs out again. Also, I’ve this theory that if you release a Christmas song often enough it become a ‘classic’. So maybe we’ll put ‘Happy Christmas to Me’ out again next year, and the year after that, until people accept it’s as essential as ‘White Christmas’.”
No arguing with that twisted logic, and we dearly need more of this agit-punk stuff. What have Swansea Sound heard around them in 2022 which appeals, music-wise? Are there enough bands out there carrying the Spirit of ’76 and all that?
“The most recent thing I bought was a CD by punk band C.O.G. It’s pretty good, like Killing Joke … not the daft, Gothic, later version … and they have this great idea – the CD itself is free, but you pay for it by doing a random act of kindness. I like that, it’s anarchistic and humane at the same time.”
What have those cross-border cousins of yours, The Catenary Wires, been up to in 2022? Can we expect a new record from them – after the excellent Birling Gap – as well next year?
It’s been a bit quiet on that front. There are some more tunes, but the deal with The Catenary Wires is that me and Amelia are supposed to write the songs together, and we’ve not had much time to do that. Also, it’s a lot more challenging to record Catenary Wires songs because we rely on other musicians – for example, Fay Hallam on keyboards – who are more talented than us, so it’s logistically harder. With Swansea Sound, it’s easy, I write all the songs, we record them at home, and it doesn’t require so much, er… finesse.”
There seems to have been a bit of burrowing into your indie pop past too, celebrating your Heavenly days. Tell me more.
“That’s probably the other reason The Catenary Wires have been quiet. It takes ages to restore the artwork for the albums, all of which we are re-releasing, and Amelia has been doing most of that. We’ve also decided to play a couple of Heavenly shows next year, and we’ve started rehearsing for those. It’s not too onerous for me, the basslines aren’t hard to work out, but Amelia’s got loads of lyrics to remember. And she has to work out how to play guitar again, not having done it for two decades.”
Apart from turning the amps up and letting rip with Swansea Sound, what else grips your attention in a festive way, music-wise? You seem to carry the spirit of The Greedies on these tracks. What Christmas records do you need to put the needle on to get in the festive spirit?
“If I’m honest, I really like old-fashioned Christmas carols best. Old tunes. My favourite modern Christmas recording is ‘Silent Night’ by The Only Ones.”
What was the first Christmas single that grabbed your attention, when was that, and where were you at the time?
“I’m pretty sure it would have been seeing Slade on Top of the Pops when I was a little kid. That is a great song, and I think that for a lot of people of our generation it’s now old enough – and has been repeated often enough – to have achieved ‘carol’ status. It’s a perfectly designed vehicle for nostalgia.”
What was the first Christmas you recall as working band members? When and where were your first festive dates, and was there a raucous after-party? It’s time the tales were told.
“I am sure The Five Year Plan would have done some kind of Christmas gig in Bristol when I was really young, but I guess my most vivid memory is of the Sarah Records Christmas Party, where Heavenly played. Hair-grips were tossed to one side, spectacles were dropped and trodden on, cardigans and anoraks were ripped. It was wild.”
I bet. And what should we do with Elon, Jeff and co. this Christmas? Is there a rocket with their name on it? And where should we set the coordinates for?
“I think they’d actually really like to be on a rocket together. So I’d put them in the Antarctic with bicycles and invite them to cycle back to freedom. If they survived, they would only be allowed to resume their lonely greedy lives if they agreed to sign forms that guaranteed paying income tax at 98%. They’d still be way richer than all of us. Actually, make it 99%.”
What’s the ratio so far with regard to requests from buyers of the CD EP package with a Swansea Sound Christmas card thrown in? Has anyone specifically requested you don’t sign it, so they can send them to friends and relatives instead?
Nativity Activity: And one of these lovely Christmas cards could be yours, reader, signed or not
“Yes, we’ve had a few like that, but most people seem to want the signed version. Bad news for us.”
Are there still copies of Live at the Rum Puncheon at the back of the Swansea Sound HQ garage?
“Yes, there are. Please buy them! We realise now that the album title may have been an error. A lot of people think, quite reasonably, that it’s a live LP. Actually, it was recorded to a very high standard on our laptop and Hue’s iPhone.”
Will there be a Swansea Sound Christmas party this year? Any live dates, or is it just about bawdy dinner parties?
“We’re all meeting next Friday for a Christmas party and signing ceremony. I will make a festive meal. And then we will do what we have promised, sign the Christmas cards, get them in the post.”
And once the tinsel has been put away, will work commence on finishing that new Swansea Sound record? And will there be an inevitable tour to go with it?
“We really hope to get the new songs mixed over the Christmas period. There’s more than enough for an album. A tour, I don’t know about that, but we’ve just agreed to play Birmingham and Sheffield next March. That’s nearly a tour, isn’t it? And we will definitely be playing in Wales again.”
Private View: Blancmange’s Chris Pemberton, Neil Arthur and Liam Hutton. Photo: Malcolm Wyatt
Admittedly, I should have got this review together a while back … but sometimes life gets in the way. Instead, consider this as much a heads-up to two of my long-playing highlights of 2022, each deserving proper recognition. Besides, with just two Blancmange dates remaining on the tour, surely I can’t be accused of plot-spoiling at this late stage. It’s not as if we’re talking a production of The Mousetrap.
Lancaster’s Kanteena was a new venue for me, and a cracking one at that, its quirky sense of character in keeping with the spirit of the acts passing through on this occasion.
There was a laidback feel on arrival, so much so that there was no one on the door at that point (we did have tickets, honest), reminding me of one of the few previous occasions that happened to me – for Emmylou Harris’ Red Dirt Girl tour visit to Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall, late 2003. As if the fact we’d shown up was enough to suggest I had legitimate attendance.
Also, for a second live show running I was too busy talking (to the merch team this time) to realise the support set was underway. And that’s embarrassing for someone for whom people chatting during a live set really gets his goat. As it was, there would be a fair bit of that on the night, Blancmange’s main man Neil Arthur somewhat pissed off about it. But it didn’t detract too much for those of us in the thick of it out front. What it must be like though to have that much ready cash that you can afford to go to a gig then babble away to your mates mid-performance. Worse still, in this case, proclaim, ‘Play one we know’ while the headliners weave their way through a winning set. Ignorance.
Two’s Company: Tom Hilverkus and Alice Hubble at Kanteena, Lancaster. Photo: Malcolm Wyatt
While the dancefloor before them seemed largely empty for much of their tenure, Alice Hubble and fellow London-based live show co-pilot, Tom Hilverkus (previously half of Lower Saxony’s The Happy Couple), soon somewhat nonchalantly seized our attention.
Alice, real name Alice Hubley, was previously half of Arthur and Martha, described by her London-based Happy Robots label as ‘cutie krautrock or tweetronica, using toy/playground electronic gizmos, battered old Casios and Korgs and cheapo drum machines to create gentle, tinny yet poignant pulsebeats that move their achingly pretty, minor-chord melodies along.’ And it’s clear those qualities carry through to this project, much of her impressive set drawn from second LP, Hexentanzplatz, its title continuing that Saxon link (and I’m not talking Biff Byford’s metal outfit), its singles ‘Power Play’ and ‘My Dear Friend’ – among tonight’s highlights – having received BBC 6 Music airplay of late. The same goes for earlier 45, ‘Goddess’, somewhere between The Cure’s ‘In Between Days and New Order’s ‘Temptation’ for these ears, Alice’s sweet vocal setting it apart.
My eldest daughter, joining me on the night, reckoned she was getting a druid vibe, and I kind of got that. If druid electronica is not already a genre, maybe now is the time. As a first-time live attendee without access to a setlist, I can’t be sure of the specific numbers, but I’ve had chances to wallow in the latest LP since, a trans-Pennine road trip proving perfect for a cinematic outfit capable of evocative soundtracks, a journey from Tebay to Scotch Corner neatly framed by Hexentanzplatz and its bonus tracks, not least the sweeping, majestic title track and its ‘Oh, what a beautiful mountain’ line.
At times, I got Debbie Harry reborn in an early ‘80s New Romantic band, while on ‘Numb’ there’s something of the other-worldliness of Tubeway Army, a gateway for many of us into that world. As for the gloriously climactic ‘Gleichfalls’, that’s part New Order, part Public Service Broadcasting, a great way to end the LP in question, even if three extra numbers add something else again, not least the disco stomp of ‘Lux’, the sweet hippiedom of ‘White Horses’ and ‘Willow’s Song’ fusing with a Bronski Beat backing, and trance-like trip-hop finale ‘Midnight in Paso Robles’, with its rather lovely false ending.
As for the headliners, their latest LP, Private View, also formed part of that later personal road trip, and again fitted the bill perfectly here, album opener ‘What’s Your Name’ also the starting point on this occasion, followed by two eminently danceable numbers written four decades apart, the 2022 composition up first, ‘Reduced Voltage’ a contender for single of the year, its ‘Boy, am I tired’ line all too resonant lately, its vibe somewhere between Bowie, John Foxx, Grace Jones, and … Blancmange.
Heart Shaped: Alice Hubble, the support for Blancmange at Lancaster’s Kanteena. Photo: Malcolm Wyatt
For while Neil Arthur has always ploughed forward, there’s always a healthy regard for Blancmange’s past, and 40 years after its arrival, Happy Families still gets the exposure it deserves, evergreen floor-filler ‘Feel Me’ never disappointing, leading to the more dreamy ‘I’ve Seen the Word’, 2020 LP title track ‘Mindset’ then reminding us of more recent accomplished output, but again with a resonance to where it all began, Commuter 23’s ‘Last Night (I Dreamt I Had a Job)’ and Wanderlust’s ‘Not a Priority’ also hitting that high benchmark.
In fact, there was plenty of evidence here for those only now getting up to speed with Blancmange’s reformation works of just how good a compilation we could get from later years alone. What say, London Records, now you’ve got them back on board?
Joining Neil this time were Chris Pemberton (keyboards/‘crazy synths’) and Liam Hutton (electronic drums), both on the money from the off with old and new material alike. Speaking of which, ‘Waves’ will always be in my all-time top-20 (there are probably 40-plus songs in there any given week, but that’s not the point), while Unfurnished Rooms’ ‘What’s the Time?’ would be among my first choices for that ‘somehow not hits’ compilation. Deep (well, who’s ‘the most invisible’ person you’ve ever known?), pensive (‘list all the things you’ve never said’), yet capable of bringing smiles to faces and a swivel of hips on the floor.
The somewhat pensive title track of the new record was next, a brief diversion back to Memory Lane allowed for ‘That’s Love That it Is’ before we headed to a trading estate in Altrincham for 2017’s ‘We Are the Chemicals’ – another filmic number dripping in imagery, always good to hear – then made for an equally atmospheric ‘Take Me’ (and I don’t just use that description because I’m reminded of Joy Division classic ‘Atmosphere’), the new record’s rather splendid finale.
Electronica Blue: Blancmange’s Chris Pemberton, Neil Arthur and Liam Hutton. Photo: Malcolm Wyatt
Further Mange Tout cut ‘Game Above My Head’ provided another rummage into the back-catalogue, ‘Blind Vision’ not far behind, the oh so poignant, of the moment ‘Some Times These’ between them, a ‘Heroes’-like number (and let’s face it, Bowie is never far off Blancmange’s creative process) serving as yet another reminder that this is no ‘80s tribute act, the quality still very much intact since Stephen Luscombe stepped back.
As for the final two choices … no surprises there, ‘Living on the Ceiling’ having the place properly pulsing before they returned for ‘Don’t Tell Me’ following Neil’s genuine address to the assembled, sharing the love with some well-chosen words before that mighty last number, enough to make me think it was as much a subtle reference to Stephen as it was to everyone who’s stayed close to the band all these years.
Blancmange’s Private View tour ends this coming weekend with dates at The Venue in Worthing (Friday, December 9th) and Islington’s Assembly Hall (Saturday, December 10th), with Sheffield’s Stephen Mallinder (of Cabaret Voltaire fame, his other projects including Wrangler, alongside Neil Arthur’s co-conspirator Benge) on fine form in the support role at present.For more details, check out the band website and follow Blancmange via Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
Some Product: Additions to the collection, courtesy of Alice Hubble and Blancmange. Photo: Malcolm Wyatt
And for this website’s most recent feature/interview with Neil Arthur, and links to our previous feature/interviews and Blancmange live reviews, head here.
Ska Faces: Buster and his band at Scotland Let’s Rock 1980s Music Festival Photo: Martin Bone
Ska legends Bad Manners are out and about again this month, veteran vocalist Buster Bloodvessel and his band bringing their stage prowess and hits catalogue to 27 UK venues, allowing himself just five nights off before New Year’s Day’s Glasgow finale.
Forming the band that became Bad Manners with friends from Woodberry Down Comprehensive School, Finsbury Park, North London, in the mid-1970s, they became live favourites on their patch before taking that next step, true entertainers of the ska scene, Buster known for his energetic live antics. Rising to prominence during the late-‘70s ska revival, they gained wider exposure with help from 2-Tone Records package tours and their appearance on live documentary Dance Craze.
Born Douglas Woods to a single mum in Stoke Newington in 1958 (his surname changed to Trendle after adoption by a great-aunt of that name), Buster took his stage name from Ivor Cutler’s bus conductor character in The Beatles’ 1967 Magical Mystery Tour film.
Bad Manners signed to Magnet Records in 1980, scraping into the UK top 30 straight away with debut single ‘Ne-Ne Na-Na Na-Na Nu-Nu’, a cover of a Dickie Doo and the Dont’s rock’n’roll song released the year Buster was born, follow-up ‘Lip Up Fatty’ making it to No.15 before ‘Special Brew’ reached No.3, a highly successful first year finishing with ’Lorraine’ reaching No.21, with both debut LP Ska ‘n’ B and rapid follow-up Loonee Tunes each going top-40.
Their 10 UK top-40 singles also included 1981 top-40 showings with ‘Just a Feeling’, ‘Can Can’, ‘Walking in the Sunshine’, ‘Buona Sera’, alongside third LP, Gosh, it’s … Bad Manners, while their cover of Millie’s ‘My Girl Lollipop’ reached No.9 in the summer of 1982, the band spending more than 100 weeks in the singles charts in those first three years.
And 40 years later, they’re still going strong. At least, Buster and his current Bad Manners line-up are, now deep into their fifth decade, with no sign of stopping, having relentlessly toured the UK and mainland Europe, America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. And as I put it to the main man when we spoke, he hardly seems to have been off the road down the years.
“We have done more than most, I must admit! But during the Covid period – which killed every band that was – I’ve never been so lazy in my life.”
Did that enforced break not suit you, give you a chance to take stock?
“No! I couldn’t stand it. I grew a beard and long hair, and I just wasn’t me. When people saw me, they said, ‘Why are you like this?’ I said, ‘Really, I’m on strike. Until I can do another gig, I’m not going to shave my head.”
Did the confidence come back straightaway afterwards?
“Yeah, once you’ve got the touch … I’ve been doing it that long.”
True enough, but even the most prolific of acts started over-thinking it all, worrying that they might not be capable of performing again.
“Well, that crosses your mind. But once you’re actually in front of an audience, that’s your job, that’s what you do, and you fall back into it.”
You certainly bring the party, wherever you play. And I don’t think anyone could accuse you of giving less than 100%. I guess you still get your kicks from live music.
“Oh, absolutely, and not just my own music. Seeing bands live still does do it for me. And I love performing. It’s in my blood.”
So where’s home these days? North London? Hertfordshire?
“I’m actually in Bulgaria.”
Blimey, is this going to cost me? Is that where I’m calling you?
“No, you’re calling me in West London. I’ve got a houseboat, but I live in Bulgaria.”
Why Bulgaria? How did that come about?
“It’s cheap, there are nice people there, lots of sunshine. It’s such a great place, and the pound goes a long way there.”
Clearly still walking in the sunshine then. Is Sofia home, or are you closer to the sea?
“Veliko Tarnovo.”
Ah, wrong on both counts (that’s around three and a half hours west by car from the capital, my online map meister tells me).
“It’s in the centre, and it was their second capital. It’s surrounded by castles, and it’s just a wonderful place.”
So you’re not a regular down at Hartsdown Park these days, watching The Gate (Buster was the main sponsor of Margate FC in the 1990s and once owned a hotel in the Kent resort called Fatty Towers, specifically catering for larger customers, its features including extra-large beds and baths, closing in 1998 when he moved back to London)?
“Not anymore. Unfortunately, not. I used to enjoy them times.”
Are you watching football out in Bulgaria instead?
Tongue’n’Groove: Buster Bloodvessel at Edinburgh’s Let’s Rock 1980s Music Festival. Photo: Martin Bone
“Erm, at this moment, I’m watching Mexico versus Poland (in the World Cup). But I don’t go to any football games in Bulgaria. I follow my Arsenal.”
So to speak.
“Well, we’ve had a good season this year, so far.”
It certainly seems that way. And what became of your old houseboat in Hackney (Buster licensed the Blue Beat Records name and logo in 1988, running the label from there for a couple of years)?
“Oh, that was a long time ago. It got put back onto the river. It was in my back garden for a long time, then got put back onto the river after a couple of years, I wasn’t on it often, and it sprang a leak and sank, so they had to come along, take it out the water, the cost of that enough to have it cut up. Not a very good ending, unfortunately.”
That’s sad. I bet that had character.
“It did, and we ran all the various labels and bits and pieces from it.”
You were a bit of an entrepreneur in those days.
“I was. I enjoyed mucking about with records.”
When you mentioned the houseboat springing a leak, I had The Clash in my head, Joe Strummer having no fear, ‘London is drowning, and I live by the river’.
“Yeah!”
Do you wince a little at the novelty favourites label your publicists tend to use, or is that part of what you’ve always been about? There’s never been any pretence, it seems.
“No, not really. I think it’s extremely hard to be able to be put in that bracket and survive for a long period, because it’s almost the kiss of death when you get that tag around your neck. But I don’t mind. If people want to think of us as a novelty band, so be it.
“We are a hard band to beat live. I don’t know many bands who can compete with us live. And we’ve played with them all. Some of these great bands you see, we slaughter them on stage.”
Before calling you, I glanced back at a 2004 festive edition of Never Mind the Buzzcocks, the contestants – including Noddy Holder and Phill Jupitus – having to guess your Christmas covers from the intros. I was howling at that, but at the same time admiring the power of your brass section. There’s comedy value, but you’re clearly a tight, hard-working band.
“Well, I suppose the only other band we’ve sort of aimed at that is similar to us would be somebody like the Bonzos, even though we carry more an element of pop. It was more about albums with them.”
As I’m writing a version of this feature-interview primarily for a North West newspaper, are there past performances around Lancashire, Manchester or Liverpool that spring to mind when venues are confirmed on your tours?
“It’s always good for us because of the scooterist connection up in that part of the world. They stick together, and they’ve stuck with us for many years, so I really like playing that area. Manchester, I’ve always had great times going out to dirty old pubs in Salford. It’s a shame they’re almost turning trendy … but not the ones I go to!”
You broke through with the ska revival, but it wasn’t a bandwagon jumping exercise. That love of Blue Beat, ska and reggae was always important to you.
“Very much so. From a very early age, and when we started it was definitely ska and rhythm ‘n’ blues. That’s what we based our style of music on.”
Who turned you on to that? Or was that what you were hearing around your manor?
“It was the area I came from. I come from a Black area, so listening to ska and reggae was easy for me. Then there was the R’n’B connection, which was more listened to by white kids. I enjoyed both, so I wanted to play both. I still liked all the commercial things like Slade though, so always had an ear for that too.”
You tend to prove that with the way you crossed over, not least those early ‘80s hits.
“Yeah, quite a lot of them.”
When you left school in the mid-’70s, was it always going to be a career in music and performance for you? Were there ever any real-world day jobs?
“There were. My first job was as a photographer, and for my second I was relaying tracks on the railway, quite a strenuous job. But at school I got my friends together and said, ‘We’re going to have a band.’ People went off to learn their instrument, then we’d get together and play. We rehearsed first at school. It was in 1975 when we actually got our band together, even though ‘76 is when it officially said we were Bad Manners.
“There was a year before that where we were dreadful, but we were learning, and we enjoyed it. And my great idea at the time was that we would be the best of friends in school, then we could go out, play music in pubs, get paid, meet girls, eat food, drink beer …”
What’s not to love there? And was there a belief that you’d make it big?
“No, never. Not when we started. Definitely not. When we actually started to hit the charts, we couldn’t believe it. It was unbelievable that they would take us seriously, that they’d allow things like ‘Ne-Ne Na-Na Na-Na Nu-Nu’ into the charts … It then became the longest-lasting single that year, to come in and out of the charts. I was so knocked out.”
