Eighth Day Magazine Issue Forty-nine.

“A wee slice of rock ‘n’ roll history!”

CONTENTS

4. Soul Asylum Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers. 16. Fuzzbox Interview by Giorgia Lynch. 22. Dub Pistols Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers. 37 / 115 / 141. Wasted World Another instalment of Dan Webster’s legendary comic strip. 38. Rick Wakeman Interview by Martin Hutchinson. 42. Inspiral Carpets Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers. 72. Kula Shaker Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers. 92. Football Rants! Everything you need to know this season with your pundit, Marco ‘Frenchy’ Gloder. 96. My Beating Heart Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers. 116. My Billy Childish Intrigue By Daren Garratt. 120. The Mighty Lemon Drops Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

142. Misty Interview by Martin Hutchinson. 147. Alice Cooper Martin Hutchinson reviews ‘Live from the Astroturf, Alice Cooper’. 148. ‘Climb Aboard My Roundabout!’ Review by Martin Hutchinson. 149. David Carroll and Friends Martin Hutchinson reviews ‘Bold Reynold’.

150. Pure Assassins Martin Hutchinson reviews ‘Questions’. 151. Gerry Jablonski & The Electric Band Martin Hutchinson reviews ‘105’ . 152. Cliff Richard Martin Hutchinson reviews ‘Christmas with Cliff’ and speaks to the man himself. 154. Leo Sayer Live review by Martin Hutchinson. 156. The Damned Live review by Martin Hutchinson. 158. Nik Turner Tribute by Marco ‘Frenchy’ Gloder.

Soul Asylum Forty Years on a Runaway Train

Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

think anybody that

A lot of greater musicians went ‘Fuck this!’”

Back in 1992, when Soul Asylum released their worldwide breakthrough album and debut release for Columbia Records, ‘Grave Dancers Union’, which topped the US Billboard Heatseekers Album Chart, peaked at number eleven on the main US Billboard Hot 200 chart and number 27 on the UK album chart and reached the top ten in various other territories and went on to be certified triple-platinum a year later and gain the band the award for Best Rock Song for its third single, ‘Runaway Train’ at the 1994 Grammys, many would have been forgiven for thinking that vocalist, guitarist and songwriter Dave Pirner and co. had been an overnight success in the wake of the early-’90s Grunge explosion. However, nothing could have been further from the truth, with the Minneapolis, Minnesota outift having

spent the previous eleven years touring the world relentlessly, often as a support band, and releasing a string of albums on Minneapolis independent label Twin/Tone (1984’s ‘Say What You Will...’; 1986’s ‘Made to Be Broken’ and 1986’s ‘While You Were Out’), before signing an earlier, far less successful major label deal with A & M Records for the release of 1988’s ‘Hang Time’ and 1990’s ‘And the Horse They Rode In On’.

Fast forward to 2022 and with twelve albums now under their belt, including their latest, ‘Hurry Up and Wait’, released in the midst of mass COVID-induced pandemonium on independent label Blue Elan Records in 2020, Soul Asylum are still out there travailing the ups and downs of the music industry. Earlier this year, they celebrated the 30th anniversary of ‘Grave Dancers Union’ with the

“I don’t

is in a band in 2022 would have survived what we put ourselves through ...

release of the ‘Deluxe Edition’ on the Columbia Legacy label, have recently been out on the road all over the world, including the UK, with fellow cult American Alt-Rockers Everclear and are currently planning more live dates, and potentially more recording, for next year.

When we catch up with Pirner via Zoom for a fascinating insight into the incredible forty year plus history of one of the world’s hardest working bands, he greets us in his typically self-depreciating style by telling us: “I’ve been busy, surprisingly! I have a very erratic schedule though! I was very busy over COVID, I’ll tell you that! It’s all about timing. I released a book [‘Loud Fast Words’, 2020] and a record right when COVID started. That was terrible timing! [Laughs].”

Firstly, hello Dave and thank you for agreeing to our interview, it is lovely to speak to you. Let’s start at the here and now, because you have just been out on the road in the UK for an

eight-date tour alongside Everclear. It had been a while since you were over here previously, but looking back over the years, is the UK a country which holds fond memories for you?

Yeah, we had toured with Everclear before, so we knew the fellas before touring with them again and it was cool to, you know, have some other Yankees out there, because none of us are very good with English! I kind of need a translator! [Laughs]. Yeah, I have [laughs] fantastic memories of being over there! I don’t know, when you’re in a shitty little Punk band from Minneapolis and you get to go over to England for the first time, it’s a thrill. You feel like, well, now we’re going to show these Brits how we do it and it’s always kind of been that way. I mean, the one band that sticks out in my mind that we did a gig or two with was Gaye Bykers on Acid [Soul Asylum opened for Gaye Bykers on Acid on several UK dates in 1988]. They were fun, they made us feel right at home! That sure was quite a while ago, I hope

Soul Asylum, 2022. L/R: Winston Roye; Michael Bland; Dave Pirner and Ryan Smith

they’re doing good.

Recent years have been a really busy time for Soul Asylum, not least with your twelfth studio album, ‘Hurry Up and Wait’ having been released on the 16th of April 2020. The tour in support of that album was interrupted by the pandemic and the album itself was released during lockdown, during which time you and Soul Asylum lead guitarist and backing vocalist since 2016, Ryan Smith hosted online live shows via Facebook and Instagram. Just what was the experience of releasing and promoting an album in the midst of all that pandemonium like?

Oh, it was just really frustrating, because we had been on tour and we were touring a bit more because the record [‘Hurry Up and Wait’, 2020] was coming out and we were in San Diego and I got a knock on my hotel room door and it was my tour manager, Jeneen [Anderson], who’s with me now, and she said, ‘Tour’s over!’ and I was like ‘What?!’ Luckily, we had

been on about a three or four week tour and we only had a couple of gigs left on the tour and so then, if I remember correctly, my book [‘Loud Fast Words’, 2020] came out and it was kind of questionable as to would I be able to promote that? And of course, the answer was ‘No’, you know, so me and Ryan [Smith, guitar and backing vocals] and Jeneen sort of started doing a livestream and that was the first time I had done anything like that, but it turned out to be, well, kind of a fun way just to be kind of present, I suppose. Every week, we did a livestream and played a hundred original songs, which was our goal. We played some songs that we don’t usually play and we played some songs that, you know, I had to use a lyric sheet for, but we did end up accomplishing our goal of a hundred songs and people still come up to me and talk to me about it, so I think people kind of ... I don’t know, I guess they appreciated it, because everyone was stuck at home, you know. Yeah, I’m not a big internet person. I’m no Justin Hawkins [The Darkness], if you

know what I mean! We laugh about his [YouTube] show [‘Justin Hawkins Rides Again’] sometimes [laughs], it can be pretty good!

On the subject of ‘Hurry Up and Wait’, a major theme of the album is communication. However, I think it is fair to say that it is references to older forms of communication and communication via the internet doesn’t figure. This leads me to ask, as a musician in a band who have been active since 1981, what is your opinion on the way that you are obliged to communicate and promote yourself in the modern age in comparison to how things were done back in the earlier days of the band? For a start, you were just saying there that you aren’t really an internet person?

Well, I mean [laughs], I kind of accept that, just referring to it as such ... I don’t really say that very often, but I realise I just did! You know, you go out and you play and that’s what you do and you do it as much as you can and it

really wasn’t until a little bit later that ... you know, ‘later’ as in after the band had been going a couple of years that we were like, ‘Oh, that’s how it works! You put a record out and then you go on tour and that’s kind of how it works’. We were kind of always learning as we went along, I suppose, but it’s still kind of just the same aesthetic as it’s always been. Like, you get in the van, you get on the plane, you go to wherever it is and you play your show and it’s as simple as that. And then you go home and you make a record and you go back out, you know.

‘Hurry Up and Wait’ was obviously recorded prior to the world going into lockdown and following your return to Minneapolis, Minnesota, utilising Nicollet Studios, where your first three albums (1984’s ‘Say What You Will...’; 1986’s ‘Made to Be Broken’ and 1986’s ‘While You Were Out’) were recorded. How important do you feel returning to not only the city in which Soul Asylum was formed in under the name Loud Fast Rules forty-one

years ago (the band adopted the name Soul Asylum in 1983), but also this particular studio was the resulting album?

Yeah, that was cool too! That was an opportunity to do something that we wouldn’t have normally done and we started working in that studio [Nicollet Studios] I think on the last two records [‘Change of Fortune’, 2016 and ‘Hurry Up and Wait’] and the fella that we’d been using as our producer, John Fields, got a space in Minneapolis. He was living in LA, so me and Michael [Bland, drummer] would go out to LA and bring the tracks back to Minneapolis, but he got a studio in Minneapolis that happened to be in the same building where we recorded our first three records [‘Say What You Will...’, 1984; ‘Made to Be Broken’, 1986 and ‘While You Were Out’, 1986]. Yeah, so we ended up back where we started and it was a very comfortable feeling, you know. It was very much like, you know, you’re just walking up and down the halls or going outside to go and get a bite [to eat], or

whatever, and it was a very natural feeling. I think that it [‘Hurry Up and Wait’] really does have some sort of ... I don’t even know what the word is ... it’s not ‘visceral’, but it’s something like that, where you’re probably excited the first time you record in LA or New York and, you know, it takes you out of your elements and that can be a really good thing and then you end up in the worst neighbourhood in Florida for three months and that can [laughs] affect the way things go too, I suppose! So, yeah, there was a real feeling of, you know, bringing it all back home, if you will.

Also in 2020, you released your book, ‘Loud Fast Words’ (the title of which is of course a reference to Soul Asylum’s original name), a collection of lyrics and memories spanning the band’s entire career. Did you notice any sort of significant evolution in your writing over the course of the band’s career?

[Laughs] It’s kind of a mixed bag. I mean, sometimes, I’ll be surprised, like

‘oh, I’d forgotten I had written that, that’s actually pretty good!’ But, I’m kind of my own worst critic, so, I mean, I like to think that my writing gets better all the time, but occasionally, I would surprise myself and other times, I’d be like a bit embarrassed, like I hadn’t really formulated my formula yet, or something. So, yeah, there’s definitely an evolution there!

This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of your sixth album, ‘Grave Dancers Union’ and the Columbia Legacy label released the 30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition of the album on the 30th of September. Despite having been together for eleven years previously, it was ‘Grave Dancers Union’ which was your worldwide commercial breakthrough, hitting the top of the US Billboard Heatseekers Albums Chart and number eleven on the main US Billboard Hot 200 chart, but also peaking at number 27 on the UK album chart and reaching the top ten in many other countries

across the globe. It also spawned three high charting singles: ‘Somebody to Shove’ (US Alternative Chart #1 / UK#32); ‘Black Gold’ (US Alternative Chart #6 / UK#26) and the track which you would soon become most associated with, ‘Runaway Train’ (US#5 / CAN#1 / UK#7). Grunge had broken in earnest the year previous to ‘Grave Dancers Union’, with Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ in particular lighting the way for many Alternative Rock bands to become commercially successful chart acts. You soon found yourself being labelled with the term “Grunge”, but what was your opinion of this tag at the time and how important do you feel your association with this movement to your commercial success during this period?

It [being associated with Grunge] didn’t really affect the band that much, because it was more of an extension of what had been going on already. So, we had been on the road for ten years when the Grunge thing started

Soul Asylum in 1992, with Pirner second from right

happening, but we had been through Seattle and we had Soundgarden open for us a long, long, long time ago and we had met a lot of the folks, some of them before they had even started bands! So, there was definitely a scene bubbling up in Seattle. And I think, and I’m pretty sure I’m kind of right about this, the Grunge thing ... pretty sure I’m kind of right about it; could I be any more confident?! The Grunge thing goes a little hand in hand with people tuning their guitars lower and I think that’s kind of what is identified with the word ‘Grunge’, which, like so many words, was come up with by a music journalist!

‘Grave Dancers Union’ was your first release for major label, Columbia Records, following three albums on the independent label Twin/Tone (‘Say What You Will...’; ‘Made to Be Broken’ and ‘While You Were Out’) and two albums for another major label, A&M (‘Hang Time’, 1988 and ‘And the Horse They Rode In On’, 1990). You would go on to release two further albums for Columbia

Records, 1995’s Butch Vig-produced ‘Let Your Dim Light Shine’ (US#6 / UK#22), which featured the singles ‘Misery’ (US#20 / UK#30); ‘Just Like Anyone’ (UK#52) and ‘Promises Broken’ and 1998’s ‘Candy from a Stranger’ (US#121), which featured the singles ‘I Will Still Be Laughing’ and ‘Close’. When you started the band in 1981 under the name Hard Fast Rules (with yourself on drums and vocals until drummer Pat Morley joined in 1983 and you switched to rhythm guitar and vocals) alongside lead guitarist Dan Murphy and bassist Karl Mueller, were such things as major label deals among your aspirations for the band and having released on an independent label, just how different did you find the experience of being signed to a major label?

No. I mean, we didn’t have any aspirations, to be totally honest, not in a way that we knew what it was we were striving for. I think we knew that we were having fun and we wanted to do it as much as we could, but we

didn’t have a lot of confidence or a lot of big dreams, because major labels weren’t working with bands like us, you know, all the bands that were out there with this do it yourself sort of aesthetic that didn’t even involve the major labels at all. There was kind of a network of fanzines and bands that were, you know, driving around on their own volition in vans and, you know, sleeping around on people’s floors. It was kind of some sort of a blind ambition where you just want to keep going and keep playing and see where it takes you, but we definitely didn’t have any delusions about how far we could go and we were probably as surprised as anyone at just how far we’d gone and that I’m still even sitting here!

In fact, with ‘Hurry Up and Wait’ having been released on the Los Angeles-based independent label Blue Élan Records, things have now gone full circle, haven’t they?

Yeah and I mean, it’s a really good disposition, because nothing ever fazed

me. There was no disappointment too large for Soul Asylum! We were just sort of used to floundering and fluffing up, if you will, and just kind of being a bunch of misfits, you know, so we always kind of rationalised it with humour and we rationalised it with just kind of going, ‘Oh well, that sucked, let’s move on’. So, I never had any delusions of grandeur about how things are supposed to be easier, or you’re going to make it some day and you’re never going to have to worry about anything again and none of that is really true! [Laughs].

So, how would you say that being a member of Soul Asylum in 2022 compares to being a member of Soul Asylum in 1992 when ‘Grave Dancers Union’ was released?

Well, hhhhmmm, that’s a good question! It’s kind of more of the same, only you have the experience, so in 2022, I’ve seen it all, you know! The other guys in the band have some of their own unique follies, if you will, and some of their own unique ... I don’t

want to say ‘successes’, but Michael [Bland, drummer, who joined Soul Asylum in 2005 and has appeared on ‘The Silver Lining’, 2006; ‘Delayed Reaction’, 2012; ‘Change of Fortune’ and ‘Hurry Up and Wait’] played with Prince [performing live as part of the New Power Generation and appearing on the albums ‘Diamonds and Pearls’, 1991; ‘Come’, 1994; ‘The Gold Experience’, 1995; ‘Chaos and Disorder’, 1996; ‘Emancipation’, 1996; ‘Crystal Ball’, 1998; ‘3121’, 2006; ‘Planet Earth’, 2007 and ‘Lotusflow3r’, 2009] and that sort of thing, but I don’t think anybody that is in a band in 2022 would have survived what we put ourselves through in the past! [Laughs]. It was brutal! I mean, you had to be kind of eighteen to put up with all that, you know! A lot of greater musicians went ‘Fuck this!’ [Laughs].

On the subject of ‘Runaway Train’, you wrote the song about your battle with depression in the period before ‘Grave Dancers Union’, but the single’s hard-hitting video, which became a staple of MTV in mid-1993,

featured images of missing people. Several versions of the video were made for various parts of the world, including the UK. The US version of the video led to twenty-six of the missing people featured being found, but there were quite a few tragic cases. How much say did you have in the video for ‘Runaway Train’ and what are your memories of the director of that video, Tony Kaye and Columbia Records, pitching the idea for it to you and the rest of the band? Well, people seemed to like the song, so I think that when they put the record out, they had actually already decided ... or part of their strategy was to release ‘Somebody to Shove’ , then ‘Black Gold’ and then ‘Runaway Train’, which is pretty ... you know, it worked. If it hadn’t have worked, we might not have even made it to ‘Runaway Train’. So, you know, it was the era when everyone made a video and I was looking to do something different and what you would get was a whole bunch of VHS tapes of different directors’ reels and you had to look

through them and go , ‘Oh, I think this guy might be a good match with the band’ and then you’d meet this guy and you’d have lunch or dinner and see if you were compatible. And so, I was looking through all these reels and I got Tony Kaye’s reel and I just thought, initially, it was just much better than anything else I had seen within the bunch of stuff that I was looking at, because his stuff really stuck out to me, so I said ‘I wanna meet this guy!’ So, there I am at lunch with Tony Kaye, a very eloquent and brilliant English man and he came up with this idea. He said ‘Milk cartons!’ to me and I said, ‘What do you mean?’ and he goes, ‘You know how they put kids on milk cartons and try to find them?’ And I went, ‘Oh yeah, I didn’t know they had that in England?’ and he goes, ‘Yeah, well, you know, they didn’t in my day’, because he’s a bit older, a little bit and ... he’s also, by the way, made ‘American History X’ [1998] and a great movie called ‘Lake of Fire’ [2006]. And so, he was kind of getting at this thing and he goes, ‘Yeah, let’s ry and find these kids!’ and I was like,

‘I’m in!’ So, it clicked between us really fast, but he put the concept forward and I said, ‘Let’s go with it’ and that’s the way it worked out and he was just making a word association with the word ‘runaway’. So, sometimes ... sometimes ... things work out and that was, fortunately, one of the times it did. And I still think about him as a brilliant and somewhat eccentric director, but Tony Kaye is great. If I was going to make a movie, I would get Tony Kaye to make it! I call him every now and then and he still always gives me a concept! Yeah, he gave me a concept right after the O.J. Simpson thing [the O.J. Simpson trial, 1995] and he was like, ‘How about this? The band’s in a white van driving down the freeway and ... yeah, you can use that!’ It was a good idea, I probably should have used it! [Laughs] I don’t know what we ended up doing, probably not something as good! I suppose I felt like ‘Well, if we’re going to do this right, Tony, I’m going to need you to direct it’ and he was like, ‘I’m busy!’

Finally, if the Dave Pirner of 2022

could offer the Dave Pirner of 1981, when Soul Asylum were just starting out, any advice, what would it be?

Oh, hhhmmmm, let’s see! Keep your expectations as low as possible! Always expect the worst, because if something bad can happen, it probably will and, you know, approach it with a sense of humour, because if you can’t laugh off the tragedies, you’re never going to make it. I mean, you have to kind of have this sense of absurdity to the whole thing to kind of dream your way into going, ‘You know, this could work!’ But, we certainly were ready for the worst and that always kind of helped prepare us, because often, the worst possible scenarios came to be the situation we found ourselves in.

Thank you for a wonderful interview, it has been such a please to chat to you. We wish you all the best with all your upcoming tour dates, the 30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition of ‘Grave Dancers Union’ and for the future.

Thank you Alice, I appreciate it!

‘Grave Dancers Union - 30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition’’ is out now on Columbia Legacy. For news and upcoming tour dates, visit the links below.

www.soulasylum.com www.facebook.com/

SoulAsylum

Fuzzbox

The Zoom call begins and I am greeted by a bright white face and a huge red smile staring down the camera at me. Although this was my first time meeting Maggie Dunne from We’ve Got a Fuzzbox and We’re Going to Use It, aka Fuzzbox, I guessed that this wasn’t her usual make-up routine. As Dunne spent the first five minutes of the hour-long interview perfecting her make-up, putting her hair into two plaits and placing a red head dress on, I could tell this was going to be far from boring.

But how could it be? Dunne is a legendary ‘80s Rock icon. With two studio albums (‘Bostin’ Steve Austin’ in 1986 and ‘Big Bang’ (UK#5) in 1989), reunions in 2010 and 2015, and now a brand new concept album entitled ‘The Lift’ coming out, we had a lot to talk about.

But, I can’t tell a lie, I had never heard of Fuzzbox before this interview. Being born in 2001, I grew up listening to all of that era’s Pop legends like Britney Spears, Girls Aloud and the Spice Girls. My music taste never diverted to the ‘80s Rock music genre. I never got to witness first hand Fuzzbox’s bright coloured clothes and their vibrant hair (that had so much volume something could be hiding in it). So, before we talked about their recent achievement, I had to learn about their past by playing songs such as ‘Rules and Regulations’ (UK#41, ‘Bostin’ Steve Austin’) ‘Pink Sunshine’ (UK#14, ‘Big Bang’) to get a feeling as to what they are about.

Right, so as you are finishing your hair and make-up, which looks absolutely amazing, I thought I’d start with a little throwback to the late-’80s, so can you just tell me what

“I thought I’d be a character rather than being myself, because being myself is really boring.”

‘Pink Sunshine’ (UK#14, ‘Big Bang’, 1989) is actually about?

I can indeed! I used to live by Birmingham Airport and I had a pet dog called Paddy. He was absolutely beautiful, absolutely lovely - I don’t think of him as a dog, I think of him as my four-legged hairy brother really! He was so lovely and we used to go for walks together, we’d go to the airport and watch the planes coming in and out. And in the evening the sun would be setting, hence the ‘pink sunshine’, but the pink sunshine, what I hadn’t realised when we were writing it was that it was actually caused by air pollution. So it’s not as romantic as your first thought. It was about imagining you are going somewhere else, getting out, getting out of suburbia and doing something exciting.

I could feel the rapport building after just asking the first question. Dunne’s infectious laugh made for such a comfortable environment and I hope that I made her feel at-ease too as she was open enough to talk

about her late sister and guitarist for the band, Jo Dunne (who died in 2012) after listening to the song ‘Rules and Regulations’ (UK#41, ‘Bostin Steve Austin’, 1986).

‘Rules and Regulations’ is just about growing up and what you might do with your life. Go to school, follow the rules, do what people say and don’t make a fool of yourself - work your brains out until your head bursts. It’s just about the mundanity of life and there must be more to life, there must be more than this. It’s about growing up and making use of your life and try and do something different. But that song is particularly special to me because it’s the song that my sister [Jo Dunne] left this world to, so it was the last song that was played at her funeral. So, it has a special place in my heart.

When I was listening to the song, and I hope you don’t mind me saying this, it doesn’t sound like your “typical” funeral song. You would normally think it would be slower and sadder, but it’s quite upbeat.

But, something that did stick in my head when listening to it was the lyric “There must be more to life”. That works, it’s a nice lyric. After finishing her laughter at what was maybe a surprising question, Dunne said:

It is and also it served as a reminder to people at the funeral that you’re only here for a short amount of time.

But it seemed like Dunne and the rest of Fuzzbox enjoyed sending out a message to people that maybe others were too scared to show off, especially in the ‘80s. When I was talking to Mike Bennett, the producer of Fuzzbox’s upcoming album, ‘The Lift’, he was saying that you were “the original girl-power group.”

We never set out to be empowering, we set out to be annoying! [Laughs].

But sometimes being yourself is the empowering thing.

Exactly and we didn’t set out to be that, but just by being who we are, we wound up being that. It’s something that I have talked about before, if you look at all the images of Fuzzbox there is four very different characters in there and Jo especially stands out because you never see her in a skirt. And I know Sporty Spice was kind of based off Jo apparently, but Jo was a lot more obviously tomboy than Sporty Spice - I think Sporty Spice got the short end of the poo stick, didn’t she? Jo was just Jo and it was never a thing and we never made a song and dance about it, it was just who Jo was, and I think that naturalness was very evident and that is very empowering.

Right, so we will start talking about your new album, which is called ‘The Lift’ and it is a concept album. So far, I have heard a few very interesting things about it, so if you just want to explain a bit about what your plans are with that?

So, during lockdown, I watched the musical ‘Hamilton’ [2015] as I was

wondering what the fuss was about. But I found it a bit boring mostly; some of it was alright. But it got me thinking about what sort of musical I’d quite like to watch, and then I thought that I really like watching programmes about serial killers, which I do. It’s a dreadful thing really because it’s like you’re supporting it. So, it got me thinking and I spoke to Mike [Bennett] about it. We were thinking about doing a musical, but it was lockdown so we couldn’t do that, so what we could do was think about a concept for an album and that is how it came along. We came up with various titles, ‘The Lift’ might not be the final title, ‘Tragic Carpet’ was another one [title]. We wondered how we could get people from one scenario to another and then we finally settled on ‘The Lift’. You go in the lift and it is a bit like a horror movie, you go in the lift and you don’t know what horror scenario you will come out at, which I really quite like, because I think that is it quite scary getting into a enclosed space, you don’t know what is going to be behind the door and so that was the whole sort of thing. It started off being

that, but it has kind of changed to something a bit different, so we got different people doing different songs but they have put their own stamp on it and I think it has actually made the project much more exciting. It’s not just a lift of serial killers, they have put their own perspective on it.

So, without giving away too much, do all the songs link in some way to form some sort of story in the lift?

They don’t, it doesn’t have a linear narrative, but we will be having the lift operator doing some sort of connection between the story. Once we have got them all in [the songs], it is a bit of a chicken and he egg situation, we can link them altogether. Mike is a prolific writer. he has done stuff for TV, so between us both, we will come up with this lift operator and we are hoping to make it into a film later.

Oh wow, do you know much more about that?

Again, we are waiting. Today, I have had a message to say that another song has been done, so as soon as it is all done we will gel it all together. Another thing about Mike is when he is on a project, he will work really, really quickly to get it all together, but obviously, when you are working with other people you have to give them time to do their thing, so it is coming together as quickly as it can be done, wouldn’t want to rush anyone.

And you have collaborated with a lot of people on this album as well, such as former Sub Sub vocalist Melanie Williams and Christine Sugary Staple of From the Specials. What is it like working with these people in a collaborative way?

I think COVID has made working collaboratively much more easy, it has become normal. Christine sent over her idea and Mike and I talked about it. Mike and I are very similar in our production values, it is rare that he sends me something and I go ‘Oh gosh, no’. But if he did, I could tell him and it wouldn’t be an issue and equally, he could tell me if it was rubbish or not. I think that is quite important when you’re working with people to have a certain degree of honesty.

So, what is it like working with Mike Bennett as your producer?

He is mad as a box of frogs! Well, a box of frogs have nothing on Mike actually! He is very intense and I have to tell him off sometimes because he is naughty! But he is amazingly creative and he has been a very good friend to me.

Now, I have been mesmerised by your outfit for the whole interview and obviously you were a part of Bennett’s movie ‘Vegan Vampires from Zorg’ (2022), which also featured Melanie Williams, so can you tell me about your part in that?

What I did, well I’m not sure what I did really because I haven’t seen the full film yet, so I’m not sure of how much of what I did is actually in there. But I did some scenes with John Otway in a record store and that is quite funny, but I’ve seen some extracts of the film and it is completely bonkers! I think it is going to be one of those cult films, it’s not mainstream at all.

Thank you so much Maggie!

This has been Maggie Dunne from Fuzzbox, the OG power-girl group and the OG power-girl!

For news on Fuzzbox’s upcoming new album, ‘The Lift’ and much more, visit the link below.

www.facebook.com/ OfficialFuzzbox

Dub Pistols

Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

it’s been a rollercoaster ride, but every line on my face is because I’ve never stopped laughing!”

The self-proclaimed “World’s most successful unsuccessful band”, Big Beat survivors Dub Pistols are currently planning to launch their ninth album, ‘Frontline’. However, with the release of previous albums having been hampered by such things as the backlash against the music scene that the band had been born out of, leading their debut, 1998’s ‘Point Blank’ to be described by one particular unimpressed journalist as “the sound of Fatboy Slim’s sweaty jockstrap”; international terrorism; inter-band warfare; the search for a new record label and a global pandemic, it was perhaps inevitable that the release of ‘Frontline’ would also be anything but straightforward.

In fact, despite Dub Pistols now being a slickly drilled outfit, their latest creation was due to be with us

by the time that this issue is released, but will now be released in March 2023. Well, what else would you expect from them? But, the struggles that ever-charismatic head Dub Pistol, Barry Ashworth and co. have had to endure only go to make this outfit more endearing and ‘Frontline’ is proof that great music has the ability to overcome even the biggest and most unexpected of challenges.

Not that the last three decades have been without their highpoints of course, with Dub Pistols having once been snapped up by the mighty Geffen Records, undertaken major sold out world tours; collaborated with musical greats such as The Specials’ Terry Hall, Gregory Isaacs, Busta Rhymes, Horace Andy, Planet Asia and the Freestylers and, more recently, having ran their own highly

“...

successful festival, Mucky Weekender. Yes, the Dub Pistols story is one with just as many twists and turns as their inimitable sound and we recently caught up with Ashworth for the full unabridged version, complete with its latest and equally fascinating chapter.

Firstly, hello Barry and thank you for agreeing to our interview, it is lovely to speak to you. Let’s start at the here and now, because next March sees the release of Dub Pistols’ ninth studio album, ‘Frontline’. What can you tell us about the recording of the new album and its content?

I mean, for me personally, obviously I’m going to say this, but I think it’s our best work to date, by miles! I mean, people always say that and I think that you’ve got to believe that everything you’ve done is better than the previous, otherwise there’s no point. We’ve always worked with lots of different guests, but I vocaled a few tracks myself, which I don’t normally

do, which I’m really pleased with and we’ve got everyone from like Demolition Man, Ragga Twins ... I mean, the list of guests is insane, you know! And I’ve been working with the Freestylers as well on producing. We’ve brought in lots of different people to work on lots of different bits of production and things and it’s obviously out on ... I’ve started my own label [Cyclone Records, named after the band’s 1998 debut single ‘Cyclone’ (‘Point Blank’)]. Yeah, I just thought it was time that I took my life into my own hands, so I’m quite excited about that.

