19 minute read
Holy Holy Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.
Holy Holy
Heavenly Intervention: Glenn Gregory on Finding Bowie and Losing Woody
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Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.
Best known as the frontman of pioneering Synth Pop band Heaven 17, Glenn Gregory has spent the last eight years doing some serious moonlighting as the vocalist of Holy Holy.
Despite performing solely David Bowie material, Holy Holy, who take their name from the relatively obscure B-side of the ‘Diamond Dogs’ single from 1974, insist on not being regarded as a tribute band. And rightly so, considering that they were founded by Spiders from Mars drummer Mick “Woody” Woodmansey, who appeared on ‘The Man Who Sold the World’, 1970; ‘Hunky Dory’, 1971; ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust’, 1972 and ‘Aladdin Sane’, 1973 and world famous producer Tony Visconti, who played bass in The Hype (a short-lived Bowie project, also featuring Woodmansey, which evolved into The Spiders from Mars) and produced ‘David Bowie’ (aka ‘Space Oddity’), 1969; ‘The Man Who Sold the World’; ‘Young Americans’, 1975; ‘Low’, 1977; “Heroes”, 1977; ‘Lodger’, 1979; ‘Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps). 1980; ‘Heathen’, 2002; ‘Reality’, 2003; ‘The Next Day’, 2013 and ‘Blackstar’, 2016.
Unfortunately, on Friday 28th January, Holy Holy announced that they had parted company with Woodmansey due to him not being vaccinated against COVID-19 and his position on their upcoming The Best of Bowie Tour, which runs from the 2nd to the 13th March, will be filled by former associate of both Robbie Williams and Joe Strummer and current drummer of The Alarm, Steve “Smiley” Barnard. Woodmansey, who lost his wife shortly before the pandemic, told fans: “It is with deep regret that I have to announce I will no longer be a part of the band Holy Holy. Due to my medical exemption regarding the COVID-19 vaccination, the band do not feel safe having me involved and have replaced me in the band. Therefore, you will not be seeing me on the upcoming tour in March 2022. I have no negative feelings towards
the band, they are doing what they believe is best for them, whilst I am doing the same. I am sad not to be part of the band and I will miss connecting with all the fans. I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your support over the years, especially for your messages of comfort and encouragement over the last year, they meant a lot. I am fit and healthy and doing well”.
Firstly, hello Glenn and thank you for agreeing to our interview, it is lovely to speak to you. You are about to head out on tour with Holy Holy this March, but unfortunately, you have had to part company with drummer Mick “Woody” Woodmansey, the man who played drums with Bowie’s most legendary band, The Spiders from Mars and appeared on ‘The Man Who Sold the World’ (1970); ‘Hunky Dory’ (1971); ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust’ (1972) and ‘Aladdin Sane’ (1973), due to him not being vaccinated against COVID-19. We suspect that this wasn’t a decision that was taken lightly. How do the remaining members of Holy Holy and Woodmansey feel about the decision at the moment?
Obviously, it’s quite difficult, you know, but it came at the time of COVID and Woody didn’t want to get vaccinated and, you know, a lot of the band weren’t happy about travelling with someone [that wasn’t vaccinated] and we also didn’t know whether we would be able to get into venues and things like that, so it came down to ... and Woody coined the phrase, it’s ‘medical differences’, you know! Yeah, the band broke up because of medical differences! [Laughs]. And everybody wished it hadn’t happened, but there’s quite a lot of things over the past two years that everybody wished hadn’t happened as well, you know.
A band breaking up due to “Medical differences” is probably a first! It is a shame though.
It is, yeah, but, you know, life must go on and we just have to carry on.
Steve “Smiley” Barnard
Who will be taking Woodmansey’s position in the band for the upcoming tour?
It will be Smiley [Steve Barnard, who is also currently a member of The Alarm and formerly a member of, amongst others, Joe Strummer and the Masceleros and Robbie Williams’ band circa 1998’s ‘Life Thru A Lens’]. He’s a friend of James Stevenson [guitarist, also currently a member of The Alarm], so yeah.
Are you hoping that Woodmansey might be able to rejoin you in the future?
I mean, it’s always open to him. I mean, Woody said that he doesn’t want to, but, you know, we would never say no and it would be great if we could get it back together.
How did you first come to be involved in Holy Holy and how have you found the experience so far?
Well, I was working with Tony Visconti
Tony Visconti
on another album, an album of an artist called stefan Emmer [‘International Blue’, 2014], who’s a Dutch artist and I’d co-written and sung four songs on that album. Tony Visconti was producing it and it was at Abbey Road Studios that I met Tony and we got on really well and at one point, he did actually turn round while mixing and he said, ‘There’s something of kind of David [Bowie] in your voice, you know, when I’m mixing this. It got me thinking of David’. And really, it was that moment. I think it was just right place, right time, because it was only about six weeks later, I got a phone call from Tony saying that him and Woody had decided to tour the album ‘The Man Who Sold the World’ [1970], which was never actually toured at the time. I misunderstood actually, I thought he wanted me to sing just that one song, I thought it was an artist like best of and everybody came and did a song. I said, ‘Are there any other songs you want me to sing?’ and he said, ‘Oh no, we want you to be the singer in the band, the whole thing’ and I was like, ‘Oh shit!’ It was weird because it was
James Stevenson
my birthday [16th May] actually when it happened and I had to pick my son up from school and him and one of his mates were running round, you know, and I was shouting ‘Shut the fuck up, it’s Tony Visconti!’ [Laughs]. And yeah, that was it and suddenly, I was into having to learn kind of like, I don’t know, 27 songs or something! Because you think you know people’s work, but if you have to stand up there and really sing it, you don’t really know anything. It took me a long time to get all of those things sorted and when I do things, I have to learn them so well that I don’t even have to think about them, so I can perform in a way that is without me having to ‘what’s the next word for that?’, you know, so I can put my all into it.