Lip Up Suction: Buster with Bad Manners at Edinburgh’s Let’s Rock 1980s Festival. Photo: Martin Bone
Was it a bit of a blur, particularly those big chart years from 1980-83, or did you have time to savour some of those mad times?
“Erm, not really a blur, I enjoyed everything that went on and still have good memories of everything that went on. And the band. And one day, when I go to prison, I will actually write a book. But until I go to prison, I won’t.”
Let’s hope you don’t then. There was a lot of touring from the start. Did you hone that stage show as you went along, or were you pretty much a fully-formed act from the start?
“I always believed that I just had to come crazy on stage and outdo everyone I’d seen, vocally. Singers I saw just standing there, I thought, ‘How crap is that?’ I just had to move, and being such a large person, it wasn’t the easiest, but it’s something I thought I’ve got to take to my advantage.”
The first version of the band came to an end around 1987 (after a less commercially successful second period, this time with Portrait Records, ended), but you were soon back in the saddle.
“We never actually ended. It’s just that people left. We reformed straight away. First, I stole members from another band I had – Buster’s Allstars. I then swapped Buster’s Allstars for Bad Manners. I almost trained them up, so when people did finally leave, in ‘87, I thought it’s not such a bad thing, because I’ve got all these young lads who want to play.”
There was also a brief acting career around then too, including roles in 1987 films Out of Order and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, and a part in TV drama Boon in 1990. Did you enjoy those days?
“Erm, you know, my whole existence was to be an actor, I felt. And stage was a very important part of it. I never got any acting parts on stage, but I got a lot of film parts. I don’t think I portrayed anything I wanted to in characters, so I’m very disappointed with my acting career. But never say die, because you never know. I might have to change career at some point, and acting I could do. I still think I’ve not achieved my acting ability.”
Do you remain in touch with the band from those early days?
“Occasionally we meet people, although it seems to be getting less and less as years go on. But no hard feelings with anybody – people just move on. I’ve always respected that, and I encourage my musicians to go off and do whatever they want with whoever they want. To me, it’s like trapping a bird. You can’t do it. I find it’s very important that musicians do what they want to do. I certainly get to be doing what I want to do.”
London Lad: Buster Bloodvessel, still loving the stage life in his 60s, giving it large with Bad Manners
In fact, just before I went to press, I read the sad news that that original Bad Manners harmonica player Winston Bazoomies, aka Alan Sayag, passed away this week, Buster paying tribute to a ‘complete one-off and unmistakable sound.’
Who’s in the band on this tour? And have they been on board for quite a while?
“Most people have been in the band quite a while. I mean, it’s a long list – you really want me to go through them? There’s an A-team, a B-team, and a C-team.”
How many players are we talking?
“I would say 30 players. Maybe more, maybe 35. And I would say most have been about Bad Manners at some point in some position in the last 10 to 15 years. And that doesn’t include abroad. There’s a Japanese Bad Manners, an Australian Bad Manners, an American Bad Manners, a South American Bad Manners … there’s a lot of Bad Manners – ha ha!”
I’m guessing they’re not all standing by the phone waiting for your call.
“They are! They drop everything when I want them to. Because they know it’s such a great gig for them. They have fun, and never is there an argument or quarrel in Bad Manners. Because I’m the money and I look after them all, I don’t allow that to happen. If I see any signs of it, I’m on it. I’ll encourage them to go out and fight each other if they have to. We don’t want bad feeling in the band.”
Do close friends and family still know you as Doug or Douglas, or is that only when you’ve been naughty?
“No, no, no … well, I’m always naughty. But most people still call me Doug … and many people call me Buster – that’s all I’ll ever be known as in the public eye.”
Is there a difference between Buster and Doug? Is it a persona?
“Absolutely. Once he’s on stage, he’s a completely different character.”
Before I let you go, none of us can take anything for granted, not least after these last few years of the pandemic, but you’re not so far off 50 years in music now. Is that a goal to reach? You’ve had a few run-ins with your health (Buster has struggled with morbid obesity and underwent laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery in 2004, his weight dropping from 31 to 13 stone, and in early 2001 fell seriously ill during a concert in Perugia, Italy. What’s more, a recent date in Dublin was cancelled – now rescheduled for late January – late on, Buster having to go into hospital with issues relating to his heart, kept in overnight). Is there a finish line as far as you’re concerned, or will you carry on, instinctively knowing when it’s time to stop?
“There’s definitely not a finish line, but 50 years has been a goal for quite a few years. Passing the 30-year mark, I thought, ‘How long is this going to carry on? And are people still gonna want this?’ But they do, and new markets are still opening for us.
“And I can’t wait for next year, because I believe there are more new markets opening …”
Bad Manners’ December 2022 UK tour dates: Thursday 1 – Komedia, Bath;Friday 2 – Engine Rooms, Southampton; Saturday3 – Brudenell Social Club, Leeds (sold out); Friday9 – Academy 2, Manchester; Thursday15 – Chinnerys, Southend (sold out);Saturday 17 – Electric, Brixton;Wednesday 21 – Arts Club, Liverpool; Thursday 22 – Rock City, Nottingham.Tickets on sale here.
Three Decades: Kate Rusby and her band, out and about for more festive shows. Photo: Mike Ainscoe
After a successful 2022 on the back of her most recent LP, 30: Happy Returns, Kate Rusby is rounding off the year with her latest festive tour, hailed as the start of Christmas for many.
The ‘Barnsley Nightingale’ will be entertaining audiences across the land with her adaptations of carols traditionally sung in the pubs of South Yorkshire at this time of year, her band including husband, Damien O’Kane and the Brass Boys quintet.
And this Mercury Prize nominee and four-time BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards winner clearly knows where she’s at, having sat in the corner of those crowded public houses as a child, feeling the songs she brings to these shows are ‘in her bones’.
For more than 200 years, from late-November to New Year’s Day, North Derbyshire and South Yorkshire communities would congregate on Sunday lunchtimes to belt out their takes on familiar carols, some frowned upon by the church in Victorian times as ‘too happy’.
Kate has long since appealed to fans beyond the folk scene and her Yorkshire roots, headlining in the UK and internationally, performing with major music stars across various genres, with a number of TV, radio and film credits to her name, plus her own label, Pure Records, and festival, Underneath the Stars.
Born into a family of musicians in 1973 in Penistone, in Yorkshire’s West Riding, learning to sing, play guitar, fiddle and piano from a young age, Kate was already playing local folk festivals before a spell as lead vocalist of all-female Celtic folk band The Poozies.
Then, 1995 saw the release of her breakthrough co-release, Kate Rusby & Kathryn Roberts, with a close friend and fellow Barnsley folk singer. And two years later, Kate released her first solo album, Hourglass, going on to acclaim at home and overseas, her family continuing to guide her professional career behind the scenes.
She also joined folk group The Equation with Kathryn, invited by Devonian brothers Sean, Sam and Seth Lakeman, a major deal with WEA following before she went her own way, Cara Dillon taking over.
By late 2004, Kate’s ‘Wandering Soul’ had featured on the soundtrack of BBC television series Billy Connolly’s World Tour of New Zealand, while in a busy 2006 she scored a first mainstream hit, her duet with Ronan Keating on ‘All Over Again’ reaching No.6 on the UK singles chart, contributed to Idlewild lead vocalist Roddy Woomble’s debut solo LP, and saw her cover of The Kinks’ ‘Village Green Preservation Society’ become the theme tune to BBC sitcom Jam & Jerusalem.
It was in 2008 that she released her first album of reinterpreted traditional Christmas songs, with Sweet Bells followed by four more, the most recent, 2019’s Holly Head, only now receiving a vinyl release.
And then I’ll fast forward to 2020, the release of Hand Me Down coinciding with the pandemic lockdown, Kate reinterpreting a number of popular songs, including Taylor Swift’s ‘Shake It Off’, Coldplay’s ‘Everglow’ and The Cure’s ‘Friday I’m In Love’, reaching No.12 in the mainstream UK album chart.
As for this year, May saw the release of 30: Happy Returns, Kate celebrating three successful decades as a professional musician, re-recording self-penned favourites from across her career, her guests on the record including Richard Hawley, KT Tunstall, and Ladysmith Black Mambazo.
That said, perhaps it wasn’t my best opening gambit, letting slip while asking how she was doing that I was calling from Lancashire.
“Lovely. Absolutely brilliant … apart from you said the word Lancashire. Apart from that, it was a good call.”
Is it better or worse to admit I’m originally from Surrey?
“Do you know what? That’s loads better. We’ll go with that!”
Excellent, and if December is around the corner, there must be another Kate Rusby tour coming up.
“Absolutely, and it’s been the start of getting all the Christmas songs out in our house. So yes, even my girls are playing Christmas music constantly. We feel like we’re already in December.”
I have an issue with any publicity about Christmas before my late October birthday, but beyond that I guess I can handle it.
“Well, we like to get Hallowe’en out of the way, then Bonfire Night, but if it’s a year that we’re making a Christmas album, I’ll be doing Christmas music the whole year. I’ll be writing and researching, then recording it in the height of summer. You just have to get on with it.”
There’s something in that. I mean, Slade recorded ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ in searing late summer heat in New York in 1973, part-way through a US east coast tour.
“Yeah, because to have them ready for that end of the year, you’ve got to record them out of season. It takes a long time to get over that thing of everybody saying, ‘No, it’s bad luck if you play Christmas music at this time of year.’ But in our studio, we have this tiny Christmas tree that whenever we’re making a Christmas album, we put in the middle of the floor and we all have to sit round it, get in the Christmas spirit.”
Tickets are going well for this tour, not least selling out the Union Chapel in North London, among the dates rolled over from last year when Damien and another bandmate followed Kate’s lead and caught Covid, both having avoided the dreaded virus until then. But this time, ‘hopefully, fingers crossed, touching word,’ she’s hoping all will go to plan.
“We did a big tour in the spring, through April and May, and then the festival season felt quite lovely and normal, so hopefully … we can’t wait to get back out on the Christmas tour.”
We like to think we know what we get from you these days, not least at this time of year, an intimate show guaranteed, with brass in tow. In fact, when chatting to Katy J. Pearson in late summer about her LP, Sound of the Morning, and a song on there, ‘Storm to Pass’, with added brass, I suggested to her it was ‘Rusby-esque’. As far as I’m concerned that’s an official description now.
“Yes! I will own this – I will own that lovely little brass band thing!”
It’s a great song too, from one of my albums of the year. Maybe you could perform it together at some point. I’d recommend a listen.
“Ah, I will do. I’ll write that down.”
And while I’m talking of LPs by solo female artists, you have my sympathy over the timing of Adele half-inching your album title a few months before you could release your own 30.
“She bloomin’ did! I think she was taping us, or something? Yes, I was absolutely raging. Actually though, we already had a subtitle to ours – Happy Returns.
“The 30 album is in the same ilk as the 10 and 20 albums – a reflective look back – so it was a happy return to songs and it was so lovely to take them all to pieces, do brand new versions of them. But also, it was happy return to touring. So it all just kind of fitted, and hopefully nobody got muddled up and listened to me instead of Adele!”
Well, she could do with the added publicity, a slice of your superior record-buying traffic. And there were a few of your inspirations on that album that you got to record with, not least local-ish, lad, Richard Hawley. Is that someone you’ve kept an eye on, career-wise, for some time?
“Yes, we have mutual friends in and around Sheffield, and he’s asked me to do a thing he does at Christmas in Sheffield every year, featuring three or four bands. But every December we’re always so full on that we’ve not made it, because of our Christmas tour. We had those links already though, and I just love his voice – the most deepest, mellowest, loveliest voice. I was looking for somebody to sing the male part of that song, and it was, ‘Oh, I know the perfect man!’
“I was thinking there’s no way he’s gonna do this, but he said yeah, and he was free, so he came along to the studio. I think he’d been there five minutes when there was this power cut, so we all sat around in the studio, around a candle, singing through the song, him learning it, getting used to it, then the lights came on and he was like, ‘Right, come on, let’s go and do this.’
“He started singing, and we were just in bits – he just hit the nail on the head. Asking me about it, we had this lovely chat, him saying, ‘When I sing somebody else’s song, I like to get right inside somebody’s head, and it’s like going through the front door and having a walk around the house.’ What a lovely day we had. It was brilliant.”
Like yourself, Richard oftens turn up on the soundtrack of a documentary or drama, it seems, offering poignant moments here and there.
“Oh, it’s always lovely when somebody uses your music for something, and quite often you don’t even know it’s happening – it’s only after the fact that you find out. And to have that emotion seen in a different way, how it fits into whatever show they’re using it for …”
I must admit I was relatively late to the party, regarding your back catalogue, working backwards after hearing you duet with Paul Weller on ‘The Sun Grazers’.
“Oh, wow. Yeah, that’s 10 years old now, being on my 20 album. And again, it’s so lovely when you’ve been touring for 30 years, you meet so many other musicians and singers, whether at festivals, or do’s, or award ceremonies or things like that, and mostly you get on great with people. Then, rarely, you leave each other going, ‘Oh, we need to stay friends and record something one day.’ And Paul was like that.
“He came to a folk club gig I did, years ago, and I remember there was a raffle. He even bought raffle tickets. I don’t know what the prize was … it was probably a meat raffle! But he stayed in touch, in and out of what we were doing, and all that. And again, when we got in touch to say, ‘Do you fancy doing it? I know, you’re busy …’ It’s kind of such a small thing, compared to his world, but he accepted and just did it, and it was so lovely, it really worked.”
You suggest a fellowship of friendship between musicians, and that’s something I put recently to Dave Pegg, of Fairport Convention fame, someone who’s worked with many friends and on ex-bandmates’ solo records and so on, playing or producing. And that’s not just a folk music kinship.
“Yeah, I think musicians and singers are fans of other people’s music. If you love music, you mostly love all music … mostly! When you come across somebody else’s music that you really like, it’s natural that you kind of gel in a different way with people. It’s the music that talks then, and it’s a lovely thing to be able to work with other people.”
I like the idea of your 2020 LP, Hand Me Down, reinterpreting in your own style well-known songs – what traditional folk music was about – but in this case what you could argue are the folk songs of today, from Prince to Ray Davies numbers, Taylor Swift to Cyndi Lauper, Robert Smith to Bob Marley.
“Yeah, as I said on the sleeve notes for that album, what we do as folk musicians is take existing songs and reinvent them each time. That’s why there are so many different versions of lots of old folk songs – people have made them their own, changed bits, passed them on, they’ve been all around the world and back again, and that’s something we do day in, day out.
“I had a list of 200 songs in the first instance, possibilities, but wanted to make sure we had ideas for the songs we ultimately chose, to make them a little, make them our own, but hopefully not upset the people who wrote or performed them, or the people that love listening to the original versions. Thankfully, hopefully, we didn’t upset too many people. And on some our girls were with us as well, singing in the studio.”
Will they be part of this tour, outside school commitments?
“There are quite a lot of weekends, so they might come to some of those. Mostly this summer, when we’ve had festivals, they came with us, got up and sung with us, like on ‘Three Little Birds’. So they’ve been earning pocket money. They take after my dad, who managed me for years before he retired from our record company. When we’re in the studio, and also when I’ve asked them to sing at gigs, first thing they say is, ‘Alright, mum, how much?’ And I’m like, ‘Ooh, you’re just like your Grandpa!”
How should we address fan letters these days? To the Barnsley Nightingale, the UK’s First Lady of Folk, or something else? What do your posties know you as?
“Ha! I’ve been called all sorts. I get letters every now and again that just say ‘Kate Rusby, Barnsley’, and they actually find their way, which is lovely!”
Live Presence: Kate Rusby, on the road again, bringing the joy of Christmas to you. Photo: Mike Ainscoe
While born in Craigavon, Northern Ireland, fellow Mercury Prize nominee – and fellow past WriteWyattUK interviewee – Hannah Peel was brought up in Barnsley. Perhaps there’s something in the water around there.
“Oh right! Do you know what, I know so many musicians from around here, and when we were kids there was a session scene around here, people getting together and playing tunes, and the folk clubs around here, and also those South Yorkshire carols being sung in pubs. There’s so much music, and especially that South Yorkshire carol thing is just going so strong. You can’t get in many of the pubs now unless you queue. It’s so lovely that they’re still going strong.”
And you’re bringing that vibe to the nation now, good news for those of us who can’t get into those pubs.
“Yeah, I grew up going to those carol singing sessions, because my parents took us as kids, and we’d be just sat with the other kids, colouring, eating crisps, drinking pop, you know, in the tap room while all the adults were crammed in, singing away. From a really young age we were hearing the songs, learning them without even realising we were. It was only in the first 10 years of touring, talking to people as we toured around Christmas time, saying, ‘Do you know this version of ‘While My Shepherds Watched’?’ and them going, ‘There’s more than one version?’
“It was that that really set the Christmas thing off. ‘Crikey, people really don’t know these songs!’ And it’s in my blood really – part of our family Christmas in the Rusby household, down the years. It was so fabulous to get some of them songs, make them our own, Rusby-fy them, and now we have the brass quintet with us as well. It’s a full band.”
Rusby-fy? I’m claiming Rusby-esque, but you can have Rusby-fy. That’s great.
“Thank you very much! Also, we’ve been doing that tour for, I don’t know, 17/18 years, something like that, and we’ve done five Christmas albums to date, but there are still so many songs to go over. And it’s so lovely when we go back to theatres now, even really far down south, and they’re singing choruses back at us from these South Yorkshire carols. That makes me very happy!”
You’re clearly making an impact. Do you see your true arrival as the day debut album Hourglass was released in 1997, when you reached the UK top 40 for the first time with Awkward Annie a decade later, got even higher with 20 in 2012, or before all that? Was there a moment you thought, ‘I can do this!’ or ‘We’re doing this!’?
“It was really organic. When I look back, I really believe music chose me. I grew up in a musical household, my parents both sing and play, there were always instruments, they were teaching us songs when we were young, and me, my older sister and younger brother all started the fiddle when we were six or seven. But the stories in the songs are the thing that intrigued me. I always found them like mini-films, and we had them for bedtime stories.
“When I was growing up, I remember GCSE and A-level time, everybody seeming to know what they were going to do. I was kind of just drifting about, thinking, ‘How do you know though? Does it come to you in the night?’ But I went to performing arts college in Barnsley, did a BTech in performing arts, majored in drama. I did a bit of music, some dancing, and technical – my dad was a sound engineer – so thought, ‘I’ll have a go at that.’ I wasn’t very good at all, but loved my time there, and it really gave me a confidence to stand on a stage and play and sing.
“It was while I was there that a friend running Holmfirth Folk Festival called at my folks’ house, and I was sat in the garage at this piano. I’d begged mum and dad for a piano, and dad bought it from this pub – it absolutely stank of cigarettes and booze, mum like, ‘No, that has to stay in the garage,’ but I loved it in there, because the reverb was brilliant.
“Anyway, she came around to visit, stuck her head in the garage and said, ‘Ooh, you’re getting quite good at that.’ I used to make up chords to songs I made. She said, ‘Do you fancy playing at the festival? Bring your piano, your keyboard and guitar, come and do us a spot.’ I kind of nodded, and soon as she left the garage was going, ‘What on earth am I doing?’
“But I went along and did it, played for about half an hour, was nearly sick with fear, came off and went, ‘I’m never doing this again.’ Half an hour later, somebody from another festival came up and said, ‘Do you fancy playing our festival in a month’s time?’ And again, I said, ‘Oh, yeah, alright,’ then told myself, ‘Shurrup, stop saying yes!’ And it just went like that – every gig I was doing, somebody else would say, ’Do you fancy doing a slot at our folk club?’ It just grew and grew, really steady.
“Then we made our first album, me and Kathryn Roberts, the first on our record label. At the time, my dad was looking for something new to do. He was lecturing at Leeds College of Music, and the politics of it had all kind of gone a bit downhill for him.
“A good friend from Barnsley, Dave Burland, a folk singer – Uncle Dave, we called him – was saying, ‘Just be careful, if you’re going to make an album, don’t be signing anything,’ and ‘They’re going to rob them girls.’ So we decided to set up our own label, and never looked back. With each gig, we would go back to the same town, and it grew and grew, really steadily, really gently. Then we moved on, me and Kathryn. She carried on with The Equation, I left and went solo. I’m like the least ambitious person in the world. My dad always said, ‘Can you not just be a bit more ambitious?’