So, how did starting your own label, Cyclone Records actually come about then? It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time and I think it’s something that the industry has sort of ... you know, I’ve sort of got myself into a position now where instead of giving away 50% of the royalties, that I can afford to take on the PR, the pluggers and the way that the whole

industry is run now, there’s no difference to me running it than, you know, just taking an advance off a record label to give them a massive 5% of your income. It just makes no sense to me anymore. You know, we’ve got a big solid fanbase, we’ve got a big database and, you know, we’re almost like a cult thing anyway, so it’s not like we’re something starting out that needs a hell of a lot of money throwing at it, you know, so I just made the decision that it’s better to take my life into my own hands. At least now, instead of getting 50% of the royalty, I’ve got 50% of the blame! [Laughs]. I’ve got no one else to blame if things don’t go right apart from myself, you know!

How have you found the preparation for releasing the first record on your own label?

Well, my original plan was to bring it out in September to coincide with my festival [Mucky Weekender], but that fell flat on its face, but again, it’s just taking its time with manufacturing these days, it just takes forever. So, the

album is not actually coming out until March, but it’s on pre-sale now and we’re starting to release singles from sort of mid-November [‘Nice Up’, featuring Freestylers, was released on the 18th of November] through to March. Yeah, it’s quite a build-up and obviously that’s because the album is supposed to be out. So, yeah, its all go though! Now we’ve actually got release dates and we’ve got everything set up, we’re pushing forward. As I’d sort of messed up the launch, I sat back, put all my ducks in line and thought ‘alright, let’s try again!’ [Laughs].

I am guessing that the preparation for the release of ‘Frontline’ must be a little easier than that for the release your last album, ‘Addict’, with that having been released on the 16th of October 2020, during lockdown? We imagine that with not being able to get out on the road at that particular point in time to tour ‘Addict’ and promote that album must have been a very unusual experience for you. Just what was it like putting out an album in the

midst of all that pandemonium?

Yeah, I mean, it was heartbreaking. We’ve also got a documentary [‘What the Fuck Could Possibly Go Wrong?’], like about the history of the Dub Pistols, and the release of the last album [‘Addict’, 2020] was to coincide with the release of the film, which was kind of like a redemption film, because, you know, we’ve had quite a chequered and colourful past. My company’s called What the Fuck Could Possibly Go Wrong? LTD! So, basically, like the idea was to release the album and, like I said, it’s a career that you’ve destroyed yourself, mostly, finally pulled the pieces back together, finally launching the album and having a sold-out festival and then, just as it was about to happen, you know, we sailed off into the sunset and then the global pandemic struck and it was like, ‘Not again!’ [Laughs]. It’s been a rollercoaster ride and, like I said, you know, to get to our ninth studio album and, like I said, this year’s festival was absolutely incredible and to be still playing all over the world, then I think

yes, it’s been a rollercoaster ride, but every line on my face is because I’ve never stopped laughing! [Laughs]. I think it’s like a boxer, you know, if you stay on the canvass then you’re out, then the fight’s over, [laughs] but if you keep getting up, dusting yourself off and going again ...! I don’t think I could do anything else, I’m unemployable! [Laughs]. And, like I say, we’ve got a very loyal fanbase that I’m really grateful to, they really support us through thick and then. You know, during COVID, the amount of support we got, you know, just through people buying merchandise was incredible.

You have obviously now been back out on the road for some time and the ‘Frontline Tour’ of the UK and Ireland began at the Boileroom in Guildford on the 30th of September. It is a sixteen date tour, which winds up with a pre-Christmas fixture at Club 85 in Hitchin on the 17th of December. At the time of this interview, you are just that one date in to the tour, but it follows a whole

host of Summer festival appearances, including the third instalment of your own Mucky Weekender festival on the 9th and 10th September at Vicarage Farm in Winchester. Have you been able to gauge any sort of audience reaction to the new material from ‘Frontline’ and which tracks from the album have you been most enjoying playing live?

Yeah, I mean, we started bringing in some of the tunes during festival season, you know, at Mucky [Weekender], we get a lot of our guests together because I book them for the festival, so I can actually get most of them on stage to perform and, yeah, the tracks have been going down absolutely, yeah, massive! You see people who have never heard these tracks before just going absolutely crazy! Yeah, and I’m very excited about it all.

We mentioned your Mucky Weekender festival there, which has just enjoyed its third year. Where did the idea to stage your own

festival come from and for you, what have been some of the highlights those three years so far?

Well, I mean, obviously, we’re a massive festival band and I started promoting clubs back in 1987, so I started off as a promoter and it’s something I always wanted to do and then someone showed me some land one year, their own land, and said they’d like to have a festival and look, I’ve always been a bit a chancer, so I thought ‘alright, I’m going to give it a go!’ And we started off very small, I think the first year was 1,200 [people] and then the second year obviously, we moved and we doubled in size and then COVID came along and had a massive effect on the amount of people that could actually turn up from bought tickets and this year was like a coming of age, where it really became, you know ... I don’t want to call it a proper festival, because that was always what we’d first do, but this year, we felt like a grown-up festival. So, like, it’s got a massive and really lovely community of people who are all sort of ... I don’t

Barry (left) with Leeroy Thornhill, formerly of The Prodigy (centre) and Happy Mondays’ Bez at Mucky Weekender. Photograph by Paul Windsor Dub Pistols on stage at Mucky Weekender

know, there’s not one fight, there’s not one piece of trouble there, everybody’s just there to see it all and it’s just grown into something really lovely, you know. Tickets for the next one [in 2023] have gone through the roof already, so it’s already underway!

Wow, that’s brilliant! Is there anything you can tell us about Mucky Weekender 2023 at this stage?

Only that it will be bigger and better. I’ve already started to put offers in for other bands. The early birds [tickets] sold out in like fifteen minutes and we’ve already sold like 33% of the tickets for the next year of the whole of the tickets and it took me forever to sell this amount of tickets last year, so it just really shows that there’s good feedback, so, yeah, it’s been brilliant!

It is incredible how quickly Mucky Weekender has grown in stature over such a short space of time.

Yeah, once again, like I said, that’s

down to the people and the community and the support, it’s phenomenal! Because when we started our campaign this year, we didn’t spend a penny on marketing and I put a few offers in for acts for next year, but I haven’t got anything back in, you know, confirmed or anything yet, so ...

Let’s go back to your pre-Dub Pistols days to those days when you first immersed yourself in club culture, because your career began nearly a decade before you formed Dub Pistols, when you ended up in Ibiza in 1987, didn’t it? How did you end up in Ibiza and how did that experience inform what was to follow? It did indeed. Yeah, I started club promoting in 1987, then I started my first band [Deja Vu] and was signed to Cowboy Records, which was Charlie Chester’s [and Dean Thatcher’s] back in the day and, you know, I ran some of the biggest nights, I guess, in London during, you know, the late-’80s and through the ‘90s and then, you know,

Barry (right) with Blaine Scanlon in Deja Vu

doing the band thing and I think the Dub Pistols started in ‘96, I think, but that was off the back of ... the Big Beat scene had blown up, with The Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim, etc. That had blown up and just as ... we [Dub Pistols] signed a deal to Universal / BMG and just as our [debut] record, ‘Point Blank’ [1998] was supposed to come out, you know, the Big Beat scene died, as things do, and went from being NME heroes to ... I think one review called us ‘the sound of Fatboy Slim’s sweaty jockstrap’! [Laughs]. And then, literally, we got a deal in America and went to America and spent the next four years there. You know, just as everything falls off a cliff, there seems to be a bouncy castle at the bottom that we hit and bounce back up again! But, it was indeed 1987 that I took my first trip to Ibiza. I wanted to be a professional footballer, but I broke both my sort of ankles in various different places over a short period of time, where after I came back from one injury, I got another and I went to Ibiza just to go on holiday and that was the ‘87 thing, took a load of

pills and never went home! [Laughs]. My football career was over and I was all pilled up! [Laughs].

You mentioned your football past there and in Eighth Day, we have recently started a new feature called ‘Football Rants!’ Do you still follow football and what are your predictions for the 2022 World Cup, which will be about half way through by the time that this interview goes to print?

My predictions for the World Cup, oh God! Based on what [Gareth] Southgate’s been doing lately, not very much! It’s not looking good, is it? I mean, to be honest, international football drives me crazy! I mean, my family are all Scousers, I’m first generation Mockney, so the first thing I had done was being put in a red shirt, so I’m a Liverpool supporter. So, that’s my team, we carried my grandmother down to ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ [Rodgers and Hamerstein, 1945 / Gerry and the Pacemakers, ‘How Do You Like It?’, 1963] when she died and I

Deja Vu

remember Roy Hodgson was in charge when she died and I phoned up TalkSPORT and I said, ‘My grandmother’s just died and the only reason I’m glad she’s dead is that she wouldn’t have to watch this team, because it would kill her!’ People were calling me telling me to get off the radio, [laughs] saying ‘Barry, what you doin’?!’ I know, I know! So, predictions for the World Cup, let’s see ... an early bath, I hope! Mind you, not much of the Liverpool team are going to be there. He’s obviously not going to take Trent [Alexander-Arnold]. You know, I’m just hoping that we get our players better. You know, the whole Qatar World Cup for me just stinks anyway, of corruption, and FIFA just drive me nuts, so I haven’t got many good things to say about it. The whole thing is a fraud, it’s total, absolute corruption at the highest level and, you know, look at how good Liverpool were last year compared to what’s happened this year and I just think the players are knackered because they’ve just literally played every game that you could possibly play last season and

then been rushed back and it’s like, they just don’t look ... they look awful and so off-pace. But yeah, it’s not being looking good for Southgate and I keep going on about [Harry] Macguire and I think he got lucky last year with the European championships [Euro 2020] taking us to the final and again, [Southgate] blew it with his selection, but this year, I can’t see us doing anything to be honest. I think the Women’s Football, the way it comes through and the whole way it’s supported, everything around it just feels a lot better, doesn’t it? I just really thought the Women’s Football is coming on so fast. I mean, you used to watch it and don’t get me wrong, I’m not being sexist, it was just a poor standard, wasn’t it? But you saw some of the goals some of the girls scored in this year’s [FIFA Women’s] World Cup and it was like, ‘Wow!’ [Laughs]. Yeah, I was delighted!

Prior to Dub Pistols, during the early to mid-’90s, there was your band Deja Vu, who released several singles and the 1995 album, ‘Gangsters,

Tarts & Wannabees’. For those who are unaware of Deja Vu, how did that band come about and could you tell us a bit about those few years?

We made one album [‘Gangsters, Tarts & Wannabees’, 1995], we did a few television appearances, we had a hit with a cover of The Woodentops’ [1986 song] ‘Why Why Why?’ [UK#57, ‘Gangsters, Tarts & Wannabees’]. It was all about me being ... you know, obviously, I was massively into the [Happy] Mondays and The Stone Roses and the Manchester scene and it was all about the vibe for me, so I just thought ‘well, if they can start a band, so can I’, do you know what I mean? And there was a few bands, there was like Deja Vu, If, Airstream and Natural Life and we were supposed to be London’s answer to the Manchester scene, but it just never really took off, do you know what I mean? Like I said, we had one album and everything fell apart and that was kind of it really! But, it set the scene, it set me on my way.

So, from there, how did you end up

putting together Dub Pistols?

I got bored of the sort of House scene as it was and the Big Beat scene was fresh. Listening to the Chemical Brothers record, ‘My Mercury Mouth’ [EP, 1994, the duo’s second and final release under the name The Dust Brothers], I just thought ‘this is fresh’ and there was the Wall of Sound [Records] thing out and I just thought I just wanted a change of direction, you know, and to start doing a different kind of sound and that was it at that time. It was only ever supposed to be DJ cannon fodder, it was never supposed to be band, it was never supposed to last as long as twenty-five years! But, like I say, that’s only because I’m unemployable and I won’t give up!

That era was the time of Big Beat and you were quickly being mentioned in the same breath as acts such as The Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim, but by the time you had released your debut album, 1998’s ‘Point Blank’, that scene was already falling out of favour somewhat in the

UK. Luckily though, you began attracting a lot of attention in the US and signed to Geffen Records. Did the speed with which that whole Big Beat scene came and went in the UK take you by surprise and how did gaining popularity in the US and signing to Geffen Records come about?

Yeah, I mean, like totally! I remember being broke ... and really broke! And our record label [Sunday Best] had sort of given up! But, like I said, you know, ‘Point Blank’ had just come out and it was just at the end of that scene. I guess it’s a bit like Dubstep, it was one of those things that blows up, you know, everything’s massive and suddenly, it just drops off a cliff and out of nowhere, Jimmy Iovine, who started Death Row Records, had heard this track we’d done with Planet Asia and said it was the best thing he’d heard in fifteen years and the next day, I flew out and did a million and a half dollar deal and we were away in America, you know. Yeah, I mean, I blew it all [the million and a half dollars] in about a

year and a half! I came back and thought I had, I don’t know, a hundred and twenty grand left and I was about sixteen grand overdrawn! [Laughs]. And obviously, just as our second album, ‘Six Million Ways to Live’ [2001] was coming out, we were Geffen [Records] and Universal’s number one project at that time and number two on Billboards [US charts] and then, you know, 9/11 happened and the world changed and the record never came out! You know, it’s just Dub Pistols all over! Like I said, one minute, everything’s going really well and the next thing ... I’m always waiting for someone to come round the corner and hit me around the face with a bat! You know, it never quite happens! I call us the most successfully unsuccessful band ever! [Laughs].

Oh, that’s brilliant! I was going to ask you about that, because the follow-up album to ‘Point Blank’, 2001’s ‘Six Million Ways to Live’, had the misfortune to be scheduled for release in the aftermath of 9/11

and with its references to world events and political content, it was deemed unfit for release, only eventually being released four years later on Distinct’ive Records / INgrooves. What are your memories of that particular time and how did ‘Six Million Ways to Live’ being pulled from Geffen’s release schedule affect the band, because there was a fairly long gap between that and the release of your third album, 2007’s ‘Speakers and Tweeters’, wasn’t there?

I mean, massive, because it’s really hard to write new material knowing that you’ve got an album there that has never come out. It probably took two or three years to get the record back off of Geffen, because even though they said they would let me go, they didn’t, you know, they held me. I think it’s the same with all these record companies. To be fair, it wasn’t their fault, do you know what I mean? But that’s neither here or there. They fully supported us up until that point, but, like any of these things, they don’t want to let you go

and somebody else making it successful. But, for us, it just meant there was nothing we could do. You know, it was just like ‘there’s no point making another album, because I’ve got one that hasn’t come out’, so that’s why there was a massive gap. And then when it did finally get released, it was trying to convince people, because I thought we’d get out of that deal and walk into another deal with no problem whatsoever and everyone was like ‘Well, if the biggest record company in the world has let you go, why would we take you on?’ [Laughs]. Oh well!

So, as we stated earlier, ‘Six Million Ways to Live’ was eventually released in 2005 on Distinct’ive Records / INgrooves and following that, 2007’s ‘Speakers and Tweeters’ was released on the Sunday Best label. Did you find it hard work convincing another label to take you on after parting company with Geffen?

Very much so, yeah! It took a while and luckily, I got to judge a band

competition on the Isle of Wight with Rob da Bank [DJ and co-founder of Sunday Best] and I hitch-hiked a lift back off him, to London, and made him listen to my album [‘Speakers and Tweeters’, 2007] and he said, ‘I love it Barry, but I don’t think we can afford you!’ And I just said, ‘Look. it’s not about the money, I just want the record released’ and he signed us and away we went! Like I say, never give up!

Around the late-’90s / early-2000s, you also became one of the go-to outfits for bands looking for remixes of their newest singles. Dub Pistols remixes around that time included Ian Brown’s ‘Dolphins Were Monkeys’ (‘Golden Greats’, 1999); Limp Bizkit’s ‘My Way’ (‘Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water’, 2000); The Crystal Method’s ‘Do It’ (‘Drive: Nike + Original Run’, 2006) and Moby’s ‘James Bond Theme’ (‘I Like to Score’ and ‘Tomorrow Never Dies: Music from the Motion Picture’, 1997). Do you have particular favourite Dub Pistols remixes from over the years?

I think that one you just mentioned, Ian Brown, ‘Dolphins Were Monkeys’ [1999] was certainly one of our favourites. I don’t think that ever actually had an official release, because the idea was that we’d remix that and Ian would come and sing for us because he was into us and then suddenly, his career took off again and he never turned up! [Laughs]. We’re still mates and everything, you know, but back in those days, as well, everyone wants you to remix them. We were probably getting three or four offers a day back then and we used to get paid a ridiculous amount of money for them, but, you know, it’s like anything, you go from being flavour of the month to nobody’s ever liked you! Do you know what I mean? So, yeah, it goes in waves, you know. And now I guess most people ... I mean, I’ve just remixed Prince Fatty, I really loved that and that’s coming out shortly, but mostly these days, you know, as you know, the money in the music industry for sales is totally different compared to when Dub Pistols first started. I mean, everyone from Limp Bizkit to ... they

used to send us letters saying that we were their inspiration, which was kind of mind-boggling, because they were one of the biggest bands in the world, so it was like ‘Wow!’

Wow, indeed! So, when you get other artists telling you that you were an inspiration to them, how does that feel?

It’s like anything and everybody, it’s humbling to hear, but I think, as an artist, you never really totally believe in yourself. You kind of feel like a ... I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s always humbling for anyone to ask [for a remix], you know. And I mean, some remixes are really easy to do and some remixes, you start off with an idea and it just doesn’t work. You know, it’s a really weird world, the remix world and I guess now, I’m more of a production, sort of album-based producer now, more than necessarily a dancefloor outfit. I still DJ a hell of a lot, but not as much as the new kids on the block.

Returning to the present day, with

all the changes that you will have seen in the music industry over the years, how does being a member of Dub Pistols in 2022 compare to being a member of Dub Pistols back in the mid-to-late ‘90s and early-2000s?

Sober! [Laughs]. Not completely sober, but the Dub Pistols of old were reckless and I would say we definitely had a drink and substance abuse problem! [Laughs]. So, I would say our performances are a lot better, our attitude is better and ... I don’t know, we were very much Rock ‘n’ Roll. We’re still Rock ‘n’ Roll, but, as I said, before, we were reckless, whereas now, we’re about making sure the show is good and then partying, whereas before, I guess we were the team that would come out and run around celebrating winning the cup before we’d kicked a ball! Do you know what I mean? And score an own goal! [Laughs]. Like I say, we’d always snatch defeat from the jaws of victory somehow! So, now, I suppose we’re just a bit more professional in our attitude, because you naturally grow up

and, you know, the recording process is different. You know, I used to spend every day, like twenty-four hours a day in the studio, whereas now I spend eight or nine hours and then I’m shot and instead of recording at full volume with everything, my ears have gone, so you have to control it. It’s a different approach, do you know what I mean? I guess it’s just maturing; it’s just maturing a little bit.

Finally, if the Barry Ashworth of 2022 could offer any advice to the Barry Ashworth who was just setting out on his career in music all those years ago, what would it be?

[Laughs] It’s a hard one, do you know what I mean? Because, like I say, I’ve had so much fun, but unfortunately, I’ve also been the architect of my own downfall. So, would you change anything? I don’t know, because, like I said, I have had a fantastic career which has laughed its way and Rocked its way around the world, but I’ve also been very reckless with money and drink and drugs, so maybe I wouldn’t have done as many of those, or maybe I might have listened a little bit more. The problem is, when you’re younger, you think everything’s forever and, you know, you don’t realise the consequences of your actions at the time. Like I said, we’re successfully unsuccessful, but the only person I’ll ever blame for anything that’s ever happened to us is me. Do you know what I mean? It’s like, I’ll never play

the victim in this, do you know what I mean? It was me that took all the pills, it was me that put my hand in the jar, it was me that poured the vodka down my neck, you know ... it was me that spent all the money! [Laughs]. But, I think we’re at the best stage of our career, you know, because we’ve been through it all and maybe we’re not the next big thing, but ... like I said, we’re more of a cult, but we have enough of a following and we’re a different type of outfit now. Like I say, we just do things naively from one release to another. Chaos! You said, ‘What would the new Barry Ashworth say to the old Barry Ashworth?’ Go to bed occasionally! [Laughs]. Go to bed occasionally, rather than staying up twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, always looking for the next party! That would be it, yeah!

Thank you for a fantastic interview, it has been such a pleasure to talk to you. We wish you all the best with ‘Frontline’, all your upcoming live dates and for the future.

‘Frontline’ is released via Cyclone Records on the 10th of March 2023. For all Dub Pistols news, including upcoming tour dates, visit the links below. dubpistolsmusic.co.uk www.facebook.com/ dub.pistols

Rick Wakeman

Rick’s Being Grumpy Again!

Interview by Martin Hutchinson.

Keyboard player / composer / raconteur Rick Wakeman CBE’s Grumpy Christmas tours are now as traditional in the festive season as mince pies and pantomime (oh yes, they are …!) and 2022 is no exception.

Audiences can expect music taken across the breadth of Wakeman’s career, with work from his days as keyboard player in legendary Prog Rock band Yes, his solo career and session work, plus a variety covers, given an unexpected twist. Meanwhile, festive tunes have been uniquely rearranged Wakeman style, performed on grand piano and electric keyboards. All of this musical virtuosity will, of course, be punctuated by Wakeman’s typically ridiculous stories, which, as he himself states, “... always contain an element of truth ... it’s up to the

audience to decide how much!”

This year, ‘Rick’s Grumpy Christmas Stocking Tour’ will be taking him to some cities of the UK that he hasn’t visited for several years. The tour kicked off in Croydon on the 24th of November and concludes in Worthing on the 21st of December.

This year has been another busy one for Wakeman, and he is optimistic that the worst of COVID is behind us, as he tells me from his Norfolk home: “I’m sort of tentatively happy that normality is coming back. I can plan things with a bit more confidence.”

Apart from the tour, one of the things that is planned is the release of Wakeman’s new album, ‘A Gallery of the Imagination’ on the 24th of February next year: “That’s right. It’s now mastered and I’m really happy

“It’s quite a departure from other albums I’ve done. There’s lots of ‘Proggy’ elements, I can’t do anything without Moog solos!”

with it. One of the things with COVID was that there was no rush to get things done and I wanted everyone to be happy with what they were doing.” He continues, in his usual exuberant way: “It’s quite a departure from other albums I’ve done. There’s lots of ‘Proggy’ elements [laughs), I can’t do anything without Moog solos!”

Expanding on what we can expect from his new album, whilst praising his collaborators this time around, Wakeman says: “There’s eight songs with Hayley ‘Strictly’ Sanderson singing and she did a fantastic job. And the guys in my band were as brilliant as ever. To be honest, I spent a long time on the lyrics , about three months and there’s a real mixture of music ... in fact, like an art gallery where there’s lots of different styles, hence the title.”

As for what we can expect from the tour, there will of course be the usual mix of music and chat, but Wakeman is being a bit cagey about the set: “Well,

there are two piano tracks on the new album and I’ll play them. Also, there’ll be some festive numbers and Christmas carols that can be played around with.”

But there are some numbers that feature at almost every show: “Yes, I wouldn’t like to do a concert without ‘Life on Mars’ [David Bowie, ‘Hunky Dory’, 1971]; ‘Morning Has Broken’ [Cat Stevens, ‘Teaser and the Firecat’, 1971], and some Yes classics. It would be like seeing Frank Sinatra and him not singing ‘My Way’!” He adds with a twinkle, “Also, I like to put in a few surprises and new stories.”

Wakeman’s workload gets bigger and bigger. “I’ll be brutally honest”, he tells me. “I’m trying to cram in a lot while the hands can do it. I realised that I lost nineteen friends due to COVID, so the future is now. I’ve got a big whiteboard in my office with all the things I want to do. I should have them all done by the time I’m 97!”

And he is looking forward to touring

again: “Of yes, very much! I’m not looking forward to the travelling though. I used to drive home after every show, but not so much now. But I still love playing and meeting friends.”

“I love Christmas”, continues Wakeman. “It’s just as well, as this will be my 74th Christmas. I will admit that I don’t remember 1949, 1950, 1951 and 1952 very well, but after that, little bits of memory start to trickle back. I’m hoping this will be my best Christmas ever, but if not, well, there’s always next year!”

Wakeman’s new album, ‘A Gallery of the Imagination’, is to be officially released on the 24th February 2023, but he hopes copies will be able to be purchased at the live shows. For all tour dates and other news, visit the links below.

rwcc.com www.facebook.com/ RickWakemanMusic

Beyond

the Fringe: Clint Boon on the Return of

Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

the Inspirals is the biggest thing that I’ve ever done in my life and the idea of revisiting that, the time felt right ...”

Moooooo! “The cream of Oldham”, legendary Baggy (and maybe even Britpop) pioneers Inspiral Carpets are back and they are still “Cool as fuck!” Need proof? Well, look no further than the man behind the band’s instantly recognisable organ sound, Clint Boon, whom we recently had the pleasure of catching up with via Zoom to celebrate the announcement of their upcoming thirteen-date UK tour, which kicks off at Roadmender in Northampton on the 23rd March next year.

Now 63, Boon has long been shorn of the equally distinctive bowl haircut which he sported throughout Inspiral Carpets’ glory years when, between 1989 and 1995, the band achieved no less than seventeen charting singles, as well as four top twenty albums (‘Life’, 1990, UK#2; ‘The Beast Inside’, 1991, UK#5; ‘Revenge of the Goldfish’, 1992, UK#17 and ‘Devil

Hopping’, 1994, UK#10), now favouring an altogether more Mod affair, which in recent years has become nearly as iconic. Over the last two decades, in addition to recording and touring with the Inspirals again between 2003 and 2016, when the band abruptly ended once more following the sad passing of drummer Craig Gill, he has established himself as a true radio broadcasting great with his weekday drivetime show and Saturday evening ‘The Boon Army Party Show’ on XS Manchester and regular DJ gigs up and down the country.

Gill’s death may have been the most difficult challenge that Inspiral Carpets have ever had to face, but it is far from the only obstacle that they have had to overcome during their fascinating thirty-nine year history. However, this band are true survivors and previously, even the

“...

departure of their vocalist throughout their most commercially successful early to mid-’90s period, Tom Hingley in 2011 did little to dampen their incredible 21st Century rebirth. They quickly reunited with original vocalist Stephen Holt (who had left the band back in 1989, half way through the recording of their debut album) and went on to release an eponymous 2014 record (UK#63) which easily stands up to the quality of any of its four predecessors. Now, with the addition of new drummer, Kev Clark and a new bassist, former Cupids and The Gramotones member Jake Fletcher taking over touring duties from Martyn Walsh, who, whilst still very much a member of the band has declined to go out on the road with the band, what can we expect from the Inspiral Carpets of 2023? Let’s all hear you shout “Boon Army!”, because here is the man with all the answers, the one and only Mr. Clint Boon!

Firstly, hello Clint and thank you

for agreeing to our interview, it is lovely to speak to you and welcome back to Inspiral Carpets, because after six years apart, following the sad passing of drummer Craig Gill in 2016, you are back together and next March and April, you will be back out on the road for a thirteen-date

UK tour. How did the decision to put Inspiral Carpets back together come about and how has the experience of playing together again after six years been so far?

Well, the decision came after we started getting offers back in July. For the first time in years, we started to get emails; a couple of emails regarding possible work in 2023, like tours and support slots. And for me, it was like, we’ve not wanted to gig since Craig [Gill] died at the end of 2016. Craig, our drummer passed away in November 2016, so we just had no desire whatsoever to do anything in terms of live music or recording ... you know, recording new music. You know, there’s always business to do when you’ve got a band like the Inspirals.