Yes, because I bet it is a very different experience being up there performing somebody’s work as opposed to just being a fan of it?
Yeah, exactly! We can all sing along in the car and go ‘La la la’ to a bit we don’t know [laughs], but you’re not allowed to do that on stage!
Paul Cuddeford
Can you remember first discovering Bowie and what impact did he have on you when you were planning your own career in music?
Oh, an enormous influence actually! You know, as I said, Tony mentioned that something in the timbre of my voice reminded him of David. It’s not surprising really, because growing up, you’re talking hero and idol really for people of my age [63]. And also, I saw David when I was really young. I was fourteen, or at the latest fifteen, and he played at the Student Union in Sheffield. You had to be a student to get in and we faked Student Union cards! Myself and Adi [Newton, later of Clock DVA and The Future with the Ian Craig Marsh and Martyn Ware] and Martyn Ware and a guy called Paul Bower [later of the band 2.3], we’d gone and bought printing sets and some sticky back plastic, could have been on ‘Blue Peter’! And mine was from Psalter Lane Art College and I think, actually, my mum might have still got
Jessica Lee Morgan
that in the bottom of a drawer! And so we made all these fake cards, which looked ridiculous really, but it worked! We got in! And I saw Bowie there, I saw Roxy Music there, loads of bands! It was brilliant! All with fake Student Union cards!
That is amazing! God, what an era to have grown up in! I’m quite jealous actually!
It was amazing, it really was! And I saw [Marc] Bolan and T. Rex and, you know, things like that, but that’s what it was all about. In fact, my first job was even influenced by David Bowie because it was when ‘Young Americans’ [1975] came out and in Moss Bros, in the window, they had a blue suit ... in Sheffield, this is ... they had a blue boxy suit, short at the ankles and I thought ‘Aah, that’s so Bowie!’ And I knew that you could get discount if you worked there for over a month, so I worked there for a month [laughs] and saved my wages literally just to get enough to buy this suit and I left the Friday that I bought the suit! [Laughs].
Janette Mason
Obviously, there is a temptation to think of Holy Holy as a tribute band, but we would suggest that they are far from it. What are your thoughts on this?
Yeah, I mean, it was never a tribute band. I mean, one of the reasons, one of the early things when I was learning the songs was that Woody and Tony both said to me, ‘Look, we don’t want you to be David. We’re not asking for someone to go up there and pretend to sing like David, or pretend to be David, we want you to do it in your own way’. I mean, Woody once said to me that Tony said he really wanted me to do it and it really wouldn’t be happy with anyone else. He wanted me to do it, I guess, after mixing my voice on those other tracks. And so, it isn’t a band. I mean, Tony was in the band on that first tour [in February 1970, for which Bowie; Visconti (bass); Mick Ronson (guitar) and John Cambridge (drums) were known as The Hype] and Tony played bass on a lot of these songs and Woody was obviously there for a lot of the early stuff [Woodmansey replaced
Glenn with Berenice Scott as Afterhere
Cambridge in April 1970]. And the guitarist, for instance, James Stevenson, he’s an absolute Mick Ronson nut! You know, he goes OD on Mick’s playing and Paul Cuddeford, the other guitarist, similarly. And Jess[ica Lee Morgan], who plays acoustic guitar and sax, who’s Tony’s daughter, and Jeanette Mason, who plays keyboards are brilliant. She’s played with everybody, she’s fantastic! And the thing is, everybody is such a musician and there’s not a computer on site. It’s like you’re going to watch a Rock band in 1976! It’s really, really exciting! The songs are brilliant, you’ve got Mr. Tony Visconti standing up there telling you stories and talking to you, what more could you want?! It’s brilliant!
As well as Holy Holy, you are obviously still part of Heaven 17, but you are also one half of Afterhere with Heaven 17 and Holy Holy keyboardist Berenice Scott, with whom you released the 2018 album ‘Addict’ and soundtracked the television series ‘Liar’ (2017) and more recently ‘Vigil’ (2021). How did Afterhere come about and could you tell us a bit about this project?