“But at every stage, we’ve felt so lucky, and kept it in the family. My mum did the accounts for the record company for years, my sister now runs the record company and has worked for us 20-odd years, and my younger brother Joe did sound for me until recently. So really, it’s our little family thing, and 30 years later, we’re like, ‘Oh, crikey, this is so lovely that we can still be doing it.”
I chatted this time last year to fellow Mercury Prize nominee and BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards winner Seth Lakeman, and wondered if you felt those days were as much an apprenticeship for you as him? Were you taking it all in back then?
“He’s a bit younger, and I’d already been doing some solo stuff, then ended up getting together with Kathryn, doing duo gigs. There were the three boys, and I think quite a lot of gigs and venues said to them, ‘We don’t want to book you, because you don’t have a singer.’ Back then, Seth wasn’t singing, he was just playing.
Jolly Hollyday: Kare Rusby, serving up Christmas much of the year round. Photo: David Lindsay
“They rang, asking if I fancied joining the band. I said, ‘Possibly, but I’ve just started this duo with Kathryn, and I’m really into it, really loving it. I don’t really want to split that up … but we could both possibly come up – have two singers, see how it goes.’ They said, ‘Absolutely, that would be amazing.’ So we joined up with them, but then it went down a different route for me. I wasn’t enjoying the music at the time, nor some of the company.
“A five-album deal is like so many years, and they were laying all that stuff on thick that I’ve never believed, being brought up in Barnsley. You know, ‘You can have Bjork’s photographer and these people …’ I’m just sat there, going, ‘This is not for me, and I don’t believe you!’ I chose the folk side for me, and I’m so pleased.
“Kathryn decided to continue, and she’s had such a lovely time, she married Sean, and they’ve got two girls. I still see her every now and again, bumping into her at a festival up in the lakes recently, had a right good chinwag, catching up. It was lovely to see her. It’s funny how things go in different directions.”
Speaking of past working relationships, is Ronan Keating still in touch? Might we see you co-present The One Show when Alex Jones is off?
“Ha! I don’t think so. Do you know what, Ronan is somebody I haven’t really kept in touch with over the years. I’ve still got numbers for him and his manager, but … It was such a privilege to have a peer into that kind of world though. You know, that pop music world was amazing. I really enjoyed it.”
And when this tour’s done and dusted following your December 21st finale in Nottingham, where will you spend Christmas? I’m guessing home is still near Barnsley.
“Absolutely. We live in a village where Rusbys have dwelt for generations and generations, and there’s still lots of my family in that village. Christmas Eve is mum and dad’s wedding anniversary, so we always get together then, and because we’re all in the same village, we start at one person’s house, then everybody goes to the pub, we have dinner at somebody else’s, then back to the pub, then call in at somebody else’s if we haven’t all fallen asleep.
“There’s not one household that has to host the whole thing. It’s great. We sing all day, including those South Yorkshire carols, and I just love Christmas. Also, it’s my birthday in December. It’s my favourite time of year.”
How long are you off this year? Is it straight back to work afterwards?
“I think this time around, when the girls go back to school in January, we’ll carry on with the new Christmas album we’re working on. So we’re gonna be doing Christmas until June! Ha!”
I was going to ask if there’s a possibility of you being Christmas’d out, but I’m guessing not.
“It’s never gonna happen! I absolutely love it.”
As for the rest of 2023, maybe you could rush out your 40 LP nine years early, get your own back on Adele, get in there first while she’s swanning around in Las Vegas.
“Ha! That’s exactly what I should do. That is a good idea. And I’ll patent the name!”
Get it done.
“We’re gonna start the Christmas album, and there are a couple of festivals in January, like Celtic Connections in Glasgow. I’ve played that for years and really love going back, and we’re doing an ‘and friends’ gig at the end of this 30 celebration, so there will be lots of people playing with us, including Jason Manford. We’ve known Jason a few years, I was on a track of his on his album, and he was at our festival this year. He’s absolutely brilliant, what an amazing voice. Jason’s doing it, and Eddi Reader, and Beth Nielsen Chapman. There’s also Trad Fest in Dublin in January. Then we’re back in the studio, and we’re touring all the way through April and May, then there are the festivals … and before you know it, it’s time to be rehearsing for Christmas again!”
Probably recording your next but one Christmas album by then.
“Absolutely, and on it goes! All the happiness. And if we’re lucky enough to keep going, that will do me fine.”
Kate Rusby’s December 2022 dates: 9th – Bath, Forum; 10th – Birmingham, Town Hall (matinee and evening shows); 11th – Liverpool, Philharmonic; 12th – London, Islington, Union Chapel; 14th – Bradford, St George’s Hall; 15th – Gateshead, Sage; 17th – Cambridge, Corn Exchange; 18th – York, Barbican; 20th – London, Croydon, Fairfield Halls; 21st – Nottingham, Royal Concert Hall. For ticket details and all the latest from Kate, visit her websitewww.katerusby.com. You can also follow her via Facebook at officialkaterusby, Twitter at @katerusby, and Instagram at @katerusby, with examples of her work via YouTube at katerusbyofficial.
A look at my (mostly trusty) list of live shows attended reminds me it was 37 years ago this week (November 17th, 1985) that I first chanced upon The Mighty Lemon Drops, supporting That Petrol Emotion at The Agincourt in Camberley, Surrey.
The very first Buzz Club show (before Jo Bartlett’s club night moved to Aldershot’s West End Centre, where I became a regular), I was there for the headliners, having seen them several times that summer and autumn around the capital. But I was impressed enough to keep tabs on their Black Country openers and caught them again in the same support role with the Petrols at the Klubfoot, Hammersmith Clarendon on Valentine’s night in ’86, a cracking bill also including The Wolfhounds.
It’s tricky to come up with specifics all these years on, but what you got was more or less always the same with that no-nonsense four-piece, namely Paul Marsh (vocals), David Newton (guitars), Tony Linehan (bass), and Keith Rowley (drums). There was clearly an Echo & the Bunnymen meets The Teardrop Explodes vibe atop a Velvet Underground backdrop, and they seemed effortlessly cool, the short-cropped hair and all-black, ‘60s biker leather chic as dependable as the guitars, bass and drums were powerful.
By the end of that breakthrough year their star had definitely ascended, my next Droppies sighting involving them topping the bill at the Astoria in central London, 36 years ago next week, every line and riff from their Happy Head debut LP – released that September – already firmly etched upon me.
I next caught them with the wondrous Stars of Heaven closer to my patch at the University of Surrey in Guildford in May ’87, by which time they’d got closer than ever to a mainstream hit – ‘Out of Hand’ stalling at No.66 on the UK chart – and saw them again the following February at the same venue, as at The Astoria with The Wild Swans, this time for the release of second LP, World Without End.
I enjoyed that album too, and dutifully bought third LP, Laughter. But I’d already moved on, and it never quite craved the same intimate attention from me … as was the case nationally, more’s the pity. I soon lost touch, but I’m listening again now via a quality new five-CD Cherry Red Records anthology out next week, a great excuse to track down and talk old times and new via Zoom with California-based David Newton, who co-wrote the songs on the first two records with Tony Linehan, stepping up some more from there.
David’s been in America since 1995 – ‘28 years in January’ – but is back at least once a year, give or take the odd global pandemic, and plans on returning next month, ‘fingers crossed.’ What does he miss most about his English and Black Country roots?
“Oh, man, lots of things. I lived in Wolverhampton until 1990, got married in ‘89 and we later moved to London. I was in South-West London until I moved here. When I go back now, I still have a lot of friends in the Midlands, but my social life became a bit – I hate to use the word – London-centric. A lot of people I knew ended up moving there. I still have friends and family in Wolverhampton though, so even on a shorter trip we’ll put in a daytrip to Birmingham.”
The new Inside Out boxset anthology celebrates their 1985/1990 output, featuring 97 tracks in all, including Happy Head, World Without End and Laughter, plus non-album singles, B-sides, bonus tracks, US radio mixes, previously-unreleased demos and rare session recordings, this guitar-driven band, somewhere between post-punk and neo-psychedelic, having appeared on the NME’s hugely influential C-86 compilation before signing with Geoff Travis’ new Chrysalis subsidiary Blue Guitar.
California Dreamer: David Newton, in America for 27 years now, but still a Wolverhampton lad at heart
Happy Head, ‘a collection of uncluttered songs with a chiming Rickenbacker sound’, was described by Sounds as one of the 50 best albums of 1986. I had it far higher. Then came the more mature World Without End, which peaked at No. 33 in the UK and reached No. 1 on the US college chart, preceded by further near-hit ‘Inside Out’. As for Laughter, that was described as ‘by far the band’s best’, their sound continuing to evolve, the well-crafted vocal arrangements and sophisticated musicianship duly noted, as well as plenty more memorable melodies.
The latest anthology includes extensive sleeve notes compiled with assistance from David, who also recently contributed to Whatever Happened to the C86 Kids? by Nige Tassell, something else bound to generate renewed interest. In those sleevenotes, David also mentions JBs in Dudley, and I get the impression he was visiting Birmingham for his music fix from a young age.
“Yeah, I first went to JBs when I was 15. I was still in secondary school and started a fanzine with a mate of mine. I really liked the Mo-dettes, they were playing there, and I was like, ‘I wonder if I can find a way to interview the Mo-dettes for my fanzine?’ and somehow be able to get into JBs, under-age. I somehow had the nerve to write to the Mo-dettes manager, and they put me on the guestlist. That made me doubly nervous – not only interviewing these pop stars, also getting into an 18-and-over club. But I managed to pull both off, and from then on it was rare on a weekend not to visit JBs. I got to see so many live bands.”
That was certainly a venue that always seemed to be in the NME gig guide, so important to us in those pre-worldwide web days.
“I know! It’s amazing how we functioned without the internet! I think about that quite often.”
We talked some more about David’s days around his adopted Roehampton patch, me mentioning my own visits to nearby Putney’s Half Moon, seeing the likes of Geno Washington, fond memories stoked of trips up the A3 from Guildford.
“We were looking around Putney, but it was a bit out of our price range. We had friends that lived around Mortlake and Barnes, but Roehampton was an interesting place, a small village, with one of the first big project council estates, in a beautiful area, walking distance to Richmond. We were able to find this gorgeous 1800s property converted into flats. And that was where we stayed.
“The band was still in existence until the end of ‘92 / beginning of ’93, with Marcus {Williams, the bass player who took over from Tony Linehan and featured on the third LP} also ending up in Roehampton, with the others in the Midlands.”
I recall Marcus in Julian Cope’s band at one stage and have it in mind he had a spell in The Blue Aeroplanes, another band I loved.
“We both were! The Lemon Drops were still going but we had the same management. I liked the band anyway and we knew them, and in early 1992 there was a bit of a falling out and half of the band kind of went away but had scheduled gigs lined up, so they scrambled together, put together this emergency line-up, myself and Marcus in there.
“Another band with the same management company was The Katydids, fronted by Susie Hug, and she also featured, so you had this bunch of friends who all knew each other. It was a great time, even though there was work to be done.”
I saw The Katydids twice, first supporting Jim Jiminee at The Marquee in May 1989, then two years later – July 11th, 1991 – at Camden Underworld … supporting The Blue Aeroplanes, that very same line-up David mentioned. But I only checked that out later. The ‘Planes were a visual delight too, I suggested.
“Ha! There was this one concert we did, at the Town and Country Club {later The Forum}, which was filmed at the time and on TV. I didn’t even know. I was looking at the internet one day, saw it came out on DVD a couple of years ago. It’s got me, Marcus and Susie on.”
The sets always seemed to end with a gloriously chaotic version of Tom Verlaine’s ‘Breaking in my Heart’, I recall.
“That’s it, and Pat Fish, who sadly passed away quite recently, features on that too. And Adam {Seymour} from The Katydids, who ended up in The Pretenders.”
The second time I saw the Droppies live, in February ’86, was the last That Petrol Emotion show before heading to Rockfield Studios, South Wales to record Manic Pop Thrill. I’m guessing you weren’t far behind with your debut LP (also recorded at that famed Monmouth studio).
“We’d not got a record deal at that point. But Dan Treacy had put out our Like an Angel EP on his label, Dreamworld.”
That was December ’85, shortly after I first saw them in Camberley. And funnily enough, it was at one of Dan’s promotions upstairs at the Enterprise in Chalk Farm, one of his regular Room at the Top gigs, that I saw my second ever Petrols show that previous July, before I’d even heard of your band.
“That’s how we met. And we owe a lot to Dan. When the band first started in Wolverhampton, we had nothing. We were rank outsiders. We had no management, no record label, nobody looking over us. It was just me and Tony, Paul and Keith. I just sent some tapes out – one to Dan, when it {Dreamworld} was still Whaam! Records; one to Alan McGee at Creation; and one to Martin Whitehead at Subway. Creation as good as passed. Martin Whitehead said, ‘I really like it. I haven’t really got a label at the moment but let me think.’ And Dan got back and said, ‘Yeah, I really like it!’
“He didn’t offer us a deal at that point, but said, ‘I run a club in London, do you want to come down and play?’ We stayed at Dan and his girlfriend Emily’s flat in Clapham, had two gigs. We supported the TVPs on the Friday {at Deptford Crypt}, then Saturday night at Room at the Top, supporting The Membranes.”
Ah, the one where the floor collapsed!
“Yeah! Haha! And that got written about in the NME by The Legend – Everett True. Completely out of the blue. We played this gig, packed up our gear, drove back to Wolverhampton, and two weeks later, still living at home with my Mum at the time, 20 years old, the phone rang, and it was Dan, saying, ‘You’re not gonna believe this, but there’s a review in the NME of your gig!’ The Legend with this amazing review.
“And that was the start of it. The phone started ringing, all these record companies ringing up, us thinking, ‘You’ve not even heard us!’ We weren’t arrogant, but we were level-headed really. We just thought, ‘No, they can come and see us live.’
“That gig was also the day of Live Aid. Tony had a Volkswagen caravanette camper van, and Dan let us park outside his flat, so we slept in the van. I remember in the morning Dan woke us up, he’d made us all a tea, and said, ‘Do you want to come in? Live Aid’s on. Adam Ant’s on. So we went into Dan and Emily’s flat and watched Live Aid before the gig that night.”
Apparently, Dan changed the label name from Whaam! Records to Dreamworld after a request from a ‘similarly monikered chart-topping duo.’ And while I’m adding a little trivia, Dan’s girlfriend Emily Brown was later with indie band The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughters. As for The Mighty Lemon Drops, it’s fair to say they hadn’t been together too long by then.
“Only March, really.”
Schoolmates David and Paul had met Tony and Keith at JBs, the latter pair already playing together in The Pow, a ‘raucous post-punk power trio’. Meanwhile, David was in high school punk bands The Lowest Class and Gang Warfare. From there, Paul, David, Tony and drummer Andy Barker formed Active Restraint, their sole single released on Wolverhampton’s The Sticky Label, garnering airplay from John Peel and Kid Jensen on BBC Radio 1, David also moonlighting with labelmates The Wild Flowers, making two singles and an album before regrouping with Paul and Tony in early ’85, becoming the Sherbet Monsters with the addition of drummer Martin Gilks, who was replaced by Keith that August, but ultimately saw success with The Wonder Stuff.
While only embarking on their first UK tour (supporting March Violets) in March ’86, they had their first NME cover by the end of May (Adrian Thrills calling them ‘probably the hottest unsigned band in Britain … practically every leading label in the country falling over its chequebook in a bid to sign them’), and the following month made their Glastonbury debut on The Other Stage, played the NME’s Rock Week at the ICA, and recorded BBC Radio 1 sessions for John Peel and Richard Skinner.
The industry exec race was on by then, leading to those twin Blue Guitar and Sire deals in July, the subsequent recording of the debut LP, then the release and tie-in tour, the UK stint culminating in that November headline show I witnessed at the Astoria, followed by European dates, an amazing year rounded off by a festive homecoming at The Powerhouse, Birmingham, with fellow locals Pop Will Eat Itself and Balaam and the Angel. But David played all that down.
“Well, we were a little careful. It seems a short space of time now, but when you’re younger, it seems like a long spell. We didn’t jump into it. We had a harder time finding management, because we had all these record companies circling around us. We had one person who didn’t work out, then had all these managers and people circling, and felt, ‘Enough already!’
“Eventually, two friends of ours putting on gigs at Bay 63, who put us on a few times and we got on really well with – same age as us, they were music fans – one day came up to us when we were playing a gig, and said, ‘We’ve never actually managed a band before, but …’ One was working at Rough Trade, helping Geoff Travis out, and we actually liked these guys.
“We had this thing about whether we could sit in a van, drive from London to Glasgow with this or that guy. But these, we could tolerate them. Eventually, our record label sorted it out, around June/ July, a collaboration between Rough Trade and Chrysalis, with a different American deal signed with Sire Records.
“Geoff Travis was at our early gigs, and just the nicest guy, and it didn’t feel like he was a record company type. That was what was great. There wasn’t any bullshit or lingo. It was lovely having him as our go-between, someone we could talk to. We could tell him what we would feel, and he would translate it for the record company. It was perfect. And it was great in America, with a lot of the people at Sire Records. I’m still friends with a lot, either college or alternative radio types. They weren’t record company bigwigs. We had the best of both worlds really. Chrysalis Records were good but more corporate, more business-like. I can’t even remember the names of people there. But Geoff was our person to deal with all that.”
I was only at Bay 63 a fortnight before that first Buzz Club date, seeing That Petrol Emotion … although it was far later that I realised it was the same Acklam Hall location – later renamed Subterrania, where I saw both The Wedding Present and That Petrol Emotion (February and March 1990, respectively), and then Neighbourhood – where The Clash played two shows at Christmas 1979.
“Well, being an old punk, I knew!”
And it was the venue where Crisis, from my hometown, played a rather infamous Rock Against Racism show exactly six months prior to The Clash’s visits, a riot following – some dodgy Nazi skinhead types trying to gain admittance, wanting to confront the politically outspoken headliners.
“Ah, I still have a few Crisis records, ‘No Town Hall’ and ‘Holocaust’, and a mini-LP.”
While I was born in ’67, too young to catch all that, I was fairly well placed to catch the C-86 indie movement, including yourselves. And while I didn’t follow your later days so closely, I was pleased to see your continued success, not least Stateside. I get the impression John Peel felt you were too big for him by then though.
“I think so … I mean, that’s kind of a normal thing … like a fanzine thing.”
They build you up then knock you down?
“That is true. We did a Peel session {August ‘86}, but were a little bit known by that time. The first BBC sessions we did was for Andy Kershaw {Manchester, November ’85, around the time I first saw them}, and Janice Long {Golders Green, London, January ’86, with another in April ‘87} …”
There were also sessions for Richard Skinner, Simon Mayo and Nicky Campbell. But how did that Peel date come around …
“We went to a Mary Chain gig at Hammersmith Palais, Peel was there, and I think we just went up to him and asked. I think he liked that {approach}.”
As for Happy Head, produced by Stephen Street, that was in my top dozen or so LPs of all time back then.
“Oh wow!”
I felt it was a great document of where you were at and of what I saw in you at the time. Instant nostalgia, in a sense.
“That’s good to hear. We weren’t sure at the time. Looking back now, I can see Stephen Street did a really good job. We’d done our first record, the Like an Angel EP, in a matter of hours, so were a bit worried when we did the record with Stephen. His job was to capture the energy but also make it palatable for … well, I don’t really want to go there. At the time, we were like, ‘He’s toned us down, took the edges off. But looking back, it’s a good balance.”
Definitely. And ‘Like an Angel’ … what a debut single. No.34 in John Peel’s Festive Fifty that next year, it certainly stands the test of time, and it’s also among the tracks featured on another great new Cherry Red compilation, C85, celebrating the best of the burgeoning indie scene from 1985, that particular 45 recorded for £96 at Electro Rhythm in Hornsey, North London, using vintage equipment, a crack in Keith’s snare drum helping create its big sound (apparently).
And because you mentioned Janice Long, I still love your cover on that first session for her of The Teardrop Explodes’ ‘When I Dream’. Is that on this compilation too?
“All the Dreamworld stuff is on there, and even earlier stuff, including the first recordings we ever did, with original drummer Martin Gilks, who went on to The Wonder Stuff. Keith, the Mighty Lemon Drops drummer, and Tony were in a band before the Lemon Drops, with Keith our first choice of drummer, but he had a job at the time, and had a lot of other things going on. Martin was recommended by a friend and together we recorded five songs in one studio and a couple of others in another, so put together a mini-cassette album … all we could afford.
“Then when we started doing alright, Keith was kind of wishing he’d been in the band. We got word of that and actually got him in the band. Thankfully it didn’t take Martin long to find The Wonder Stuff, so everything came off for everyone.”