Clint Boon

There’s always the business of, you know, back catalogue reissues, or licensing deals where people want to put your record on ‘This is Dad Rock Volume Six’ or whatever [laughs]. There’s always stuff to do and, you know, for pretty much on a weekly basis over the last six years, people have been in touch about various things, but never any of us have said, ‘Let’s do some gigs’, because we just ... I wasn’t ready for it and the others weren’t and then we got this one particular offer in July that came through on an email on a Saturday morning and it didn’t even mention any fees, it was just ‘Do you fancy going out with this band in Summer of ‘23’, etc. And I just read it and I thought ‘do you know what? I’m ready! I could do that!’ Partly because it’s so way ahead, it’s a year away, so it gives me time to, you know, get the keyboards plugged back in and make sure everything’s working and it gives me time to learn how to play again and remember the songs, because I’ve not played them for ages. I mean, the last time I played proper was the end of 2015 when we

toured with Shed 7. So, yeah, this email came and it really got me excited and, you know, feeling positive and I think I personally needed something like that in my schedule of what’s happening over the next few years, because I was getting into this ... well, I am, I’m a DJ, I do a lot of DJ-ing at various events/ You know, I’ve just done four DJ gigs in the last three nights. So, I do that and I’m on the radio six days a week [Boon presents the drivetime show on weekdays, 4-7pm and ‘The Boon Army Party Show’ every Saturday, 7-10pm, on XS Manchester] and that’s all I’m doing. The public see me doing the DJ-ing and the radio and in the background, I’m always working on other little projects as well, but the idea that we could have something else in place that’s a massive part of my career, you know, and my life ... the Inspirals is the biggest thing that I’ve ever done in my life and the idea of revisiting that, the time felt right and it did for the other guys as well. So, Graham [Lambert] and Steve [Holt], the guitarist and singer were, you know, well up for it;

Stephen Holt, with Martyn Walsh in background

Martyn [Walsh], the bass player told us he doesn’t feel ready to do it yet, so he’s opted out. He’s not leaving the band, he’s still the bass player and still our business partner, but he’s not going to do this round of gigs with us, so we’ve got a guy called Jake Fletcher, who’s another Oldham lad. He was [frontman] in a band called Cupids and one called The Gramotones and he’s now a really well-established session man. He’s playing with Paul Weller these days. So, we’re getting Jake. Jake’s going to do the bass and we’ve got a guy called Kev Clark, who’s stepping in on the drums and the rehearsals that we’ve had so far have just felt amazing! I mean, night one was emotional. You know, walking into the room and there being someone else sat in Craig’s position was emotional for all of us, but, you know, as soon as we started playing, to say we’ve not played for six and a half years or something at that point, it was like, ‘This is going to sound alright this! It’s going to sound great!’ And the feeling in the room, I think because we are all ... you know, the two new

lads are from the Oldham and Ashton area, the North of Manchester, it feels to me like it felt in the ‘80s when we started! I mean, me, Graham and Steve were in the original line-up of the band, you know, from 1986 onwards, so you’ve got us three and then you’ve got two other local lads in with us and because we’ve got this common background, all being from the same part of the world and, you know, we’re all pretty much from working class families there’s similar humour and an intense passion for music, as most bands have, yeah, we just hit the ground running! And in terms of the chemistry in the new line-up, the chemistry feels brilliant, the songs sound great and I’m not in any doubt that this tour is going to be one of the most exciting tours that we’ve ever done, at the same time as being very emotional because Craig won’t be with us ... physically anyway; he’ll be there sonically as far as I’m concerned, but I’ll be hearing his beats, but played by someone else, you know. But yeah, it’s dead exciting, I’m buzzing and it’s just ... I think the others would say the

The much missed Craig Gill Clint (far left) with Inspiral Carpets, c.1986

same, it’s what I needed in my life. You know, for the next couple of years, I needed something like this to be focusing on as well as all the other stuff that I do.

So, it has come at the right time then?

Perfect timing, yeah, absolutely! I wouldn’t have thought it. If you’d have asked me, you know, at the beginning of this year ‘Will the Inspirals do anything?’, I’d probably say, ‘Maybe one day, but no rush, I’m happy doing this, that and that’, but yeah, when that email came through in July ... I was the one that thought when the offers came through, I might be the one opting out and, you know, I might be the one that says, ‘I’m too busy with radio and I’m happy doing this’, but yeah, I got the email and I showed it to my wife, Charlie, and just said, ‘Look, read that. I’m ready for it’ and she’s like, ‘Go for it!’ So, yeah, we’re going for it big time! Because we’ve got the UK tour, obviously, in spring, which is selling brilliantly and some of the gigs have

sold out already! Yeah, I think two sold out on the first day tickets went on sale and then I think Sheffield [Leadmill on the 14th of April] has sold out since then. Yeah, so, we’ve got the tour in spring and then we’ve already committed to like some festivals through the summer and then we’re also looking at another offer that’s come in to do some work in the spring of ‘24, so it’s certainly going to be the next eighteen months, maybe two years of Inspirals and whether that’ll lead on to new music, I’ve got a feeling that it probably will because that’s what happens when bands get back together! So, we’ll see, but for now, we’re just taking care of the touring, celebrating the back catalogue and then we’ll see what comes next!

Yes, it has been a full eight years since the last Inspiral Carpets album, 2014’s ‘Inspiral Carpets’ (UK#63), so can we take it from what you have just said that making new music and releasing a new album is something you would like to do?

I’m not in a rush to do it, because I think sometimes, if you rush it, it can sometimes backfire. I think, you know, I’d rather wait until the inspiration is there to write songs and until we’ve got enough songs to make a good album. You know, the time will come, I’m sure. I think, in the past, we’ve been guilty of ... you know, we made a couple of albums back in the day where we just wrote twelve or fifteen songs and made an album, whereas some artists, they’ll have ... you know, someone like Paul Weller, he’ll have like forty or fifty songs and he’ll pick the twelve most amazing ones and put an album out, whereas I think we’d be like scraping round, going ‘Come on, we need two or three extra tracks here, [laughs] we’re in a rush!’ So, yeah, I think if we’re doing it the right way, the time will come and we’ll know when it’s time to start jamming and writing and then, you know, that’ll lead on to the next part. I mean, the album that we put out in 2014, we called it ‘Inspiral Carpets’, it was the eponymous album, it was as good as anything we’d done, I think, because

we waited until the time was right and it was an album that really does represent that band, that line-up ... because it wasn’t with Tom [Hingley, vocalist, 1989-1995 / 2003-2011], it was with Steve [Holt, vocalist, 19831989 / 2011-2016 / present] and it’s just the best document of what that band could do and what that band did. And so, yeah, I think that album was as good as anything that we’ve ever done. I mean, another album that’s potentially going to happen is that when Craig died, we were actually working on new music, so we had some recordings that weren’t finished and I think we all like the idea of, at some point, finishing that as an album. It would be nice, yeah. Some of it, from what I remember, was Craig ... we were like jamming these ideas out in the studio in Stockport and Craig had like an electronic drum-pad and he had it on his lap, so he was drumming out the beats with his hands, so I love the idea that that could be finished and then we get to hear Craig doing the percussion.

tribute. So, how far did you actually get into the creation of what I’m guessing would have eventually become your sixth album?

From what I remember, without revisiting the recordings, I’d say we had probably seven or eight ideas on the go; you know, seven or eight ideas for tracks. So, that’s not definitely going to happen, but it’s a nice project to think about for at some point, you know, finishing that off. You know, we’re really respectful of Craig’s memory, obviously, because he was with us for thirty years. Thirty years, because was fourteen when he joined the band, so it’s a long time to know somebody that. Yeah, he was there most of my adult life ... I was twenty-five when he joined the band and he was fourteen, but for all his adult life, he was in a band with us. Yeah, we’ll always feel his presence, I’m sure we will at every gig and every time we get on the tour bus. Because, you know, the tour bus for bands, it sleeps thirteen or fourteen people and it’s got various lounges in it and a

kitchen and that becomes the band’s inner-sactum during a tour and the idea that he won’t be there in that space with us, that’s as profound to think of as him not being on stage with us; the fact that when we get on that bus at night to travel to the next city, he won’t be there entertaining us on the back lounge all night and, you know, he won’t be the one saying, ‘Check this DVD out, it’s brilliant!’ He was the one that introduced me to, do you know the film ‘Searching for Sugar Man’ [2012]? It’s a really amazing film, ‘Searching for Sugar Man’, and it’s a real life documentary about a real life musician [Sixto Rodriguez] and he just, one night, said, ‘Do you want to watch this? It’s brilliant!’ and we put it on and it’s not life-changing, but it’s genre-defining as a movie and it’s one of my favourite films ever, so I remember the moment that Craig said on the back of the bus after the gig, ‘Let’s watch this’. So, what I’m saying, he wasn’t just the drummer, he was an essential part, an intrinsic part of our soul for thirty years, you know. But we’ll do our best to celebrate his

work and he’ll be up there and he’ll be smiling on us when we play, yeah.

As we talked about earlier, with Gill’s passing and bassist Martyn Walsh, although he is still an official member of the band, having elected not to join you on tour, there have been a few changes to the Inspiral Carpets line-up this time around with the addition of bassist Jake Fletcher and drummer Kev Clark. How did Fletcher and Clark actually come to join the band?

Well, in the case of ... the main one was Kev. We’re not just looking at getting extra members in, it’s not just a case of finding a few session men. In the case of the drums, this was something that was going to be as emotional for him, whoever gets that gig, as it is for us and Craig’s family seeing somebody else in their dad’s place. And the way we found Kev was, Steve, our singer, has also got a band called The Rainkings [formed in 1989 by former members of Inspiral Carpets and The Bodines] that he works with and so, every few years,

he’ll [Holt] will go out and do some gigs with them and in recent years, the last time Rainkings toured, Kev was drumming with them and he’s also in a band called Dub Sex, who you are probably aware of. So, it was Steve who suggested, you know, ‘Let’s try Kev out’ and we tried him. He was the first person that we tried and it was just immediate, it was like, ‘Yeah, he’s the one!’ Because he was a friend of Craig’s, he knew Craig and he was a massive fan of the Inspirals music and he also reads and writes drum notation, so he’s able to not only listen to Craig’s music, but he can write it out and document it, so when he’s playing, if he’s in any doubt about what’s coming next, he can read the music. You know, he’s actually transcribed Craig’s drum music on to paper and that in itself is pretty special, I think. So, yeah, Kev got the drum gig and Jake was just somebody else we knew from around the Oldham area. He was on the music scene, very much on the music scene, really good looking lad, really good to get on with and we just said to him, ‘Do you want to do the tour with us?’

Inspiral Carpets with Tom Hingley (second from right), 1990

and he was like, ‘Yep, I’m in!’ So, yeah, but with the first night we rehearsed, back in, I guess it would have been late-September maybe, we just did ten songs, because I’d been rehearsing at home on my own with just ten songs I picked out of the set to start learning. So, we were just rehearsing these ten songs and we sent them to the new guys and said, ‘These are the ten songs that we’re going to do on Wednesday night’, or whatever it was, and we rehearsed all ten songs on that night and we could have literally gone out the next night and done a gig! It was that good, it was that bang on! And it was quite a nice feeling that, in some ways, this is going to be quite an easy gig, do you know what I mean? In some ways really hard, obviously, but ... In some ways, it feels a bit like the hard work’s already done. All those records we made all those years ago and all those fans that we attracted over the decades are still there and they’re now bringing their kids! So, it feels like all the hard work’s done and all we’ve got to do is turn up at these gigs and look cool and play the right notes!

Going right back to the beginning, you joined Inspiral Carpets in 1986, by which point the band had been together in some form or another for three years, having initially been formed as a Garage Rock and Punk-inspired outfit by guitarist Graham Lambert and vocalist Stephen Holt. What musical activities had you been pursuing up until that point and how did you come to join the band?

about bringing this in, because I thought ‘this organ with the Inspirals, it might really sound right’, you know. And it did, we tried it and you know that phrase, ‘a marriage made in heaven’? It was perfect, you know. It was the perfect sound to bring into that band’s sonic spectrum and it gave me an amazing vehicle to, you know, go into the next chapter of my life, do you know what I mean, with that band and everything that came with it.

Of course, and you bringing the organ in gave the band a very unique sound as well, didn’t it?

Yeah, and that’s still what it’s like, it’s just so easy to identify us when we come on the radio. Even if we put out a new record now, you’d know it was us just by that organ sound! And I’ve stuck to it! I mean, there’s some songs we’ve done over the years that don’t scream ‘Farfisa organ’ ... I mean, ‘I Want You’ [‘Devil Hopping’, 1994], the track we did with Mark E. Smith [Smith appears on the single version of ‘I Want You’, UK#18, but not on the

album version], I don’t think there’s any Farfisa on that, but most of the other stuff we do, at some point, even really mellow stuff like ‘Sleep Well Tonight’ and ‘Beast Inside’ [both from ‘The Beast Inside’, 1991], you know, some of those really epic ballads, they’ve still got the sound of the organ in there somewhere that you can hear and you go, ‘Alright, there you go, that’s Clint’s organ, that must be the Inspirals!’ And I’m happy about that and I’m sticking with that sound, you know, I just love the sound. It’s still the most exciting sound that I know, especially when you put some reverb on it and echo and a bit of distortion and it’s like, ‘Wow, man!’ Yeah, I’m still using it!

So, how did you actually come to choose the organ as your instrument in the first place?

Well, like a lot of things in my life, it was accident really, because I think after Punk music touched me in 1976 ... you know, I really fell in live with Punk music and the whole ethos of it that

even people like me, who wasn’t a musician, could still be in a band and I started collecting lots of instruments and recording equipment. I left college, because I was studying art at the time and I was about to go off to university and I just dropped out, it was just immediate. I saw the Sex Pistols in December 1976 at the Electric Circus in Manchester with The Clash, they were on the same bill as the Buzzcocks and that was it, within a few weeks, I was out of college! Yeah, and I got a day job so I could get some money to buy equipment and I started collecting anything to do with music. Even though I couldn’t play anything, I started collecting guitars and tape recorders and effects units and keyboards. So, by the time I met the Inspirals in ‘86-ish, I’d already accumulated quite a lot of really cool music junk, including this 1966 Farfisa organ. So, I just happened to have that in my collection and I just knew in my head that that was the sound that would fit in well with that band. I had another organ, another classic ‘60s organ at the time called a Vox Continental with a

much softer sound. It was still definitive ‘60s, but not as shrill and as piercing as the Farfisa and I could have brought that into the Inspirals, but I knew that the Farfisa would be better because it needed to cut through Graham’s rhythm guitar sounds. You know, Graham’s guitar sound is really beautiful and distorted, but I needed something that could cut through that and that’s why I chose the Farfisa [laughs]. But the first single we ever did, the first recording we ever released was ‘Keep the Circle Around’ [1988, UK Indie Chart #13], from the ‘Plane Crash’ EP [debut EP, 1988] and if you listen to that, I couldn’t decide which organ to play on it, so I played them both! And I didn’t realise until after, the organs are slightly out of tune with each other. When you listen to it, you can hear it and there’s a technical reason behind it, which I didn’t realise at the time, but I’ll tell you now what it is and can use this if you want ... the Vox organ is a British instrument and I think the British instruments at time, A was tuned to 440hertz, but Italian instruments of the same age [like the

Farfisa], A was tuned to 442hertz, so when I got them in the ‘80s, the instruments were both tuned as the manufacturers had left them when they were built. So, that’s why, when you listen to ‘Keep the Circle Around’, the weird droning noise between the two organs is because the soundwaves are fighting against each other. I realised about a week after we’d recorded it, when it’s too late, and I was just horrified when I realised what I’d done! But now, I love it, because it just sounds like ... you know, we were finding our way and I was finding my way as a sound engineer, if you want to call it that, as well as a musician, but that record really captures the ramshackleness of what we were at that point in time. And it was Dave Fielding [guitarist] out of The Chameleons, he produced that track for us. We spent a week in Suite 16 Studios in Rochdale, a little studio there, with Dave Fielding, who at the time was an icon to us because he was in The Chameleons and he produced it. I think we gave him sixty quid and a bag of weed! [Laughs].

One of your notable additions to the Inspiral Carpets image was the famous cow logo which has adorned all of the band’s records since your second demo, (following 1987’s ‘Waiting for Ours’) the ‘Cow’ cassette in 1987. That logo, of course, went on to give the band’s own label, Cow Records, its name in March 1989, with the first release on the label being that year’s ‘Trainsurfing’ EP. Is there a story about how the cow logo came about?

Yeah, it started before I joined the Inspirals, way before I even knew them. I was living in a house that backed on to a farmer’s field and it was full of cows, these beautiful dairy cows, and I was a keen amateur photographer and I just used to photograph these cows. A lot of days, I’d just sit in the garden with a cup of tea just photographing cows! And they were really close up obviously, looking right in the camera. And a lot of the film I was using back then was actually slide transparency film which I’d acquired. I got a load of slide film; I think it was

The band show off a T-shirt featuring Clint’s cow logo on the BBC’s ‘8.15 from Manchester’ in 1990

knock-off stuff that somebody sold me very cheap. So, by the time I joined the Inspirals, I had a lot of slide photographs that I’d taken and I also had some projectors that I’d collected, slide projectors, so one of the first things I did when I joined the band was starting to help develop our visuals for live shows. So, we got, obviously, smoke machines and bubble machines that blew bubbles out and these slide projectors and we had about four or five. I mean, by the time we toured in 1990, we had a dozen, you know, really industrial Kodak projectors, but that started off in the pubs in Oldham in the late-’80s and it was just me plugging in all these projectors with pictures on and a lot of the pictures that would pop up obviously, randomly, were these cows! So, eventually, it got to the stage where we were doing a gig and when the cows came up, people would start moo-ing during a song! Do you know what I mean? It was very spontaneous and accidental, that, but that carried on to the point where we did our first ever TV show and it was Tony Wilson’s ‘The Other Side of Midnight’ [on the

30th of January 1989] and I made myself a cow shirt, because we didn’t have any cow T-shirts, we’d not made them yet, and I made one, like just drew the cow on the front of it, wore it for the programme that night and then people started asking me where we can get a cow shirt from. So, that’s when we started manufacturing them and we handed them out to our friends and then soon after that, we decided to set up our own record label and that became Cow Records and then when we had to think of a catalogue number, you know, like ‘FAC1’ [Factory Records], that’s where ‘DUNG’ came from; DUNG4 [‘Dung 4’ demo cassette, 1989], etc. So. the cow thing was one of those really happy accidents and there’s been a lot of them in my life, personally, I’ve had a lot of happy accidents and that was one of them and it’s still here, you know, thirty-five years or whatever after I designed it; it’s still here every day! I actually do them now and I sell them as art. I’ve got to go and do some cow art after this chat! It’s not haunting me as such, but I’m stuck with it! It’s just pop art really, innit?

Well, it has become absolutely iconic, hasn’t it?

Yeah! Absolutely, yeah! But I think that’s what art is, it’s best not to premeditate. It’s like the stuff on the radio now, I’ve reached a point in my life where I’m having to turn the radio off, because some of the new Pop music that I’m hearing ... well, I love Pop music. Pop music’s a great thing, you know, and I love Sia, I love stuff like that, but then you hear something that’s so formulaic and somebody trying to write a Sia song or trying to write a Katy Perry song ... there’s one on the radio now and I can’t remember who it’s by ... I’ve not even had the radio on long enough to listen to who it’s by, because I’m having to turn it off because it’s doing my head in when I hear it! It’s like so uninspired, like someone’s sat down and thought ‘right, we need to write a version of Katy Perry’s whatever it’s called, ‘X’ track, and that’s not the way to do it. I’ve never done it anyway. Well, exactly! Well, it is just forcing

it, isn’t it? And you can tell it has been forced, whereas with artists like yourselves and all the other bands around at that time, the songwriting was just natural, wasn’t it?

I like to think so. I said to someone the other day, when we started the band, none of us were great musicians really. I always thought Craig was the best musician, but even he was fourteen when he joined the band, so it was even early in his musicianship. So, we weren’t great musicians, we were very Garage in our approach and we weren’t great songwriters, but what we wrote was what we felt and then we played it and recorded it to the best of our abilities, as in ‘Keep the Circle Around’. And with that song, that was written by Graham, I think, and it’s got its imperfections, whether it’s in the organs being out of tune, or whatever imperfections are in there, but it’s a unique track.

Well, that is one of the things that makes a song great, and also unique, isn’t it? The artist might see

Clint (right) with Noel Gallagher

certain parts as imperfections, but those parts are things that no other artist could have got because they weren’t there at particular point in time when the song was being written and recorded. Those, should we say, ‘happy accidents’ are what makes a song what it is.

Yeah! You know when I talked about that first rehearsal back in September? That [‘Keep the Circle Around’] was one of the songs that was on the list of ten. It’s one of the songs that I picked to rehearse at home. When I got that email back in July, I think I was probably setting my keyboards up by the end of that weekend because I was that excited! So, I’ve been playing every day pretty much and I’m sat here now with a keyboard that I’ve been doing a bit of work on, all Inspiralsrelated! So, we did this rehearsal on the first night and ‘Keep the Circle Around’ was one of the tracks and it’s probably not the greatest thing we’ve ever written and not the most well-known thing, but I was there in the moment! I had proper goosebumps,

because it’s a great song to play and sing the backing vocals on, but it just transported me back to day one of the Inspirals pretty much. It is was like ‘the world is good, everything’s alright’, do you know what I mean? Yeah, but going back to the songwriting, it wasn’t contrived in any way. I think, generally, with the sound of the band back then, we wanted to sound a bit like The Seeds or The 13th Floor Elevators, but ‘Keep the Circle Around’, I can’t think where that came from. I know The 13th Floor Elevators had a song called ‘Keep the Circle Unbroken’ [‘May the Circle Remain Unbroken’, ‘Bull of the Woods’, 1969] or something, so I think Graham was inspired by that title, but it’s just a dead simple Garage song with a wonky organ sound and a lot of energy. Yeah, it’s a great track that. I’ve got a list here of like twenty-two or twenty-three songs that we’re rehearsing. These are songs that we’re rehearsing; not in any order at the moment, it’s just a list of tracks, but these are the ones that we’re going to pick our set from. So, all the classics

From left to right: Clint, Lee Mavers of The La’s and Noel Gallagher

are on there, all the big singles, a lot of early, high energy stuff, ‘Butterfly’ [‘Dung 4’] is in there and our cover of ‘96 Tears’ [originally recorded by ? and the Mysterians as their debut single in 1966 and included on the album of the same name from the same year. It was covered by Inspiral Carpets for the ‘Plane Crash’ EP], we’ll probably be doing that on the tour. It’s just like every day at some point, I sit down and play some of these, or most of these and it’s exciting and my fingers are remembering what to do, which is good! My mind doesn’t remember what to do, but my fingers do! Because I don’t read music and I don’t say like this is a G and that’s a D and now I need to go to Am, I play by sight, you know. I know what it looks like and I play by sight. And then, sometimes, when I need to explain to the band what the chords are, then I need to work it out, like this is a Dm, or whatever. Yeah, what I’m saying is, with my memory, I can’t remember the chords, my fingers seem to know where to go and some of these tracks I’ve not played for ten or fifteen years!

Just something that I picked up there, you were saying earlier about not being classically-trained and I think that is something that perhaps allows you to be more creative and less rigid in your approach to music and songwriting, isn’t it?

write. When I need to play a fast riff, I’ll do it, but generally, I’ll just play what the song needs and if it’s a song like ‘This Is How It Feels’, which is quite an emotional and poignant song really, there’s the little oboe riff on it and that’s how it felt; that’s what I felt I needed to put in there, because I thought ‘it needs to be a bit sombre and a little bit weepy in parts’, you know what I mean? So, that’s why I’ve always played like that, rather than over-doing it. I got offered a job in The Stranglers once. Dave Greenfield [Stranglers keyboardist] was still alive, but back in the ‘90s, he was out of action for a few months. I think he was in hospital for a while and their manager phoned me up and said, ‘We’ve got a tour of Europe and Dave has suggested we call you’. Now, I’d never met Dave Greenfield, but all through the Inspirals’ success, he would have heard me talking about The Stranglers being a massive influence, which they are, obviously and he put my name forward, so that in itself was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever heard, that Dave Greenfield, out of

one of my favourite bands ever, had recommended me to take his place. So, I got this call from their manager and I had to turn it down. I said, ‘Look, I can’t do what Dave does. I can probably sit there and make it look like I’m doing what he does, but I can’t play scales, I’m not a classical musician, I can’t play a complicated, you know, part with my right hand while drinking a pint of Guinness with the other hand’. But, that is a trick that I picked up off him and I did emulate it. I do do that sometimes! If I’m playing a simpler part, I can’t remember if it’s ‘Joe’ [the band’s second single, released in 1989, UK Indie Chart #5. A re-recorded version with Hingley on vocals was released as the band’s final single before splitting in 1995 to accompany ‘The Singles’ compilation, reaching number 37 on the UK chart], there’s one of the tracks where I do it and I play a chord sequence with my right hand and have a Red Stripe, you know, with my left and that’s my Dave Greenfield moment! That’s the only way that I’m similar to him really, I can do that! But, yeah, going back to it, my

keyboard style is still very Punk, it’s still a Punk Rock approach, you know what I mean? ‘What’s the least I can get away with playing on this record?!’ That’s what I’ve made a living out of really!

Well, less is often more, isn’t it?

Yeah, it’s like Pop and Pop culture, it’s like pop art. Andy Warhol’s art was very simple, wasn’t it? It wasn’t complicated. I mean, this little fella here, this little cow thing that we keep talking about, it took me seconds to draw the original version of it and it’s opened a lot of doors and made us money! It’s sold us a lot of merchandise, obviously, and made people happy. Even if you don’t know what it is, if you see someone walking down the street with that on their shirt, you’re going to smile, aren’t you? And then there’s the one with the ‘F’ word on, as well, ‘Cool as F’, I think we’ll be selling them again when we get out on tour. I think we’ll be putting them back on the merchandise stand.

Aaw, I bet you are so excited, aren’t you?

I am! Do you know what? I’m the busiest person in Rock ‘n’ Roll anyway, me. People know that. When I’m out DJ-ing and on the radio and everything, people are always saying to me, ‘I don’t know how you do it, you must have four of you!’ [Laughs]. Do you know what I mean? So, the idea of bringing the Inspirals back into the equation, I mean, it is exciting, but it’s going to be a busy year and I’m probably going to have to turn down some of the other work at some point. I’ll have to take a bit of a sabbatical out of the radio maybe, do you know what I mean, just to create a bit of space for me to do this properly. But, yeah, at the moment, I think it’s the most excited I’ve been for years really in terms of when I wake up in the morning. And usually, when I wake up in the morning, I’ve got this massive list in my head of things that need doing and the list in my diary, obviously of things I need to be doing, but now, rather than it being waking up

and getting that sense of dread, like ‘I’ve got to do this for the taxman, I’ve got to do ... we’ve got some damp we need to get sorted out’, I’m now thinking, ‘Right, I’ve got to learn how to use this new keyboard I’ve bought, I need to freshen up on the middle eight of ‘Saturn 5’ [UK#20, ‘Devil Hopping, 1994] ...’ and it’s all like really positive stuff! So, I’m waking up in a much better place now, which is really exciting, yeah!

Having taken that time out from Inspiral Carpets for that few years, did you miss it?

You know what? I think I’m fortunate because my day job, or my other jobs, all revolved around being in front of an audience, playing records and shouting ‘Boon Army!’ down the mic! When I’m DJ-ing, I do play some of the Inspirals hits, when I’m in a club, or whatever, so I’m still connecting with the audience and I’m still on the radio everyday and we do still play Inspirals tunes, so I think I’m lucky in that when the Inspirals stopped touring, it wasn’t

like I was just going working in an accountant’s office for the next few years, I was with Rock ‘n’ Roll all the time. And, you know, because of my job, I get to meet bands like The Sherlocks and The Slow Readers Club and Paul Weller and I’m in contact with them and I interview them and we know each other, so I still feel very much immersed in the music world even when the Inspirals aren’t working. So, in that respect, I don’t miss it, but I think to be more specific, yeah, I mean, the idea of playing those songs to our fans is ... yeah, I probably have missed that more than I realise. Do you know what I mean? I’ve just done four DJ gigs in the last three nights and even though they were all brilliant in their own way, none of them were a room full of people who collected every record that we ever made. Do you know what I mean? And a lot of the older people in the room [at an Inspiral Carpets gig], their first gig would have been seeing us in the ‘80s and early-’90s. So, it’s going to be nice getting out and yeah, it’ll feel really like the Inspirals coming home I think.

When we get out and play those rooms to our audience, we’ll feel like we’re back and yeah, it’s a new chapter, it’s a different chapter than the last one with two new members, but to me, it’s the same. It’s going to be as exciting and as relevant as any chapter of the band that’s gone before it. And we’re dead fortunate, because how many bands can you name where the original singer [Stephen Holt] features on a few singles that John Peel loves; John Peel loving us got us a record deal [with Mute Records]; Tom [Hingley] joined us; Tom left in 2011 and the original singer rejoined and we carried on! Yeah, it’s really unusual that a band can do that and I think a lot of people see my name and think ‘oh yeah, he’s the lead singer of the Inspirals’, which I’m not! Everything about the band and our ability to metamorphosise with everything that’s happened, it sets us apart, I think. I know you’ve got bands like The Charlatans who’ve gone through similar things with losing members [keyboardist Rob Collins died in 1996 and drummer Jon Brookes died in 2013] and that, but with us, to

change singers and then flip-flop back [laughs], it’s ... I’m still in touch with Tom. Tom is still very much a part of certain conversations that we have with the band to do with, you know, putting records out and reissuing records. So, Tom is still very much part of some of the email chats that go on. So, we’re still in touch with him and you never know, we might do some more work with him again in the future. But, at the moment, it’s still very much Steve who is our lead singer and he has been for the last eleven years and he will be going onwards until we see what happens next, you know. I do like the fact that the Inspirals, as an entity, it’s something that is up there and it will carry on and, you know, even if I’m not around, I’m sure they’ll get someone else that can pretend to be Dave Greenfield and Ray Manzarek [The Doors] rolled into one! [Laughs].

You were saying there about working with Holt and Hingley as vocalists over the years. In February 2011, it was announced that Hingley had parted company with the band and

On stage with The Fall’s Mark E.Smith

you went on to reunite with original vocalist, Holt, with 2014’s aforementioned self-titled album being the first album to feature his vocals. How would you consider working with Holt to compare to working with Hingley?