‘When I Dream’ is not on the compilation actually. Perhaps it’s a licensing issue. Ah well, you’ll find it online. And if 1986 was an eye-opener, the following year saw the momentum continue, starting with a 27-date North American jaunt with The Chameleons and that fresh crack at the charts with ‘Out of Hand’, its promo video directed by Derek Jarman. The second Janice Long session followed, then that Spring tour and Glastonbury Pyramid stage debut, before they returned to Rockfield, this time working with Tim Palmer on that second LP.
The Droppies opened 1988 with a Simon Mayo session at London’s Maida Vale, before ‘Inside Out’ was released, as seen on BBC TV’s Saturday morning show, Going Live, another major tour ensuing, another ending with prestigious Astoria and Powerhouse bows as World Without End grazed the top 40, doing even better stateside, the year’s other highlights including dates in Brazil and high-profile arena shows supporting The Mission.
As 1989 dawned, they were back at work with Tim Palmer again, Tony soon moving on and David stepping up to primary songwriter, Marcus on board by the time they regrouped at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios, Laughter not far off, the LP and accompanying singles promoted by more live dates, culminating this time in two sell-outs at London’s Dominion Theatre, a few days before that Nicky Campbell session, the ‘80s almost done.
While Laughter failed to chart in the UK, again they scored a US college radio chart-topper, also entering the Billboard 200 in March 1990, a four-month 100-plus Laughtour following. But on our side of the Atlantic the water turned cold, the Chrysalis/Blue Guitar deal done, two further LPs released by Sire largely ignored here, the band calling it a day after a late ‘92 US farewell tour. And while a December 2000 one-off reunion back in Wolverhampton, with Tony back in the fold, followed, there was nothing more forthcoming … until now, I guess.
So what about the rest of the band, David? Are you all still in touch?’
“Yeah, mainly I see Tony, who lives in London, and Keith, who lives in Birmingham. I haven’t seen Paul in person for a while. The last gig we’d played {pre-2000} was in ’92, and that seemed a long time … but now it’s been another 22 years!”
So this anthology marks 30 years since you originally called it a day.
“Erm … wow, yeah … it is …”
Will there be another reunion gig? Are you saying ‘never say never’ in a Noddy Holder style?
“It is ‘never say never’, you don’t know, but I don’t think at the moment … just because of the logistics. But we get offered things all the time, festivals like Shiine On, and something last year with Ned’s Atomic Dustbin. They were playing the Civic Hall and were asking if we’d like to do a kind of co-headline thing.”
I never really thought of you and The Wonder Stuff and Ned’s being part of the same set, until you reminded me about that link with Martin Gilks.
“And the Poppies.”
Yes, Pop Will East Itself too, of course.
“Again, there was that JBs, Dudley connection. They were regulars at the same time.”
I saw the Poppies at Glastonbury in ’87. But I missed you.
“We did it twice – in ’86 on the second stage … I think the Petrols were on around the same time. The thing I remember about that time was a game of football – a Go! Discs team, with Billy Bragg and Andy Kershaw, versus The Mighty Lemon Drops and Friends. They were really good. Then we did it again in ’87 on the big stage. That was crazy, but a tough one – we went on before Husker Du. Can you imagine that? I think we went on after World Party, and New Order headlined that same stage.”
That reminds me why I missed you. A smashed windscreen in nearby Castle Cary on Friday evening meant we turned up too late to see anyone but New Order that evening.
“I do remember that New Order flew in by helicopter. Fucking hell – punk rock!”
That weekend marked the first time I saw both The Blue Aeroplanes and future Blue Aeroplanes bandmate Rodney Allen, who opened the Pyramid stage set on Saturday, a truly memorable moment, just this young lad with a guitar, playing to thousands upon thousands.
Anyway, going back to the beginning, you and Paul were at school together, yeah?
“Yes, Parkfield Secondary. I got to know him when I was about 12. He was a year above. We all got to know each other, these punks, really. We weren’t hardcore, but living in the USA since ’95 it’s hard to kind of explain how it was then, with bands like Buzzcocks in the charts, on Top of the Pops and all that. In secondary school there were kids into punk and kids into Rush and AC/DC, and older kids still into Northern Soul.
“One of the great things about growing up in the UK at that time, another thing you can’t convey here, is that you were into everything. I used to buy Northern Soul records and the first records I bought were by Slade, Sweet and Mud. And soul was big, and reggae too. It was great, this mixture of all these kinds of things. The other thing in the States is that radio’s kind of formatted here. You get a rock station, a soul station, a pop/top-40 station … With the BBC, you got a real cross-section.”
Were you a Wolves fan amid all that?
“Absolutely! They’re not doing too good this season though. It’s great that they’re doing better now than when I first moved here though, when they were in the second division. People would hear my accent and say, ‘Hey buddy, who’s your team?’ I’d say Wolves, and it was, ‘Say that again?’ I’d say it again, and they’d be like, ‘Manchester United?’ But finally, I can now say it, and they’ll know.”
We’ll talk more on this at some point, but I guess Slade were important to you growing up, flying the flag for your hometown.
“Well yeah, and growing up in Wolverhampton, you always knew somebody that knew someone connected with Slade. It was great that they were kind of like our band and one of the biggest bands in the country at that time … And when I was a little older, in the early ‘80s, there was this great pub by us called The Trumpet, in Bilston. It was actually The Royal Exchange but had that nickname because there was a lot of live jazz in there – quartets would play there. And Noddy was a regular. You’d go in on a Tuesday night, and he’d be having a pint. You’d never see him sitting down, he was always just leaned up against the bar, and you’d just be on nodding terms. That was up until he moved to Manchester. When they got big again in ‘82 or ‘83, you’d still see Noddy in there.”
Were you playing guitar at school? Or did you pick that up later?
“I was given one of my uncle’s old guitars when I was a kid. Two strings on it! Me and my neighbour across the street had a pretend band in the early ‘70s, and I used to make pretend records out of bits of cardboard. We were originally called Pop Slop!
“By the time I’d progressed to having actually put six strings on it, I know it sounds like a cliche, but I saw The Adverts on Top of the Pops doing ‘Gary Gilmore’s Eyes’ and realised I could actually play that! So me and some mates at school formed a punk band, The Lowest Class. Then we changed our name to Urban Kids after the song by Chelsea, and played a gig at our secondary school. That was like 1978, my first proper gig, and it was packed – 150/200 kids. We did all our own songs and covered a Skids song, ‘TV Stars’.”
They still do that to this day.
“Ah, but we changed the words in the verses to all of our teachers!”
What you said about The Adverts – that’s what it was all about, surely. Punk took away the pretentiousness – you felt you could play those songs, which wouldn’t have necessarily been the case if you were copying Steve Howe from Yes or Steve Hackett from Genesis. You’d see bands like The Clash and think, ‘I reckon I could play that!’
“You took the words out of my mouth. Yeah, and punk really made sense, you know. The first band I was really into that got me into punk was early Eddie and the Hot Rods. It was like a sped-up Dr Feelgood. I bought the Hot Rods’ Live at the Marquee EP with my pocket money, summer of ’76, and used to buy records from the out-of-chart box in Woolworth’s, Bilston. I think I got 50p a week pocket money, and 7-inches were 25p, leaving 25p. I bought ‘Anarchy in the UK’ from the ex-chart box for 25p, and was really disappointed because it wasn’t as fast as Eddie and the Hot Rods! But that was my introduction to what became punk.”
Did you know the basic chords, and just tried to play along?
“Yeah, when you’re younger, you’re hearing the entire thing but unable to differentiate between the instruments that are making that noise. But punk clearly made me realise, ‘That’s the guitar … that’s the bass ….’ It kind of broke it all down. It was great. Now you hear about all these bands that met at these music colleges.”
It’s a different world, of set lessons and YouTube tutorials and stuff like that.
“Yeah … the idea of being taught that at school. But I wouldn’t change a thing. I think it was healthier then. That’s why you get all these generic indie bands now, that all sound the same – they probably all went to the same music school with the same teacher that taught them the same bloody generic indie rubbish!
“My one attempt at keeping up with what’s going on in modern music – my wife works in the music industry for a TV network – is going to South by Southwest {SXSW} in Austin, Texas, each year. It’s great for me – I see like a year’s worth of 30/40 different bands and artists in five days, although the last couple of years have been harder because of the pandemic.”
Home for David and wife Bekki is Burbank, a suburb of Los Angeles, ‘a 10-to-15 minute drive from Hollywood.’
“It’s great, just out of town. It doesn’t feel that much different to living in the UK, being a suburban street. There’s a film and TV and music industry around here, but it’s far enough away that it’s not like living in Hollywood or downtown Los Angeles, although things have changed in the 27 years I’ve been here. Burbank is its own little city, with its own shops and local pub.”
As we’re talking, I spot a framed photo of Blur on his wall.
“You know the reason I’ve got that? It’s actually taken at a cafe in Wolverhampton. My wife saw it, and funnily enough one of their first gigs outside London was at JBs, Dudley, before ‘She’s So High’. Now and again, you’d walk into JBs to see a relatively unknown or heard band, and it was one of those gigs where you thought, ‘Wow, they’re really good!’ I had no idea they’d become as big as they did though.
“I don’t see as many bands now as I used to, but I saw a lot of bands and they had everything. They had the songs, they sounded good, and they were good looking lads and could fucking play. They had energy, Damon Albarn climbing up the PA. And he was still playing that Farfisa organ. They reminded me of … I don’t know, Radio Stars, the way Andy Ellison used to play, and they had the energy of a punk band. My missus was with me at the time, and we both thought, ‘Fucking hell, that was great!”
How did you and Bekki meet?
“At a Primal Scream gig at ULU in 1987. Bekki was 18. I was 22. She was going to school in London. She’d just moved there, she’d only been there about six months. We played gigs with the Primals, and I was living in Wolverhampton at the time. It was a Friday night. The Lemon Drops had a couple of days off, so me, Keith, the drummer, and a couple of our mates decided to go down to London, went to see Primal Scream, and I just bumped into Bekki. I had no idea she was American – originally from Los Angeles – and it turned out she knew somebody I knew. That’s now 35 years ago. She actually moved up to Wolverhampton for a while.”
As you do. It wasn’t like Brix moving in with Mark E. Smith, then? That major culture shock of an LA lass experiencing Prestwich, Greater Manchester?
“Ha! It wasn’t quite that … and I didn’t quite have Mark E. Smith’s lifestyle!”
I’m reminded of Brix’s tale, enquiring on her arrival where the milk was for a cuppa, Mark telling her it was kept outside on the window ledge.
“Well, we didn’t have a fridge until the mid-‘70s. I think the neighbours came round and had a look!”
These days there’s Dave Newton and the Mighty Angels. Is that you keeping your hand in, gig-wise?
“I haven’t done any gigs for a little bit, but because of my day job really. When we moved here, we got this house, and there’s a two-car garage out back. I didn’t have a job, but was always into the recording side, watching what the producers of the Lemon Drops were working with. I used to do my own demos at home, had a little 4-track. I was always intrigued by that and turned our garage into a recording studio, recording my mate’s band around 1997. That turned out all right, they released it, then told somebody else, and before I knew it, I ended up producing bands.
“That was 25 years ago, I was scraping a living doing that, and I’ve got to work with a few bands, mostly Los Angeles based, a couple of them picked up. Heavenly Recording picked up The Little Ones, and they did quite well in the UK, and also The Soft Pack. We both knew Jeff {Barrett} from the label when he was putting gigs on around ‘86.”
I loved Happy Head, liked the follow-up and its singles, but for whatever reason lost touch with the band from there. So I’ll be interested to go back to Laughter now, see what I make of it. It does seem clear though that you became bigger in America than in the UK. As if they ‘got you’ more.
“I think so. And by the time Laughter came out, the climate had changed so much – the dance culture element really kind of merged with the guitar and pop thing. It’s funny really – The Stone Roses would come to our gigs. I remember them being on the guestlist when we played the International in Manchester. There was an element of what they were doing that wasn’t really that different from what we were doing. But we never really embraced the dance culture element the way a lot of those bands did. And even C86 bands like The Soup Dragons did.”
A fair point. In fact, listening back to Happy Head before finishing this feature, I hear the influence they may have had on Inspiral Carpets. And like many bands of their era, they missed out on the adulation that would surely have been afforded them if they were around slightly later and seen as part of the Brit Pop phenomenon.
“You don’t know, that’s the way it is, but yeah, quite possibly. But I can’t complain. And in the US, we weren’t really linked in any particular scene but were kind of alongside – and Sire Records had bands like the Bunnymen, Depeche Mode, The Smiths over here – bands we weren’t aligned with in the UK. We toured with Love and Rockets, who didn’t sound anything like us, and even Gene Loves Jezebel and Flesh for Lulu, all bands more popular in the States than in the UK.”
All in all, it was one hell of a ride, and something you can feel immensely proud of … and there are a lot more recordings we haven’t really talked about here.
“Yeah, we did an album called Sound, then did one more called Ricochet in the States, when we were given free rein to do what we wanted. I think that kind of stands up. I can listen to that. I can’t listen to Sound, to be honest. Laughter is a good album though. There’s some good stuff on there.”
The Mighty Lemon Drops: Inside Out – 1985-1990 is priced £27.99 and out on November 25th, with more details here.
The band also feature on the same label’s C85 triple-CD clamshell boxset, celebrating the burgeoning indie scene from 1985, also including tracks from The Jesus And Mary Chain, The Stone Roses, That Petrol Emotion, The Woodentops, James, Del Amitri, and The Housemartins, with details of that 72-track collection here.
With extra thanks to Matt Ingham at Cherry Red Records.
Pulling Shapes: Simon Nicol and Dave Pegg at Fairport’s Cropredy Convention, 2013. Photo: Tim Hayes
Legendary bass player Dave Pegg marked his latest big birthday in style recently, turning 75 with lots of good friends at Dudley Town Hall, a date that also marked 53 years’ involvement with British folk-rock legends Fairport Convention.
“It was fabulous. We had a great time, lots of my mates turning up. Ralph McTell came and sang, Anna Ryder … a fantastic night.”
Also marking the occasion for the Birmingham-born multi-instrumentalist and producer was his ex-Fairport Convention rhythm buddy, drummer Dave Mattacks, over from America especially, and also lined up for the band’s next winter tour in February 2023.
Founded in 1967, two years before ‘Peggy’ joined, Fairport Convention are clearly not ready to retire, these folk-rock pioneers going strong 55 years on, after 29 albums and thousands of gigs, alongside many solo and collaborative projects by current and former members, with the annual Fairport’s Cropredy Convention attracting 20,000 people to ‘Britain’s friendliest festival’.
The affection and regard in which they are held is highlighted in new authorised book Gonna See All My Friends – A People’s History of Fairport Convention, which features memories from more than 250 fans, friends and collaborators, Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson and Doane Perry, Ralph McTell, producer Joe Boyd, BBC broadcaster Michael Billington, and many folk luminaries among them.
Taking its title from a line in Richard Thompson’s Fairport anthem to enduring friendship, ‘Meet on the Ledge’, this 384-page publication – including full colour photos and memorabilia – was compiled by Manchester-based music writer Richard Houghton, his past works including those on the Rolling Stones, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, and Jethro Tull.
And as well as Peggy’s own words, contributors also include surviving founder member Simon Nicol (guitar/vocals, 44 years’ service), the line-up these days completed by Ric Sanders (fiddle, keyboards, ukulele, since 1985) and Chris Leslie (mandolin, bouzouki, flute, since 1996).
As for Peggy, who has put in 47 years’ service with Fairport Convention since 1969, I soon mentioned how if he’d only popped up among the playing personnel on 1970 LP, Bryter Layter, I’d be in awe, let alone everything else he’s played on down the years, that session with Nick Drake around the same time he recorded Full House, his first Fairport Convention LP.
“That was a fantastic period for music for people of my age. I joined Fairport Convention that year and got to play with lots of other people coming up, people like Nick. And that’s one of my favourite albums, Bryter Layter.”
Quite right too.
“And I got to play on Solid Air, the John Martin album, as well.”
That 1973 LP was another I was going to mention, and I get the impression it’s fundamentally about a fellowship of friends with Dave, working with those artists, in and out of their bands, including projects with ex-bandmates Richard Thompson and the late Sandy Denny and Dave Swarbrick.
“Exactly. I’ve played in Richard’s band, and with Ralph McTell, producing his album, Slide Away the Screen. There were times when there was an awful lot going on, all the ‘folkies’, if you like, big buddies – playing on each other’s albums. It was one big band, and some people wrote their own material – like Sandy, Nick, John … – and those of us that managed to survive are still great mates.”
Your online profile has you down as multi-instrumentalist, bass player, producer … what do you see yourself as, first and foremost?
“Well, I’m a bass player. Bass guitar is my instrument. I play the guitar and the mandolin, and I started learning the cello a couple of years ago, during the lockdown. I’m pretty crap at the cello, but I love playing it!”
While missing out on three seminal Fairport LPs featuring Sandy Denny, Peggy worked with the revered singer-songwriter as a solo artist and when she returned for 1975’s Rising for the Moon. And it’s striking to me all these years on that Sandy was the same age as you, yet she’s been gone 44 years now.
“It is bizarre, but she’s always kind of represented with Fairport when we do gigs. We could never replace Sandy Denny, that’s why we never got a girl singer again. Like you could never replace Richard Thompson, which is why we never got another guitar player. But Sandy’s still there, because we play some of her wonderful songs, like ‘Fotheringay’, and of course, ‘Who Knows Where the Time Goes?’”
The latter is among my all-time favourites.
“Well, it’s a song that everybody knows, and quite rightly so. I think it was voted the best folk song ever written, and we have a nice arrangement of it. We don’t do it every night, but (we have while) we’ve been out in October doing some little gigs up in Scotland and down in Cornwall, which we’ve enjoyed a lot.”
History Man: Dave Pegg gives the new Fairport Convention People’s History publication the thumbs-up
Funny you should mention Cornwall. I’m just back from a few days in Perranporth and read in my advance copy of Richard Houghton’s Gonna See All My Friends the story of how you ended up playing the Memorial Hall there in late 2019. You’ve clearly brought so many memorable nights to unexpected, often remote venues down the years.
“Yeah, well, the band’s been going since ’67, so we’ve kind of covered … I mean, we still do a lot of gigs, but because we’re getting on, we try and put all our work into concise periods. So everybody gets some time off. We’re not doing a spring tour next year, but we’re doing about 25 gigs in October. And we’re doing a winter tour which starts on February 1st in Tewkesbury, and we’re probably doing 25 or 30 gigs. We have Mondays off. Ha!
“We try and cover the whole country as much as we can. Then of course, on August 10th, 11th and 12th we’ve got Cropredy, which is something we started quite a while back.”
That’ll be more than 40 years in itself.
“That’s the highlight of our year. We had a fantastic one this summer, apart from the heat, which is the first time we’ve ever complained about having constant sunshine for three days at Cropredy!”
Yes, this isn’t Mustique during a hyper-successful band’s tax year out. We’re talking North Oxfordshire, amid increasing global warming.
“Yeah, absolutely.”
There’s been many a big name involved at Cropredy down the years, not least your old pal, Robert Plant.
“He’s played Cropredy a few times. He was up in Scotland last night. Our mate, Tristan Bryant, our agent and tour manager, went up to see him because he sometimes works with Saving Grace. And they’re a great band. Robert really enjoys doing that, and I hope he’ll keep it going.”
You only have to hear his output in the last decade or so to know he’s still got that love and the music comes first.
“Yeah, and I think that goes for most musicians of our age. When we started, it was for the love of it, all our roots the same – first The Shadows, then the blues and American R&B … And while you’re physically able, you can’t just stop. It doesn’t matter how successful you become. You still want to be out there playing.
“That works for everybody. People like Macca, and a classic example is Bob Dylan. I saw him last week and it was one of the best gigs I’ve ever seen.”
Heady praise from the fella behind his own Dylan Project a couple of decades ago, and clearly with a long affinity to His Bobness (and of course, Fairport Convention ‘and Friends’ released their A Tree With Roots covers LP in 2018).
“Yeah, we were all Dylan fans. But the worst concert I’ve ever seen was Bob Dylan in Birmingham a few years ago – the last time I saw Bob before last week. It was just horrendous, but Rough and Rowdy Ways (his 2020 LP) is just such a fantastic piece of work, and it was just a brilliant gig. He sang like an angel, the sound was incredible … and I was right at the back of the arena. The band were fantastic, and your man … an hour and three-quarters of just joyous music. It was fantastic. If you’ve got the chance, get a ticket. Don’t miss it!”