Well, let me put it another way, I’d say they’re different singers, different styles of singers, so some of the songs that Tom did, we’re not even trying them with Steve on this tour, because it’s a completely different vocal approach. And vice-versa, there’s some stuff that Steve did that Tom might not be able to do justice to. So, the set that we’re doing these days is very much tailored to Steve as a frontman and a singer, like how can we make him shine? And these are the songs we picked. But, I feel privileged that I’ve been able to work with both singers. It’s like, they are both incredible singers in their own way and they’re both brilliant people. I mean, they’re different as people and even Tom will tell you, Tom’s personality, he’s a different beast completely to Steve. Tom is a deep

thinker and probably the most well-educated member of the Inspirals of all time, do you know what I mean? I mean, Tom is as special as Steve, they are both very special, and I like to think that one day, in some context, we’ll work with Tom again. Do you know what I mean? Because he has got something very special with that voice. He’s a good lad. We’ve had him round here. He came round to our house about six months ago and we were signing copies of the reissue [30th Anniversary Edition] of ‘Revenge of the Goldfish’ [1992, UK#17]. We’re in touch, obviously, and we invited him and his wife to my 60th a couple of years ago [2019]. So, we’re in touch, we are still friends and yeah, he came round six months ago, roughly, to sign these albums and he was here for a couple of hours and it was really nice spending time with him again. And he’s doing alright, he’s doing a lot of work and he’s in a good place, obviously. He’s a grafter with his music and he does solo work, he does The Karpets and he’s got The Lovers as well. He’s very industrious, you know!

As you have just been talking about, a significant change came half way through the recording of your debut album, 1990’s ‘Life’ (UK#2) when Holt left the band to be replaced by Hingley, formally of the band Too Much Texas, who would be the band’s vocalist throughout Inspiral Carpets’ most commercially successful period, going on to appear on 1991’s ‘The Beast Inside’ (UK#5); 1992’s ‘Revenge of the Goldfish’ (UK#17) and 1994’s ‘Devil Hopping’ (UK#10). But, one unsuccessful auditionee for the role of new Inspiral Carpets vocalist was one Noel Gallagher, who would instead become the band’s drum technician between 1989 and 1991 ... and we all know the rest of the story!

He was the first one [to audition]! Well, what happened was, towards the end of ‘88, Steve decided he was leaving the band and it wasn’t acrimonious, as I remember it, it was more to do with ... he was about to get married and get a mortgage and we were still struggling to pay for petrol to

get to a gig in London, do you know what I mean? I think that’s the main reason he went. Noel, at that point, was a fan of the band, you know, like a local lad who followed us around. He was a big fan of the band and we got to know him a bit and he was the first one, through Craig, because he was close to Craig, and he said, ‘That lad, Noel. You know him from the Gas board?’, because he worked for the Gas board, ‘He wants to audition to be our singer’. And we were all like, ‘Give over! Noel thingy? Give over!’ Anyway, he came to us and we knew that he was writing songs at the time. He had a little four-track portastudio and he was recording songs, like playing guitar and singing, so we knew he was doing these demo tapes. So, we said, ‘Yeah, come and sing. Come and try doing the lead vocals’, which he did, he auditioned with us in early December ‘88 and he could sing, he could sing as well as a lot of the guys out there who were singing, but he just didn’t have the kind of voice that we were looking for. Because Steve had such a big voice, quite ... not shouty in a bad way, but it

was a loud voice that cut through and we needed something like that, which, subsequently, when we found Tom, it was like absolutely perfect; loud, operatic when he needed to be, a big voice. But Noel, we all liked him that much, we just took him on as a full-time employee from that day. You know, we started giving him a wage and he’d be helping us out in the office every day, he’d be in the rehearsal room with us, he might go and get us our chips or something for dinner. You know, he was just our right-hand man from day one and, you know, when we went out on the road obviously, he was our main roadie and he was with us for a few years and he still very kindly says, you know, publicly, that that was the happiest time of his working life. Because we paid him well, he saw the world, he had some amazing experiences, didn’t have any pressure on his shoulders, whereas when he joined Oasis, or when he started Oasis, suddenly, everybody was expecting him to run the operation. Johnny Marr had the same thing in The Smiths, you know, he was like twenty-one or

something and suddenly he was managing this massive music machine. But, yeah, Noel’s always been really kind about, you know, the part we played in his journey and Liam [Gallagher] as well, Liam gives us a lot of credit, you know, for inspiring him; you know, being able to come along to Inspirals gigs at G-MEX in Manchester and sit in the dressing room with us because his brother was our roadie. So, Liam is always really, really kind about us as well, which is nice. In fact, when Craig died, Liam was one of the first people to put anything on social media about him, which was massive, because Liam doesn’t need to do stuff like that, but the way he put ‘Craig Gill RIP’ ... and he came to his funeral as well, which was lovely. There’s still a lot of, I feel, mutual love and respect between the Inspirals and the Oasis lads. And, you know, Noel, he learnt a lot, the time he spent with us. It taught him a lot about the music industry and again, he still gives us credit for that, which is really nice.

Following Inspiral Carpets’ initial

The Clint Boon Experience

break-up in 1995, following the release of ‘The Singles’ (UK#17) compilation, you went on to form The Clint Boon Experience, releasing two albums, ‘The Compact Guide to Pop Music and Space Travel’ (1999) and ‘Life in Transition’ (2000) on the independent record label Artful Records. Guest vocalists for The Clint Boon Experience included Travis’ Fran Healy; Sara Cluderay, who regularly toured and recorded with the band, and the now world famous Opera singer, Alfie Boe, who appeared on both albums, credited as “Opera dude”. Eighth Day is based in the area in which Boe grew up, so how did his involvement with the band come about?

Yeah, so, I mean, spring of ‘95 was when the Inspirals split and it was very amicable, it was just like we didn’t have a record deal, we didn’t have management and we’d all got a bit jaded. You know, at that point, we’d had the two or three big years from ‘90 through to ‘93 / ‘94 and by ‘95, you know, like I say, we didn’t have a

record deal, because our record deal with Mute had finished and I think we all just felt like a break. I did, I felt like getting on to another chapter. So, we took a break from the spring of ‘95 and I immediately carried on writing new songs, but if anything, writing in a style of music that I couldn’t have done with the Inspirals, which is why the music that became The Clint Boon Experience is ... it’s quite wild some of it! Some of it was almost like cabaret in terms of the colourfulness of it, do you know what I mean? So, I started writing these songs and recording them and building myself a nice little studio in Rochdale, where I lived at the time, but I started looking at collaborating with people as well. So, I started putting the word out that I was up for doing collaborations and we had one guy came round, I can’t remember his name now, but he came and put a load of tabla and like Asian percussion down. I was just doing stuff like that and a girl came round one night and played like loads of flute parts for another track I was working on. And I got a call from somebody who I knew

in the music industry, she was called Caroline Ellery and she was in the publishing side of the industry. She was my publisher at the time and she said, ‘Do you know last week, you were saying you were interested in doing unusual collaborations?’ She said, ‘My husband has just bumped into a young lad that’s studying Opera and your name came up and this lad said ‘I’d love to meet him! I’d love to work with him!’’ So, Caroline gave me Alfie’s details and I got in touch with Alfie and within days, he was on the train from Fleetwood [Boe’s hometown] to Rochdale. I picked him up at Rochdale station, took him to my house and we just recorded Alfie singing along to loads of tracks that I’d written. And they were pretty much the first recordings that Alfie Boe ever made. It was first time his voice had been recorded. So, I put out two Clint Boon Experience records [‘The Compact Guide to Pop Music and Space Travel’, 1999 and ‘Life in Transition’, 2000] and Alfie’s voice is spread out, you know, across both of them. And he was lovely, we got on

but there was always this underlying ‘I’d rather be doing Rock ‘n’ Roll!’, which is why I think he loved being in a band with us, you know. And obviously, he became more and more unobtainable as he got more and more successful and then we got a girl called Sara Cluderay and she became Alfie’s replacement. I mean, a completely different style of Opera singing, but when Alfie was in the band, we called him ‘Opera dude’ and when Sara joined us, Sara was ‘Opera chick’! [Laughs]. She used to put a full ballgown on and sing Opera! That’s kind of how mad that band was! It was like ‘all the things that I could never do with the Inspirals, I’m going to do it now with this band!’ And we did really well, you know, to say we didn’t have a big record deal or anything. We ended up on ‘TFI Friday’ [in 1999, performing ‘White, No Sugar’ from ‘The Compact Guide to Pop Music and Space Travel’]! And soon after that, we had a serious motorway accident with the band and that was so traumatic that that’s pretty much how it ended. We were unable to travel much after that,

is definitely on my agenda. But whether the two [Inspiral Carpets and The Clint Boon Experience] could work alongside each other, I don’t think they could at the moment, I’ve got to throw myself into the Inspirals. But, yeah, maybe the year after or the year after that, I can get the other band moving again.

I hope so because The Clint Boon Experience only lasted quite a short amount of time, didn’t it? Yeah, it was only a couple of years really. We probably started gigging in ‘98 and I think we finished in 2000, maybe. I mean, before that, it was two or three years of me writing the material and recording it at home and I put the band together around it and where I’d been using a drum machine on certain tracks, we’d record Tony’s [Tony Thompson] live drum parts and Stubbsy [Richard Stubbs, bassist] was a really vital part of my development through that period, because Stubbsy was just this amazing musician, he could play anything and when we went

out live, he was the bass player, but when I was putting the tapes together, he was playing trumpet, bass, guitar, backing vocals. He was like my right-hand man making those Clint Boon Experience recordings, in my little attic in Rochdale at the time. Yeah, it was a great band and I’m very proud of it and they were all brilliant musicians in their own right. You know, it was awesome to be with them. But I’m really excited to be getting back to the Inspirals and everything that embodies, so it’s all good!

This interview is about to be featured in our Christmas issue, so do you have a Christmas message for our readers and your fans?

I’m not going to be cheesy, I’ll just say ... I could say, you know, Inspiral Carpets tickets are a great Christmas present! There you go, I’ve said it, but I’m not going to say that! [Laughs]. No, it’s just, the world will get better. It’s been in a bit of mess for the last few years, hasn’t it? And sometimes it doesn’t seem like there’s any light at

The band in 2014

the end of the tunnel, but I saw when we announced our reunion, that was a lot of light for a lot of people and I think the week after we announced getting back together, Pulp did and Peter Kay ... the Peter Kay [tour] announcement is monumental and phenomenal, isn’t it? So, I think there’s little signs that the world is going to get better. I was at an event last night in Bury that was all, you know, in aid of the Enough is Enough campaign about the cost of living crisis and this weird stuff that’s been going on and what I’m saying, it was quite a celebratory event, a lot of positivity in the room and I think that things will get better soon if we all just stick together and, you know, think good thoughts and look after each other. Make your bit of the world a bit better, that’s what I would say; make your corner of the world a bit better and if everybody does that, the world will get better, won’t it? So, that’s my Christmas message! [Laughs]. And buy Inspiral Carpets tickets, they’re a great Christmas present! [Laughs].

Finally, if the Clint Boon of 2022 could offer any advice to the Clint Boon of 1986 who had just joined Inspiral Carpets, what would it be?

I think I would have two. One would be take more photographs. I used to take loads anyway, I’ve got some beauts, but take more of those photographs, because the ones you’re getting are magical, but get more of them! And then the other one would be, learn to play the piano properly! I think what I’m saying is, I like the idea of going out and doing like the likes of Elton John, sitting at a piano and being able to do a beautiful song, you know. Because I’m good at chords. I can do the chords and the little three fingered riffs with my right hand and that, but I think part of me wishes I had learnt piano over the years. I’d still play in the same simplistic style that I do, but I just like the idea of being able to jump on a plane and do a solo tour of Japan! All the bars and that, loads of money, with a bottle of whiskey and just going ‘This is how it feels to be lonely’! [Laughs]. But, to answer your question

in a different way, I don’t really have any regrets. I wouldn’t change a lot of it really. I mean, it would just be little things like take more photographs, maybe put a little bit more money away for a rainy day rather than buying that stupid TVR car!

Thank you for a wonderful interview, it has been such a pleasure talking to you. Merry Christmas, we wish you all the best with the Inspiral Carpets reunion and all the upcoming tour dates and for the future.

It’s been great chatting to you and you have a great day and hopefully we can get together sometime! Keep up the great work Alice and I’ll see you again soon, yeah?

For all of Inspiral Carpets’ upcoming tour dates and other news, visit the links below.

www.inspiralcarpets.com

www.facebook.com/ OfficialInspirals

Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

Having spent a majority of 2022 touring countries as far flung as Japan, Chile and Spain, Kula Shaker embarked upon the UK leg of ‘The Eternal Love’ tour with shows at The Waterfront in Norwich on the 7th of December and the O2 Shepherds Bush empire on the 8th. More UK dates are to follow early next year, before the band head off to the States in late February.

A statement as grandiose as their latest offering, the twenty-track, double concept album ‘1st Congregational Church of Eternal Love (and Free Hugs)’, released back in June to widespread critical acclaim deserved a tour of such

magnitude if only in celebration of these once unlikely Britpop heroes having had the audacity to return after six years with a sixth album which so boldly eschews 21st Century listening trends in favour of creating a piece of work which is as imaginative as it is timeless.

But then, throughout the band’s twenty-seven year history, its creators, vocalist and guitarist Crispian Mills; bassist Alonza Bevan; keyboardist Harry Broadbent (who replaced original member Jay Darlington upon the band’s reformation in 2006) and drummer Paul Winterhart have never felt compelled to follow the

“Columbia Records got behind us and they pushed their global super-button and even now, twenty-five years or so later, we’re all grateful that we’re able to tour the world still, because it’s really down to that.”

fashions of the day, with their ascent to superstardom at the time of Cool Britannia having been more down to luck than by design; their coupling of late-’60s and early-’70s inspired Psychedelic and Prog Rock sounds with Indian mantras spreading messages of truth and love such as ‘Tattva’ (UK#4) and ‘Govinda’ (UK#7) from their double-platinum selling 1996 number one debut album ‘K’ or the ultimate expression of pre-Millennium tension that was their second album, 1999’s ‘Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts’ (UK#9) having been about as far removed from the nihilistic attitudes and laddist posturing associated with the movement as was possible.

Still thankfully very much believing in music as the ultimate means of escape from reality in the increasingly arduous 2020s, Mills recently set out Kula Shaker’s intentions for ‘The Eternal Love’ tour as we move into 2023 as such: “What the world needs now is LOVE, sweet love. Affordable fuel,

world peace and end to debt-slavery would also be nice! So, light up the incense and break out the magic mantra cake as we’re taking the ‘1st Congregational Church of Eternal Love (and Free Hugs)’ on the road to lift off ‘23 with some all-round good vibes!”

However, before Kula Shaker’s mission to bring joy to people in venues all over the UK begins, we caught up with Bevan, who joined us from his home in Belgium, where, in-between recording and touring the world with his own band, he has recently been busy working as producer of local Britpop-influenced Indie act The Stanfords on their debut self-titled album, to spread some Christmas karma!

Firstly, hello Alonza and thank you for agreeing to our interview, it is lovely to speak to you. Let’s start at the here and now, because the 10th of June this year saw the release of Kula Shaker’s sixth album and follow-up to 2016’s ‘K 2.0’, ‘1st

Congregational Church of Eternal Love (and Free Hugs)’ on your own StrangeF.O.L.K label.

Congratulations, because this twenty-track double concept album is a truly great piece of work, but it also sounds like an album that had quite a lot of work put into it, so when and how did you come to start working on it and could you tell us a bit about its writing and recording process? Thank you! Sure, I think Crispian and I started talking about maybe doing some music together again in 2019. We’d come off the road at the end of 2016, when we toured ‘K 2.0’ [2016], we’d had a little break. Crispian was working in film [Mills wrote and directed the 2018 comedy-horror ‘Slaughterhouse Rulez’] and I was doing music over here [in Belgium], so we started exchanging ideas. We’d met up in England and he’d come over here and then, before the two years of craziness that we went through [the pandemic] ... we started recording before that period. So, it wasn’t a

lockdown album, we started the process long before and then we continued. It was a little difficult but, you know, for work, we were able to travel still and it was done in about three or four sessions over here about two weeks at a time. The guys would come over and all move in my family home, with my very tolerant wife [laughs] and we started tracking the album and we built up a bunch of songs. And so, yeah, the writing process, it was a little long distance, exchanging ideas and obviously, we’d come together here and we’d be routinely rehearsing songs and then as they took shape, we were recording them straight down and then obviously building those up. We’ve got a host of musicians out here that we can work with and you meet the craziest people out here in the South of Belgium, in the middle of nowhere! The bus driver for the local school bus, he’s a sitar player and a really good sitar player as well! [Laughs]. And through my connections here, we know some great horn players and string players, so we’ve been able to sort of get some local musicians in to

help expand the album and Henry [Bowers-Broadbent, aka Harry Broadbent, organist], of course, added some nice organ pieces. He’s a classical organist who works in many areas and we were able to use his pipe organ for stuff. But the basis of it all was really a live recording off the floor, so we tried to keep it as unprocessed and un-cut-up and as real and as dirty as possible in that sense as an album. I don’t know, when you listen to the top 40, apart from most of the artists being solo artists, already we’re a band, so that’s a little bit of an anomaly, but most of the music, you’re listening to the sound of a computer and that can be great, but when that’s all you have, it’s nice to have some relief and there’s something in live performance and I think there always will be and when you get that right, that connection, that human expression you can get through music and especially live, when you see that live, it’s still a really magic thing, so we wanted to try and capture that.

I like the idea of the album being a

proper live recording, as opposed to all that computerised nonsense that we get filling the charts, because you can really tell most of it has been made on a computer, can’t you?

I know, and sonically, the sound can be very impressive, but I always find that after thirty seconds, nothing changes, so there’s no danger, there’s not that feeling that the band could just fall apart any minute and it’s that danger in the music, that tension that keeps you drawn in.

It is all a bit sort of safe, isn’t it?

For me, yes. Yes, absolutely! I love a lot of electronic music and it can be really innovative and dangerous and brave in it’s own right, but it’s true, we’re lacking some excitement, some new musical trends really.

Definitely! You have recently been working with Belgian Indie act The Stanfords, a band with a distinctly classic British Indie / Britpopinspired sound, producing their

2020 debut EP, ‘Come and Get This’ and debut self-titled album, which was released on the 12th of October this year. When you were working with them, did it remind you of yourself and the other members of Kula Shaker when you first started out?

Yes, absolutely and in many ways, because they’re, you know, a Belgian band that are obsessed with British music from the past, they’re terribly out of touch and unfashionable in that sense and so were we. It was quite a fluke that we were playing Indian mantras; we were into Psychedelic Rock music; we loved The Beatles, obviously and I think we were just lucky. You know, Grunge sort of transformed in Britain into what was Britpop and there was an emphasis on live music again and we were just very lucky to be mistaken, in a way, for one of those kind of Britpop bands, I guess! We were a live band and we loved a lot of similar records, I’m sure, in our record collection, but we weren’t at all fashionable and I like that! But it’s

good not to follow the crowd too much!

You mentioned there about sending demos backwards and forwards via email in order to put this album together, which was quite a different way of working for Kula Shaker. Was this a process born out of necessity due to the various pandemic lockdowns and how did you find working in this way in comparison to the way in which you worked on your previous albums (‘K’, 1996; ‘Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts’, 1999; ‘Strangefolk’, 2007; ‘Pilgrims Progress’, 2010 and ‘K 2.0’, 2016)?

No, I mean, that’s caused by geography. I live out here in Belgium, in the middle of the sticks in Southern Belgium and obviously Crispian is out in the sticks west of London, so, yeah, it’s a little hard. I mean, I could get in a car and I can hop over the [English] Channel and I’ll be in a few hours, it’s not that hard, but at the same time, spontaneous songwriting is a little bit difficult. I mean, I curse technology a

Crispian (left) and Alonza on stage

lot of the time, but what’s great about it is the fact that we are able to produce an album, you know, and a lot of the pre-production and post-production, we were able to do remotely. So, if we needed an extra guitar part, if we thought the track needed an extra guitar part or some organ or something, we could record it in London, it could be sent over here and put into a session and that’s all really great, we love all that.

So, was this album the first time you had actually worked like that?

Yeah, pretty much, it was, yeah, absolutely, and I guess the pandemic added into that, but also the technology .... I mean, technology has always affected the way that music is made and the way that we create music, so I guess it’s just that, yeah.

As we previously mentioned, ‘1st Congregational Church of Eternal Love (and Free Hugs)’ is a concept album, very much in the vein of those great ‘70s concept albums from acts

like Pink Floyd, Yes and ELP, which takes place in the titular church under a leaking roof in the semi-fictional village of Little Sodbury. Was it envisaged as a concept album from the outset or was there a point in putting the album together when you realised it was going to be something more than just a standard album?

Yeah, there was a point in it. We never start off with anything particularly in mind, we start exchanging songs and ideas and often, the initial idea ends up very far from where it will end up and that’s always the case. And yeah, so half way through, we realised we had a bunch of songs and actually good songs and it was very hard to choose which songs to leave off the album. And also, we were talking about just this day of TikTok and social media and the instant sort of hits for information where attention spans are now no longer than thirty seconds and we thought, you know, ‘let’s make a double concept album with a ridiculously long title [laughs] and see what happens!’ Going

against the grain, pushing the youth to their limit!

Do you perhaps feel that, with all the changes in the way that many people listen to music these days, particular following the advent of streaming and download platforms, that the concept album is something of a dying art these days?

Well, it is and I guess young folk probably think we’re quite sad, but often, when I was young, we would, you know, sit around with friends and we’d put on an album and we would all sit around and listen to it and maybe chat a little bit, but often, you were immersing yourself in the album and especially those albums that really told a story, like the classic, ‘Tommy’ [The Who, 1969] and the Pink Floyd albums, but also, The Pretty Things, ‘S.F. Sorrow’ [1968], one of those classic albums that really takes you and puts you into a different world. We wanted to create something like that, so yeah, Crispian came up with this concept of the ‘1st Congregational Church’ set in

this little rural church somewhere in Little Britain. It’s a good escape! With music, you can always immerse yourself in another world; it’s a great medicine for modern life.

Well, it’s brilliant that in this day and age, somebody has actually had the nerve to bring back the concept album! Because, personally, I always loved all those late-’60s and early-’70s Prog Rock concept albums and ‘1st Congregational Church of Eternal Love (and Free Hugs)’ very much has the same sort of feel for me.

Well, excellent, yeah! We were just trying to be free and not constrained by any sort of preconceptions or any expectations either. You know, that’s the good thing about being independent! Obviously, you will have seen many technological changes between those early pre-Kula Shaker days under the names Objects of Desire (19881993) and The Kays (1993-1995) and

Below and right: Kula Shaker in 1996

during Kula Shaker’s lifetime and now. You have been there and recorded in the expensive studios, with your classic 1996 debut album ‘K’ (UK#1), for example, being recorded at various big recording facilities all across London, including Eden, RAK and Townhouse and its follow-up, 1999’s ‘Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts’ (UK#9) being recorded on Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour’s Astoria houseboat-studio, but whilst ‘1st Congregational Church of Eternal Love (and Free Hugs)’ presumably didn’t have quite as money thrown at it and was obviously recorded on a smaller scale, you have still retained an impressively big sound. What is your opinion on the way in which recording technology, allowing you to acheive this, has changed over the time that the band has been together?

It’s true, you can now make music in a much more affordable way that certainly back in the ‘90s even, or certainly the ‘80s, where, you know, a

mixing desk would be the price of a house [laughs] and would achieve pretty much the same. It was very expensive to record and obviously, you can get a very good quality recording from your iPhone these days! [Laughs]. One thing about the old recording process is, it was done on tape and those tapes were maybe twenty minutes long, depending on what speed you were running them at and what it meant was ... also, to edit on tape was a real pain. If you wanted to correct some timing on a drum track, you would have to go into the tape machine, you would have to find that point on the tape, you’d have to get your knife out, you’d slice it down, you’re slicing a couple of millimetres off, you’re sticking it back together and you’re going back in and you’re checking it and, you know, that took ten minutes to do that and it’s done in a split second now! So, as a result of that, musicians had to get their bloody parts right, they had to be on the money and they really had to have a great part and really had to play it brilliantly. There was no ‘Oh, we’ll fix it in the mix’; ‘I’ll sort that out

later’; ‘Don’t worry, we’ll do some science and we’ll repair that stuff’! That wasn’t an option back then, so as a result, you’ve got these great, you know, real life performances from those recordings. And yeah, it’s hard to know these days how far to go. It’s a bit like plastic surgery, you know, when you do a little bit and you go, ‘Hey, you look good!’ and then you take it too far and start looking horrific! [Laughs]. It’s a little bit like that with modern music, I guess!

The first single to be taken from ‘1st Congregational Church of Eternal Love (and Free Hugs)’ was ‘The Once and Future King’ on the 3rd of May. We believe that his was the first piece of music that keyboardist Harry Broadbent, who replaced Jay Darlington upon your reformation in 2006, brought to the table, wasn’t it?

That’s right, absolutely, yeah! I mean, he’s really given a lot to the band. You know, he’s probably the best musician out of the lot of us, because he plays everything and he can read notes and

everything, he’s brilliant! And yeah, he loves his synths; he’s got all his modular synths and he created this almost Synthwave track, but because it was using all these old analog synths, it was very reminiscent of all those old ‘70s bands that we were talking about, like [Pink] Floyd and Emerson, Lake and Palmer. And so then, we kind of laid the band on top of that. He created this amazing soundscape and yeah, it’s a really great track on the album and sonically, we hadn’t done anything like that before, so it was something new. He’s brought something new to the sound. It was a really good single to come back with because it was so different for you. Well, yeah, it was commercial suicide to put that out as a single, because, you know, it’s the most un-media friendly, meandering, sort of atmospheric track, but yeah, it really sort of summed up the mood of the album and it’s got some fire in its belly, it gets going, it’s got some great performances and it’s a

On the set of the ‘Hey Dude’ video, 1996

great song, so, yeah, I love it and the video’s great. It’s really worth checking out that video! It was filmed at Beachy Head, scene of the famous scene in ‘Quadrophenia’ [1979], where Jimmy flies off the cliff! We filmed down there and it was a fantastic day. Yeah, really great!

I really like it when bands come back with a daring first single from a new album. Coming back with ‘Once and Future King’ reminded me of things like when Radiohead came back with ‘Paranoid Android’ as the first single from ‘OK Computer’ (1997).

Yeah, absolutely! There are moments when, yeah, you surprise people, so yeah, absolutely, I think you should do that in any art form.

Well, exactly! There is no point in being boring, is there?!

No, no, no, definitely! There’s plenty of time to be boring! [Laughs].

Following the release of the second

single from ‘1st Congregational Church of Eternal Love (and Free Hugs)’, ‘Cherry Plum Tree (Farewell Beautiful Dreamer)’, on the 29th of July, your latest single, and first standalone single since your 1997 cover of ‘Hush’ (UK#2), is a cover of John Lennon’s ‘Gimme Some Truth’ (‘Imagine’, 1971), released to mark Remembrance Day in the UK. How did the idea to record a version of this particular song come about?

Well, yeah, we recorded that along with the album tracks actually and maybe because it was a cover, it didn’t make it on to the album, I’m not sure. Again, it really sort of captures something in that performance. ‘Gimme Some Truth’, it’s a great song and I think with Crispian’s vocal performance, it’s made it a little less angry than John Lennon’s version and it’s got some real heart to it. Yeah, we live in a crazy age, what can you say and ultimately, if we can have some real truth, you know, it would make the world a better place. So, we released that on Armistace Day,

on the 11th of November and we were very lucky to get permission to use some World War I footage, you know, which is the colour stuff that Peter Green put together and yeah, when you set it [‘Gimme Some Truth’] to the images of war, you realise just the stupidity, the futility of war, so let’s get some truth! [Laughs]. But even spiritual truth, let’s have some love, let’s be honest with ourselves.

Is it right that Mills write some alternative lyrics to the verses of ‘Gimme Some Truth’ in order to make the song more relevant to today’s global issues, but you were refused permission to release that version by John Lennon’s estate, so your version instead stays faithful to the original version?

No, no, well, we didn’t put that forward, we put forward the original version. We did record a version with some alternative lyrics, I don’t know if that will get out there later, yeah, because at that time, it just felt like we needed to, what can I say? You know,

misinformation, disinformation, all of this, it really felt like a time when we are lacking truth and everyone’s opinions are so polarised and people muddle up opinions with facts and, you know, to have collective truth and for us all to come together would be nice. There is truth, we all share that, but, you know, it’s a very divisive world and often, we’re divided for opportunist reasons, so we should come together and see through it all! [Laughs]. There’s only so much I can say about all this, I’m sorry [laughs] or I’ll have the Belgian Intelligence Services over here hunting me down! ‘He’s talking about truth and freedom, shut that man up immediately!’ [Laughs].

To coincide with the ‘1st Congregational Church of Eternal Love (and Free Hugs)’ album, you are currently out on the road on the ‘Eternal Love Tour’. Having recently played shows in Spain and Chile, the UK leg of the tour kicks off on the 7th of December at The Waterfront in Norwich, with the 02

Shepherds Bush Empire following on the 8th, before you play a further fourteen dates in January and February next year and head off to the US in March. With gig-goers having had a few months to listen to the new album, how have you found audiences’ reactions to the new songs and how do you feel that they sit in the set amongst the obvious Kula Shaker classics and tracks from your previous five albums?

Obviously, we do play all our old songs from all our albums, the old classics, absolutely, and the audience loves that, but as the tour goes on, people know the album [‘1st Congregational Church of Eternal Love (and Free Hugs)’] better, so yeah, we can play those songs and ones like ‘Once and Future King’, for example, is a great, great live track; a breath of fresh air, actually. They’ve worked, they’ve fitted really great into the set and everything stands up and it feels like one whole kind of sound, if you like. No, and it’s been great touring. We released the album just before the summer, so we picked up a

few festivals and we got out to Japan in the summer, which is always great and like you said, we’ve just got back from chile and that’s the first time we’d played out in South America and it was a really crazy, fantastic place. Really lovely, warm people and huge music fans, really great music fans and you have no idea and actually, we did two shows in Chile, but we had people coming from Brazil and Argentina to see the show. It was great to meet all the music fans out there; just really passionate, really positive. Yeah, it was a great country with a great heart. And we played out in Spain, which was really lovely and I’ve been really falling in love with Spain again and as you said, we’re doing a UK tour next year. We’re doing a London show in December [02 Shepherds Bush Empire, 8th of December] and we’re playing Norwich [The Waterfront, 7th of December] and then we’ll be going out and playing every town and village [laughs] around Britain, which is great, and I’m glad we’re getting back to Wales as well!

By the time of that aforementioned classic 1996 debut album, ‘K’, which hit the number one spot, surpassed the record for fastest selling debut album of all time set by Elastica’s self-titled debut the year before and produced the singles ‘Tattva (Lucky 13 Mix)’ (1995, UK#95); ‘Grateful When You’re Dead / Jerry Was There’ (UK#35); ‘Tattva’ (UK#4); ‘Hey Dude’ (UK#2) and ‘Govinda’ (UK#7), you and Mills had already been working together on music since 1988 when you formed Objects of Desire after meeting at Richmond upon Thames College in South-West London. You then went on to form the pre-cursor to Kula Shaker, The Kays in 1993, before adopting your final name in 1995. Having been working on music for that long together, did the fact that Kula Shaker became quite so big at that point in time come as a surprise to you?

Yeah, I know what you mean, it should have done. No, we were young ... I guess young and stupid and probably a

little bit arrogant. A lot of our friends had got record deals. You know, we went to college with the band Senseless Things, who were a great band who had been playing since the age of twelve, so when we were at college, they were a really happening band, so they went off and got signed and also there was Miranda Sex Garden ... there was a great little music. It was a lot easier back then, you know, because you had a lot more record companies, there was a lot more money being put into going out and developing artists, you know. There was so much money in the music industry that you could sign an act and it would be a tax write-off for a record company, so there were lots of bands just getting record deals, so for us, it was like, ‘If we just write some good songs and be a good band ...’ It’s silly, you know, we were really lucky and we didn’t realise it I don’t think at the time how hard it is actually and even when you do get signed, how many bands just sat there stuck on a record deal on a record company’s roster where you’re not allowed to release stuff and you’re actually stopped from moving forward.

Columbia Records got behind us and they pushed their global super-button and even now, twenty-five years or so later, we’re all grateful that we’re able to tour the world still, because it’s really down to that. Yeah, we were immensely lucky.

At that time, was there any particular moment of realisation of quite how successful you were about to become?

I’m trying to think ... yeah, I remember the press agent that we were working with at the time warned us, ‘You’re going to be really famous’ and you just thought ... I don’t know, partly, you’re young and arrogant and yet, you dismiss that sort of stuff as well and I don’t think we were probably ready for it. It is a shock. I mean, back then, obviously to get on ‘Top of the Pops’ was a huge thing. I’m trying to think ... there were moments. Mark Radcliffe invited us on to ‘The White Room’ [Channel 4, 2nd of March 1996] and that was very early and we were still playing pubs. You know, we’d been

playing playing pubs around North London and we’d built up a little following, funnily enough, out in Essex as well and then we did this TV show and we continued on our pub tour, but then, of course, the gigs were just rammed and there was a moment where it expanded a little bit too quickly in a way, we weren’t ready for it! [Laughs]. Yeah, I think the first time you get on TV, it’s the equivalent of ... now, people talk about ‘How many hits you got on YouTube?’ or whatever, but back then, to get on national TV, that’s like getting fifteen million hits on YouTube in one evening, you know! So, it was really influential! [Laughs].

In fact, ‘Hey Dude’, released on the 26th of August 1996 as your fourth single, was only held off the number one spot by the Spice Girls’ debut single ‘Wannabe’ (‘Spice’, 1996), whilst your cover of Joe South’s ‘Hush’ (previously covered by Deep Purple as their debut single in 1968 and featured on their debut album, ‘Shades of Deep Purple’), released in March 1997, was held off the top spot

Kula Shaker upon reforming in 2007

by No Doubt’s ‘Don’t Speak’ (‘Tragic Kingdom’, 1995). There were obviously the obligatory TV performances and such like, presumably alongside both of those acts, but do you have any particular favourite memories of promoting those two joint highest charting singles?

I’m trying to think ... somebody said that if you can remember the nineties, you weren’t there! [Laughs]. I can remember doing ‘Top of the Pops’ and I think it was at Elstree [Studios, London] at that time and we would drive up to the security gates and there were all these screaming young girls outside and we drove in and we got to the dressing room and these hysterical girls had managed to get in and we were like, ‘How come they got in?!’ and then we realised it was actually the Spice Girls! I think that was the first time we played ‘Top of the Pops’, so that was quite a shock! Yeah, it’s true, they did keep us off the top! I’m trying to think, yeah, goodness me, there were a hell of a lot of music shows. We

loved doing ‘TFI Friday’ [Channel 4, 1996-2000], which was a great music show with Chris Evans. That was a crazy show, really chaotic and one of the great memories, we got Arthur Brown, [sings] ‘Fire’ [‘The Crazy World of Arthur Brown’, 1968]! And yeah, he set his head alight live on TV at the end of ‘Mystical Machine Gun’ [‘Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts’, 1999] and then told everybody ‘Don’t worry’ and ‘It’s the end of the world’, you know! It was great, that was a really fantastic moment, one of our favourites from our whole career! What a lovely guy! For all the fire and brimstone, he’s an amazing, lovely guy, really great, yeah! And a fantastic artist, he really puts some theatre into that performance. I love all that, yeah!

Well, to be honest, we need more artists like Arthur Brown these days! I am getting a bit bored of all these solo artist who just get up on stage and do virtually nothing!

Yeah, I know, we were known as a country of eccentrics and we need more

people like that who are willing to set their head alight! [Laughs].

As with many bands at that particular time, Kula Shaker were afforded the Britpop tag. However, ‘K’ was an such an expansive album filled with the Indian musical influences that you became famed for, not to mention quite a lot of inspiration from the Progressive Rock of the late-’60s and early-’70s, and by the time you got to ‘Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts’, which featured the singles ‘Sound of Drums’ (UK#3); ‘Mystical Machine Gun’ (UK#14) and ‘Shower Your Love’ (UK#14), your ambitions had led you to recording on David Gilmour’s Astoria houseboat-studio with Pink Floyd, Alice Cooper, KISS and Peter Gabriel producer Bob Ezrin to make what was arguably the ultimate expression of the fears that abounded at the turn of the Millennium. Did you ever feel that whilst that whole Britpop movement may have been pivotal to your success during the mid to late-’90s, it also undermined

the ambitions that you had as a band and the messages that your music was conveying?

I mean, there’s a lot goes in the world that you’re not okay with and you don’t feel that you fit in with and certainly, yeah, the Britpop movement, you know, it was characterised by the laddism and that sort of slightly nihilistic sort of attitude and we were all about, you know, spiritual love [laughs] and exploring existence. Yeah, but, of course, we liked to have fun as well! So, we weren’t at all singing about the same things, absolutely, and I think yeah, maybe we were probably criticised at the time. You know, I think there was the classic, ‘How can you be spiritual when you’re working bloody hard down the mines?’, or whatever it was! But, of course you can, it’s just about lifting your mind out of the mundane, isn’t it? And we’re confronted by mundane crap every day, so you know, if you can create something, some music, or even if you can create a thought which just for a moment lifts you out of that, what a

wonderful thing! You know, you can travel anywhere with your mind!

Absolutely, yeah! And you especially really did on ‘Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts’, didn’t you?

Yeah, absolutely! And we got to work with Bob Ezrin, who’s a fantastic producer and people will know him from the Pink Floyd album ‘The Wall’ [1979], but also Alice Cooper. He’s a great, larger than life producer and we got to work on Dave Gilmour’s houseboat [Astoria] not far from where we grew up in the South-West of London there and, you know, what a fantastic studio on the River Thames and recording with a top producer. Yeah, it was a really great opportunity and I think because ‘K’ [1996] had been a successful album, you’re automatically allowed a little bit of freedom and there’s a little bit of trust to explore and do whatever you want. So, again, we were really lucky to be allowed to do that.

Yeah, ‘K’ wasn’t exactly what

anybody could have called a straightforward album, but I think ‘Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts’ really surprised a few people, didn’t it?

I think a few people were very surprised! Over time, people have really grown to love that album, but certainly, I think it shocked a few people at the time! You know, I guess it was less immediate than ‘K’, but it reflected where we were at at that time. We’d had a great experience with ‘K’ and I think that album [‘Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts’] reflected some of that craziness that we had been through and the way we were kind of looking at the world after that.

I really think that ‘Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts’ reflected the way the tension that was apparent as we approached the Millennium, didn’t it?

Yeah, I mean, it was intuition and it was correct, that feeling that we were about to fall off of a cliff! [Laughs]. I think we did, didn’t we?!

I think we have now!

[Laughs] Yeah, I think it’s been going for a while! When you look back on this century and the 20th Century was pretty crappy as well, I have to say, but at least it was a bit more colourful! [Laughs]. But let’s keep this thing positive! It’s global and you feel it wherever you go and when we were out in the United States, I had that feeling as well. You know, you felt like you were at the end of a civilisation. You’ve got shanty towns in the downtown areas of the West Coast and you just think ‘this is the richest country on the planet’. It’s criminal is what it is, and weird, yeah. Liberal capitalism, there you go! It’s like that in many places in the world, but you don’t expect it in America, I guess. You know where it is like that?

Washington D.C. is much the same. I saw this pile of rubble and there was something moving in it and you realised ‘God, that’s a person!’ And this guy walks out of it, he’s got no shoes on, he’s got bare feet and a rope tying his trousers up. Yeah, it’s shocking. I’ve been to India too, I’ve been to Delhi and it’s also shocking! [Laughs]. So, how did you actually find the experience of being in India?

Oh, you know, you really judge a country by it’s people and again, what a lovely country, really, and the people there, that enthusiasm. I don’t want to sound patronising, but there’s a real

child-like quality, especially when you get out in the villages ... playfulness and that love of colour and sound and that enthusiasm for life, it’s really touching. With the whole Indian philosophy and that spiritual side to things, in the West, it can seem pretentious and a bit alien and a bit like new age craziness and, you know, I even felt like that myself at certain times, but when you go out to India, you see it’s just a part of every day life out there and people are living that and that’s the most natural, loving thing that can be done, you know. To see that, yeah, you fall in love with the place and it’s hard not to. It’s such an old culture. We’re always fascinated with ancient Egypt and stories of the Pharaohs and all of this and the Egyptian culture, which was immensely advanced, you know, but the Indian culture, I don’t know if we tend to put that down because we colonised India, but it’s such a rich philosophy and actually, their knowledge is so huge, you know, from thousands of years ago. They say that when Britain entered India in the late-17th Century, India was the richest country on the planet and Britain wasn’t, it was just starting to establish itself, it was maybe the thirtieth richest and, anyway, when Britain left India, Britain was the richest country on the planet and India was way down, so you can see what happened there [Laughs]. No, I love India, it was a great place, a really fantastic place. The music, the art, the people, the culture, everything

and the landscape, you know, from deserts to the Himalayas, it’s amazing. It’s changing fast and certainly the cities. It’s great to see it’s doing really well, you know, for itself and it’s changing quick, certainly cities like Delhi and Bombay are becoming really modern cities. But the world is changing, really fast, yeah [laughs], scarily much ... STOP!

I will make this the last question, because, although I could talk to you all day, I have kept you quite a while! So, finally, as this interview will be featured in our Christmas issue, do you have a Christmas message for our readers and your fans?

Yeah, no worries! My tea is going, so I’m going to have to make a fresh tea! I’ve got lukewarm tea. I like it, it’s good, but, you know ...! [Laughs]. Merry Christmas! Just remember to keep it ‘merry’ and the New Year ‘happy’ and never wish anyone a ‘happy Christmas’, always wish them a ‘merry Christmas’. It’s important! It always used to be ‘merry’ and I think it should be ‘merry’. I mean ‘happy’ is good, but ‘merry’ has got something ... you’re happy when you’re merry, but there’s something a little bit giddy about being merry. Something a little bit more, yeah! So, keep Christmas ‘merry’! You get annoyed by silly things when you get older, don’t you? And that’s one of those silly things that annoys me! It’s not ‘happy Christmas’, it’s ‘merry Christmas!’ There you go,

that’s becoming a dad and what it does to you! [Laughs].

That’s brilliant, thank you! It has been such an absolute pleasure talking to you, thank you so much for a wonderful interview, Merry Christmas and we wish you all the best for the future.

Yeah, lovely talking to you, thank you Alice!

‘1st Congregational Church of Eternal Love (and Free Hugs)’ is out now on StrangeF.O.L.K Records. For Kula Shaker news and all of the band’s upcoming tour dates, visit the links below. www.kulashaker.co.uk www.facebook.com/kulashaker

FOOTBALL RANTS!

A Feast For the Few?

Hello hooligans of all ages! So, I had written a new rant, but after the last couple of days, I felt I had to rewrite it because not only have the minnows made a mockery of the FIFA rankings but Qatar have also made mugs of FIFA: it’s a ‘take the mick out of FIFA’ cup! I was expecting Qatar 2022 to be strange but nothing prepared me for such weirdness! Then, to cap it all, we had England vs USA: cor blimey, gimme strength!

Firstly, and maybe it shouldn’t be like that in a sporting event, but there have been various, serious political gestures by players, most notably by the Iran players who refused to sing their own anthem in solidarity with protesters back home, the Germans cleverly covering their mouths with their hands (in a gesture of ‘we haven’t got freedom of speech’) in their official match picture and England taking the knee before kneeing the courageous Iranians where it hurts most: on the pitch. Supporters got in on the political action too: Iranian fans flying banners in support of the protests back in Iran, but applicable to Qatar too, banners saying ‘WOMEN. LIFE. FREEDOM’. Who wouldn’t agree? You’ve got to admire those Iranian players: it takes bollox to stand up to a dictatorship so publicly. Also, a lot of support for the LGBTQ+ community and rightly so because it’s about freedom and the right to choose how to live your life. So far, this World Cup has been bursting with political

electricity: even fans interviewed on TV said how restricted they felt because officials have confiscated everything slightly controversial such as rainbow hats, bracelets or laces before they could get inside stadiums where they couldn’t even get a beer! Qatar are saying they are entitled to run their country the way they see fit rather than how the West want them to govern: quite right ... unless you happen to have a cruel, un-democratic, nepotistic, insensitive, belligerent, spoiled bunch of psychotic billionaires at the helm. Even players and managers have been told that wearing rainbow anything would lead to severe sanctions, such as bans to compete in future FIFA cups, league bans, etc. Vive la Libertè!

Meanwhile, back in the desert, there’s a World Cup going on! There have been some amazing upsets, none bigger than Saudi-Arabia beating Argentina, one of the favourites, 2-1. Saudi Arabia deserved to win: they scored two great goals and their defenders were giants, a steel curtain protecting an amazingly good keeper. And to add to the amazement, Japan literally mullered Germany by the same score, 2-1. Truly heartwarming! It’s the romance of football, 11 vs 11, dreams can come true and if anything, this is what might save this World Cup: the beauty and unpredictability of football, not the fake welcomes and bogus fan-zones. Other sides that have impressed me: France, Tunisia, Ecuador and Spain, teams who

won (or drew) because they believed in the team. Spain walloped Costa Rica 7-0 and even though Costa Rica were poor, they still have to score the goals. I think that Brazil will win the lot, but if not, France or Spain might go all the way. Argentina? Nah, you can’t win a World Cup on reputation alone. Sorry Messi … even despite a better result vs Mexico, a 2-0 win with a good goal by the maestro.

And England? Well, you saw the matches: beauty and the beast! Beating Iran 6-2 is not difficult, not for a team of England’s calibre and they looked good while winning, but playing so badly versus the USA, wtf is going on? I still think Southgate is out of his depth but the players have got to take some of the blame too. They’re on the pitch, it’s up to them to show some conviction ... although you got to be selected in the first place: Grealish and Henderson ahead of Foden? Really? Come on, Gareth, you’re too cautious to win anything, let alone a World Cup! They’ll be lucky to make it to the quarter-finals. Back In Blighty, we have

the FA Cup. The first round proper produced some giant killings already: the biggest shock was a 2-1 victory for seventh tier Alvechurch versus League One Cheltenham, but Forest Green Rovers was a vegetarian meal too far for the minnows in the second round, losing 2-1. My League Two team, AFC Wimbledon lost 2-0 to Chesterfield of the National League, also in round two, and are out of the FA Cup for another year! I love December football, league matches coming fast and furious; the early rounds of the Cup, it is special, it’s part of the fabric of Christmas. Sadly, it’s being upstaged (or stopped in the case of the Prem, Championship, etc.) by a worldwide competition that many of us just can’t get into, not because the football is not good, but because there’s such a backdrop of hate and political shenanigans that you can’t completely lose yourself in the games. Qatar wanted this World Cup to highlight how far they’ve come in a short time, to show what a civilised, modern country it is. They didn’t expect anyone to go and look under

the carpet! That’s why I’m afraid that World Cup 2022 might be remembered for all the wrong reasons and that would be a shame because there have been some class goals and players. It’s meant to be a feast of football, so let’s enjoy feasting ... as long as it doesn’t turn out to be a feast for the privileged few!

Page 114: Harry Kane: So much for Rainbow armbands; “NO what?!”

Page 114 (left): Brazil’s Richarlison: best striker so far… and at Spurs, he rarely starts!

Page 114 (right): “WOMEN-LIFE-FREEDOM”: Says it all!

The 2022 FIFA World Cup runs until the 18th of December.

Below: Is Southgate “too cautious to win anything?”

My Beating Heart

Manchester Gets On the Ball!

Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

By the time that this issue goes to print, regardless of whether or not the England Football Squad are on their way to answering the hopes and dreams of the nation over in Qatar, the 2022 FIFA World Cup will be a memorable one for Louder Than War’s Nigel Carr, for it has been this tournament that has finally seen the release of ‘Come on England (You Better Believe It)’, an ambitious bid to create a World Cup anthem which had been in the works ever since the last World Cup, at which point, it was thwarted by England’s shock 2-1 defeat by Croatia in the semi-finals in Russia.

‘Come on England (You Better Believe It)’ evolved somewhat between Carr recording and posting a rough draft of the song to YouTube after its chorus came to him a dream and it finally being launched on the 18th of November, just three days

before England defeated Iran 6-2 and renewed our faith in the Southgate’s men after their frankly dismal performance in recent UEFA Nations League matches. First and foremost, after producer and serial ideas man Mike Bennett was brought on board, it grew to become a true collaborative effort between a collective of Northern musicians, including Temper Temper, Sub Sub and Haçienda Classical vocalist Melanie Williams; The Membranes / Goldblade’s John Robb; The Fall’s Simon Wolstencroft; The Smiths’ Craig Gannon; Gustaffson / The Naughty Boys’ David Gleave and the Roger Waters Band / Suede’s Jay Stapley. Other touches included a children’s choir courtesy of Chorlton High School; further vocals from Jerrelle Clayton-McKenzie, Coral Roberts and Nigel’s brother, Ian Carr and additional production and mixing by the Pet Shop Boys’

“There’s no pretence there, it’s about having your feet firmly on the ground and going ‘Come on England!’”

musical director, Pete Gleadall, before it was decided that proceeds from the single, released under the name My Beating Heart, would go to Child Bereavement UK.

On the very morning that ‘Come on England (You Better Believe It)’ was released, we caught up with Carr at his home in Manchester. Whilst we have rarely spoken to such an excited interviewee, as our conversation began, competition from a 2022 reworking of a certain classic footy anthem evidently wasn’t far from his mind. “It is going well!”, he tells us. “We’ve had nearly 3,000 views for the video, I was on Times Radio last night [17th of November] and Mike Sweeney’s radio show [on BBC Radio Manchester] last week, so it’s all been kicking off! I don’t know, I cross my fingers and everything that things are going to build up and then I see Baddiel and Skinner [and the Lightning Seeds] have brought out their new single [‘Three Lions (Football’s Coming Home for Christmas)’] on the same day and

I’m like ‘oh my God!’ But, at the end of the day, ours is a brand new song, it’s different and it’s good and everybody likes it, so I can’t complain, you know! So, I’m quite happy. You know, I had an aspiration when I first started this that as long as people said, ‘Nigel, it’s not shit’ [laughs], I’m happy!”

Firstly, hello Nigel and thank you for agreeing to our interview, it is lovely to speak to you. The 18th of November saw the release of Northern music collective, My Beating Heart’s song for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, ‘Come on England (You Better Believe It)’. We had already had a few football-related songs released this year, largely from the official FIFA soundtrack, starting back in April with the release of ‘Hayya Hayya (Better Together)’ courtesy of Trinidad Cardona, Davido, Aisha and FIFA Sound, but they have been quite underwhelming. Congratulations on your single, because we know it is a project that has taken quite a while

Nigel Carr

to bring to completion and the result is great, but what do you feel sets ‘Come on England (You Better Believe It)’ apart from the 2022 FIFA World Cup Songs that we had already heard so far this year?

Thank you very much, thank you [laughs], it means a lot. It’s been a great journey, a nine months journey, you know! Well, who am I to say, but the problem is that they’re [FIFA] either choosing tunes that have been recorded before, like ‘Come on Eileen’ [Dexys Midnight Runners, ‘Too Rye Aye’, 1982 was, to our knowledge, first used as the basis for a football song with 4-4-2’s ‘Come on England’ released to coincide with Euro 2004] and I listened to a Welsh football song yesterday based on ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’ [The Clash, ‘Combat Rock’, 1982], or one of The Clash songs at least, it sounded very similar, and I think what sets our song apart from the others is that it’s truly original and so, you know, it’s not based on any particular formula, or any tune, or any song that’s been recorded before, it’s an

original tune and I think that’s probably what makes it different. That and the production [by Mike Bennett]. The production is amazing and it absolutely zings. So, you know, there have been a lot of football songs around and there are songs called ‘Come on England’ as well, which I didn’t even think about when I wrote the song, but ours is called ‘Come on England (You Better Believe It)’, and I think, you know, that the way it’s been written and the way that it’s been recorded sets it apart from the others a little bit. And we’ve also got the children [the Chorlton High School Choir] on there, which is really good and the fact that it’s ... well, it wasn’t recorded for a charity, but I was sort of looking at a way that, if God forbid, it was successful, you know, what would we do with the money? So, we got in touch with Child Bereavement UK, which is something that is quite close to my heart, because my granddaughter, she lost her baby. He died at three weeks old, so that was awful, yeah. So, that’s why and that kind of connects all the story together and the fact that it’s called My Beating

Melanie Williams

John Robb

Heart kind of mixes the cause with the song and everything. So, anyway, in a nutshell, that’s kind of where we are, you know. So, yeah, there are lots of football songs around and quite frankly, I don’t even want to hear them, I’m not bothered, it is what it is.

I will say here that for Euro ‘96 was my personal favourite tournament for football songs, as there was not only David Baddiel, Frank Skinner and The Lightning Seed’s ‘Three Lions’, but also others such as Collapsed Lung’s ‘Eat My Goal’ (‘Jackpot Goalie’, 1995); Primal Sream, Irvine Welsh and On-u-Sound’s ‘The Big Man and the Scream Team Meet the Barmy Army Uptown’ and Black Grape, Joe Strummer and Keith Allen’s ‘England’s Irie’.

Well, that [Black Grape, Joe Strummer and Keith Allen ‘England’s Irie’, 1996] is a really great song! I think one of my favourite ones is ‘[Touched By the Hand of] Cicciolina’, which was Pop Will Eat Itself from 1990 [‘Cure for

Sanity’]. It’s a really good one! It’s a bit dodgy. because Cicciolina is an Italian porn star! [Laughs]. But, the Pop Will Eat Itself song just goes ‘Cicciolina, Cicciolina ...!’ It’s a really cool song, but it’s about a porn star called Cicciolina. ‘England’s Irie’ I think is really, really good and I love ‘World in Motion’ [New Order, 1990] because it’s New Order, of course and I think Ian Broudie [The Lightning Seeds] is a genius songwriter, so who am I to take away from those guys?! I love David Baddiel, I think he’s a tremendous comic and writer and obviously, Frank Skinner is the easy going comedian, you know. He’s not really on my radar, I’m more a Stewart Lee guy, but yeah, I think those are really great songs and ‘England’s Irie’, in particular, is a really great song and it’s got a good rap on it as well! Unlike the one from John Barnes [on ‘World in Motion’]! But, yeah, you know, it’s a bit of nostalgia! I quite like the fact that people do release original football songs. I don’t think that ‘Come on Eileen’, ‘Come on England’ has any value really, I don’t know, you’re just

Simon Wolstencroft

Craig Gannon

ploughing someone else’s furrow really, aren’t you, you know?

Well, yes, exactly! Like I was saying, with that ‘Come on England (You Better Believe It)’, it is nice to hear something original that has actually had some effort put into it.

Oh, effort, you wouldn’t believe it! [Laughs].

Music has long been an essential part of World Cup and Euro tournaments, but would you consider to be the essential ingredients that make up a memorable England football song?

I think it’s got to have a chant. I think that’s really, really important and just to fill you in on the writing process [of ‘Come on England (You Better Believe It)’], I dreamt the song, so I woke up with the song in the morning. Well, I was singing it ... I do it quite frequently, I sing a song in my head, because the clearest moments are probably between four and six o’clock in the morning and

for some reason, my brain is extremely clear at that time. So, I woke up with the chorus to the song and it was forming, ‘Nothing can stop us now, You better believe it ...’, and then you start to get a chant in your head. So, I formed the chorus in my head and I had it all, but I only had the chorus. But, I think what makes a great football song is having that chantable chorus, you know, ‘Come on England, come on England, Come on lads, let’s ...’ and the ‘win this beautiful game’, because, of course, we call it ‘the beautiful game’ and so, to have that in there as well is like a double whammy because it becomes an earworm. So, I think it’s really, really important to have something that is chantable and that can become an earworm and I think we’ve got a few earworms in our song, whether that’s the ‘Ooh, aah, ooh’s, or the ‘Kick it boys!’, or the ‘Come on England’. So, you’ve got quite chantable little earworms going on and I think that’s really, really important. Like, ‘World in Motion’ didn’t really have that ... yeah, ‘We’re playing for England, ENGLAND’, maybe? I don’t

David Gleave Ian Carr

know. Is it chantable? I don’t really know. Yeah, there’s a difference between a memorable earworm and a chantable chorus and I think we’ve got a chantable chorus and I think that’s quite important and I think that’s what rings out from the song in my opinion, yeah.

On the subject of other now classic football-related songs, such as David Baddiel, Frank Skinner and the Lightning Seeds’ aformentioned ‘Three Lions’ for Euro ‘96 and New Order’s ‘World in Motion’ from World Cup 1990, there are a fair few contenders for the greatest England football song of all time, but if you had to choose a personal favourite from across the years, which would it be and why?

Oh, that’s a difficult one! I’m a big New Order fan, but I would have to say that, probably, ‘Three Lions’ is the one for me. And, you know, Ian Broudie, he was in Original Mirrors before he was in The Lightning Seeds and he’s a very, very talented songwriter. I mean,

I wouldn’t class myself as a songwriter, but he is a bona fide, 100%, copper-bottomed songwriter and I’ve got a massive amount of respect for the guy. Not only that, but, you know, they’ve just brought out a new album [‘See You in the Stars’, 2022], The Lightning Seeds, and you know, I haven’t listened to it all the way through, but I just think it’s [‘Three Lions’] a really great song. After that, the ones that stick in my mind are probably ‘Back Home’ by [laughs] the England Football Squad [1970] ... it’s just a decent tune, badly sung, but it’s kind of a classic! But, it’s not really chantable, I guess. And probably ‘Cicciolina’ as well, but I know that’s a very odd one, but I like Pop Will Eat Itself, I thought they were amazing, and it just has a really cool groove to it, you know, ‘Italia! Italia!’, sung in like half-Italian, you know! And so, yeah, but that’s mine, because I’ve got quite an eclectic musical taste, which runs from, you know, Robert Johnson to Aphex Twin via Laurel and Hardy and the Sex Pistols. I like songs that really have a heart, you know, and that are

Jay Stapely

Mike Bennett

really quite tough, like ‘Firestarter’ by The Prodigy [released as a single in 1996, featured on ‘The Fat of the Land’ in 1997] and, you know, I like songs to really be challenging, which is why I like Aphex Twin, but I did like PWEI [Pop Will Eat Itself] at the time, you know, they were a cool band! I think they were just very, very cool, you know. There was a really cool groove to them and despite the subject matter, I thought that song was a really cool song. Conversely, there have also been some absolutely terrible attempts over the years, so what would you consider to have been the worst England football song of all time?