Talking of musical heroes and inspirations, you mentioned in your afterword in the book how you were inspired by The Shadows, particularly Hank Marvin’s playing, and The Beatles … but also Joe Brown.
“Yeah, and Joe lives in Cropredy now, and sometimes in America. We see him quite often, and I saw him at our festival last year. And he was such an influence on people. I mean, he was the first English rock star, if you like. He played in Eddie Cochran’s band when he came over, which is amazing. He’s an incredible guy.”
Dave served his own musical ‘apprenticeship’ in Birmingham with The Crawdaddys, Roy Everett’s Blueshounds, and the Ian Campbell Folk Group, led by UB40 stars Ali, Duncan and Robin Campbell’s father.
I’m guessing in your formative playing days, everything was a learning experience, on stage but also making notes on the many bands passing through Birmingham at the time.
Bass Instinct: Dave Pegg in Denmark with Fairport Convention, 2015. Photo: Niklas Nilsson
“Oh, absolutely. When I started, I used to play lead guitar. So I played in blues bands. Crawdaddys was a great little band and Roy Everett’s Blueshounds, which had a fantastic saxophonist, Mike Burney, who went on to play with Roy Wood’s Wizzard.
“You just pick up influences, and Birmingham had such a great scene. We had the Spencer Davis Group, with Steve Winwood just a genius when he was like 16 or 17, doing gigs. An amazing performer. We used to play at the town hall. We did an all-nighter one year, our band, The Crawdaddys, on first at 7.30 and finishing at 7.30 the next morning. We did the first and the last spot! And in between there was the Spencer Davis Group, John Mayall with Eric Clapton, Chris Farlowe and the Thunderbirds, with Albert Lee. All these great guitar players.”
If you weren’t learning from that lot, there was little hope for you.
“Yeah, and I saw Cream seven times in and around Birmingham. And that was a fantastic experience. There’s a book about Cream that Richard Houghton put out. That’s how I got to know about Richard. He sent me the Cream book, which I really enjoyed, and I wanted to be in that book if I’d known that was coming out. Having seen them so many times, I had some good stories about seeing Cream.”
Then there was time with the afore-mentioned Robert Plant and his former bandmate, John Bonham. With another twist of fate, could Peggy have featured in Led Zeppelin?
“Knowing Bonzo, I’m sure I’d have got a mention. Actually, their manager, Peter Grant phoned me one day to see if I’d join Bad Company. Which I didn’t because I was already in Fairport. But I’d be no match for John Paul Jones. Without him, I mean … He wasn’t just a bass player. He was such a phenomenal musician … still is. His keyboard work and his arranging … it’s a different league to me!”
You’re being very modest, but I know what you mean.
“He’s also a monster mandolinist. I think he took up mandolin after seeing Fairport at the Albert Hall, when we did Full House. We’d do a mandolin duet on ‘Flatback Caper’, myself and Swarbrick, and John was in the audience.
“I may have that wrong, and of course, the mandolin on ‘The Battle of Evermore’ … well, when John Paul Jones was at Cropredy, playing with Seasick Steve, I said, ‘John, I loved the mandolin on ‘The Battle of Evermore’, and he said, ‘it wasn’t me, Peggy, it was Jimmy (Page)!’
Your early days with the Ian Campbell Folk Group saw you closely aligned with the folk scene, but you were clearly a rock fan alongside that. And seeing as there’s a mention from Christine {Dave’s ex-wife) in the book about a heated debate around the time you first saw Fairport Convention in Birmingham in ’69 as to whether it was right to mix folk and rock – four years after Dylan’s ‘Judas’ moment at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall – I get the feeling that didn’t bother you.
“Not at all. When I joined the Ian Campbell Folk Group, I played electric bass on one of their albums, The Circle Game, and they invited me to join the band, but I had to take up the acoustic bass, like double bass. And that was when I took up the mandolin as well. I was with them for about a year and was never a great double bass player, but I really loved the music they did. It was very Scottish influenced, obviously, because the family were from Aberdeen.
“But I learned an awful lot about traditional music there, and also an appreciation for Dave Swarbrick, who’d left the band when I joined, but I used to go and see him with Martin Carthy, who was and still is a formidable singer. He’s just the best, a great guitar player, Martin. I saw them about seven times as well.
“And after I went to Mothers that night, I couldn’t believe it when Dave Swarbrick phoned up and said, ‘Ashley Hutchings has left, will you come for an audition?’ And it was exactly what I wanted to do at the time.”
It seems that Dave already had an advance copy of Liege & Lief when he caught Fairport Convention that previous night in Birmingham on his 22nd birthday in 1969.
“I don’t know where I got the copy from. I wouldn’t have bought it from a record shop. I know that much. I don’t know how I was able to learn the tunes, but I know I’d listened to ‘Matty Groves’. I don’t know whether Swarbrick gave me a copy.”
You clearly gelled with the rest of the band, early doors. How important was it for you all to move into that pub in Little Hadham, Hertfordshire, in your case moving down from Birmingham?
“It was the way of the band ostensibly being all together, ‘getting it together in the country,’ which is what people like Traffic were doing at the time. But The Angel, I described it one night on stage as a hovel, and Simon (Nicol) said, ‘It wasn’t that good!’ There was literally one toilet, with a little cistern to get hot water. You could get a bath from it once every five hours. And there were about 12 of us living there! In my family, we had our daughter, Steph, and my wife Chris, at the time. Swarbrick had a wife and a child, and there were a couple of so-called roadies. It was like a hippie invasion of Little Hadham.
“We weren’t really hippies, but to the neighbours – and there were seven millionaires living there – we were looked down upon for a long time. It took us a while to establish ourselves. But eventually they got to know us and got to like us. We had a lorry crash through the house one day. The driver was killed. It crashed into the bedroom downstairs where Dave Swarbrick was. He was very lucky not to be killed. But the neighbours all mucked in and really helped us out. And they still have a little festival in the next village, at the Nag’s Head pub in Much Hadham. We played there at a concert to raise money for the Policemen’s Benevolent Fund.”
Was that an attempt to ingratiate yourself with the local bizzies so you could have pub lock-ins after hours?
“It was so we didn’t get tickets on our van when we parked in Bishops Stortford! They gave us a washing machine for doing the gig … which just shows you what they must have thought of us. Ha!”
That initial chance to audition with Fairport Convention must have been a bit of a mingle-mangle moment. And there have been a few such fateful twists, it seems. Yet it was clearly meant to be.
“Yeah, it’s like when I joined Jethro Tull. That came at a time when Fairport had literally split up, Swarbrick had got hearing problems … he never seemed to have them when it was somebody else’s round at the bar though! But he was suffering a bit and we were paid not to make any more albums for Vertigo, a record label that was part of the Phonogram group. Because they couldn’t sell our albums.
“They said, ‘We don’t want anymore,’ and we said, ‘But we’ve signed a four-album deal. We want paying for the next two.’ And they went, ‘Okay, we’d rather give you money not to make music than have you give us your albums.’ That’s when you know how successful you are, Malc!’
Is that how your Woodworm Records label came about?
“It was indeed. We got £7,000 each, which paid for the cottage I bought, moving to Cropredy. And because I was unemployed, I thought I’m gonna set up a little studio. We had a little studio in the back garden shed. Then we decided that if nobody wanted to put our albums out, we’d have to do it ourselves. So we set up Woodworm, and that was the reason that the longevity of Fairport is still there. We were one of the first cottage industries, and from that came the festival as well. We started to promote Cropredy, which at first was just a get-together, like a reunion gig for ex-members who just wanted to get up and play for a bit of fun. But it’s turned into such a great event.”
When it came to August 4th, 1979, playing Cropredy, was there a proper feel of finality about that show? Or was there always that feeling that you might one day be back?
“No, there was a feeling of finality. We didn’t have any real plans to do anything else. We played with Led Zeppelin in the morning at Knebworth. They invited us to be the first act, which was quite scary – 100,000 fans of Led Zeppelin, and us guys playing jigs and reels and slow ballads! But we went down very well. And it was just the fact that we were all still mates.
“And we’d started this little label and we were building up a mailing list with people – obviously before the mobile phone and faxes and everything like that.”
It’s difficult to think how it used to work then, thinking back, in these days before the internet, social media, and so on.
“Everything was done from the post office in Cropredy – all the letters and invitations. And we thought while we were doing this, we could have a get-together. We knew the farmer, having used his land for our farewell gig. So we thought, ‘Yeah, we can do this.’ That’s how it all started, and now it’s a great event. We’ve had some fantastic bands playing at Cropredy. We’ve had Alice Cooper, we’ve had Brian Wilson, Status Quo, who I loved, Little Feat … we’ve had some great bands and, of course, all the Fairport folks and Richard Thompson, Robert’s been a few times, Steve Winwood …”
There’s a nice story in the new book about a fan who came up to you and Robert Plant at Cropredy, asking for a photo … then requesting that Robert take it of you and the fan. I liked that.
“That was a classic moment. You just you had to be there!”
I loved Ralph McTell’s story about his double-five finish in an impromptu darts contest in your crowded cottage (you’ll have to buy the book for that one).
“That’s true. I’ve read the book, it’s really good, and all credit to Richard … and Ian Burgess who got all the photographs and got it together. There are some very funny stories and some very sad ones as well.”
There are certainly a few gruesome moments in there too … quite a few of them involving the excesses of alcohol. But the socialising has always been up there with the music.
“Yeah, well, there’s the Krumlin festival story (Barkisland, near Halifax, for the Yorkshire Folk, blues and Jazz Festival, August 1970), with Elton John there, before he was very well known. I mentioned this the other night to one of my mates. We were talking about Elton John, and I mentioned how I went to see him with Ian Sutherland, of the Sutherland Brothers (in later years). Dave Mattacks and myself were playing on one of his albums, and he’s a big mate of Reg (Dwight, aka Elton John).
“He said, ‘Peggy, he’s at Birmingham NEC … or whatever … come along.’ So we went along, the first act finished, and just before the interval, Ian said, ‘Come backstage, say hello to Reg.’ I went, ‘Oh, I can’t, I’m too embarrassed.’ So he went back, then came back and said, ‘Elton says hello. He said he remembers you well from Krumlin. You taught him how to drink.’ That’s my claim to fame, Malcolm!”
One of many, surely. One story in the book in particular made me wince though, one about what you thought was a tick in your leg you wanted removing at Cropredy … but turned out to be a varicose vein.
“Oh, yeah, Well, I missed 10cc. I was in the ambulance. They started ‘I’m Not in Love’ as the ambulance pulled out of the field.”
So I gather … off to Banbury, where doctors struggled to stem the bleeding for two hours.
Meanwhile, you say in the afterword how you told yourself if you ever made it in this business, you’d always be ‘as nice to fans as they were to me’. There are lots of examples within suggesting that’s the case. And that sums up the band ethos really, doesn’t it?
“Well, yeah. I mean, without the fans … we’re all fans, I’m a fan myself. Not necessarily a Fairport fan, but of other bands. And I’ve met some fantastic people who I worship, like McCartney – a classic example to everybody about how nice you can be … even when you’re Paul McCartney. He’s just lovely.
“I’ve only met one person – and I’m not mentioning who, but he’s a bass player, he’s American, a very highly respected jazz bass player, who my son worshipped as well. I wanted to get his autograph for my son. I bumped into him in a hotel somewhere in America – he was staying in the same hotel – and I said, ‘Oh, I’m a big fan of yours, any chance of getting an autograph for my son? He’s a bass player too.’ And he was very short with me. He said, ‘Just ask reception to put a note in my pigeonhole, by the key, and I’ll do it.’ And nothing, he never did it. But that’s the only time I’ve been blanked.”
There are many legendary tales of bands who go that little bit further for fans, all good examples of people treating fans right. And you’re part of that.
“Well yeah, times have changed, obviously, and there are health and safety and security issues, insurance, you know, it’s a different time to be out there playing music and you have to be more careful nowadays. But we go out, my partner, Ellen, and myself, we try and sell merch when we’ve got something new to sell, and I love meeting people, because you get really good feedback about what they think of the show and what they’d like to hear. And it’s beneficial to the band, and I’m sure that helps.”
It must keep you on level ground as well. Although I get the impression you’ve never been one to get above your station.
“Well, I’m still waiting to get there, Malcolm!”
A major rant followed about Brexit Britain, Dave headed for Brittany when the book lands, complaining, ‘You can’t post books to Brittany, because apart from the cost of the postage, thanks to Brexit and all those tossers that voted for Brexit … somebody bought a book from Oxfam for me, it was 50p, it cost them £4.50 to send it to Brittany, then I had to pay nine Euros duty on it.”
Then there are all the bands who can’t afford to play mainland Europe right now, what with added red tape, hoops to jump through, and so on, a potentially lucrative market for musicians ruled out.
“Well, yeah, because of paperwork costs, and so on. Hopefully that’ll all change, but it’s really messed up. You know, there’s just no point trying to go to Europe to do any gigs. We’ve stopped going to Europe.”
Which is sad in itself. You’ve clearly got a good fan base there.
“It’s a shame. But we say, ‘Okay, come to Cropredy.”
They know how to find you … as long as they keep their heads down, in case Ralph McTell is playing darts at the time.”
“Ha! Indeed … and he’s so proud of that.”
Well, it’s been lovely to talk to you, and I was gonna say ‘keep on rocking’, but maybe that sounds a bit too Slade-like.
“No, that’s alright for me. I’m of an age!”
Friendly Convention: Simon Nicol and Dave Pegg get down to it, Lugano, Italy, 2010. Photo: Mauro Regis
Gonna See All My Friends – A People’s History of Fairport Convention, priced £19.99, is available via this Spenwood Books link, and https://www.fairportconvention.com/, where you can also find future dates and news of the band and Cropredy Festival.
It seems a negative way to start this feature, but other than reaching No.1 in the UK singles chart three times with David Baddiel and Frank Skinner with ‘Three Lions’ (in 1996, 1998, and 2018, for a song seemingly everywhere during this summer’s Women’s Euros, as the Lionesses memorably brought football home), you have to go back to the last century for the last time Lightning Seeds made the UK top-40.
A minor hit in 1999 with ‘Life’s Too Short’ followed 11 other singles chart successes over that previous decade, and despite platinum and gold certification respectively for 1994’s Jollification –eventually celebrated with a sold-out post-pandemic 25th anniversary tour last autumn – and 1996’s Dizzy Heights, rather surprisingly there were no UK top-10 albums either.
But one thing’s for sure, Lightning Seeds’ chief sound architect, Ian Broudie, never lost his ability to craft classic pop, as is apparent from the three singles so far released from new LP, See You in the Stars, out this weekend, his first for BMG. What’s more, there’s at least one more sure-fire hit tucked within those vinyl grooves. We’ll get on to that later though.
After radio-friendly lead single ‘Sunshine’ and worthy follow-up ‘Walk Another Mile’, came the, erm, marvellous ‘Emily Smiles’, co-written – as was 1994 hit ‘Lucky You’ – with Specials/Fun Boy Three/Colour Field legend Terry Hall, described as a ‘a big, infectious tune with a tight focus: human connectivity,’ Ian adding, “Emily Smiles is about miscommunication and lives being changed by small moments and random events. It’s about desperation and the distances between us being unlocked with the magic inside a smile.”
And overall it’s fair to say that See You in the Stars – completed at Ian’s West London home studio earlier this year – is nothing if not tunefully and emotionally uplifting, its 10 songs written and recorded in short bursts over the last three years, the first of those tracks recorded – ‘Great to be Alive’ and ‘Live to Love You’ – co-written with The Coral’s James Skelly a year apart back in Liverpool.
I’ve had a few listens this week, opening track ‘Losing You’ a great way in, straddling Tales Told-era Broudie and the grand ol’ Lightning Seeds. There are more polished songs on the LP, as Ian puts it, but perhaps that’s why it stands out for me. A late addition, more erm, pure and simple.
Polished does work when it’s as good a song as ‘Emily Smiles’ though. Infectious, and I could so hear Terry Hall’s own take. Not sure I’d allow many modern pop starlets near it, mind, even if that would inevitably lead to wheelbarrow-loads of added royalties for its authors. It’s certainly on the right side of pop fare, Mr Broudie telling us this is him, ‘trying to get out of that cloud and be me again.’
Talking of commercial, ‘Green Eyes’ provides a sonic link to the early days, Ian remarking, ‘I felt like it was a postscript to ‘Pure’ – so I thought I’d shadow it with that little melodic line. Because, in a way, it’s about the other end of that relationship.’ And it’s not just his own past conjured up. I could hear this on a late ‘80s or early ‘90s Pet Shop Boys album. Not sure which, but one I probably bought dirt cheap from some market stall in Thailand or Turkey.
Lightning Return: Ian Broudie is back with the Lightning Seeds. Photograph: Tom Oxley
Then comes the delightful, ever so catchy ‘Great to be Alive’, one for full cast and city centre flash mob treatment in Lightning Seeds – The Musical perhaps, James Skelly’s input keeping it the right side of acceptability, street cred-wise.
I wasn’t sure about ‘Sunshine’ at first. There are hints of vocoder pop and catchy Clean Bandit-isms. It screams, ’We need a hit!’ But somehow Ian gets away with it, and I couldn’t possibly begrudge him that hit. And if it also suggests an ‘80s feel, why not? He was there in the thick of it first time around, after all. In his own explanation, he adds, ‘ultimately it’s about retaining your sanity. It’s a worried but hopeful song. It also reminded me of my first band, Care, and the Bunnymen, and producing The Pale Fountains. I thought I want to write like it was me, then.”
‘Fit for Purpose’, with added strings, is another that could play its part in a tie-in musical (want me to help script that, Ian?), and perhaps because I mentioned Pet Shop Boys, I’m contemplating their partnership with Dusty Springfield, concluding it’s a shame Cilla Black’s not around anymore to guest on this. I could so hear her duetting with her fellow Liverpudlian. Maybe it’s that ‘anyone with half a heart, anyone who has a heart …’ line putting that in my head.
Lyrically, it’s another deeply personal number, from a writer with an older brother who took his own life after battling depression, and a mum who had to live with polio. But again – in the words of John O’Neill, it takes the positive touch, his mum’s words of advice and comfort taken on board on ‘blue days’, the dreamer of the family living up to her ‘you can be anything you want’ philosophy, determined not to ‘let that darkness take over’.
As for ‘Live to Love You’, written a year after ’Great to be Alive’, that gorgeous guitar and the sheer class within lets me know this is another Broudie/Skelly number, while ‘Permanent Danger’ carries a darker air, and I love it all the more for that. Apparently, the last song written, that backs up my instinctive feelings about the LP’s opening number – don’t over-think these things, Ian, sometimes you just need to deliver in more raw form. There’s a big sound incorporated, and the usual sense of songcraft, but I get the feeling this is Broudie exposed, down to bare bones.
He’s back in outwardly jollified mode again with second single, ‘Walk Another Mile’, and it seems like this was sprung from Ian’s ’90s vault, but it’s stood the test of time and is as soulful as it is fresh and catchy. In fact, it was borne out of a love of Northern Soul and an appreciation of songwriters who write proper stories within songs – its author suggesting Squeeze, The Kinks, and Eminem. And his take on that is a tale of ‘two imaginary people arguing about the end of a relationship and blaming each other’.
Then we’re away on perhaps the most poignant number, neatly fitting our collective pensive, post-pandemic narrative, but never over-egged. Reflective but subtle, a ‘see you later’ to a close friend who died, Ian paying tribute to someone who lifted his spirits when he faced his own dark days, saying, ‘He’d make me go out and play shows. He helped me back into the world …’ adding, ‘The idea of seeing you in the stars is not mordant – it’s hopeful. It’s saying: nothing ends. It’ll carry on. Keep on, stay strong.’
In effect, this is his seventh Lightning Seeds LP, 13 years after the last, but even that is debated, Ian seeing 1999’s Tilt as its true predecessor, despite having followed up 2004’s splendid Tales Told solo long player during a period of much personal anguish with Four Winds for Universal in 2009, something he saw as closer to another solo offering. He bowed to record company pressure at the time, but on his own terms, refusing to promote it live, feeling it didn’t have that necessary band feel, not least that positive message he strives for.
He certainly has this time though, the finished product very much a feelgood statement in places, sometimes in spite of everything. And maybe that’s what we need in these dark times, I suggested.
“I think one of the reasons I haven’t done anything for so long is that I felt emotionally I wasn’t able to write a Lightning Seeds tune. The last album I did, I felt wasn’t that, so I sort of disowned it. And I think what Lightning Seeds tunes are … they have this innate positivity. I hope this {album} really has that. It’s hard to write positively without writing quite vacuously, somehow the Lightning Seeds lies amid all that, and I wanted it to be a positive album. But I know what you mean about ’in these times’ – these times are so strange. Not just the pandemic, y’know … the world … the country, really.”