Well, do you know what, I probably wouldn’t even comment on that, because I don’t think it’s fair, because in my world ... I mean, I grew up where my parents listened to ABBA and I really don’t like ABBA, but it’s not a popular view and my view is that all recorded music is worthwhile, however terrible one person thinks it is. And the

bottom line is, there isn’t a bad song, there’s just a song that you don’t like. I don’t care whether it’s ABBA, or Demis Roussos, or Fat Les, you know, it’s not for me to cast judgement on somebody else’s songwriting and too many times, I see ‘Oh, that’s shit, that’s shit ...’ and I’ve said it myself, I’ll be honest with you, but really, I don’t think any music is rubbish. You know, I sometimes listen to a bit of Jazz, I sometimes listen to Aphex [Twin], I sometimes listen to just cheesy comedy songs, like ‘My Boomerang Won’t Come Back’ [Charlie Drake, 1961], or ‘My Brother’ [Terry Scott, 1962], or ‘Don’t Jump Off the Roof Dad’ [1961] by Tommy Cooper, you know! They all have a place, whether they move you, or whether they make you cry, or they make you laugh, I think all music is valid and if ten people in the world like Jason Donovan, then who am I to disagree with them?! [Laughs]. But yeah, I think all music is valid, whether it is ‘World Cup Willie’ [Lonnie Donegan] from 1966, the first World Cup song, or ‘Back Home’, or whatever. World Cup Willie was the

Chorlton School Choir Pete Gleadall

lion mascot from 1966! I don’t know, they tend to be ... football songs, going right the way back, Ronnie Hilton did a football song for Leeds United and I can’t remember the date [1964], but it was called ‘Leeds United Calypso’ and there’s a line in that song about the single black player in that team, called [Albert] Johanson, and this song goes ... and he puts a Jamaican accent on, which is really terrible, and he says, ‘Albert Johanson is one of the few, I don’t know where he comes from, but I think it’s Timbuktu!’ [Laughs]. I know, I know, so, racism in football records! I don’t have a particular peccadillo for ... I haven’t rooted out every football record, it’s just my musical knowledge!

I used to one that record, the Leeds United one. I bought it at a car boot sale and sold it. I used to work at Barratts Shoes in Bradford and one of the guys in the office was a big Leeds United fan and I sold it to him! So, I bought it for 10p and sold it for five quid! [Laughs].

You touched on this a bit earlier, but we believe that the idea for ‘Come on

England (You Better Believe It)’ came to you in a dream, so could you talk us through how you then went about writing the song?

Yeah, it happens a few times and sometimes, because obviously my wife’s in bed, I’ll just jump out of bed and go and record it into my phone or something like that, but with this one, it was running around my head ... it was July 2018 [during the 2018 FIFA World Cup, held in Russia] and I think I’d been to see a game at the pub and we were sitting outside, or maybe I’d seen something on TV, and I just went to bed that night and I woke up and I remember dreaming the chorus to the song, which was the ‘Nothing can stop us now ...’ and that went round and round and round and that went into the last bit where it jumps up half a gear and goes ‘Come on England ...’ And so, I’d got that and I woke up with that running around my head and I quickly went downstairs and my wife was still asleep and I just started strumming it out on my guitar and just recording it on my phone, so I’d got the basics and

The 2022 version of ‘Three Lions’, released on the same day as My Beating Heart’s single

then, within about twenty minutes, I’d written the verses as well, because once you’ve got the chorus, the verses just sort of drop out because they have to be in the same sort of chord sequence. So, I got the verses down and I’m still sitting in my pyjamas and I was on the computer ... I know, this sounds crazy, but I’m on the computer and I’m writing down all of the team members from the England World Cup team and so, the first version of the song, which later in that day, I actually recorded on my phone and I put it on YouTube, the first version has literally every member of the England football team [laughs] on it! So it had ‘Come on Sterling, come on Rashford, come on Foden’! It had all of them and ‘Have you got the cheek yet?’ That’s on the original one.

And actually, I say ‘Alexander Armstrong’, who is obviously a TV personality, instead of Alexander-Arnold, who was in the team at the time as well and somebody said, ‘You know you sang ‘Alexander Armstrong?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I know, it’s my little joke!’, but actually, I just kept singing it wrong and I kept saying

‘Alexander Armstrong’! So, yeah, within about twenty minutes, I’d pretty much written the song and then a few more minutes after, I’d written all of the lyrics as well and then, obviously, England got knocked out [losing 2-1 to Croatia in the semi-finals. Croatia went on the play France in the final, losing 4-2] the following day! So, my beautiful song lasted about twenty-three hours! [Laughs]. Yeah, so, and that was it! So, it was on YouTube and I’d posted the lyrics to myself and that was it and nothing happened for four years, but that was basically what happened; I woke up with it in my head, wrote it and then put it on YouTube and then England got knocked out! I remember putting on Facebook, ‘That’s the end of my beautiful song!’ [Laughs]. It was hilarious, yeah!

‘Come on England (You Better Believe It)’ was produced by Mike Bennett and you enlisted a whole host of Northern musicians to appear on the track, including Temper Temper, Sub Sub and Haçienda

Classical vocalist Melanie Williams; The Membranes / Goldblade’s John Robb; The Fall’s Simon Wolstencroft; The Smiths’ Craig Gannon; Gustaffson / The Naughty Boys’ David Gleave and the Roger Waters Band / Suede’s Jay Stapley. Meanwhile, the song’s backing vocals were performed by the South Manchester-based Chorlton High School Choir; Jerrelle ClaytonMcKenzie; Coral Roberts; Ian Carr and Bennett and additional production and mixing was provided by the Pet Shop Boys’ musical director, Pete Gleadall. Could you talk us through how you went about assembling the cast of people who have made your dream a reality and tell us a bit about its recording process?

Yeah, so what happened was, you know I run Louder Than War with John Robb? So, I became friendly with Mike Bennett quite a few years ago. Basically, I met him a pub in Salford and started chatting about things and I set it up with Mike Bennett that I would

interview him, like you’re interviewing me, and we did a very long ... well, I went to his flat, because he needed some sleevenotes for an album he was making called ‘Glamnezia’. It was a big boxset with a coffee table book and things like that and I actually don’t think it’s come out, because there’s been lots of legals surrounding The Rubettes. But, I sat and interviewed him for hours and we did this big ‘Glamnezia’ thing and we just put it on Louder Than War and it did really, really well and then I suggested that he could do some radio work for us, because I was doing a radio show on Radio Alty, which is a local radio station here [in Altrincham] and we ended up setting up our own radio station called Louder Than War Radio and then Mike became one of the presenters. He did a Thursday night ‘Freak Party’. So, he did that for a while and we used to just chat and go out for curries and things and I brought up the subject of the football record and he said, ‘Oh, let’s listen to it’ and I said, ‘I’ve just stuffed in a drawer’ and he said, ‘I’d like to hear it’. So, I sent him

the YouTube link, because it was still on YouTube and he suddenly got kind of inspired by it and he was saying, ‘Nigel, I haven’t forgotten about the football record, we’ll have to do it!’ And I was like, ‘Really? Okay!’ Yeah, because you’ve got this imposter syndrome, where you’re thinking ‘it’s not very good’, you know, but Mike, bless his heart, saw something in the record and kind of started to assemble the bones of an idea of pulling it all together. I didn’t really know that he knew all these people, but he insisted ... well, we started off doing a basic track with Alan Keary. So, Alan Keary did keyboards and programmed the drums and all that kind of thing and then he got Craig Gannon on board, from The Smiths [rhythm guitarist, 1986], on guitars and it was very much a collaborative process. It was like, ‘Nigel, how about we get Jay Stapley?’ and I’m like ‘Jay Stapley?’ He was in Suede and Roger Waters’ band and I’m like, ‘Yeah! Yeah!’ So, we sent the basic sort of basic demo track and we sent the track to Craig Gannon and he provided guitars and we sent the track

to Jay Stapley and he very, very kindly did it and sent back all the electric guitar parts, feedback and all that sort of stuff, which really put some zing into it, and then, a friend of mine, David Gleave, who was in a band in the ‘80s actually called The Naughy Boys ... they weren’t successful, but they were on the Manchester scene ... and is now in band called Gustaffson with Andrew Gower and Andrew Gower plays Bonnie Prince Charlie in ‘Outlander’ [Starz / Amazon Prime Video, 2014-]. So, he’s the guitarist in that band and a very close personal friend of mine and Dave put like a bedrock of guitar all the way through it, which is really, really great and then Simon Wolstencroft [drummer The Fall, 1986-1997] came on to add a bit of percussion and then I went, ‘Oh, John?’ ... John Robb ... ‘Do you fancy doing some bass on this?’ and then he said, ‘You don’t need bass, but I’ll do some EBow guitar’. So, he did that for us and so all that expanded the sound, it just started to build up and build up and then, we were looking for a singer and I said, ‘Well, my brother can sing, we’ll get my brother to sing

it’. So, Ian Carr is my brother and at that point, he was singing everything and we recorded all of that and all that was done in Mike Bennett’s studio and then, I heard about the Lionesses winning the Euros [UEFA Women’s Euro 2022], so I thought ‘wow, I know what we’ll do ...’ Because we were talking to Melanie Williams [Temper Temper, 1991; Sub Sub (‘Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use)’, 1993) and Haçienda Classical] anyway about her connection with Chorlton High School. We said, ‘Melanie...?’ And I poo-pooed the idea at the beginning, because I’d never head a football song sang by a woman, but it all made sense when I saw the Lionesses win, so I re-wrote one of the verses that then became ‘The Lions are all in play, The esses are the ones to show the way’, so that made sense, but then it made even better sense to have a woman singing it. And obviously she is a legend on the Manchester music scene with that song, ‘Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use)’, 1993 with Sub Sub, who became Doves [in 1996]. So, she was brought in to record it for us and her daughter, Coral

[Roberts] put some ‘Ooh aah aah aahs’ on it as well, some backing vocals, and also sounded amazing. So, it was even better formed then and it was studio hopping to all these different people and then, through Melanie, who was doing a competition with them to go to the Castlefield Bowl and meet Peter Hook and see whatever she was doing there with the Haçienda Classical as well ... because I’d always said, ‘We want kids on it’, because ‘School’s Out’ [Alice Cooper, ‘School’s Out’, 1972] was a number one hit in 1972; ‘Another Brick in the Wall [Part 2]’ [‘Another Brick in the Wall’, Pink Floyd, 1979], same thing, same producer, Bob Ezrin ... Bob Ezrin suggested that they double up the verse, double up the chorus, put some children on the record and Bob Ezrin was right because ‘Another Brick in the Wall’ was a number one for Pink Floyd. And then there’s ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday’ [Wizzard, 1973], children on it. So, I thought ‘we need children out’, so Melanie arranged for this school choir at Chorlton High School to do all the harmonies and sing a verse and ...

From left to right: Mike Bennett, Nigel Carr, Lizi Ransome and Melanie Williams, Chorlton High School Choir with Mike, Nigel and Chip Filo

actually, they learnt the whole song in their music lesson! So, that was amazing! Chorlton High School were fantastic, they did an amazing job! So, the whole thing just gelled and, you know, we eventually ... we’d used all these engineers, but I needed it to be tightened up and we took a couple of BPMs off as well, just to make it a little bit quicker and this guy called Pete Gleadall, who is the musical director of the Pet Shop Boys, he was on tour with New Order and the Pet Shop Boys in Los Angeles and by the time they had got to Seattle to do their final gig, he’s sent me the final two mixes of the song. So, we got ‘the third Pet Shop Boy’! [Laughs]. And that’s why it sounds so good! He made the difference. Him and Gary Watts [engineering] made the difference. They are, in my opinion, geniuses, because they’re the guys, they’re the engineers ... we can produce, all the people here, and I was directing the choir and doing the video and Mike Bennett was furiously doing all of his amazing work, but really, the final sauce is that the engineers brought this magic and that’s why it sounds like

it does, why it sounds well-produced. It’s well engineered. So, that’s the story of the record, from the inception, from my brain dreaming it, which was crazy, to the final production. Yeah, very exciting as well! And also, as well, the guys down at One Media iP were great, very encouraging. So, I went down to see Michael Infante, the CEO of One Media iP, based at Pinewood Studios, which was terribly exciting and we had lunch with Michael Infante and they have very kindly put the record out though their [One Media] iP company, which is fabulous. The whole thing is like a dream sequence, it’s crazy! Obviously, I’ve had to put my hand in my pocket a little bit. Honestly, jobbing musicians ... if you’re Bono or Bob Geldof, who have got oodles of money ... big bands can do something for charity, but there was no way I would have expected everybody to chuck in for free just because it’s for charity, so there has been some outlay, but honestly, I don’t care! You know, as long as Child Bereavement UK can make some money out it, I’m happy with that.

Chorlton High School Choir with Melanie, Mike and Nigel

Chorlton High School Choir with Mike, Nigel and Melanie

Definitely, and Child Bereavement UK is a great cause.

Yeah, it’s fabulous. And it’s not the reason we did the record, because, as I was saying to you before, we did the record before that and we looked for a worthy cause after that. It didn’t make us do the record, it just gave us a kind of home for the funds if you know what I mean. I didn’t even think about it being for a charity beforehand. Yeah, I’m no saint, I didn’t think of that before, I kind of thought of it along the way and it kind of went from an idea ... because I needed a name for the group as well and Ian and I were just talking about it and we were going, ‘It would be nice, why don’t we do it in aid of Child Bereavement UK. But, it is, it’s like a dream sequence, the whole thing. Because I said to a friend of mine about twenty years ago and we had a drink ... I worked in the shoe business and I was in Taipei, Taiwan and we’d just got a 350,000 pair order from Peacocks for shoes, so we were so happy and we getting very drunk in this bar and this friend of mine said, ‘Nige, what’s your

dream? What would you really like?’ and I said, ‘I’d like to write a record that got in the charts!’ [Laughs]. So, maybe, maybe! Hey, it probably won’t, but, you know, it’s kind of been like a little bit of a dream of mine, but it just needed the right moment. It could have been a Punk song, it could have been a love song, it could have been anything. You know, obviously, I’m more into Punk and Post-Punk and hard, aggressive music from, like I said, the [Sex] Pistols to The Prodigy to Aphex Twin ... you know, anything, I’m into a lot of music. So, that’s it really, the whole thing is like a dream sequence and God forbid, it becomes successful. I mean, we’re hammering it out! I don’t know, we’ll know next week! I won’t be disappointed, whatever happens; just getting it out there is a major achievement. The fact that we’ve got this far is fabulous and, you know, I’m really, really proud of it ... not in a conceited way, but I’m proud of it and I’m proud to have been involved in it. I’m proud of my brother and Melanie and Mike and everybody else for just sticking the course,

From left to right: Ian, Nigel and Melanie Nigel and Ian

because, you know, there’s been dodgy moments, like ‘Oh shit, we haven’t got the final mix! What are we going to do?!’, or ‘Aargh, the video! We’re going to miss the release!’ So, there’s been a little bit of ... we’ve never fallen out, but there’s been a little bit of agitation along the way. But, it’s just great that it’s out there.

I hadn’t actually realised the single had taken so long to make, but then again, with all the work that has gone into it, I don’t suppose it has actually been that long really considering what you have achieved, has it? Do you know what, Alice? I think if I had to make an album, I think I’d go and hang myself! [Laughs]. One song has taken nine months! But, yeah, I can’t imagine doing a full album. But there’s such a lot gone into it, it really has, and, you know, my initial thought was ‘We’ll phone Dean and we’ll go into his studio with a band and we’ll just bash it out in a day, 500 quid’, but it’s not that sort of song. So, unfortunately ... you know, it’s like a

Trevor Horn number, it’s been layered and layered and layered and it was like, ‘Ian, we’re going to have to treble-up your vocals!’, so his vocals have got one, two, three, slight delay, slight echo, incredible!

Well, that is really good, because, like you were saying, you could have just gone into a cheap studio and done it in a couple of hours, but because it has taken so long and it has had so much put into it, it has been a real labour of love, hasn’t it?

It has been done so professionally and that’s why it has got this zing to it and you don’t get that in a cheap, one day studio. If I had a Punk band, and I did have a Punk band when I was a kid, I would have been very happy to just take them into a studio and bash it out on the guitars furiously and make it sound raw, like Garage Rock. I like Garage Rock, so, you know, that type of thing is perfect for that genre, but it’s not for this. And, quite frankly, when I was writing it, I didn’t even know what genre it was going to be! I don’t even

Melanie and Ian Nigel, Mike and Melanie

know what genre it is now, because it’s not Punk, it’s not Rock, it’s not Soft Rock ... the drums have got a lovely shoegazey shuffle to them and, you know, you’ve got a lot of modern stuff in there and then you’ve got amazing Rock guitar, so I can’t even categorise the song now, even when it’s finished!

It spans the genres a bit, it’s anthemic, and there’s an Indie edge to it as well.

As we were discussing earlier, with a release date of the 18th of November, ‘Come on England (You Better Believe It)’ actually went head to head with David Baddiel, Frank Skinner and the Lightning Seeds’ updated version of the legendary ‘Three Lions’, which has been revamped as not only a football anthem, but also a Christmas anthem entitled ‘Three Lions (It’s Coming Home for Christmas)’. Much like the new version of ‘Three Lions’, ‘Come on England (You Better Believe It)’ taps into the hopes and dreams of a nation who, following the recent success of the Lionesses in the recent UEFA Women’s Euro

2022, still believe that the England men’s team can go all the way in Qatar, but how do you rate England’s chances and what predictions do you have for the tournament?

I think that we have a very good chance of getting through the first stages. We’re playing Iran [England 6, Iran 2] and then the USA [England 0, USA 0] and then Wales [England 3, Wales 0] and I think that maybe the USA will give us a run for our money and are maybe, and forgive me, we are better than Wales and definitely Iran, so I think we will definitely get through the first stages and then really, it’s in the lap of the Gods. I haven’t followed every single England game to be an expert on it, to give you the expert critique, because my knowledge of football is that my mother and father we’re Manchester United fans when I was a kid, so they had season tickets, but there were three boys and you can’t take three boys to the match, so no boys went to the match! That was the difficult thing, so in terms of my own

England v Iran. Photograph by Ian MacNicol England v USA

football upbringing, yeah, I’m a Man United fan, but do I go and watch them every weekend? No. Do I watch them in tournaments? Yes. Do I watch the England team? Yes, of course. And, call me what you want, call me a fairweather football fan, but, you know, I like to see Man United win and I love to see England win, but as for their chances, I think they’ve got a fighting chance. I think Brazil are strong; obviously France are strong, but, you know, you can never discount Germany. It just depends whether we get through that Argentina section. If we can beat Argentina, then obviously, we can get through and win. I’ve seen a sort of schematic, sort of pie chart of the matches that we’ve got to get through to win. So, yeah, it’s in the lap of the Gods, I think. Southgate’s a competent manager and if he wasn’t, he would be manager and he obviously has been for the past X years. I think we’ve got a fighting chance, but I’m not the expert, honestly!

If you had to name your favourite England World Cup moment from

any tournament during your lifetime, what would it be and why?

Alice, there’s only one and that’s when we won it in 1966! When the crowd was on the pitch! We even used it in the lyrics, ‘The crowds are on the pitch, It’s been that way since 1966’. But that’s the iconic moment, when Kenneth Wolstenholme said, ‘Some people are on the pitch ... they think it’s all over ... it is now!’ That is the iconic moment and even though I’ve got no recollection of it, because I was too young, it really is that moment when we last lifted the World Cup, that moment with Bobby Moore holding the cup aloft with everybody else. That is the iconic moment. And really, unfortunately, we’ve not surpassed it and it’s not been that way since 1966 and I don’t know, it’s like a blight on England, isn’t it? It’s like a curse! I mean, the World Cup started in like 1930 [when it was held in Uruguay, with the host country being crowned the winners. England did not take part in a World Cup until 1950, when the tournament was held in Brazil, with

Most iconic World Cup moment? What else? England v Wales

Uruguay winning their second title] and we’ve won it once! And we invented football, it’s our national game and we’ve won once in the ninety years of the tournament, so yeah, what is the iconic moment? Of course that’s the iconic moment. Everything else, unfortunately, apart from David Beckham bending a few in, you know, probably our memories of the World Cup are blighted by the failed penalty shoot-outs and again, I allude to that in the song, you know, ‘No more open skies, No more tries’, where it goes over the bar, right? I’ve kind of intertwined some of that frustration into the lyrics, because it’s kind of written from the point of view of a frustrated England football fan, ‘Come on England! ... No more tries!’ So, the lyrics kind of reflect the view of a frustrated England fan, because there’s nothing greater than just down to Earth pragmatism and, you know, we can hope and we can dream and pretend we’re going to win, but this song is not about ‘we’re going to win’, it’s ‘please win!’ [Laughs]. There’s no pretence there, it’s about having your feet firmly on the ground and going ‘Come on England!’

Finally, this interview will be featured in our Christmas issue and, hopefully, with a bit of luck, by the time it goes to print, England will still be in the World Cup. But, regardless of what happens, do you have a Christmas message for our readers and football fans?

Never lose hope. There was a wonderful line that was scrawled on the side of our local pub, the Cheshire Midland and everybody had their photograph taken under it and it said, ‘There is always hope’. And do you know what? As long as you’ve got that ... And people forget very, very quickly. If we crash out of this tournament, there will be a sort of sultry few months where we’re going ‘Oh my God’, but after that, we’ll be thinking about the Euros [UEFA Euro 2024] and we’ll be celebrating the women’s victories and we’ll have something to be proud of the team about. But, all I would say is, you know, if we’re winning, fabulous, but if we’re not, look, there’s always hope and that’s all you can say really, because without hope, there’s nothing. The problem at the moment is, there’s so much negativity in the world. But, if we lifted the trophy, it would be such a fillip and it just makes people feel better and things are bad, but, you know, it would be so good if we could win it. Just keep your hopes up, that’s what I would say, that’s the most important thing.

Thank you for a wonderful interview, it has been lovely chatting to you. We wish you all the best with ‘Come on England (You Better Believe It)’ and for the future.

‘Come on England (You Better Believe It)’ is out now on One Media iP.

My Billy Childish Intrigue

By Daren Garratt.

“You know the one thing that pisses me off about Billy Childish? He releases far too much stuff ... I can’t keep up ...”; “You know the other thing that pisses me off? He only releases like ten copies of stuff ... I’ve got no chance of getting everything ...”; “You know the OTHER one thing? I lose track of all the group names ... I don’t know what he’s doing on what, where, when and who with ...”; “.... And at the end of the day, he only ever does the sa-“ W.O.A.H.!!!! HOLD IT RIGHT THERE! ...

Now, don’t get me wrong, there are certainly arguments to be made for the first three of those sentiments, and at various times and to varying degrees, I have undoubtedly concurred, but I have steadily learned that the fourth thing is just lazy bollocks. It fuels an empty complaint and feeds into a commonly held misconception that the ‘trouble’ with Billy Childish is that once you’ve heard one Billy Childish combo, you’ve heard them all, the various names are interchangeable and he’s effectively a one-trick pony who has spent forty-odd years milking a single solitary idea over a thousand-odd records.

Yes, he is a man who constantly has, does, and will always “love playing in a Punk Rock band playing Bo Diddley guitar”, so can I just say to those cloth-eared dolts, “At least it was a fuckin good idea” before muttering,

“And I suppose you say the same thing about Bo Diddley?”

Hand on heart, there were long periods when I loved what I knew of Billy Childish, but was undeniably overwhelmed by the confusing vastness of his catalogue. I assumed it was largely indistinguishable and impossible to track down, and I still have to concede some objective truth in this, which certainly adds to my Billy Childish intrigue.

It’s not enough to just realise and accept he’s the ultimate example of a ‘Renaissance man’, because he is actually the living antithesis of the cosetted musician who dabbles in abstract landscapes or tries his hand at cut-up writings.

He is Billy Childish. Poet. Painter. Singer. Dreamer ... his art lies at the heart of everything he does. He is a creator that is constantly compelled to create, hence the ungovernable plethora of ludicrously limited editions that frustrate collectors but reflect his unrelenting creativity.

The volume, constancy and range of his outpourings are certainly part of my Billy Childish intrigue, but probably the first thing to acknowledge here is that the multitude of group names and cavalcades of regular record releases are as far from cashing in on fickle passing trends or wider, crass, consumer exploitation that it is possible

to get.

There is no grand plan for a career path to pave, or a cynical marketing strategy to rinse in the way he operates. As he himself says in the excellent 2002 documentary ‘Billy Childish: Confessions of a Sunday Painter’, “In many ways I like to look on myself as an amateur in everything I do. The amateur does things for love and belief, not for a mortgage. I don’t do things I don’t want to do.”

His isn’t a discography padded out by paying Norman Cook to turn up the kick drum, or by doing ‘a Kevin Rowland’ by making your fanbase wait years for a new release only to mastermind a massive reissue campaign to simply appease your own paranoid delusions by tweaking your perfectly agreeable vocals a bit. No superfluous strings are added to dead artists’ meisterwerks without their knowledge ‘round here, and he will never pathetically ‘change direction’ in the hope of remaining relevant. Do you remember The Cramps making a dance record? No? Me neither. I remember Tin Machine though ...

Most notably the variety of issues accompanying different releases is not equivalent to the 1980s ‘Madness Multi-Format Machine’ of lifting three or four LP tracks and churning out mass produced singles in a variety of sleeves, colours, shapes, sizes and pictures every couple of months

knowing that idiot kids like me will spend all our pocket money having to get every one.

And even when he does release something like the ‘Joseph Beuys Flies Again’ 7” (Wild Billy Chyldish (sic) and CTMF, 2013) in a range of colours, the total combined run isn’t more than 500 anyway, so just getting one is a victory in itself. The difference is that unlike Stiff Records, the onus is not on maximising profits by multi-marketing the same commercial product ad infinitum. Childish, on the other hand, produces individual, interesting pieces of art (usually a handmade, wood cut sleeve that comes with a lathe-cut vinyl record) so the accompanying price tag reflects that; if you want the art you’ve got to expect to pay for it. I can’t afford to collect the ultra-scarce visual aspects and am only really interested in the music anyway which, after being initially presented in issues of only thirteen totally unaffordable, impossible to find 7”s will thankfully be handily bundled together, combined and released later on a standard 500 edition album for less than £20 for us grateful luddites ... if we’re still lucky enough to get in quick and snag a copy.

To continue this art and music metaphor, a Billy Childish pencil sketch is to one of his collages as it is to one of his woodcuts or his oil paintings. They may be inarguably his, and they may share common conceits and wear certain influences on their

sleeves, but the materials differ, therefore the means of expression differ, therefore the resultant creation differs.

It’s the same with the songs. They share a voice, but what that voice expresses differs from alias to alias, group to group, recording to recording, much like a self-portrait or a landscape will differ from painting to painting. If you can write something as perfect as ‘You Make Me Die’ (first released with Thee Mighty Caesars on the 1986 album ‘Acropolis Now’), then why not present it in five different ways over five different decades every time you find a new way to express that emotion? If you can’t understand and accept that, then can you please explain to me why people still pay good money to go and see a ‘new’ Shakespeare interpretation? That lazy cunt’s not written anything new for yonks!

To my ears, his ingrained approach to music making means Billy’s stock doesn’t go down. It’s never diluted. I’m not saying everything’s always brilliant, but I’ve certainly never heard an absolute stinker. He’s almost like the anti-Dr. Who in that, the face stays the same whilst the name and means of operation constantly morph and shift and evolve without pause. He’s never ‘retired’ or disappeared for a bit, only to return decades later with the old, reliable name masking new, unknown faces behind him either and after forty-five years, who else can say that?

Dr. Who can’t. Mark Smith couldn’t. Not even Robert Lloyd can.

It’s like trying to explain to people that the “they’re all the same” gag is the equivalent to telling a mother of octuplets that, to all intents and purposes, she only ever had one kid; YOU may not be able to tell the difference between ‘Dave A’ and ‘Dave H’, but she can not only instantly tell them apart, she also knows their idiosyncratic mannerisms, particular quirks, dazzling strengths and lazy, frustrating weaknesses intuitively. YOU see no further than their obvious similarities and lazily misinterpret the shared DNA that courses through this genealogical brood as sameness when it’s actually just ignorant and offensive. They may all wear a matching smirk, but it’s a singular beating heart that drives each abiding passion.

Zest We Forget The Mighty Lemon Drops

Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

it was kind of all natural and organic ... it was four mates come together.”

“Morning! Alright, how you doing? Doing good! Alright! I’ve been up for about an hour and a half, so somewhat awake, not doing too bad!

I’m in Burbank [California] and it’s about five past seven [AM]. Today, I haven’t really done a lot, but I walked to Starbucks! [Laughs]. It’s a bit overcast today, but it’s not too bad, it’s kind of nice really!”, former guitarist and co-songwriter with Wolverhampton’s The Mighty Lemon Drops, David Newton tells us in a surprisingly chipper manner considering the earliness of our Zoom call.

Maybe the sheer happiness and infectious levels of positivity that Newton exudes over the course of our following interview could simply be put down to natural Black Country charm and charisma, or maybe it is the fact that for the last twenty-seven years, following the split of The Mighty Lemon Drops in 1992, a brief stint in The Blue Aeroplanes and an

even briefer stint in a new London-based band called Starfish, he and his wife have resided in the Golden State, from where he has produced acts such as The Little Ones and The Blood Arm; become the third member of Art Brut’s Eddie Argos and The Blood Arm’s Dyan Valdés’ Everybody Was in the French Resistance... Now!; provided music for television shows such as ‘Gilmore Girls’ (The WB / The CW); ‘The Osbournes’ (MTV); ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ (The WB / UPN) and ‘The Bill’ (ITV) and released a string of albums and singles with his outfit David Newton and Thee Mighty Angels. But, no doubt adding to Newton’s jubilation is the fact that here in the final throes of 2022, in conjunction with Cherry Red Records, his latest accomplishment in a career that has so far spanned thirty-seven years is to have compiled arguably the finest reissue of the year in the form of ‘Inside Out: 1985-1990’.

“...