Yes, Brexit Britain, where Joe Public’s misguided dream of UK independence from Europe led all too easily to economic freefall, an increasingly fragile NHS, Government support for draconian measures and public service cuts, less protection for our rights, our waters, our wages, our wildlife … all going hand in hand with bonuses and tax loops for the rich. Not as if I ranted much of that with my interviewee. Just a few key words. But he gets it.
“And no one will admit it. Without taking a side, it’s the lack of the value of truth at the moment. It’s an unsettling time for everyone, because there is no truth. It’s like if you say something enough, it’s a bit true. So I think it is kind of a good time to maybe just … I don’t know, I feel like it’s an open album, you might say. I’ve tried to be quite direct. Sometimes I get a bit shy and cover up things. I’ve tried not to do that. I hope it gives you that feeling.”
It does that. And certain songs, for instance the title track, are deeply personal, it seems. But you still offer that positive take on difficult situations. You don’t seem to dwell on negatives … at least not on record.
“I don’t know, I’m kind of a blue person, I suppose. But I do try and see the beauty in things, if I can … sounds a bit wet, that, but I think when you’re bombarded with negativity … you have to kind of try and find the way to do that.”
One of the artists you’ve co-written with on this record, Terry Hall, was arguably seen as the rather glum, miserable face of 2 Tone, yet here the two of you come up with the highly infectious ‘Emily Smiles’, in a similar way to delivering ‘Lucky You’ back in the day.
“Yes, although lyrically, ‘Lucky You’ is a bit darker. But I think Terry’s just one of the greatest talents I’ve had the pleasure of working with. We started working together when I produced a couple of things for him …
Was that initially with The Colour Field?
“I think so. I’d met him before, but I think the first thing we worked on was The Colour Field, and we struck up a friendship, really … I’d say a bond. And it’s been lovely seeing his career re-blossom with The Specials. Then there was The Fun Boy Three, and … he’s done so many things that have been great. I think he’s brilliant.”
Mind you, as a Manchester United fan, that seems to go against this notion of you working with so much Liverpudlian talent down the years.
“That’s his main fault!”
I must also mention James Skelly from The Coral, also integral to this record, co-writing two songs. That’s someone else you go way back with, in that case producing his band’s early albums.
“I started working with James when they were an unsigned band, and we stayed working together from then, developing them into … well, I did the first three albums. And again, I tend to work these days with people I know I have some sort of affinity to. And with James, it’s kind of shocking to think we started working together 20 years ago.”
Indeed, their self-titled debut album released in 2002.
“Yeah, so probably a bit longer, and again, we’ve always remained friends, really in touch friends – The Coral and I, the Bunnymen and I, Terry … certain headlines in your life go beyond a sort of resume.”
Last time we spoke was in Summer 2018, and so much has happened since. Back then, we got on to the subject – and it’s something you’ve alluded to again – of the Lightning Seeds LP you didn’t really get behind. So I wonder how you felt this time. Did you know instinctively these were Lightning Seeds songs, rather than Ian Broudie songs?
Still Firing: Ian Broudie, 33 years beyond the debut Lightning Seeds single, still up for the fight
“Well, once bitten, twice shy, really. And the reason I didn’t do one {a Lightning Seeds album} for so long was because I felt the songs I was writing didn’t fit the bill. But I feel these do fit the bill. I’m very proud of this. It’s kind of funny, they could be Ian Broudie songs, but they’re Lightning Seeds songs. It’s almost like the two things have almost become the same thing. Does that make any sense?”
It does indeed. And with regard to you sat there with Terry Hall and also James Skelly, for example, does that come easier to you now, 30-plus years down the line? Have you always been keen on collaboration? That mighty production CV of yours suggests you work well in the studio with others.
“I don’t say this with ego, but I never wanted to be a producer. I’ve always ended up convinced to produce things. And usually people I’ve worked with before are keen to work with me again, so that must mean something, in a way – it must mean I’m okay at collaborating.
“I think one of the things that’s always annoyed me about producing is the fact that it’s called producing. If someone said to me, ‘Will you collaborate on a tune?’ ‘Anytime!’ Know what I mean? But being a producer, it’s like, I don’t know. it’s just soulless.”
It kind of suggests you’re making a product … which doesn’t strike me as what you aspire to do.
“Yeah, and it’s excluding you from a certain part of the process which you might be good at.”
For whatever reason, Steve Albini prefers the term engineer.
“Yeah, and it’s not an inclusive term. It’s an exclusive term, so that’s why I don’t want to do it.”
I wasn’t exaggerating when I mentioned a mighty production CV, Ian’s credits ranging from Echo & the Bunnymen (Crocodiles, 1980, then Porcupine, 1983) through to Miles Kane (Don’t Forget Who You Are, 2013), the latest in a long line of Merseyside musicians benefitting from the Broudie Touch in the studio, also including The Pale Fountains and their successors, Shack, plus The Icicle Works, The Coral, and The Zutons.
And there are several other personal favourite LPs with his name on, including works by The Bodines, The Fall, Dodgy, Sleeper, and I Am Kloot. But let’s get back on track. There are a few nods to Ian’s past on this LP, one jumping out straight off being ‘Green Eyes’, with its nod to ‘Pure’ in the brass synth effect.
“Definitely, and it was obviously intentional, yeah.”
You add in the notes it’s perhaps a continuation, a part two.
“Yeah, it might not be a part two. I think I did say that, but … It just reminded me of that tune and the way words were sort of gushing out – it just felt related to that. It’s definitely connected.”
You seem to have lost nothing of your pop craft, ‘Sunshine’ a prime example of radio-friendly fare here. Two decades after your last chart appearance other than for regular ‘Three Lions’ re-presses, do you think you needed those years in between to get back there again, writing commercial pop?
“It seems I have needed that, in my mind. I think a lot of it was reluctance. And I am in two minds doing this. I don’t mean this interview, I don’t mean it as specifically as that, but you’re sort of opening this door – and it sounds dead spoiled when you say it – you’re not sure you want to open again. There’s loads of stuff beyond that door that is great, but it also requires something you’ve got to be willing to give, really. Y’know, I can’t be less vague than that – it is a vague feeling!”
Last time we spoke, I suggested perhaps originally you were happier in the shadows, hence going with that Lightning Seeds name for what was ostensibly just you. You said you always wanted to be part of a band. How about the 2022 version, including your Riley? How much of a collaboration is it these days?
“I think it’s still mostly me on my own creative process, but it feels like I’m buoyed massively by Riley’s enthusiasm and talents, and also the rest of the band, who I’m very fond of and feel very much a part of.
“When you’re not a band, and it’s a person – which is kind of me – you have good and bad bands, and if you lose focus you can become not so great live, quite easily. I described it as going to the bottom of the Championship then fighting back up to the Premier League. I think live we’re really good now … possibly better than we’ve ever been. And I think that inspired me in some ways – thinking it would be a shame not to make a record. We’re in such a good moment, live, y’know.”
Stage Presence: Ian Broudie, live in concert in September. Photo: Ian Broudie and the Lightning Seeds
I told Ian I took that on board, but that analogy needed work for a Woking fan, my club three rungs down from the Championship, yet loving it there. Grass-root approaches can work too. Accordingly, a discussion followed about Disney Plus documentary, Welcome to Wrexham, following Hollywood stars Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds’ takeover of National League side Wrexham. And from there we briefly got on to Marine AFC, the subject of 2001 Granada TV documentary, Marine Lives, both myself and Ian – with his brother – having visited Rossett Park, Crosby, in the past. Furthermore, Ian spoke with warmth about occasional visits to Luton Town with his pal, Rob, talking about, ‘a different kind of … almost obstinacy, really. It’s very English, isn’t it?’
As well as Riley Broudie (namechecked in 1992 hit, ‘The Life of Riley’, now 31, playing guitar and Dad’s manager), Ian’s joined by Martyn Campbell (bass, backing vocals), Jim Sharrock (drums) and Adele Emmas (keyboards, backing vocals) these days, his band rehearsing this week for in-store and radio appearances ahead of tour rehearsals for the real deal. At the grand age of 64, can he ever see himself not involved in all this?
“I think I’ll always be … I mean, I’m not going to retire or something.”
I wouldn’t have used that word.
“I think for me, and with the generation I’ve come from, certain people in my generation and the generation before felt they’d be in a band, then at 26 they wouldn’t be in a band and wouldn’t be doing music. And in some ways that’s pretty cool – burn brightly, and move on. Then there’s others who think this is a vocation, and I’d say I’m one of those. I think music’s not really a job, and I can’t imagine myself not doing it really. Even when I’m not making albums, I’m doing it all the time – playing gigs, writing, maybe a bit of production.
“I did think about not doing it anymore at a certain point when there were a lot of things going on in my life that were negative, and I felt, ‘Should I be sitting in a dark room worrying about drums?’ That’s not the best way to spend your life. But in the end, I felt this probably is what I enjoy doing.”
Last time we spoke, I mentioned seeing you at Lancaster Library, yourself and Starsailor’s James Walsh doing solo sets. Going back to that footballing grass-roots analogy, maybe you needed those low-key live shows to remember what you’re in this for.
“Yeah … I don’t know, maybe I’d rather be someone who was exploring the Amazon or sailing on big boats. But I’m not really, I’m a bloke who likes making music.”
Arguably, as a creative you can explore all that via your music career anyway, hopefully. At least in your imagination.
“Yeah, although I don’t think it’s the same as going. But y’know, everyone has their lives to lead. I think everything’s {about} balance. And balance is tricky.”
Maybe like Serena Williams, it’s not about retirement so much as evolution.
“I think so. I think everything changes around you, and you probably change. It’s different as a sports player – they either win or lose. Whereas with the arts, it’s more vague, subjective. But like I said, everything changes around you, and you change. And sometimes you’re in sync, and sometimes you’re not. You just can’t worry about that after a certain point. You have to worry about that when you’re 18. I’m not sure you do at this point, although it’s lovely when it clicks a bit.
“I mean, this has been interesting, having been away for so long and not making a record. In the past that would have been an advantage, but it’s a real disadvantage, completely, because everything’s now an algorithm, there’s no previous algorithm, and all these things work on continuity in product, continuous product.
“It’s a real different world, and one that benefits the career rather than the vocation. Now, I think it’s easy to manufacture careers and celebrity. I’m not saying, ‘it was better in my day,’ it’s just different, and throws up amazing things. I think music’s probably never been as good and creative. People seem so talented and so able to focus, almost like they’ve been taught how to focus.”
There’s probably a YouTube tutorial for that.
“Yeah, I’m just saying it’s different. And I think you function better as someone armed with knowledge and a career as a kind of hazy, vocational Nick Drake type.”
Getting back to this record, ‘Great to be Alive’ impressed straight away. Is that a track you’re holding back on for a pre-Christmas hit?
“Looking at what record companies tend to do now, and again, it’s different for me – It’s a different world and might not suit me, to be honest – it seems that when the album’s out, that’s the end of job. It seems to be all about a chart position on week one for the album … which I find mystifying.
“I never looked at a chart, I had no idea who’s in the chart. The only people who know who’s in the top-10 seem to be the record companies. The focus has shifted away from selling albums to kind of a trophy position, which seems mad. The industry seems very focused on that kind of thing. Whereas you and I … I feel like ‘Great to be Alive’ would be a great single to bring out next. No one’s said they won’t, but I just wonder if that’s in their system.”
Well, hopefully people will read this and know they need to hear the album. And seeing as we mentioned chart positions, it was only when I was putting questions together that I reminded myself that afore-mentioned breakthrough single, ‘Pure’ was out the summer I met my better half … and now we’ve been together 33 and a third years. Maybe there’s something in that.
Strings Attached: Ian Broudie, living the life of Riley’s dad, three decades after his first Lightning Seeds 45
“Well, congratulations. That’s great. And it’s funny that even in those days, chart positions … with ‘Pure’, we only had a few pressed up, so it could never chart {at first}. Even in the end when I did Top of the Pops, they ran out of records. It could never go past No. 16.”
Wasn’t it initially a 500 run?
“I think it was 200, actually.”
Have you still got a copy?
“I’ve got one somewhere. I think I’ve got a cassingle!”
That initial deal was with Rough Trade, Ian’s first single eventually requiring re-press after re-press. After many months and lots of graft, their modest grassroots campaign took off, that eventual top-20 slot here (and in the US) leading to a higher profile for debut LP, Cloudcuckooland, a major deal and second album, Sense (1992) following, including ‘The Life of Riley’. They were on their way.
“It is quite funny, y’know. ‘Pure’ was a song where the chart position doesn’t reflect what it was, really. And I think Jollification, our biggest selling album, sold a million or something in the UK … although it never got into the top 10. And yet, everything is kind of facts and figures.”
For this website’s Summer 2018 interview with Ian Broudie, head here.
Lightning Seeds are set to embark on a 14-date UK tour, with ticket details here, calling at Cambridge, Junction (Thursday, October 27th); Oxford, O2 Academy (Friday, October 28th); Frome, Cheese & Grain (Saturday, October 29th); Southampton, The 1865 (Thursday, November 3rd); London, O2 Shepherds Bush Empire; Leeds, Stylus (Saturday, November 5th); Glasgow, Old Fruitmarket (Sunday, November 6th); Birmingham, Town Hall (Thursday, November 10th); Newcastle, Boiler Shop (Friday, November 11th); Liverpool, Olympia (Saturday, November 12th); Brighton, Chalk (Thursday, November 17th); Cardiff, Tramshed (Friday, November 18th); Manchester Albert Hall (Saturday, November 19th); Sheffield, Leadmill (Saturday, November 26th).
See You in the Stars is available on CD and standard Forest Green vinyl. For details of that and a limited-edition transparent midnight blue vinyl LP available from the official artist store, HMV and independent retail, head here. And for the latest from Ian Broudie and Lightning Seeds, head to his website |and check out his Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pages.
Stepping Out: from left, Paul McLoone with bandmates Damian, Billy, John and Mickey
I realise that most of you reading this know The Undertones’ back story full well, but humour me and read on, even though it’s one of those situations where people say, ‘This band needs no introduction,’ then waffle on for several paragraphs all the same, doing exactly that.
Emerging from Derry, Northern Ireland, in 1976, The Undertones continue to exude the spirit of punk rock 46 years on, the last half of those years with their Mk.II line-up.
When John O’Neill and younger brother Damian, Feargal Sharkey, Billy Doherty and Michael Bradley set out, with no local bands worth watching they learned by listening to records bought through mail order, reading the few copies of the NME that made it to their locality, and listening to John Peel’s influential nighttime BBC Radio One show.
It was Peel’s love of their debut single, ‘Teenage Kicks’ that provided their springboard to success, John O’Neill’s classic 1978 single recorded for Terri Hooley’s Good Vibrations label in Belfast so loved by the legendary DJ that he played it twice in a row one night.
On signing for America’s Sire Records, ‘Teenage Kicks’ was re-released, a first appearance on Top of the Pops following. And for five years from there, John continued to craft gems, Damian and Michael also pitching in, and Billy too coming up with some cracking tracks, Derry’s finest recording four acclaimed LPs before Feargal – these days best known for environmental campaigning – left to pursue a fairly successful solo career in 1983, the remaining members deciding to call it a day, the story of that amazing stint told so well by Mickey in his highly (family) entertaining Teenage Kicks: My Life as an Undertonememoir (Omnibus Press, 2016).
But The Undertones reconvened in 1999, Feargal’s place taken by fellow Derryman Paul McLoone, his vocal prowess and electric onstage presence quickly convincing floating voters. And after much consideration, the reconfigured five-piece released the first of two further LPs of original material, 2003’s Get What You Need and 2007’s Dig Yourself Deep proving this accomplished outfit had not lost the art of writing short, sharp songs.
Furthermore, the reconfigured band’s first single, ‘Thrill Me’ inspired John Peel to repeat history, playing that 45 twice in a row on his show as well.
From there, the focus has largely remained on live shows, although in 2016 they released vinyl remasters of their first two LPs, alongside a 7” vinyl remix of 1979 single ‘Get Over You’ from Kevin Shields, of My Bloody Valentine fame. Then, to mark the 40th anniversary of ’Teenage Kicks’, there was a 2018 vinyl boxset containing their 13 singles from 1978-1983, while last year saw a vinyl best of compilation for the post-reformation LPs, Dig What You Need issued on the Dimple Discs label.
And still the love for this remarkable band remains, their current nine-date autumn tour including several guest spots from former Stranglers frontman Hugh Cornwell’s three-piece. What’s more, my interviewee Paul McLoone is loving it all, this month alone starting with dates in County Down, County Donegal, and Barcelona. Not a bad life, eh?
“Spot the odd one out there!”
Is it County Down?
“Absolutely … a non-European date, that! No, it’s been really good since everything came back, thank goodness. We’ve been having a great run of it. And we’re really enjoying it. I mean, it’s just great to be doing it again, because, you know, it’s in the back of our heads, but of course, I have to say it out loud. Two years ago, we were kind of going, ‘Did we just do our last show?’ Your brain really was in that sort of place, so yeah, it’s great to be back. Of course, Covid hasn’t gone away. The repercussions of it certainly haven’t gone away, and the logistics are pretty challenging at the minute, so there’s all that side of it.”
Similarly, post-Brexit, playing in Europe’ no doubt. Even a band of your size.
“Well, yeah, it’s not even so much bureaucratic, it’s just the actual logistics of getting about. The flights are still a bit crazy, with delays and cancellations. And some of the infrastructure is still in recovery. For instance, when you hire buses, some of those businesses are just gone. I mean, they’re coming back, but they’re still playing catch up to an extent. So you’re noticing little things here and there that are still going on. But that’s to be expected. You know, the world’s been through a crazy, mad period …
“Why am I saying, ‘has been’? The world’s in the midst of a crazy mad period! And I’m a little premature in saying we’ve come out the other side of anything, it’s a challenging kind of period. And it’s probably going to remain that way for a while. But that’s all on the negative side of the ledger, it’s great to be back, it’s great that people are showing up and still coming to gigs, as money is even less abundant. “
I imagine those couple of Covid years gave you as a band a chance to think about whether you really wanted to carry on. And it seems that you concluded that you were happy to carry on.
“It was very much that. In fact, I’ll go further and say you don’t miss something until you can’t do it, you know? Certainly, I was raring to go, absolutely chomping at the bit, and I don’t want to speak for Michael, but I know he’s said he’s really enjoying gigging again, you know, whereas I think if you’d asked him maybe two or three years ago, he’d have said, ‘Yeah, fine.’ I think it really underscored how much we were enjoying it, and I think maybe that came as a bit more of a surprise to some of the other guys in the band. I was dying to get back out there.”
Pre-pandemic I recall having a similar conversation with John (O’Neill), who always struck me as the one who perhaps doesn’t really feel that compunction to keep playing live these days, in the same way that he was the first to walk away from That Petrol Emotion. Yet here was a fella telling me he was loving it then more than ever. And it shows on stage.
“Absolutely. I totally get what you’re saying there. John, I think in his own little quiet way, has been rocking. And I think he’s really enjoyed being back. We’re all loving being back. Billy as well, even though he had his own issues. It’s great to have him back as well. It’s all good, despite the challenges.”
And you’ve got your own Sharkey on the bench as well.
“Exactly – the super-sub! Yeah, Kev was great to step in those couple of times…”
Including a Manchester Academy appearance on April 1st that I loved (with my review here), another show also featuring Hugh Cornwell‘s trio.
“Ah, great … and thanks so much! You know, it’s been great having him waiting in the wings… but you know, I’m sure he won’t mind me saying this, but hopefully he won’t be needed too often! We can’t be too careful with Billy, but it is what it is. We had a couple of little scares, but he’s fine. He’s 100% and in great form, playing out of his skin, to be honest with you.”
I don’t think he’d be able to play any other way, to be honest back at you.
“That’s very true.”
Incidentally, since we spoke the band’s autumn tour has got underway, with winning shows at Birmingham’s O2 Academy 2, Castleton’s Devil’s Arse, and Holmfirth’s Picturedrome. And this year also saw the release of the Dig What You Need compilation, a best of those two post-reformation LPs on vinyl. Any chance of you completing a treble soon, making another record?
“I would absolutely love that to be the case. And I’m not saying it isn’t or it won’t be. I didn’t really know about the compilation when it was first mooted. I kind of went, ‘Why?’ But I’m really glad we did it. It makes a lot of sense and kind of displays those songs in a possibly better context.