However, despite the fact that this exquisite boxset includes all of The Mighty Lemon Drops’ recorded output for the first five years of a seven year run which saw them achieve critical and commercial success in both the UK and the US, including their first three albums (‘Happy Head, 1986; ‘World Without End’, 1988 and ‘Laughter’, 1989), non-album singles, B-sides and bonus tracks, to consider ‘Inside Out: 19851990’ as just a reissue, would be to do it a great injustice, for also included in this incredible five-disc, 97-track treasure trove are a host of radio sessions, some of which until recently even the band members themselves had forgotten about, previously unreleased demos and US radio mixes. And with all of this having been brought together with the same level of attention to detail which marks out all of Newton’s work, complete with extensive liner-notes and a host of photographs, many of which have previously never been seen, it is simply one of 2022’s most essential releases.

Before discussing everything Mighty Lemon Drops and Newton’s career since the band’s farewell gig in Chicago in late-1992, attention turns to his plans for the festive period and what brings him back to the UK these days. As to be expected, other than friends and family, it is more often than not music-related, with the winsome Wulfrunian telling us: “I used to go to Blackpool [the home of Eighth Day] a lot when I was in England [laughs]. I think I was last there about ... I went to a Punk thing there, is it Rebellion [Festival]? God, that was about twenty years ago, mind! I try and get back once a year if I can and I went to a London one and it was in December. It might not have even been a Rebellion, it might have been something else, but it was in December and it was at what used to be the Forum. Yeah, whatever that one was called, but yeah, it was really good! It had The Damned on. I try to get back once a year if I can, because I’ve still got a lot of friends and family over there and all that, but I’m planning to be there in

December. Because of the pandemic, obviously, the last time I went before that was 2019. But I did go for like six days in February, which was nice.”

Firstly, hello Dave and thank you for agreeing to our interview, it is lovely to speak to you. Let’s start at the here and now because the 25th of November saw the release of ‘Inside Out: 1985-1990’, a five-disc boxset mainly covering the period that The Mighty Lemon Drops were signed to Chrysalis Records imprint Blue Guitar. The box-set features a massive 97 tracks and includes your first three albums (‘Happy Head, 1986; ‘World Without End’, 1988 and ‘Laughter’, 1989) plus non-album singles, B-sides, bonus tracks, US radio mixes, previously unreleased demos and rare recordings from a variety of radio sessions. You compiled this expansive collection yourself and provided the extensive sleevenotes, so how did this boxset come about and how did you find the experience of

looking back over those first five years of the band’s career?

Well, good question! Cherry Red Records, we’d done a couple of things with them before. Thy put an album out of ours, oh god, it was nearly ten years ago now, of just the really early stuff, it was called ‘The Early Years’ [‘Uptight: The Early Recordings 19851986’, 2014] and since then, they’ve included us on a few different compilations and there was another one that just came out actually, which is ‘C85’ [on 21st of October, which includes The Mighty Lemon Drops’ 1985 debut single, ‘Like an Angel’] and it was really surprising actually when I saw the line-up of that. It was like a three CD boxset and there was a lot that was going on, because like ‘C86’, which was a thing in [May] 1986 [a 22-track NME cassette compilation] that we were part of. That was kind of a bit of a turning point, because there didn’t really appear to be a lot really going on in kind of up and coming like Post-Punk, guitar-based bands at that time. In the early-’80s, you had the

Post-Punk thing, but then you also had the kind of more glamorous New Romantic thing and the era after that happening, so that’s what made the ‘C86’ thing exciting, but it was funny looking at the ‘C85’ line-up because there was actually a lot more going on than I remember. So, it was good to do the Cherry Red boxset. It basically covers us from 1985 to 1990. It’s got all the stuff we did at the beginning, like the really, really early stuff ... Cherry Red just wanted to do it, they wanted to include the first three albums [‘Happy Head, 1986; ‘World Without End’, 1988 and ‘Laughter’, 1989] and they asked me because, you know, I was kind of like the archivist for the band in some ways and I held on to all the demo tapes and the radio sessions and there’s the BBC sessions, some of those are included on there, but there’s one from Piccadilly Radio in Manchester [in 1987] that we’d all kind of forgotten about! I was going through my stuff and I found a cassette of that, you know, and the quality was really good so I had it kind of digitally transferred. So, there’s a lot of really

interesting stuff, a lot of B-sides, a lot of unreleased stuff like demos and radio sessions. There’s five CDs altogether, so it’s a really nice set. There’s a lot of stuff, so it’s going to take a lot of listening to get through! [Laughs]. But, given the opportunity, it was nice to put that together and we all helped out with the liner-notes and dug out a load of old pictures and stuff like that. So, it was great, it was really nice!

Going back to very beginning of The Mighty Lemon Drops’ career, we believe that yourself and the other four members of the band (vocalist and rhythm guitarist Paul Marsh; bassist Tony Linehan (replaced during sessions for 1989’s ‘Laughter’ by Marcus Williams) and drummer Martin Gilks (later to join The Wonder Stuff and replaced in the same year by Keith Rowley)) had shortly before been in various other Black Country bands, including Active Restraint and The Wild Flowers. So, how did the five of you come together to form The Mighty Lemon Drops, initially under the

name The Sherbet Monsters?

Well, we were quite young, but even though we were young, we’d all been in bands before. You know, like in secondary school, I was in Punk bands and stuff like that and myself and Paul [Marsh], the singer, because we went to school together had a band called Active Restraint [formed in 1980] and we put out one single [‘Terror in My House’ / ‘Turns Out Roses’, 1982]. And then I was in a band called The Wild Flowers and we did okay, we had an independent record deal and we put out an album [‘The Joy of It All’, 1984] and a couple of singles and played a lot of shows. I was still only eighteen / nineteen years old and I think when the Drops formed, I was twenty years old at the time, but I’d known Tony [Linehan], the bass player and the co-songwriter and Keith [Rowley], the drummer. Even though I didn’t been to school with them, I’d known them and they were also in another band before that, like a Post-Punk, kind of Power Pop, kind of Mod kind of band ... they were really good and there was a great

music club, kind of hang-out, in Dudley, near Wolverhampton, called JB’s and every band, you name it, played there. We saw loads of like up-coming bands there, like everybody from The Pretenders to early-on U2 and The Teardrop Explodes, they all played at JB’s. Even later on, one of Blur’s first gigs outside London was at JB’s, which I saw! And it was great, because they used to have a Tuesday night, which was free for local bands to play and The Lemon Drops played the local band night at JB’s and The Wonder Stuff, Pop Will Eat Itself ... but they all played this Tuesday night at JB’s. Spacemen 3 did it and they weren’t even that local, they were from Rugby, which was a bit further away. So, that was our kind of window into, you know ... when we were really young, we were really lucky to have that place, you know and we also had the college, Wolverhampton Polytechnic which had a lot of bands on and stuff, so we’d go and see stuff there. The Civic Hall was where we’d see like bigger bands, like I saw The Clash there ... showing my age now ... in ‘78 and all the Punk bands,

The Wild Flowers, 1984

like The Damned and The Undertones and The Ruts and the Skids; it was brilliant, it was great! So, we were kind of lucky really, even though we felt like we were outsiders and we didn’t get as many things in Wolverhampton, we were only like half an hour drive away from Birmingham, so we’d go to Birmingham to see things as well. That’s how the band came about, we all kind of kind of knew each other really. We were all fans of music and we were just all into the same kind of stuff, so it was kind of all natural and organic. You know, we didn’t like put ads in the music press looking for musicians, it was just natural; it was four mates come together.

On the subject of the band’s name, how did you come to settle on The Mighty Lemon Drops?

I think that was Tony’s idea. He was the bass player and, you know, he just thought it was a really good ... you know, it’s weird, because the name that I had at the time was ... we were nearly called The Railway Children and it’s

funny that we weren’t, because about six months later, there was another band came out called The Railway Children! [Laughs]. But, The Mighty Lemon Drops, that was Tony’s name. I don’t know, he just kind of came up with it. It was going to be The Lemon Drops, but he added the ‘Mighty’ to make it a bit less kind of twee and all that. Sherbet Monsters was another one, blame Tony again for that! [Laughs]. We were never called that, but when we’d got a little bit more popular and all that, when we’d do like a low-key thing, we’d use that name, but we were never actually called that! [Laughs].

Your first independent single, 1985’s ‘Like an Angel’ (a track later featured on ‘Happy Head’), was released on Dan Treacy of Television Personalities’ Dreamworld Records label, sold 14,000 copies and soared to the top of the UK Indie Chart. This was quite an auspicious start, but at this stage in your career, what ambitions did you have for the band?

We had no ambitions. We started playing music because, you know ... I don’t know, it was organic, it was natural. I know I’ve said that before, but ... and we never thought in a million years that it would be a career or something that we would make a living out of. It’s kind of different today, where you can leave school and go to a college where they teach you how to be in an Indie band [laughs], there was nothing like that existed when we started. So, there was no one more surprised than us really when it happened. When we started, we had no manager, no booking agent, no contacts in the music industry, we were living in Wolverhampton and I sent cassettes out. I sent one to a few different people. I sent one to Alan McGee at Creation [Records], but I sent one to Dan [Treacy] at dreamworld Records and Dan was in the band Television Personalities and he just really liked it and he invited us down to London to play a gig. We played at his club ... he ran a club and we played there and the gig got reviewed in the NME by Everett True and he gave it this

amazing review. I was still living at home at the time, I was still living with my mum. I was twenty years old, you know, and the phone started ringing, because my mum’s phone number [laughs] was on the demo that I sent and then all these record companies from London started ringing my mum! She would answer the phone and she’s say, ‘Ooh, Dave, there’s someone on the phone for you from a record company!’ and I was like, ‘Really?!’ So, it was organic and we didn’t rush into it, we kind of waited and we eventually got the right offer. But after ‘Like an Angel’ [debut single, 1985], we didn’t do another Indie record. We were going to, but we did a deal with Geoff Travis from Rough Trade, who had an offshoot with Chrysalis called Blue Guitar and we did that and that it was it really!

In May 1986, your track ‘Happy Head’ was featured on the infamous 22-track NME cassette compilation, ‘C86’ and in August of the same year, you recorded a four track (‘Open Mind’; ‘Take Me Up’; ‘Behind Your

Back’; ‘Up Tight’) session for John Peel. Soon after, you were snapped up by Rough Trade’s Geoff Travis for his new Blue Guitar label, a subsidiary of Chrysalis Records and also signed with Sire Records in the US around the same time. How did you find the experience of being signed to those labels and how much of a difference did a larger deal make to yourself and the other members of the band at that particular point?

Well, it was good, because we had no money. Myself and Paul were both unemployed and Tony and Keith, they had jobs, but they weren’t high paid, great jobs, they were kind of shitty jobs and to be able to get a wage and to make a living and be in a band, it was all we kind of wanted really. You know, we didn’t have loads of money thrown at us or anything, it just made things a lot easier. It made us go into an actual proper recording studio, you know, and we just a little bit more money to be able to do the basic things and to be able to buy proper equipment. You know, we had shitty equipment

before, like I had a cheaper, less expensive guitar and you know, it was just nice to have that. At the time, it felt like a big deal, but they were small luxuries really and we didn’t have to worry about what we were going to do the next day. It made a difference in that way and the other thing was, we had freedom from both labels [Blue Guitar and Sire Records], we were allowed to pick who we wanted to work with and produce our records and, you know, we had a say in what we wanted as singles. Obviously, there would be input from the record label and, you know, we would understand that you wanted to put the commercial or radio-friendly single out ... I know that sounds kind of cheesy, but you have to do that. So, there would be a bit of give and take, but for the most part, it was no different to being on Dreamworld really, we just had a little more ... I hate to talk about it in monetry terms again, but it was nice just being that little bit more comfortable and being able to do what we wanted to do.

As we just mentioned, that ‘C86’ compilation found you positioned alongside twenty-one other bands of the time, including Primal Scream; The Wedding Present; The Pastels; McCarthy; We’ve Got a Fuzzbox and We’re Going to Use It; The Soup Dragons and The Servants. At the time, what was your opinion of the other bands of the so-called “C86 movement”?

Great! I mean, we knew a lot of them. It started in 1985 really, we’d played with most of those bands on there and we got to know a lot of them, even though we weren’t quite the same musically, you know. But, it was great. You know, it never felt like a competition or a race. Primal Scream were probably a bit more well known that we were at the time and yeah, The Wedding Present were known and, you know, it was nice. It was nice to have something in common with bands playing with guitars doing a similar thing to what we were doing, you know. We didn’t really think of it being anything more than that, there

was no competition or anything and it was nice. Even bands that didn’t sound like us ... we would play gigs with bands like Bogshed, for instance, who didn’t really sound anything like us, but they were really funny, great guys as well and we got on really well with them. They were from not far from you in Hebden Bridge! [Laughs]. So, yeah, it was like that, it was great, it was really good.

A constant and rather lazy comparison throughout The Mighty Lemon Drops’ lifetime was to Echo and the Bunnymen, largely due to you both having Psychedelic influences, but your influences obviously went much deeper than that. I do remember you once saying, “The press would lead you to believe that the only reason we exist is because of Echo and the Bunnymen. I don’t even like them!” Did this comparison with Echo and the Bunnymen become somewhat tiresome over the course of the band’s career?

Erm, not really. We didn’t not like them. I mean, I saw them play not long ago, but I just thought it was lazy to compare us to one band, because of course there was similarities between what we did and what they did and we did like the band, but there were a lot of other bands ... especially if you look at Liverpool, bands like Wah! Heat for instance, Pete Wylie’s band, that was for me, like his guitar playing was as big of an influence ... actually, more of an influence than anything else really.

I mean, from my point of view, I love like Gang of Four and Dr. Feelgood and Wilko Johnson’s guitar playing was a big influence on me as well. But, you know, there were a lot of different influences. We were influenced by a lot of the ‘60s kind of bands, the Garage bands, like The Seeds and a lot of the ‘Nuggets’ [‘Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era’, compilation, 1972] kind of stuff as well. That was as big an influence on the sound of the band early on. Kind of that combined with the kind of early-’80s Post-Punk kind of sound. But, come 1986, the Post-Punk thing

had kind of, you know ... things had got mellowed out. I mean, I really liked bands like The Icicle Works and Lloyd Cole and the Commotions and all that, it was great, but there wasn’t really much of an edge to it and I think that’s kind of what we wanted to do, put that Post-Punk energy back into it and, going back to like Wah! Heat, that kind of aggressive guitar sound, put with that ‘60s influence, so it was a mixture of all those things.

Your 1986 debut album, ‘Happy Head’, reached number 58 on the UK Album Chart, but its follow up, 1988’s ‘World Without End’, often described as presenting a more mature sound to its predecessor, peaked at number 34. At this point, you also found a healthy degree of success in the US (where, as previously mentioned, you were signed to Sire Records) with ‘World Without End’ becoming a number one Modern Rock / College album there in its year of release. Having made a name for yourself in the UK, how did you find the experience of

then promoting yourselves to audiences in the US?

Well, we went into it blind, really. None of us had really been there before, you know, so it was a new thing to us and we just did exactly the same thing as what we’d done in the UK, we just kind of played the same songs and all that. But, it was a real eye-opener, because it’s obviously a bigger place and you don’t get like one music paper ... like, in the UK, you had the NME, which from literally one week to the next can tell you what’s going on, whereas over in the US, it takes much longer to get something. This was obviously before the internet, in those days it wasn’t really like that. Our crowd [in the US] was slightly different. I’d say there was about 20 / 30% that knew what was going on in the UK, that were kind of Anglophiles, who would buy the NME and would know what was going on and stuff, which was great. Especially early on, we would have a lot of those types, like the die-hards, people who had bought the ‘Like an Angel’ EP and stuff. But

then, there would also be people who liked a lot more, I don’t know, diverse kind of stuff, you know, like more mainstream bands like The Cure and Depeche Mode, who we didn’t really feel much affinity with, you know. You’d call it ‘Modern Rock’ and it was kind of nice in a way, we didn’t think it was a bad thing.

Moving on to the final album represented by ‘Inside Out: 19851990’, your 1989 third album, ‘Laughter’ and following the departure of bassist Tony Linehan after the writing and recording of just two tracks (‘All That I Can Do’ and ‘Second Time Around’), you were now the band’s primary songwriter. Lineham was replaced by former Julian Cope bassist Marcus Williams and there was a bit of a shift in musical direction around this time and reflecting the album’s title, ‘Laughter’ could be viewed as an altogether lighter, Poppier affair complete with a horn section, layered guitars and a live sound. Was this change of direction planned before

you began making ‘Laughter’ or was it more something that developed due to those aforementioned changes within the band as you went along?

I think it was like ... you know, Tony leaving the band definitely made a difference, because he was the co-songwriter with me, which meant that I kind of writing all the songs. So, it did change a bit, but things had changed in the UK then and also spending more time in the US had a bit of an influence on what we were doing. I don’t know, it was still, again, kind of organic. It wasn’t the record company telling us what to do, it just felt like, you know, we kind of wanted to me, I don’t know, not a Poppier album, but, you know, we’d learnt to play our instruments a little better as well, you know. So, it was just a natural progression really. I don’t ever remember us sitting down and having a discussion about it, it just happened, you know. It was like a natural thing. I don’t know, things were kind of changing a lot more in the UK by then with music. This was 1988 / 1989 and

the Dance culture was really starting to evolve and come into Indie music, like a mixture of the two. That’s not something that we embraced as a band, which is ironic, because we would listen to those kind of records and stuff, but we didn’t really ... I’m not saying that any of the bands sort of jumped on that bandwagon, but it was something we didn’t really want to do ourselves, you know. That was when things changed, when Marcus [Williams, bassist] joined the band ... He’s a Northerner, by the way, Marcus. He’s from Rochdale and he’s back living there again. I was only talking to him a couple of days ago. I haven’t seen him since 2010, that’s another story, but yeah, he’s from up your end. But, yeah, anyway ...

It would be fair to say that ‘Laughter’ made a far greater impression in the US than in the UK, peaking at 195 on the US Billboard Hot 200 and seeing you undertake a 70-date tour alongside Sire Records labelmates The Ocean Blue and John Wesley Harding. In addition, two

singles from ‘Laughter’ reached the top ten of the US Modern Rock Tracks chart, with ‘Into the Heart of Love’ and ‘Where Do We Go From Heaven’ peaking at number five and number eight, respectively. Did the fact that the US were more appreciative of the ‘Laughter’ album surprise you?

Yes and no. It [‘Laughter’] was the only album we did that actually got into the [US ] Billboard [Hot 200] Charts [#195], but the fact that because the musical climate had changed so much ... well, not the underground side, but the kind of top 40 kind of side ... in the UK at that point, it didn’t surprise us really that it was more accepted in the US, because, it’s like I said, a lot of the bands that we were aligned with ... because in 1988, we spent a lot of time in America and we toured with Love and Rockets and The Church, the Australian band, and we kind of felt a little more aligned with those kind of bands at that time. I don’t know, it’s kind of funny to put it into perspective, looking back, but we seemed to be

more in that world than the one we did in the years before and it was also kind of going on independently to what was going on in the UK, you know, because it was getting more ... I hate to use the term Dance-centric, but it kind of was, you know. So, yeah, it didn’t surprise us, but we didn’t really think too much about it anything. It was just nice to be appreciated somewhere! [Laughs]. So, you were never tempted to do a Dance album then? [Laughs] You know what, a year or two later, there was a remix done of a track from a later album, which kind of had a little bit of that kind of feel to it, but, I don’t know, I’m not totally proud of it. A tiny bit, maybe. So, we kind of did it, but we didn’t really want to be defined by that and do a Dance album when that was the thing, you know. And that’s fine, you know, I don’t have a problem if any of those [other bands] did, then that’s great, good for them, but, I don’t know, we just wanted to do our thing really. But, there was one song we did a remix of.

Following ‘Laughter’, you parted company with Chrysalis Records, but remained with Sire Records and two further Mighty Lemon Drops albums, 1991’s ‘Sound ... Goodbye to Your Standards’ and 1992’s ‘Ricochet’, followed before you called it a day shortly after the release of the latter. Were there any particular events during this period which led to you calling time on the band?

I think really, because when you’re younger, like seven years or eight years is a long time and it feels a lot longer. When you’re older, it doesn’t feel like it, especially now, when I look at how long some of my friends’ bands have been going. I think I said earlier, but I was twenty years old when I started the band and I was twenty-seven years old in 1992, twenty-eight in 1993 and it felt like we’d been around for a long time. I mean, we made five albums and we all just felt at that point that, I don’t know, we all wanted on. We were all really good friends still, but we just felt like we’d been and done everything that we kind of wanted to do, even

though the last album that we made, ‘Ricochet’ [1992], I kind of stand by that, It’s a good album! It didn’t get a release properly in the UK at the time, but it did okay in America and we did one last tour of the US in like October [1992] and we played our last show in November in Chicago, Illinois, which is a weird place to play your last show ... well, not a weird place, but being a band from Wolverhampton, to call it a day in Chicago in 1992 [laughs] is kind of bizarre! And, you know, I remember when we played the last gig, we all kind of just looked at each other and laughed and just went, ‘Ha, okay, see you back in the UK’, or wherever we were all going off to. Funnily enough though, myself and Marcus, the bass player, were also helping out, you know, playing with the band The Blue Aeroplanes as well. They had the same management as us and we knew them and we liked the band as well, but a few of the members had left and they kind of put together, because they had some shows lined up, an emergency line-up and I had some songs that were possible Lemon Drops songs that we

weren’t going to use, so myself and Marcus did two albums [‘Life Model’, 1994 and ‘Rough Music’, 1995] with The Blue Aeroplanes. So, those were fun times as well!

So, what was the experience of being a member of The Blue Aeroplanes like?

Well, it was great for me, because I didn’t feel the same kind of pressure as I did with The Mighty Lemon Drops, because The Blue Aeroplanes wasn’t my band, it was somebody else’s band, so I could just show up and play guitar and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got this song! Do you want to use this?’ So, it was really nice to not have that pressure, but to be in a band and to drink the rider! Yeah, but it was great, it was like a honeymoon kind of period almost, you know. But yeah, there’s two [Blue Aeroplanes] albums that me and Marcus are on, they were on Beggars Banquet Records. Yeah, it was fun, it was a good laugh; it was a good time. And I had another band at that time, this was when I was living in London,

called Starfish and it was myself and Susie Hug, who was in a band called the Katydids and again, I knew Susie and Katydids had finished because Adam [Seymour] joined The Pretenders and Susie and I put this band together called Starfish [1993/1994] and then we had a couple of other mates, like Donald Ross Skinner, who was Julian Cope’s guitar player [between 1984 and 1994]. He was in the band and his brother, Gavin [Skinner, drums] and Gavin was actually in an early line-up of Primal Scream [1987-1988] and he’d been a band called Whirlpool as well. So, Starfish, we did one single [‘Answerphone’, 1994] and we kind of had a bit of interest and stuff. But, by that point, I was working in London at, well, it used to be called Record and Tape Exchange, in Notting Hill. I was working in a record store by then [laughs] and it was at the point where myself and my wife decided maybe to move to America. So, that was kind of the end of that! [Laughs].

You just mentioned there about your move to Burbank, California in the

mid-’90s, but at the start of our chat, you did say that you try to get back here at least once a year. Is it strange coming back here after being out there for so long?

It is a bit. I mean, some things have not changed, because I’m still in touch with a lot of my old friends from back in the day. It’s funny because I’m from Wolverhampton originally and I’m still in touch with a lot of my old friends even back to school day and stuff, so it’s nice to get back there. And also, I kind of lived, not like a double life, but the band started in ‘85 and then we started spending a bit more time going to London and all that stuff, but I ended up moving there in 1990 and I lived in London from ‘90 to ‘95 and then I moved here in 1995. So. I’ve kind of had a double existence of part-Midlands, part-London and now can you throw the US into the picture as well! [Laughs]. Not that I have a really busy, active social life or anything, but that’s the closest thing that I have! [Laughs].

So, how did you end up moving out there then?

My wife’s originally from Los Angeles. We met in the UK; we’ve been together since 1987 and we’ve been married since 1989, so a long time, like thirty-three years. But, she’s originally from here and I mean, I loved living in London and it was great really, but we never really had any money, because the cost of living there where we were living, it was ... you know, even when the band finished ... The Lemon Drops ended, but we didn’t even really break up even, we just kind of stopped around the end of ‘92, beginning of ‘93 and, you know, I had a job and that and we were both working, but it was kind of hard. We got by day to day, but we never really had any money, you know, so we kind of got a bit tired and fancied a change, so I ended up moving out here.

And you never came back! [Laughs] No, never came back! Yeah, I thought about once or twice, but it’s

alright, it ain’t so bad here at all! My life’s not really that much different to what it was over there, you know. It’s about the same, I do the same sort of things here as I would have done over there, you know, but it’s great here, beacuse, well, I live in Burbank, which is a suburb of Los Angeles, but we still get the same ... most of the bands from the UK come here at some point. The one thing that really keeps me up to date with what’s going on over in the UK is every year, I go to Austin, Texas and they have this thing, South by Southwest [festival, aka SXSW] and, you know, a lot of the newer, up and coming artists and bands always kind of want to play there and you get a lot of kinder older bands playing, obviously, too. So. it’s kind of nice going to that because I’m a little bit older now and I don’t go out as much as I used to. You know, when I first moved here, I was thirty years old and I’d still go out like several times a week to bands and go to gigs and stuff, you know. I don’t do it quite as often now, being a little bit older, but it’s great going to South by Southwest and

seeing like a year’s worth of gigs in like five days! [Laughs]. It’s really nice because it’s spread out over the whole city and there’s a lot of venues and a lot of clubs and all that and it’s really good, because a lot of the British acts that are playing are already quite well known in the UK and they’re playing in little, tiny pubs and clubs, so it’s exciting really! You get to see the new bands and you get to see them in a small kind of environment. It’s great, it’s really good and that’s a good way of keeping up, for me, on what’s going on.

the French Resistance... Now! amongst others, as well as a sideline in composing music for television, film and music libraries, with your work having been heard in such TV shows as ‘Gilmore Girls’ (The WB / The CW); ‘The Osbournes’ (MTV); ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ (The WB / UPN) and ‘The Bill’ (ITV) and having released new music with your band David Newton and Thee Mighty Angels over the last few years, can we safely assume that there is little chance of any further activity from The Mighty Lemon Drops?

We didn’t turn it [the offer to reform for the Coachella Festival in 2007] down. I think it was offered though, I saw it somewhere that it was talked about, but the band, no, we weren’t even together at that point. Tony was living in New Zealand at that time and I’ve actually not seen Paul since we did the gig in 2000. I’ve seen the others. I’ve seen Tony and I’ve seen Keith and I’ve even seen Marcus, the second bass player, but I’ve not seen Paul. Tony, I still see

quite often, he lives in London; Keith, I see quite often. I saw him last year. They’ve all kind of flirted with other things musically since then. Tony works in like IT, computer-related stuff. He worked for MTV for a while and I think he’s working for the BBC at the moment and Keith, he stills lives in the Midlands. One of his best mates was Jon Brookes from The Charlatans, who sadly passed away [in 2013], but Keith worked with The Charlatans for a while. I think he drum-teched for them. But, yeah, we will still get offered stuff. Rat from Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, they did a thing at Wolverhampton Civic Hall, and he asked if we’d be interested in doing like a co-headline kind of Christmas holiday thing. So, that was a couple of years ago and then he asked Paul and he wasn’t into it, so we didn’t do that. And I recently got back in touch with Adam [Mole] from Pop Will Eat Itself, I’d not seen him for a long while. I was in London in February and I went to see ... do you remember a band from the early-’80s called Wasted Youth? They were like a Post-Punk band and

all the Stourbridge lot, as we used to call them, Pop Will Eat Itself, The Wonder Stuff, they were all really into them, they were all really into this band, Wasted Youth and they did a reunion gig in February and it just so happened that it was when I was going to be there and sure enough, I ran into Adam and Graham [Crabb] from Pop Will Eat Itself. I’d not seen Adam for like twenty-five years! But, he was saying as well, ‘You should do some gigs!’ and I was like, ‘Hey!’ I don’t know, I might be interested, Tony might be interested ... I don’t know about Keith. But, I think Adam got in touch with Paul as well and Paul said ‘No’. So, that is what it is. But, still, it’s amazing who I run into and all that!

Finally, could you tell us a bit about your career since The Mighty Lemon Drops ended and projects you are currently involved in at the moment?

Sure! Well, when I first moved here, I didn’t really know what to do. The only thing I’d done since The Lemon Drops was work in a record shop and

have a couple of bands and we got a house in Burbank at the right time, when it was still sort of affordable and it had a two car garage out the back and I was like, ‘You know, it would be great to have a recording studio’. I didn’t really have a lot of money at the time ... I didn’t have any money at the time really and I just slowly but surely started buying like plasterboarding and wood and stuff and I slowly converted the garage into a studio. Because living in Burbank too, there was a lot of like TV and film studios going digital, so you buy all the old anolog equipment for like no money. So, I basically built a little recording studio in my garden. I think when I started out, it was for my own doings and then I recorded a friend’s band and it turned out okay and then it was like, ‘Dave’s got a studio!’ and then ... I thought it would keep me out of trouble for a few years until I found a proper job, but that was like twenty-five, twenty-six years ago now and that’s kind of what I’ve been doing since, you know. I mean, the bands that I’ve worked with, they’ve pretty much all been local, Los Angeles, you

know, but I’ve had a few that have done okay in the UK, that have got picked up. Heavenly Records picked up a couple of the bands that I worked with. There was The Little Ones who did okay [Newton produced their debut EP, ‘Sing Song’, 2006], Heavenly signed them and they toured with Kaiser Chiefs in like 2007 and I went to Cardiff Arena and saw this little band of my mate’s from Burbank playing to like I don’t know how many thousand people! They did Earl’s Court as well, which is like huge! I did a band called The Blood Arm as well and they toured a lot in the UK. I did two or three albums [‘Lie Lover Lie’, 2005; ‘All My Love Songs’ EP, 2010 and ‘Turn and Face Me’, 2011] with The Blood Arm, which were all recorded in my shed! So, yeah, and I did a record with Eddie Argos from Art Brut [Everybody was in the French Resistance... Now! ‘Fixin’ the Charts, Vol. 1’, 2010] and that was me with Eddie and Dyan [Valdés] from The Blood Arm and they were a couple at the time and I knew them, which is really weird because Art Brut, I loved that band so much before I even knew Eddie and everything and he’s now like one of my best friends, you know. And he started dating Dyan and then they had this idea for this side project and, you know, I was kind of given the free rein to do whatever I wanted to do and I played a lot of the instruments on the record and all that and we toured ... we did like a full UK, like European tour and everything as well! It’s really funny too, because you know The

Lovely Eggs opened for us as well? Well, I actually bought one of your magazines a few years ago, because there was a piece on The Boys and The Lovely Eggs were on the cover [Issue Seventeen, February 2020]! I just sent off and bought that from the UK [laughs], because The Boys were one of my favourite bands growing up and I saw that there was a Boys piece in it and then I saw that The Lovely Eggs were on the front cover! I still have it! At the moment, I’ve mainly been doing a lot of work on this [‘Inside Out: 1985-1990’], because I did a lot of the transferring and digitalising of the tracks, but other than that, most of the bands that I’m working on at the moment, it’s mainly been kind of local stuff. And I do my own thing as well, Thee Mighty Angels, which is my own band and we had a single out last year [‘Winter Tragedy’] and a full album the year before [‘A Gateway to a Lifetime of Disappointment’].

Thank you for a wonderful interview, it has been such a pleasure talking to you. We wish you all the best with ‘Inside Out: 1985-1990’, all your future projects and for the future. No worries, likewise, it was great, I’ve enjoyed it! Keep up the good work!

‘Inside Out: 1985-1990’ is out now on Cherry Red Records. www.cherryred.co.uk/artist/ mighty-lemon-drops-the

Misty Michael Plays For Us

Interview by Martin Hutchinson.

“The one difference between us and the others was that we played Bach note for note!”

We tend to feature bands that ‘made it’ or had a decent stab at success, but I thought I’d write about a band that promised much, but lack of promotion and management experience led to their demise. And then there was the small matter of a ground-breaking album that they recorded, but was never released.

Formed in 1968 by classically trained keyboard player Michael Gelardi and bass guitarist Steve Bingham, by the autumn of 1969, the line-up had settled with the addition of singer Tony Wootton; drummer John Timms (now sadly no longer with us) and guitarist Freddie Green. Their music fused classic three-minute songwriting with an organ-based late Psychedelic / early-Progressive Rock sound, firmly in the tradition of bands like Procol Harum and The Nice.

Misty, named after Erroll Garner’s iconic 1954 Jazz standard, were introduced to impresario Michael Grade, who signed them to his newly-formed London Management. Late in 1969, the band spent seven days in London’s Regent Sound Studios recording their first (and subsequently, only) album. Eleven songs, nine written by Gelardi and Bingham with two by Wootton were recorded and the album was scheduled for release in early 1970. Also, the band travelled to Carlisle to record a TV showcase for Border Television which was broadcast in July 1970.

Two further tracks were recorded at Olympic Studios in London in the spring of 1970 for release as a single. ‘Hot Cinnamon’ backed with ‘Cascades’ was released on EMI’s Parlophone label in July 1970, but a

lack of promotion resulted in the single being a flop, as the band’s music was difficult to place. Strangely, the single is now a major collectable after being unearthed and championed by Mod club DJs.

Despite Grade issuing the (ultimately incorrect) statement that “Yesterday was The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Cream. Today is Led Zepplin (sic), The Moody Blues, Deep Purple. Tomorrow will be MISTY” and a few gigs, one supporting Roy Orbison, following, the album was never released and the band split.

The acetate of the album was discovered in Gelardi’s home and cleaned up to a standard suitable for release and along with four live tracks from the TV recording, which was unearthed by a fan, Cherry Red have released the album on their Grapefruit Records label.

Recently, I caught up with founder member and songwriter Gelardi, who chatted freely about Misty and the

recent release of the album, but first I asked him about his influences. “Well, I trained as a classical pianist in South Africa, where I was born”, he tells me. “We came to the UK when I was eleven in 1961. It was the beginning of the Pop music era, so I was getting into Pop and Rock and Jazz. I was really influenced by the likes of Jimmy Smith and the American Jazz Hammond Organ players and later on, Keith Emerson. Actually, Alan Price was one of my biggest influences. I learnt almost every [keyboard] solo he did. The only one I couldn’t quite figure out was the one on For ‘Miss Caulker’, which was the B-side to 1965’s ‘Bring It On Home to Me’.”

In fact, Gerlardi found that there was a good reason for the trouble he had encountered with that particular solo. “I met up with Alan and asked him about it”, he explains. “He told me that they [The Animals] all had terrible hangovers and he’d had a row with Eric [Burdon, The Animals’ singer]. They just needed to record

the B-side, but Alan told me that he didn’t remember what he’d played!”

Gelardi also brought his classical training in to the Misty mix: “Yes, I like Bach, Handel, Scarlatti and Corelli, they’re all on the album.” And, whereas many bands had classical influences, Misty was a bit different. “Yes”, he agrees. “The one difference between us and the others was that we played Bach note for note!”

Once it was apparent that the album wasn’t to be released, the band wasn’t exactly over the moon. “Yes, we were disappointed”, Gelardi says. “Michael Grade was our manager. We were his first, and last, Rock band. He loved the music, but while he was extremely well-connected in the variety and TV worlds, he didn’t really have connections within the then current Rock music business. On the live front, we did one show supporting Roy Orbison and one for Banbury College and we went down a storm, but London Management didn’t have the connections for the

college circuit either. We then recorded the one single [‘Hot Cinnamon’ / ‘Cascades’] on Parlophone, but, although a huge Pop music label, it was the really not the right label for our kind of music, we would have been better on EMI’s more progressive label, Harvest, and the single was never really pushed. Also, Michael Grade wasn’t keen on our singer and he suggested getting Robert Plant in. A band has a chemistry, so I said no, and that was the final straw. To add to all that, the album was never released, despite Michael Grade paying out for rehearsals and recording.”

One person was pleased about the break-up, Gelardi’s mother: “Yes, mother was a mathematician and, much to her dissatisfaction, I’d become a professional musician. I’d opted out of university after time at Selwyn College, Cambridge and Bristol. She said that now I could go out and get a ‘proper job’ and go to night school. I continued with London Management as a

songwriter, recording musician and arranger. Then I got a job with the band-leader Geraldo. After the war, he had an agency in New Bond Street [due to the amount of bands he placed with liners, the agency became known as “Gerry’s Navy”] and I was his assistant. After a while, I formed my own agency, which I later sold to Trust House Forte and founded the Entertainment Division of Trust House Forte, which became the second largest entertainment agency after Rank.”

He then told me about how the album came to be released, a full fifty-two years after being recorded: “Well, my girlfriend at the time, a classical violinist, asked me about the album and if she could hear it. I actually didn’t know where it was, but she managed to find the acetate of the album, which was probably the only one in existence. I didn’t think of it being released, but my son told me to take it to Porky’s Mastering and they digitally enhanced it. Then, when I went to pick up the CDs, the engineer said that his boss, George ‘Porky’ Peckham wanted to see me. He said that he’d heard the music before and I said that he couldn’t have as the album had never been released. He was adamant and it turned out that he had been a member of The Fourmost when we appeared on the same bill supporting Roy Orbison and heard it then!”

And the band also has a famous fan. “That’s right!”, says Gelardi. “It turns out that Mike Read was a big Misty fan. In September, he featured us in his ’Footage Detectives’ slot on Talking Pictures TV.”

After splitting, the other members of the band have pursued other careers: “Freddie [Green], our guitarist, went on to work for the Post Office for twenty-five years as well as being a semi-pro musician during that time. He is now retired, but still plays with various bands from time to time.

Steve Bingham has remained a professional musician ever since and presently plays for and manages Geno Washington and the Ram Jam Band, as well as Ronnie Lane’s Slim Chance band; and Tony Wootton, our singer, went into the electronics and later insulation businesses, but he and I have remained recording music together over many years under the name of The London Baby Boomers.” Sadly, Misty’s drummer, John Timms passed away in 2012.

Misty’s album, ‘Here Again’, containing the thirteen studio-recorded tracks, plus four tracks from the TV showcase is out now on Grapefruit Records via Cherry Red. It includes a 4,000 word sleeve-note about Misty’s hitherto-undocumented existence together with photos, memorabilia and quotes from band members.

www.cherryred.co.uk/artist/misty

Alice Cooper Cooper-tastic!

Martin Hutchinson reviews ‘Live from the Astroturf, Alice Cooper’.

In 2015, Dennis Dunaway, bassist with the original Alice Cooper band, published a book about his time in the band called ‘Snakes! Guillotines! Electric Chairs! My Adventures In The Alice Cooper Group’.

To promote the book’s launch, he arranged a get-together of the surviving members of the group, rhythm guitarist and keyboardist Michael Bruce and drummer Neal Smith for a Q&A session and live show. The live show took place at the Good Records store in Dallas, Texas on October 6th 2015 and producer Chris Penn had the foresight to record the event in sound and vision for prosperity. The big surprise for the attendees was that after the first song, ‘Caught in a Dream’ (‘Love It to

Death’, 1971), sung by Bruce, the band were joined on stage by Cooper himself!

This release contains the eight-song set performed on the day (and they have kept in the between-song banter), which includes some of the band’s greatest hits, such as ‘I’m Eighteen’ (‘Love It to Death’); ‘No More Mr. Nice Guy’ (‘Million Dollar Babies’, 1973); ‘Under My Wheels’ (‘Killer’, 1971); ‘Elected’ (‘Billion Dollar Babies’) and the anthemic ‘School’s Out’ (‘School’s Out’, 1972). Also included for good measure is an instrumental version of ‘Desperado’ (not the Eagles’ song, but the band’s own song from the ‘Killer’ album), which was recorded at the soundcheck the previous day.

Short but sweet, the tracks nevertheless capture the sound of the original band and all their power. Meanwhile, the second disc is a Blu-ray disc of the documentary film, entitled ‘Live From the Astroturf, Alice Cooper’, which has the full show and extras in the form of two music videos from the show and an interview. Cooper-tastic!

‘Live from the Astroturf, Alice Cooper’ is out now on earMUSIC / Edel Records. alicecooper.com www.facebook.com/AliceCooper

from Jeff Lynne‘s early band The Idle Race and Deram-era David Bowie to backroom auteurs like Mark Wirtz, whose ambitious ‘A Teenage Opera’ project (recorded in 1967, but unreleased until 1996) inspired a young Andrew Lloyd Webber, who provided similarly over-the-top arrangements for CBS hopefuls Cardboard Orchestra.

Adventures in Toytown

Issued at the start of 1967, The Beatles’ single ‘Penny Lane’ coupled a widescreen production (bolstered by a phalanx of session musicians on brass and woodwind) with a mildly hallucinogenic lyric populated by mundane characters going about their unremarkable suburban lives. It proved to be an enormously influential record and for the next year or two, British pop was awash with records that married quasi-Classical arrangements with newly-minted fairy tales and character vignettes based around the grey everyday lives of ordinary small-town folk.

Many years later, this burst of English eccentricity came to be known in collector circles as Toytown Pop – a pseudo-genre that took in everything

Featuring 87 excerpts from various pre-teenage operas, ‘Climb Aboard My Roundabout!’ is a 3CD celebration of the Toytown Pop experience brought to us by Grapefruit Records / Cherry Red. It includes contributions from the key players as well as many obscure delights and some huge rarities, including a hitherto-unreleased track from Wirtz’s aborted ‘A Teenage Opera’ project.

In fact, there are quite a few previously unissued tracks here and historians will love hearing some great names at the start of their career. As well as the aforementioned Lynne and Bowie, there is an embryonic Slade, Gilbert O’Sullivan, producer extraordinaire Chris Neil and, hiding as a session musician with Simon Dupree and The Big Sound in 1968 is a young Elton John. As well as the forgotten artists, there are also some ‘known’ artists like The Kinks, The Mindbenders, Marty Wilde, The Shadows, Ayshea Brough and even Kenny Everett! And let’s not forget the 48-page booklet which is fully illustrated and has very informative notes by David Wells.

Martin Hutchinson reviews ‘Climb Aboard My Roundabout!’

David Carroll and Friends

Highly Strung

Martin

David Carroll spent much of the seventies travelling on the buoyant Folk club and college circuits with Folk band Spinning Wheel. After Punk Rock came and the demand for older forms of music declined, he gained a qualification in stringed instrument making and repairing, which led to a long and successful career in the musical instrument industry. He also was an in-demand session player and live performer thanks to his expertise in such diverse stringed instruments such as uilleann pipes and dulcimer as well as the more familiar guitar, bouzouki and mandolin. The idea of a solo album brewed over many years and, bolstered by the offers of help from many good friends, this is the result.

The nine track ‘Bold Reynold’ puts the the Rock back into Folk Rock. It features seven traditional songs, an epic version of the anti-whaling song ‘The Last Leviathan’ and the Dave Cousins (Strawbs) classic, ‘The Battle’. Helping Carroll out are Fairport Convention’s Chris Leslie and Dave Pegg; Tom Spencer from The Men They Couldn’t Hang and renowned singer Lucy Cooper. We also have Dave Oberle, Graeme Taylor and Brian Gulland from Gryphon (Taylor also produced).

I’m a sucker for the sound of the dulcimer, bouzouki and mandolin, so this album’s music was, to me, wonderful (although I would have loved a bit of harpsichord in there), and the vocals were spot on. Yes, there will be comparisons with Steeleye Span, but Carroll and friends have their own sound which sets them apart. It’s different, and definitely in a good way.

‘Bold Reynold’ is out now on Talking Elephant Records.

Hutchinson reviews ‘Bold Reynold’.

Pure Assassins

personal music I’ve ever made. I also surprised myself many times with the final outcome of a track.”

Former Drum ‘n’ Bass Martin Hutchinson reviews ‘Questions’.

Man Asks Questions

Chris Rush has experienced the extremes of the party lifestyle, like many who came of age in the ‘90s. He is a multi-instrumentalist and producer who cut his teeth as one of the forerunners in the Drum ‘n’ Bass scene, and although he enjoyed success as part of the duo Calyx along with Larry Cons (who these days runs the outfit solo), Rock music is now his weapon of choice.

After several EPs and singles, Rush decided that it was time to create an album that brought together his many influences and musical preferences. “I decided not to limit myself with this album and, within reason, to go with first instincts and keep the creative process open and free from too much self-analysis or criticism”, says Chris. “If the song felt like it needed a gospel choir, despite being a dirty guitar / Synth Rock groove, then I was going to try it!”

He continues, “I feel like this approach has produced some of the most emotionally connected and

‘Questions’ is a self-released album which showcases Rush’s visionary Rock, a sound that had me cranking up the volume. Lyrically, he ponders meaning in love and life, but reverently. It’s Rocky, catchy and magnificently listenable.

‘Questions’ is out now.

www.facebook.com/pureassassins

Gerry Jablonski

& The Electric Band Get Intense

Martin Hutchinson

reviews

‘105’.

The self-released nine-track ‘105’ is Jablonski and the band’s fifth album and the follow up to their critically acclaimed single ‘Goddamn’, which is included here.

The Aberdeen band are no strangers to the UK and European music scene and have gained a reputation as a must-see

Blues Rock act. Their previous releases have resulted in them gaining headline slots at the HRH Blues Festival in Sheffield and the Rory Gallagher Festival in Ireland.

Jablonski explains about the feel of the album: “The art and music especially should reflect reality. We walked into the studio on the morning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The terrifying event of the unfolding war started shaping the mood and the sounds we were creating.” Expanding further, he continues: “It seemed like the lyrics never meant so much before, the sound never felt so dark.”

Harmonica player Peter Narojczyk then tells me about the lyrical content:

“Lyrically, the album comments on the current events, from the war [‘Hard Road’] and environmental disasters [‘Heavy Water’] to mental health [‘Tiny Thoughts’] and the high cost of living [‘Breaking the Stones’], but it was never meant to be delivered with such an intensity.”

‘105’ is out now.

www.gerryjablonskiband.co.uk

www.facebook.com/ GerryJablonskiBand

Cliff Richard

Christmas with Cliff!

Martin Hutchinson reports on the Peter Pan of Pop’s first Christmas album in nineteen years and speaks to the man himself.

Sir Cliff Richard’s first dedicated Christmas album in nineteen years, ‘Christmas With Cliff’ has been issued in chart eligible “magazine format”, a first even for an artist who’s career has spanned an incredible eight decades. Featuring the full thirteen-track CD and a twenty-page magazine dedicated to the album and Cliff’s love of Christmas, this unique, chart eligible format brings albums back to some supermarket shelves for the first time since they started phasing out CDs from July 2021. The ‘Christmas With Cliff’ magazine format is available in selected WH Smith and Tesco stores.

Released on East West Records, the brand-new album features Christmas classics and brand new Christmas

tracks from this British music legend synonymous with his love of Christmas. In addition to Richard’s first magazine format, the album is also available digitally, on CD, very special red vinyl and a limited run of white vinyl exclusive to Amazon.

As the only artist in the world to achieve UK top five albums in eight consecutive decades, ‘Christmas With Cliff’ continues to see Cliff Richard as an industry trailblazer and his first ever magazine format features twenty pages of thoughts on the album from Cliff, lyrics, photos and a special dedication to fans. Now celebrating his 82nd year, his passion has brought together an album of classics such as ‘It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year’; ‘Sleigh Ride’; ‘Joy to the World’; ‘When a Child is Born’ and many more in his own distinctive style. The album also includes new Christmas songs ‘First Christmas’; ‘Six Days After Christmas (Happy New Year)’ and ‘Heart of Christmas’.

Richard recently told us: “I have had

many firsts in my career, but have never had an album released in a magazine format, it’s like Christmas has come early for me. Music means so much to us all and to ensure it is available to all, no matter who they are or what age they are, is important. This format has enabled me to share my love of Christmas and a few personal memories, so I’m delighted that I can share these with you in such a beautiful way.”

Recorded earlier this year in Criteria Studios, Miami and produced by Sam Hollander and Chris Walden, this is Richard’s first Christmas album since ‘Cliff at Christmas’ (UK#9) in 2003, which today stands as the third biggest selling seasonal album of the 21st Century, with sales in excess of 409,000 copies. Meanwhile, there is of course a Christmas single in the form of one of the new tracks featured on ‘Christmas with Cliff’, ‘Heart of Christmas’. Well, what else would you expect from an artist who has topped the Christmas chart on two occasions as a solo artist with ‘Mistletoe and Wine’ in 1988 and ‘Saviour’s Day’ in 1990 and narrowly missed out on the 1999 Christmas number one when ‘The Millennium Prayer’ was knocked off the top spot by Westlife’s ‘I Have a Dream’ / ‘Seasons in the Sun’?

Additionally, Richard also scored a Christmas number one as part of the Band Aid II ensemble in 1989, but his first Christmas number one came way back in 1960, when he and The

Shadows released the not at all Christmas-related ‘I Love You’.

In November 2023, just after turning 83 on the 14th of October, Richard will be celebrating his 65th year in the music industry with the eight-date ‘The Blue Sapphire’ tour, which calls at London, Blackpool and Glasgow.

‘Christmas with Cliff’ is out now on East West Records, with the magazine format of the album being available from selected WH Smith and Tesco stores. Meanwhile, tickets for next November’s ‘The Blue Sapphire Tour’ are on sale now.

www.cliffrichard.org

www.facebook.com/sircliffrichard

Leo Sayer

A Masterclass in Stagecraft and Singing Martin Hutchinson reports from Bridgewater Hall in Manchester on the 31st of October.

He may be small in stature, but his voice and stage presence make him seem like a giant!

The long-awaited return to the UK by Leo Sayer resulted in a great crowd in Manchester, who were treated to a masterclass in stagecraft and singing in a two-hour journey through Leo’s stellar career. And it is a career that has lasted fifty years!

Before he even sang a note, Leo introduced his band. I’ve never seen that happen before, they usually get name-checked either during or at the end of the gig. The show kicked off with a trio of early hits, ‘The Show Must Go On’ (‘Silverbird’, 1973); ‘One

Man Band’ (‘Just a Boy’, 1974) and ‘Moonlighting’ (‘Another Year’, 1975), as well as ‘Train’ (‘Just a Boy’). I’m pleased to report that Leo still has his trademark curly locks (which originally gave him the name ‘Leo’, as in a lion’s mane), and he leapt about the stage as if he was twenty-four instead of seventy-four. And he showed lots of humour (complete with the occasional naughty word). His voice is a strong as ever and he continued to belt out hit after hit, including ‘Raining in My Heart’ (‘Leo Sayer’, 1978); ‘Orchard Road’ (‘Have You Ever Been in Love’, 1983) and ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You (Though I Try)’ (‘Leo Sayer’) … and that only took us to the interval!

More hits followed after the break, and with two tracks from his recent album of Beatles’ covers ‘Northern Songs’, his whole career was covered. Leo performed ‘Across the Universe’ and ‘Eleanor Rigby’ (which was a lot more ‘Rocky’ than the Fab Four’s version) and the mobile phones (modern day replacement for lighters) were brandished during ‘When I Need You’ (‘Endless Flight’), whilst everybody was on their feet for ‘You Make Me Feel Like Dancing’ (‘Endless Flight’).

It was a complete history of Leo Sayer. If you recall the 1979 compilation album, ‘The Very Best Of Leo Sayer’, he sang all but one of the tracks off that album, only omitting his cover of The Beatles’ ‘Let It Be’.

For the encore, Leo took us back to the very beginning in 1973 and two songs that he co-wrote which were used by Roger Daltrey on his first solo album, 1973’s ‘Daltrey’: ‘It’s a Hard Life’ and ‘Givin’ It All Away’. As the whole audience gave Sayer and his band a much deserved ovation, the speakers burst into life with ‘The Werewolves of London’ and the musicians playfully larked about as vampires. Well, it was Halloween!

Set List: ‘The Show Must Go On’; ‘One Man Band’; ‘Moonlighting’; ‘Train’; ‘Dancing the Night Away’; ‘Raining In My Heart’; ‘Have You Ever Been in Love’; ‘Bedsitter Land’;

‘Orchard Road’; ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You’. Interval. ‘Thunder In My Heart’; ‘More Than I Can Say’; ‘Eleanor Rigby’; ‘Across the Universe’; ‘You Make Me Feel Like Dancing’; ‘When I Need You’; ‘Long Tall Glasses’; ‘How Much Love’.

Encores: ‘It’s a Hard Life’; ‘Givin’ It All Away’. www.leosayer.com www.facebook.com/ LeoSayerMusic

The Damned

Loud Loud Loud!

Martin Hutchinson reports from the O2 Apollo in Manchester on the 3rd of November.

One of The Damned’s best-known songs is ‘Neat Neat Neat’ (‘Damned Damned Damned’, 1977) and this show was Loud Loud LOUD!

To warm us up, and to get our ears accustomed to the volume, there was a trio of supports. Firstly, an all-female trio from Italy, Smalltown Tigers. They were followed by TV Smith and The Bored Teenagers. Smith was in The Adverts back in the day and his set was exclusively tracks by his old band, including their 1977 hit ‘Gary Gilmore’s Eyes’ (UK#18). The third band to assault our ears was Penetration, another band that was founded in the seventies.

Finally, it was time for the main event: the reunion of the original members of The Damned, with Dave Vanian on

vocals, Rat Scabies on drums and Captain Sensible back on bass guitar to make way for original guitarist and main songwriter Brian James, who departed the band after their first two albums, ‘Damned Damned Damned’ and ‘Music for Pleasure’, both released in 1977.

Today’s Damned is a different animal to the seventies’ version. For a start, there are now five of them, including a keyboard player and the music is more melodic and a bit ‘gothy’. The version we saw tonight was the Punk Rock Pioneers, the band who was the first UK Punk band to release a single and tour the US. The material played was mainly from the first two albums along with a couple of supplementary tracks. The songs came thick and fast with hardly a pause, although at one point, Vanian asked for the lights to be turned on the audience, with Sensible commenting that we were “better looking than that London lot”. The Damned had, of course, just played two dates in the capital.

It was high-energy and high volume throughout, even the snare drum gave up the ghost at one point and had to be replaced. And after a four-song encore, which included that first UK Punk single ‘New Rose’, released on the 22nd October 1976, and a cover of The Rolling Stones’ 1965 single ‘The Last Time’ (we had already had a Beatles’ cover with the band’s unique version of ‘Help!’, which was featured on the B-side of ‘New Rose’), Rat set his cymbals on fire whilst Sensible smashed his bass to smithereens. A fitting end, I thought!

I will admit that I have been to better gigs, but the historical value of this one made up for the four-day loss of hearing.

Set List:

‘I Feel Alright (1970)’; ‘You Take My Money’; ‘Help!’; ‘Born to Kill’; ‘Stretcher Case Baby’; ‘Feel the Pain’; ‘I Fall’; ‘Fan Club’; ‘Alone’; ‘Fish’; ‘1 of the 2’; ‘Problem Child’; ‘Neat Neat Neat’; ‘Stab Your Back’; ‘Sick of Being Sick’; ‘See Her Tonite’; ‘You Know’.

Encores: ‘New Rose’; ‘Pills’; ‘The Last Time’; ‘So Messed Up’.

www.officialdamned.com www.facebook.com/

OfficialDamned

Nik Turner:

Master of the Universe

Tribute by Marco “Frenchy” Gloder.

In the history of Hawkwind and Space Rock, Nik Turner stands on his own because he wasn’t a guitar player, a bass man or an audio-generator player: he was a sax player ... and a free jazz sax player at that. To make such an impact as a sax player, in a Rock environment, takes someone special. And Nik was special. Like he always said, “I only wanted to play Jazz in a Rock band” and that will, that vision gave birth to Space Rock.

With the help of his friends Bob Calvert, Lemmy and DikMik, Nik created a new genre of Rock. Those four were pivotal to the success of Hawkwind: even Dave Brock, with all his talents and vision, could not have made it happen in the way it did, not without Nik, Bob, Lem and Mik. But

primarily, it was Nik’s vision and disposition that allowed Hawkwind to flourish: he brought Lem and Mik into the band, knowing very well that neither could play bass and synths. But it didn’t matter and like Punk Rock seven years later, your attitude was more important than your ability to play an instrument: make some noise in E!

Nik understood that instinctively: investing in people was his greatest strength because it inspired loyalty and not just because of what he might have done for you, but because he was such a thoroughly nice geezer; a decent, lovable, happy, loyal, forgiving chap. I am not going to go into what Nik and I did together and the adventures we shared because this is not the time, but what I will say is that of all the Hawks, he is the one that made me a better person and for that alone, I will be forever grateful. In my bad days, he never preached, never judged, never walked away and afterwards, he was still there, welcoming as always. I might not see him for a couple of years, but when I did, he always made me feel like it was the most joyous occasion!

The history of Hawkwind and Space Rock in general is well documented. Many a book has been written about the band by better writers than me and since the digital age, everyone knows almost everything as it happens, sometimes before it does happen even! So, I won’t go into all that. What I will

Photograph by Keith Morris

talk about is the ‘who owns the name’ affair, because at the time, many sided against Nik. I remember one bright spark saying that Nik was on seven Hawkwind albums and Dave is on all of them, therefore Dave should have the right to the name. That same person wrote a touching tribute to Nik in the past few days. Another said, “Who the fuck does Nik Turner think he is?’ and I remember answering that whoever he was by saying that he deserved respect for what he had done and kept on doing. I always thought that Dave deserved to have the name, but my loyalty to Nik never wavered, especially when we were the minority. And that’s what Nik inspired in others who knew him well enough to call him a friend: loyalty and love. Yes, my head said Dave should own the name because he’s been through all of it, but Nik was still the Spirit of Hawkwind. And because of that, who cares who owns what? His name, Nik Turner, the Thunder Rider, was more than good enough to see him alright: fans are not so shallow that they can be swayed by a name alone ... and the following Hawkwind releases proved that!

the mighty Hawkwind show! I know, I know, just indulge me!

Nik was REAL, nothing about him was ego or self-importance, it was always about music, having a laugh, sharing an hour ... being together in a way that mattered. I will miss him and it’s difficult to remember him without tears welling up: but he wouldn’t want that, he would want all of us to remember him for his music and for the man he was. He would want us to keep on hawking and winding!

Nik, wherever you may be, thank you. Thank you for the music, thank you for the memories, but most of all, thank you for your friendship: you are truly the master of the universe.

Nik Turner: 26/08/40 - 10/11/22. www.hawkwind.com www.facebook.com/ HawkwindHQ

I truly and really loved Nik in a way that I don’t feel for Dave, although I have huge respect for and am very grateful to Dave. Always will be. Maybe Nik was the yin to Dave’s yang, two sides of the same seven-sided coin. I like to think that they all loved each other, all of them, and that the arguments and the spats were part of Nik on stage in 1974. Photograph by Linda Robbins