“I don’t want to tempt fate, speaking for the others, but certainly with me it kind of reignited the idea of maybe doing another record. John’s been busy with side stuff, and Damian’s got another solo record – an instrumental album coming out in a week or two, which is brilliant, also on Dimple Discs – but maybe next year, the smoke will clear a wee bit. I don’t want to put all the pressure on John, but he’s the instigator on that score.”
Well, that’s what I thought until the last LP, which carried a lot of very good Michael Bradley compositions.
“Oh, they are, but John starts it off, then Mickey will go, ‘Oh, I better write some now.’ John sort of sets the tone, no pun intended, then the rest of us get behind it. And it is a group thing. So hopefully, we’ll be in a place next year where we can get a bit of time to consider it and kind of go, ‘Let’s take a month and maybe try and get a record together.’ I would absolutely love to, but I don’t want to say it’s happening, because at the moment … well, it’s less unlikely now than it was before we put out the compilation.”
The Undertones’ story effectively goes back to 1976 at St Mary’s Scout Hall in Derry, winding up initially in 1983, the band having originally called it a day 40 years ago next year.
“That was before I was born, of course.”
Indubitably. I’d like to say me too, seeing as Paul’s just a few months older. But I could have sworn I was at Guildford Civic Hall, the Lyceum in London, then at Crystal Palace FC for the UK finale with Feargal. Then of course came those Nerve Centre shows in Derry in 1999, and now Paul’s been part of the band for three times as long as his predecessor, 23 years and counting. What’s more, I’ve seen him out front with the band 12 times, and only saw Feargal fronting the band four times.
Yet the fella with the golden warble has been back in the spotlight of late, proving a mighty fine orator, giving inept politicians and utility firm bosses a hard time on TV and radio, running rings around them and voicing environmental concerns so perfectly.
“Well, absolutely. And, you know, things are in a dreadful state all over, but the way they’re treating the environment generally and the water in the UK, particularly, it’s an absolute disgrace. There’s no other word for it. This gang of clowns, this Government the UK has at the moment, seriously, it’s beyond parody, it’s beyond satire, it’s genuinely criminal right across the board. So Feargal, for getting out there, using his profile the way he has, and being so clever on social media, choosing his moments, he’s doing great, doing something necessary and really important, and more power to him. I think he’s really carried himself brilliantly, saying things that need to be said.”
And a Derry lad at that.
“Absolutely, and I genuinely don’t know him at all, but I’m behind what he’s doing and wish maybe a few more people in genuine positions would wake up to what’s going on, because with all due respect, it’s pretty easy to characterise environmentally concerned campaigners and whatever as these sort of Jeremiah figures, but it’s really, really important, you know?
“Generally, we’re in an environmentally threatened period, and globally things need to change. But I think the water thing is indicative of this almost Dickensian age these people want ordinary people to return to, to further their own interests and those of the corporations and rich people pulling their particular strings. I really think it’s symptomatic of and a little part of that broader vandalistic agenda of these people that really needs to be stopped and dealt with and reversed urgently.
Derry Roots: From left – John, Feargal, Billy, Mickey, Damian, back in the day (Photo: Paddy Simms)
“Things have reached a point now where it just can’t go on. I wish I was a bit more like Feargal, to be honest. I’m a wee bit backwards in common forwards, as we say over here, but really think what he’s doing is very admirable.”
Seeing as this Autumn tour includes a show at Lytham on the Fylde, on the subject of the Dickensian age idea, there was Jacob Rees-Mogg on the telly the morning we spoke, talking about relaxing fracking constraints, a move that if it happens could have a devastating effect on that part of the country.
“I mean, where does it stop? Drop the legal age for children working? We clearly have … or should I say you clearly have a Government that doesn’t care about anything, any precedent that’s been set, any rule, they’ll just tear it up and flush it down the toilet. And If you have guys like that in charge – where if they don’t like a rule, they’ll just change it – we’re in deep, deep trouble. There’s a word for it, and it’s going that way, and people need to really, honestly, wake up.
“I don’t despair, but sometimes look at what’s going on and wonder, is nobody paying attention? These people don’t care about you. I don’t care whether you voted for Brexit or not, fuck that, but do you think these people actually give a shit about you and your life, and how well you’re doing or not doing, or whether you’ve got money or a home? And there’s more food banks than McDonald’s in the UK now.”
Home’s been Dublin for Paul since as long as he’s fronted The Undertones. He clearly likes it there.
“Well, I hate to just throw stones at the UK and suggest everything’s perfect over here. Far from it. But it is home. And what passes for my friends are here!”
Paul has two sons, one in Dublin, the other in Glasgow. Have either of them followed his road to rack and ruin, his rock’n’roll path?
“Not to the same detrimental extent, but they’re both musicians on the side. They both play, they’re both guitarists.”
As far as I recall, I’ve not seen you up on stage with a guitar strapped on.
“No, they wouldn’t let me! Actually, it’s really funny. I don’t know if this is going to look interesting in print, but I’ll tell you now, Mickey has a real problem with singers playing guitar. John would love me to play guitar because it would take a bit of pressure off him. I’m not so sure if it would work either, just in terms of what I do on stage with The Undertones ….”
Prancing about, mostly, yeah?
Sound Proposition: Paul McLoone during the soundcheck at Birmingham Academy. Photo: Kate Greaves
“You used a very polite word there. My Terpsichoral skills, darling, would be somewhat inhibited! But I’d be very interested to hear what it sounded like with three guitars. I think it was me that said it, although it might have been Mickey – but I’ll take it anyway – we’re not Radiohead. Two guitars are enough. I actually did play when we did a wee acoustic tour in Holland. A long time ago now. It wasn’t all of us. It was me, John and Damian. Kevin Sharkey joined us on a bit of percussion. It wasn’t really The Undertones, but it was Undertones songs and a few covers, and kind of interesting. I played guitar on that. So strictly speaking, it’s not unheard of, but it’s unlikely to happen.”
Did I hear a whisper that your pre-Undertones band, The Carrellines (an early ‘90s Derry four-piece, also featuring Billy Doherty, named the Carling/Hotpress Band of 1990, no less) are coming back?
“You did! Word travels! We’ve been threatening – not publicly, mind – each other to do this for 30 years. Now it’s eventually happening on December 29th in Sandinos, Derry. Now we’re dealing with the reality of the fact that we haven’t rehearsed and don’t know the songs anymore, everybody kind of terrified! {Bandmates} Aidan {Breslin} and Damien {Duffy} are kind of the organisers, getting the tickets and social media together. And it’s all a pathetic display of denial – we don’t want to face the fact that we’ve got to get together, stand in a room and actually play these songs. But we really need to get the finger out, get that organised … because winter is coming.”
Before I called, I was listening back to your single, ‘Bridesmaids Never Brides’, and it incorporates a mighty sound, with a lot going on. It sounds fresh, a cracking song. What surprises me is that if I hadn’t seen 1990 on the label, I’d have assumed it would be commemorating its 40th anniversary now. It sounds like it was from a different era.
“It kind of was really. It is kind of an Eighties thing. It came out in 1990 but we were an Eighties band, 100%, and were all big fans of synth. We didn’t really have an idea what we wanted to say, but what we eventually became was a synth-rock band … a bit closer to New Order than maybe Erasure … put it that way.”
Although listening back I was kind of getting classic – and I mean pre-big hits – Simple Minds, OMD, even Heaven 17.
“Very much, and Aidan and Damian are huge Simple Minds fans, and I’m a big OMD fan. In fact, Andy McCluskey and I are mates now, which is kind of surreal. I love OMD, and Simple Minds as well. I got into them after the fact but love those first five or six Simple Minds records. Yeah, that would definitely be a big influence. Well spotted, hopefully a bit less bombastic than the way that turned out with Simple Minds, but definitely an influence.”
Paul was a great ambassador during the emergence of Dublin outfit Fontaines DC in his DJ-ing days at Today FM. I’m guessing they don’t need him so much now they’re as huge as their fifth single.
“Yeah … how are they doing? Are they doing alright?”
Last time I heard, they were doing okay. But while I’ve liked everything they’ve done, I still hold tightly to the memory of witnessing their first LP promo tour short set at Blitz, Preston, just before they properly took off. I’ve no doubt they’d be great at a big venue, but that’ll do for me. That however is clearly not my approach with The Undertones, having seen you so many times down the years.
“If only Fontaines DC could take a leaf out of our book, they could do much better – they’d be getting a lot of repeat business. Funnily enough, I saw them at Ivy Gardens, a park in Dublin where every summer they have a bunch of gigs. Fontaines headlined one. Actually, they did three nights. I was kind of reluctant, thinking, ‘Can they do this?’ But they totally did. And without doing all that – and please God, touch wood – all that stadium rock kind of bullshit. Yeah, they’ve got the ability to hold a big crowd.”
Talking of Dublin bands, I dropped my youngest daughter off at The Continental in Preston to see Inhaler, and that was quite an occasion, not least wondering how the hell they got their huge splitter-bus into the car park there. I get the feeling they’re destined for huge stuff, and sound so big. Dare I say it, like early U2.
“There’s genetics for you! And do you know what? When your dad’s Bono, people are going to have a few cracks at you, and that’s really unfair. I I like Inhaler. I think they’ve got some great songs, and that kid {frontman Elijah Hewson, son of Bono} seems a really genuine, good man. They’re a good band and fair play to them. And you know, what, if you get a leg up because your Dad’s who he is, who cares? If you don’t like it, don’t listen to it. And if you don’t like it, don’t have a go at the kid. Grow up.”
I do find the U2 baiting rather tiring.
“In general, it is. It’s kind of dull. We get it. If you don’t like it, shut up. Maybe actually step back and think, ‘You know what …’ You might not like the last couple of records, but they have some fucking great songs. They’re doing something right, you know? Live and let live. I get it if you’re 18 years old, and it’s cool, having a knock at the establishment or whatever. But men my age? Seriously, there are actual other things going on to worry about, rather than Irish rock stars.”
Well, next time perhaps we’ll take this further and defend Phil Collins.
“I’ll tell you what, I was at a Phil Collins show in Croke Park, and it was great. Ha!”
Well, there you go. He lived across the tracks from me in my home village, albeit not on my council estate, and made his first solo records there. So I have a fair bit of affection for him, not least as he regularly drank in my friend’s pub. I still get sentimental hearing Genesis’ rather poignant ’Follow Me, Follow You’. There, I’ve said it.
“I love that too, and do you know what, I’ve never met Phil Collins, but he’s probably a good bloke. He’s always come across as a decent sort.”
Paul’s entertaining stint on Today FM in Dublin ended around the time of the pandemic. I see he’s been compiling Spotify playlists and so on. Is he DJ-ing again?
Graphic Equaliser: Paul McLoone in his Today FM days, and now eyeing a return to radio
“No, I’m actively seeking employment. That’s the truth of that. I really miss being on air, and I’m still very much available for that line of work. I can’t say much more about it, to be honest. I didn’t want the show to end, but it did, these things happen in radio – a very cruel place sometimes. I’d seen it happen to many others, and, you know, eventually it’s your turn. Like politics, I guess. It’s kind of ultimately, you know, it’s gonna happen …”
Well, there’s a good title for a song.
“… You get knocked off your perch, but hopefully I can sneak back into something. I have been trying to get back in there.”
Do you have a home studio setup?
“I don’t, I never had to do that. That was the slightly ironic thing – I got through Covid, then next thing you know you’re out. It wasn’t really anybody at Today FM. It was corporate stuff, new owners, big changes. That’s what happens, you’ve just got to live with that.”
Meanwhile, there’s still the rather marvellous Mickey Bradley Record Show on Radio Foyle, with Paul a guest on Northern Irish radio recently too.
“I did a wee Radio Ulster show a couple of months back. That was fun, sitting in for Steve McCauley. It was great, actually at BBC Radio Foyle, where I started out in radio a very long time ago. It was kind of surreal being back in studios completely changed beyond recognition from when I worked there. The setup is good there. And it’s nice to keep your hand in, you know.”
We’ve spoken about The Undertones’ past before, but remind me, did you get to see the band before that initial 1983 split?
“No, I was a fan, but when ‘Teenage Kicks’ came out, I was only 11, and by the time I was old enough to go to gigs, they’d just about split up, and hadn’t played in Derry for a long time. At the end, they didn’t play in Derry. I was only 16, just about getting into gigging, but they weren’t doing any locally. It always annoyed me. Long before I ever dreamt of joining The Undertones. As a young adult It kind of bugged me that I never got to see them, although I got to see the Petrols. So it’s kind of funny the way things turned out.”
Your first show on this side of the Irish Sea, at the Mean Fiddler, Harlesden, North West London, Summer 2000, is among my favourites, if not the favourite itself. That setlist was amazing, including several songs no longer being played when I first saw the band. And I guess I never ever thought I would see the day.
Stepping Time: The Undertones, 40-plus years on. From left – Damian, Paul, Billy, Mickey, John
“It was different back then. I think bands played for a shorter time, generally. They always wanted to play newer stuff. There used to be a thing where bands would sort of be a little grudging or even resentful of their early stuff. I remember seeing The Smiths in ’84, one of my earliest gigs, in a little sports hall in Letterkenny, basketball hoops at either end, a small room. I was a big fan, and it would be one of my top five gigs, probably for nostalgic reasons – I was 17 and it was The Smiths at the absolute height of their … Smithdom. Johnny Marr played the intro to ‘This Charming Man’, everybody went mad, then he just stopped, going into something else instead. And that was in ’84! Kind of, ‘Yeah, we’re not playing that one anymore.’”
Well, with The Undertones, I finally got to see the band playing all those classic songs of yore, so thanks for your part in that.
“Oh, it’s an absolute pleasure. I remember that gig very well. Funnily enough, with The Carrellines back in the day, the first gig I did in England was also at the Mean Fiddler, in ‘87. On that occasion we were just over and back, that was the thing back then. If you didn’t do that, you probably weren’t going to have much of a swing at it. We never relocated.”
And when you get back to Derry now, is there still a good feeling about the place that maybe wasn’t there when you left just over two decades ago? I wonder how you see it now, post-Good Friday Agreement and all that.
“Yeah, it’s an interesting perspective. I always love being back in Derry, and always notice something new, or maybe something I hadn’t noticed before. Without being too Tourist Board about it, it really has come out of the shadows. There’s still a lot of issues, still a lot of problems, like everywhere at the moment. But that notwithstanding, I think the place is looking really good, with a real little buzz about the place, like that little sort of artisanal sort of hipster-ish kind of thing. I love that.
“I think it’s great that creatively, not just in a musical context but generally, there’s a DIY kind of funkiness about the place that I’ve noticed here and there. And musically, there are some great young bands, across genres and across genders. It’s brilliant, that side of it is all good. Derry is still of course dealing with its legacy, but I think it’s moving in a fairly positive way.
“As usual, it’s probably coming off the worst, and that’s the last thing it needs. Derry doesn’t need a non-functioning executive. It’s had enough as it is, and is always at the back of the queue when it comes to certain things. It’s probably always been that way. But despite that, I’m really proud and really impressed with what I see when I go there, which isn’t often enough.
“It’s always a pleasure and always great to see the progress being made. And you know what? They’re the best people in the world! It’s just great to be in Derry, hear Derry voices and that unmerciful Derry sense of humour, and general kind of Derryness! It always moves me, and it is home in my heart … without sounding corny about it. I live in Dublin but the home in my heart is Derry, and always will be. And it’s great to see it come on, you know.”
For this website’s Spring 2015 conversation with Paul McLoone, head here. And for a Mrs Simms’ shed-load of past Undertones features, interviews and reviews from WriteWyattUK, just type in the band name from there.
The Undertones’ Autumn 2022 dates resume this week, calling at the 1865, Southampton (October 6th); the O2 Academy, Oxford* (October 7th); and the Lowther Pavilion, Lytham* (October 8th). Then there are three more dates beyond that, at the Waterfront, Norwich (October 20th); the Apex, Bury St Edmunds (October 21st); and the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill* (October 22nd). Dates with an * include special guest Hugh Cornwell. For tickets, head here.And for more information on the band, check out The Undertones’ website and keep in touch on social media via Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Last time I saw Will Sergeant, I was barely two feet away from him on a Sunday night in the snug bar of The Continental, Preston, Lancashire, thrilling to the garage/surf punk spectacle and hearing sensation that is Michael & the Angelos, the ‘60s cartoon-ish alter-egos of equally-mysterious Liverpool band The Kool Aiders.
That was at Tuff Life Boogie’s Preston Pop Fest in late August, with Echo & the Bunnymen’s guitar hero as enthralled as the rest of us – barely a couple of dozen as it turned out, the rest of the festival-goers back in the main room, waiting for The Bluebells to bring the curtain down on a happening indie pop weekend.
Word was that when the organiser told the band he’d head back through and drum up a few more punters, frontman Bob Parker (also ex-Walkingseeds) wasn’t so bothered about numbers, clearly preferring a low-key approach.
“Ah! A good night that, and it’s a great place, The Continental.”
I reckon my ears were still recovering from chief Kool Aider Bob and his band a couple of weeks on. Do you two go back a long way?
“Me and Bob? Oh yeah, years. I played some stuff with (his previous band) The Mel-o-Tones and did lights for them once or twice. And I’m The Hawk.”
Tune into Michael & the Angelos’ website Radio Hour episodes and that’ll make more sense, if you’re not yet hip to that particular trip. Besides, any words I write won’t do justice to this amazing sonic happening. Highly recommended.
“It’s a great idea. I’m always saying he should get someone in like Matt Groening, referencing all the ‘60s, ‘70s and even the punk stuff.”
You clearly still enjoy a bit of dirty rock’n’roll and garage rock alongside an appreciation of the likes of Love, early Genesis, and all that.
Bunnymen’s Return: Mac and Will are set to be back on the road again soon. Photo: Alex Hurst
“I love all that stuff – that classic record period from the ‘50s through to the ‘80s. It’s kind of what I’m about really. And I love records, so I’m chuffed they’re putting all these LPs out on vinyl again. They’ve been going on about it for years, and everyone else seemed to have their records coming back out on vinyl.”
That’s our excuse for a chat, the re-release of the classic first four LPs by Echo & the Bunnymen, from the years 1980/84, available again on vinyl from this weekend.
Formed in Liverpool in 1978 with Will on lead guitar, Ian McCulloch on vocals and rhythm guitar, and Les Pattinson on bass, Echo & the Bunnymen were soon joined by Pete De Freitas on drums. The rest is history.
Debut 7” single ‘Pictures on My Wall’ c/w ‘Read It in Books’ was released via Zoo Records in 1979, the A-side then appearing on first album Crocodiles in 1980, cementing the band’s reputation amidst a growing wave of post-punk outfits, the NME describing it as ‘probably the best album this year by a British band’. Ultimately breaking into the top-20, it garnered much critical acclaim.
They followed that with the release of the Shine So Hard EP in 1981, recorded live at Pavilion Gardens, Buxton, then second studio album Heaven Up Here the same year, the band’s first UK top-10 album, going on to win the 1981 NME Best Album award. Considered slightly darker, Heaven Up Here was produced by Hugh Jones and was well received by critics and fans, highlights including ‘A Promise’, ‘Over the Wall’ and ‘Show of Strength’.
Then the Bunnymen’s cult status was transformed into mainstream success in 1983 with the release of third LP Porcupine, produced by future Lightning Seeds creator Ian Broudie, their best chart performances following, ‘The Cutter’ reaching No.8 in the singles charts and the LP No.2 in the album charts, soon certified gold.
And 1984 brought fourth studio album Ocean Rain, regarded by many as the band’s classic opus, recorded in Liverpool and Paris, incorporating a 35-piece orchestra, award-winning composer Adam Peters – still a close friend of Will – scoring the strings for an album best known for classic singles ‘Silver’, ‘Seven Seas’ and ‘The Killing Moon’.
Heading into Cornwall recently, dropping my youngest daughter off to start at university, I saw the sign from the A30 near Jamaica Inn on Bodmin Moor for Warleggan/St Neot/Mount, the way to Carnglaze Caverns, where the cover of Ocean Rain was shot,an extra copy back in the day giving me a chance to Blu Tack that iconic photographic image by Brian Griffin to my bedroom wall, Brian’s photos and Martyn Atkins’ design also featuring on the three previous LPs. Perhaps I should arrange a pilgrimage one day, take a boat out and stab a sorry heart in the water with my favourite finger, in a Mac style.
“Ah, I think we stayed in Fowey – tucked away in this little guest house – when we were doing that.”
Will’s been on the mind a fair bit this last couple of years, having raised his social media profile somewhat to mark the release and success of Bunnyman: A Memoir (Constable, 2021), retelling part one of his life story, from formative years growing up in Melling – an outlying Liverpool district back then classed as within Lancashire, not far from where he still resides – through to the early days of the band. Is he hard at work on part two now?
Distant Echo: Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant, 40-plus years after their first Bunnymen antics together
“Yeah. I’m getting all my research together at the moment.”
Are you re-immersing yourself in that next era (with Pete de Freitas on board by that point)?
“Yeah, I find I can travel back in time in my mind, remembering what we were wearing, the sort of things we were influenced by, what we were into, how we recorded, all that. It’s amazing what can be dragged up.”
Is it a cathartic experience?
“It’s nice, like having a time machine. With the first one, a lot of it was about being a kid, and that was great, going back to then and what we used to get up to, all those scallywag things we used to do.”
You’re not so far from that patch now, around 10 miles from your Melling roots, right?
“Yeah, if that. I just like it round here. When we were bigger, in our heyday – I was going to say massive, but we were never massive – loads of bands moved to London, and it was like, ‘Why move to London?’. It was full of fakers.
“To me, London seemed to be too many people scrambling around. We were trying not to do that. We turned down more things than we did. Even if there was some band on down there we didn’t like the look of, or they had the wrong trousers on or something. ‘We’re not going on with them,’ y’know. ‘They’re shit!’. London felt a bit like that, everyone too desperately trying to impress the local A&R man and all that stuff.”
There was a lot more money being thrown at bands then, it seemed. Those of you still playing all these years on seem to have a far healthier attitude, playing for the right reasons – loving being in a band, playing live and making music, rather than chasing chart-topping status and vast sums of money. Competition doesn’t seem to be such an issue.
“Yeah, it’s not really like that anymore. It’s not a game, anyway. There was always a bit of rivalry between us and people like U2 … although I think they won that one! Ha.”
Speaking of whom, breakthrough Irish band Inhaler played an Action Records promotion in late summer at the afore-mentioned Continental, and catching footage of them at Reading Festival shortly after, I felt seeing frontman Elijah Hewson in action was like watching his dad in U2’s early days.
Booked Up: Will Sergeant proudly displaying the first instalment of his memoirs, with number two on its way
“We share a roadie with them, and we’ve met them a couple of times. They’re a really nice bunch. Dead cool, like. And it’s a difficult track to follow, isn’t it? I’ve seen them live, and they were good.”
From February onwards, Will should be back out on the road with the Bunnymen again, with 20 live dates lined up for a classic band who managed 20 top-20 UK singles. Which made me wonder, for all his cool demeanour, was he ever secretly thrilled about the prospect of chart hits, Top of the Pops appearances, and all that?
“Only once. I think it was for ‘The Cutter’. Rob Dickens at the record label had loads of stuff he’d been given in his office, like a Pee-wee Herman bike with flat tyres. Me and Les were disgusted that the tyres weren’t even pumped up. We loved Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.
“He also had – just leaning against the wall – an Andy Warhol Electric Chair print. I said, ‘That’s great!’, and he said, ‘Oh yeah, someone gave me that’, or he bought it for buttons or something. He said, ‘I tell you what – if your single gets to No.5, you can have it’. So I really wanted to get to No.5 … and I think it got to No.7, so I hit the post on that one. And I think he would have given it me, he was a man of his word.”
It actually reached No.8, the first of three Bunnymen top-10 hits. Not bad for a lad born on the Lancashire side of Liverpool. And going back to those roots, Odyssey style, I mention to Will how Status Quo’s Rick Parfitt would often return to his childhood address on my old patch in Woking, Surrey, gazing at the house where he lived from his car, re-igniting memories. Is that the case with Will and Melling, taking a walk or drive down Station Road, looking at his family home?
“Yeah, and the weird thing is, our house was the shittiest in the road – towards the end of Dad’s life, her and Dad’s life had fallen to bits – but someone’s bought it, done it up, and it’s now the poshest house in the street, extended and everything. It looks like it doesn’t belong there.”
No blue plaque to follow? No chance of the National Trust coming in, as they did with Forthlin Road and Menlove Avenue for Paul McCartney and John Lennon’s homes further into the city?
“No, it’s a completely different house now. You wouldn’t recognise it.”
If you had the chance to go back and be a fly on the wall for Echo & the Bunnymen and The Teardrop Explodes sharing the bill at the legendary Eric’s in Liverpool, late ’78, what do you think you’d make of each band?
“Well, we weren’t the competent players we became. I think the Teardrops could play a lot better than us. Mick Finkler was great on the guitar and Julian (Cope) was obviously a really good bass player. I don’t know what I’d think, but …”
You clearly had something about you.
Big Mac: Ian McCulloch has something about him, says bandmate Will Sergeant. Photo: Alex Hurst
“Yeah, with Mac up front and everything. He’s sort of got it, hasn’t he, you can’t really deny it. He’s got something. As a frontman, if you can bottle that … like an arrogance … an assuredness, he exudes it.”
Thinking of the vinyl reissues of the early LPs, do you still have and play the originals? I recall Noddy Holder once saying he lent someone a copy of his first LP with Ambrose Slade and didn’t get it back, and he didn’t have one for years.
“Our records? There’s loads I haven’t got. Half the time, they put things out and don’t even send us them. There was one that came out not long ago with sunflowers on the cover. I never got that.”
The day I spoke to Will, I was hoping the postie would knock on the door with a copy of Will’s Bunnyman, but I was still waiting when we spoke.
“Well, Costco have got it cheap! The cheapest I’ve seen. No VAT.”
Recently, I read Steve Hanley’s entertaining, informative Fall memoir, The Big Midweek – Life Inside The Fall, and there’s a mention of a meet-up between your bands in Liverpool, around 40 years ago, Mac and his old pal Mark E. Smith trading insults and cutting repartee, while Steve made small talk with Les and new Radio 1 DJ Janice Long.
He also revealed how he got home and put on Heaven Up Here, suggesting he could play Les’ parts and join you. It seems he felt he might have had an easier life in your band. Do you think he would have?
“Yeah. I met him the other day, actually, when I did a book signing and talk with Dave Haslam in Manchester at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation. We had a chat in the bog! I’m set to do another with John Robb at the Louder Than Words festival. I think with Marc Riley and Steve we’re all going to be out for a curry later. It’s gonna be a hoot, that night. Nice lads.”
That date with John Robb – on Saturday, November 13th, at Innside, First Street, Manchester, with ticket details here – sounds like a winner, judging by their conversation for John’s Louder Than War website in July (linked here). In fact, John has contributed to my forthcoming Fall appreciation, and Will too has good memories of seeing The Fall.
“I loved The Fall. They were just different, weren’t they, kind of like … they weren’t really punk, but they weren’t anything and didn’t want to be anything. They were their own thing. And I loved Mark E. Smith. He was funny as fuck!”
Was there a particular period you liked above all others?
“I bought all the records for maybe 10 years. They kind of drifted off from there. Live at the Witch Trials was great. I loved the cover – the pencil drawing. Pendle’s not so far from here, really, and it’s got that sort of weird, dark satanic mill kind of feel. Kind of odd, that, places like Saddleworth Moor and Holcombe Hill, spooky kind of areas. The Fall almost tapped into that with the area they were based, and it played into his lyrics.
“And I love the way he used to use people’s names. Like ‘Taxi for Mr Nelson!’. That was great. The only ones now doing something slightly similar are Sleaford Mods. Yeah, The Fall were great.”
When did you last play live, and where was that?
“Erm, 2019, I can’t remember where.”
Records suggest it was at Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh with the Bunnymen on December 18th, 2019. Have you missed all that?
“Er, it’s a weird thing with playing live. It’s a lot of pressure, a lot of anxiety. After a few gigs you get into a flow though, and it becomes okay. You stop worrying. But it’s a lot of worry for me. Is it going to work, will I get all the parts right, will we get the sound correct, not too loud and not too quiet?
“And because I have loads of effects and things I play with, it’s not just playing the guitar. It’s pressing on loads of pedals, making sure you’re in the right place at the right time. And tuned up. It’s like Pressure Central. But once you’ve done a couple, it kind of eases and becomes natural. And I’m going to have to play soon, because all my fingers have gone soft.”
There has been a long gap … not as if I’m trying to add to your anxiety on that front.
“Well, I’m frightened anyway.”
Has the lockdown been a good time for your artwork too? Or was the writing all-consuming?
“I’ve done a bit. I got into doing collages for a while, just for the fun of it really. I started the writing before the lockdown. That sort of came initially from doing …. these records have been re-released before by a smaller label that licensed them, with these fancy booklets. And those liner notes kind of started me off on the writing thing.
“Around 2013, I think it was, I started a science fiction story. I got to about 17 chapters, and it was all about a world where instead of industrial technology, it was more bio-genetic. I got deeply into it, then that film Avatar came out, and I just thought, ‘Fucking hell, this is too similar!’. But I might revisit it. And I’d love to do short stories. I love John Wyndham, Ray Bradbury, James Herbert, all that.”
As for the memoirs, part two will cover from Pete’s early days with the band. Up until when?”
“I might go up to the end of Heaven Up Here. That’s a couple of records, loads of touring, Europe for the first time, all that stuff. That was the first time I’d ever been abroad. To Belgium, a place called Plan K, these sort of hipsters running these nights. Joy Division were on the week before.
“A Certain Ratio, us and The Teardrops went over and did it, in this old sugar refinery. I’d never seen anything like that, thinking you could do anything you liked in Europe – get an old factory and turn it into a gig without much money or interference from authorities. It seemed to be a place that was open.”
Records suggest that was in Sint-Jans-Molenbeek on January 26th 1980, with William S. Burroughs, Buzzcocks, Cabaret Voltaire and Scritti Politti among the previous year’s guests there, and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark on 12 days earlier than the Bunnymen. And such happenings are something this up’n’coming generation of bands won’t be able to experience at this rate, post-Brexit. It would cost too much to get over and play, with too many new bureaucratic hoops to jump through.
“Yeah, I don’t know what’s going to happen there.”
Last time we spoke, in early 2015, you told me you weren’t a big reader and you’d rather put a record on. You seem to have proved yourself wrong on that front.
“I’m not much of a reader. I’m better with an audio book in the car, driving around, or on dog walks with the headphones on. “I’m listening at the moment to Shantaram (by Gregory David Roberts), about an Australian who breaks out of jail, ending up in Bombay, embroiled in all sorts in these shanty towns. It’s brilliant, and my mate Adam Peters is doing the soundtrack music for a series. They’re in Thailand filming at the minute. He’s asked me to help with odd bits.”
Room Service: Will Sergeant on a return to Belgium, where he had his first overseas trip, in 2003
As you mentioned Australia, how’s Bunnymen bass player Les doing? Is he still Down Under?
“He’s alright. I’m in touch with him most days, via WhatsApp or whatever. He’s always sending me jokes and pictures. It looks amazing, where he lives. In Mornington, Melbourne, on this big bay. They go sailing and all that. He does trials riding too.”
With that, our time slot is well and truly done, but Will tells me we should catch up at the Conti again soon – where he also caught Can’s Damo Suzuki and Gnod fairly recently – and revealed a few details about another musical project he has lined up.
“I’m toying with the idea of going out and doing ambient gigs on my own. I’ve got to plan it out, work out what I’m going to do, get some projections together. There’s a bloke round here with an organic farm and he built this baboon house in his back garden, made for Knowsley Safari Park. He’s made it into this groovy space. He’s a bit of a hippie. They do yoga in there and sound baths.
“I was saying you could put things on, like poetry readings or ambient nights. I was going to do something acoustic with our keyboard player, do some of his tunes and some of mine, then I was thinking of something more electronic, with a table-top set-up, something we used to do years ago, under the name Glide. But keep it minimal.”
By then, your fingers may be more hardened up again.
“I probably wouldn’t be playing the guitar. Last time I did the Glide stuff, I played guitar with a screwdriver and a metal rod. I’d thrash the shit out of it! Using the screwdriver like a slide, with open tuning … maybe a bit violent for a gentle ambient night.”
The first four Echo & the Bunnymen LPs (Crocodiles, Heaven Up Here, Porcupine and Ocean Rain) are available from today (Friday, October 22nd) on heavyweight black vinyl and limited-edition coloured vinyl, with further details via https://lnk.to/EchoandtheBunnymen_Vinyl.
Meanwhile, Mac, Will, and the current line-up will be playing a full UK and Irish tour in Spring 2022 to celebrate Echo & the Bunnymen’s 40-year careers. For ticket details head here. And for all the latest on the Bunnymen, head to their websiteor keep in touch via Facebook,Twitterand Instagram.
“Sink back into time, I’ve been hypnotised; and meanwhile my time’s not my own.”
Thirty years ago today, one of the bands that provided a key component of the soundtrack of my 20s stepped on stage at Berlin’s Quartier Latin as part of a cross-city live event celebrating the first anniversary of Germany’s reunification, for a show also starring LA alternative rock outfit Hole and cult London post-punk group The Monochrome Set.
Three decades later, BOB’s set – broadcast live on national radio in Germany that day, 21/10/91 – is commemorated by Berlin Independence Days, which was due to be out in June as a limited-edition 10-track vinyl-only LP before a backlog in vinyl manufacture saw the release date put back, the delay leading to a decision to reward those who pre-ordered with a subscriber-only exclusive CD version.
As co-frontman Richard Blackborow put it earlier this year, “We’re proud of this record. We were on great form and, luckily, we were professionally recorded on the night by clever German recording technicians who broadcast the show live on Berlin radio. No one has heard it since, and we were lucky enough to escape with the multi-track tape of the show. Simon (Armstrong) and I mixed it during lockdown last year and we’re chuffed to bits with the results.”
I spoke to BOB drummer Dean Leggett, who first appeared on these pages in late 2019, to ask for his memories of that Berlin show.
“We played in London, either the night before or the previous one. There’s bit of a disagreement, but we were at The Underworld in Camden, which received a fairly good review in the NME, and we played the same set in Berlin. I think ‘Nothing for Something’ was about to come out as a single.
“As I recall, we packed up the gear after the gig in Camden but couldn’t leave till late as there was a club at the venue and you had to load out through the back doors. You couldn’t load out while there was dancing. We were really knackered, but still had to load the van, drive to Dover, smoke all the weed we’d got before we got there, then get on the ferry and drive all the next day.
“We got to Berlin in the afternoon. I think we checked into the hotel, had a kip, then pretty much went straight there. That’s my recollection, but Simon thinks we left the following day. Either way, we more or less went straight there.”
The North London based indie outfit’s visit came just four months after the Bundestag switched from Bonn to Berlin, honouring an earlier stipulation of the Unification Treaty to make this born-again city the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Last Time: BOB, 1991. From left – Simon Armstrong, ‘Henry’ Hersom, Richard Blackborow, Dean Leggett
“We’d already played in Berlin, on the East side, a castle on an island, and played a small club on the West side around six months earlier to about 60 people. We went through Checkpoint Charlie, even though the Wall had come down, either 1990 or earlier in 1991. The (previous) gig in East Berlin was absolutely packed, sold out, around 200 in. But this one was more a showcase.”
Dean met Courtney Love, playing with Hole, at an after-show party that night. In fact, he reckons he met Kurt Cobain too, although it seems the Nirvana frontman and bandmates Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl were playing in Austin, Texas that day, on their Nevermind tour.
“Our agent, Rob, came with us. He had loads of bands, including Babes in Toyland, but was trying to get Hole as well. We were staying in the same hotel and had a party with them upstairs in their room, where Courtney was. She was snogging some guy with blond hair. I recall her being quite bossy. There were around 30 or 40 in this smoky room, and she was making him take boxes of beer around to give out. Henry (Hersom), our bass player, was with me. Simon was watching The Monochrome Set and Richard was struggling with a cold and didn’t come out. Me and Henry always said it was Kurt. We didn’t have a camera though.”
While I missed Nirvana, I did see BOB three months earlier at Reading’s After Dark Club – my seventh sighting since April ’88 – but that late night set is a little sketchy in my mind now, and as it turned out, I had to wait 28 years for my next live fix, at Leeds’ Wharf Chambers in late 2019. But this Berlin performance helps fill in a few gaps.
“The reason we did the gig was to try and get a European agent, and we were looking for funding for the next album, which would have been You Can Stop That for a Start. When we came back, we started writing, then went on another tour of Europe, playing nearly all the songs on that record, to learn them. We’ve footage of us playing those songs in Germany, which we hope to put out at some point. When we recorded them, we did it all in five days in Harlow then in Bristol for a few days.”
The story of that and the subsequent 28-year wait for the LP to be released is told in my interview last year with Richard Blackborow. And, as I said to Dean, it seems a trademark BOB move that this live album – also including ‘Round’, which finally appeared on that delayed second long player – features a song called ‘You Can Stop That for a Start’, which – as it turned out – didn’t even make it on to the record of the same name.
“Yeah, exactly! Ha!”
It’s not the only song that missed out, this fan loving ‘Another Crow’ too, originally dubbed ‘Tour Song’, as included on 2014’s deluxe version of Leave the Straight Life Behind in pared-back but spot on demo form. But I certainly can’t argue with the final track listing on You Can Stop That for a Start, and the live record is also a winner.
Studio Tan: BOB, 1992. Their second album, You Can Stop That For a Start, took 28 years to land
“We had a very basic soundcheck, about three in the afternoon. There were other things happening around the city, all being recorded for German radio, and we had to be there at half four to go on at five or half five on the dot. We weren’t allowed to drink or swear or take too long talking between songs. Everything was mic’d up, it would go straight to a sound deck, mixed by our engineer, Chris, with a cable going out the back of the building to a van with a huge dish on top, fired to the radio tower on the front of the record sleeve (Berliner Fernsehturm, aka Berlin TV Tower).
“We were all on form, and played really well, so Richard said to Chris, ‘I want you to go out there and get the tape, and I don’t want you to come back until you’ve got it’. Ha! Two hours later, he came back with the reel-to-reel tape. The radio guy said, ‘You can have these, but we want them back’. I don’t know how he persuaded him. Then, 29 years later, Richard gets the tape, bakes it in an oven – as you have to – put it in his computer and up pop the tracks, tweaked a bit where necessary, and when I sent it to Ian (Allcock) at Optic Nerve, who initially wasn’t sure about putting out a live album, he listened and said, ‘Let’s put it out – it’s great!’ The quality’s that good.”
The band come on to Miles Davis’ ‘Milestones’, in a recording mixed from the original ½” digital multitrack tape in 2020. And from incendiary opener ‘Skylark III’ through to fellow Leave the Straight Life Behind prime cut Skylark II, it’s something of a time capsule treat, like the two records that preceded it.
We also get ‘Tired’, apt in the circumstances according to Dean’s back-story, released as a single the previous year, before a return to the prior album for ’95 Tears’, BOB stepping up through the gears again, the set continuing with the first two numbers from early 1990’s Stride Up EP, kicking off our shoes for the splendid ‘Flagpole’ (I’d love to have heard Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood cover this gem, not as bizarre a suggestion as you might think when you know the story behind it) and of its time Madchester/Screamadelic-tinged Bible Belt America mash-up, ‘My Blood is Drink’.
The title track of the LP that didn’t come our way for a near-eternity (the one that didn’t make the final XIII, as it turned out) starts side two in style, before ‘Nothing for Something’, which seemed destined to be BOB’s final single until their welcome return and the release of ‘Queen of Sheba’ last year. And listening back now, this should well have taken the band on again, bringing in the wider audience they deserved, as ‘Convenience’ should have before.
As for ‘Round’, here was a Teenage Fanclub-esque (maybe even Status Quo-like) guitar romp that suggested the power of what was coming our way next. Given a year or so, perhaps it could have been a nailed-on set opener, but on this occasion it instead leads to the big finish, the band back in Leave the Straight Life Behind territory, the Smiths-like collage of ‘Take Take Take’ – and the irony was just how long that stop was before they started again – followed by inevitable show-stopping finale ‘Skylark II’, in typically more live than live form.
Seconds and years, icebergs and tears; this time I’m not on my own.”
And all in all, this Berlin Independence Days set provides a timely reminder – if we should ever need one – of the live might of BOB, showcasing what a great outfit they were on their day, something only now truly realised in some circles. But enough hyperbole. I’m clearly tired and emotional as I write this, so I’ll stop that for a start. As Richard himself put it, ‘I’ve had a lovely evening, please close the door behind you’.
Plastered Cast: BOB in Paris in 1990, on the lead-up to the release of first LP, Leave the Straight Life Behind
writewyattuk 