Yeah, Afterhere is myself and Berenice Scott and we met Berenice, who became Heaven 17’s keyboard player for many years, and she and I just got on really well and we kind of were quite similar people and I was working on a ... I’ve forgotten what TV series it was for ... but I wanted her to come and sing for me on something in the studio and play piano and so she did. And we got on really well and obviously, I can play and program piano and play everything really, but not to Berenice’s standards, you know, she’s proper! We used to work with someone else, but we didn’t get on in the end. I had a period of working on TV dramas and things where I was on my own for years and I would just start talking to myself, so I like working with people, you know. It’s better than me saying, ‘Do you think that’s alright?’ and I’m going, ‘Well, you could perhaps change that ... well, should we perhaps try this?’ But I’m talking to myself and I’m thinking ‘this is really not good!’, you know!
[Laughs]. So, Berenice and I started working together like that and as we were kind of working on writing score, we started to work on a few songs as well. So, we then turned to that and we released an album called ‘Addict’ [2018]. It’s beautiful and the idea was for us to sing kind of half and half, but in the end, Berenice’s voice is so beautiful that I made her sing more. We used to argue. You know, she’d go, ‘No, you sing this one!’ [Laughs] and I would be like ‘No, you sing it!’ ... ‘No, you sing it!’ ... ‘You go first and then I’ll try!’ And in the end, I just loved her voice so much, it’s amazing and I love working with Berenice, we get on so well. We have a very similar way of working and it’s very easy, it’s brilliant! I really loved that album, ‘Addict’. Yeah, there’s some really nice songs on there. I think I loved writing that album much more than writing the first Heaven 17 album [‘Penthouse and Pavement’, 1981] actually.
Really?!
Yeah, it was really exciting and we spent probably six months of our lives being in a room together and it was very, very enjoyable.
On the subject of Heaven 17, you largely refused to play live during the ‘80s, despite releasing five albums (‘Penthouse and Pavement’, 1981; ‘The Luxury Gap’, 1983; ‘How Men Are’, 1984; ‘Pleasure One’, 1986 and ‘Teddy Bear, Duke & Psycho’, 1988), but have since re-invented yourselves as a powerful live act. Looking back to those early days of the band, having asserted yourself as such a great live band since, do you regret the decision to abstain from live performance at that point?
It’s a weird one that, because we’re kind of getting good at it now and enjoy it and we’ve got a really good connection with our audience and our gigs are exciting and there’s a lot of love going on, you know. And so, you think ‘wow, we could have been doing this years ago’ and you know, we would have made more money and everything, but then I start to think
‘well, maybe the reason we’re doing this now and we’re really loving it is because we didn’t do it then’, you know! Maybe we would have kind of all fallen out and we wouldn’t be doing it now if we’d done it then because, you know, a lot of bands did fall out. So, in one way, I kind of wish we had and it would have been lovely to do as you’re at number two in the charts or number one around the world and you want to go and play. That would have been good, but we made the decision and you’ve got to stick by it and I feel we’re happy where we are now and I love doing it now, it’s good!
Yeah, you always seem like you love doing it as well.
Yeah, it’s good fun, you know. And Martyn [Ware, keyboards / synthesizers] and I, I think it’s really weird because we’re really good mates and we see each other and we go and have a pint together, but the only time we argue is when we’re in a studio or on stage! [Laughs] It’s really funny, yeah! It’s kind of in a lighthearted way,
17-year-old Glenn leaving for London
but, you know ... I was doing a gig the other day and I sat on the front of the stage and started talking to this girl and [laughs] Martyn shouted on the mic, ‘Oi! Get back up here!’ So, we have a laugh and there’s definitely a good connection with the audience.
In September last year, Heaven 17 performed the first two Human League albums, ‘Reproduction’ (1979) and ‘Travelogue’ (1980) in full for the first time live in Sheffield and London. It goes without saying that Heaven 17 and The Human League are two bands that will always be inextricably linked, but we believe that you were actually the first choice of vocalist for The Human League back in 1977, but you were busy with other projects. Is that right?
I think ... I mean, it wasn’t that it was choice. At that time, there were quite a lot of bands that we were all in and myself and Ian [Craig Marsh, keyboardist / synthesizer player in The Human League before he and Martyn Ware left the band to form the
production company British Electric Foundation (B.E.F.) and Heaven 17 with Gregory on vocals] and Martyn, we were in such bands as Underpants ... we had a band called Musical Vomit, which was Ian Marsh and various people ... and I always used to end up being the singer in these bands and literally just a week before The Human League were born ... We had another band called VDK and the Studs, which was a kind of Glam Punk band really and we played a gig at the Art College in Sheffield and there were two members of Cabaret Voltaire in the band, there was Martyn Ware, Ian Marsh and myself and Paul Bower, who’s in a band called 2.3, It was a great night and we had a big party afterwards. We had a kind of workshop in Sheffield that we all used to use as a studio and some of us lived there. It was just good fun. And I decided, ‘Right, that’s it, I’m going to move to London now. I’m going to follow my dream of being a professional photographer, I’m going to take pictures of bands and so I’m moving to London’. So, that weekend, I did! On
Glenn’s photograph of The Human League, which went on to be featured on the front cover of Sounds magazine in August 1978
the Monday, I got on the train and I went to London, I was seventeen. In fact, I’ve got a picture of myself on the train station saying goodbye to my mum and dad! And that was it and I left, but Martyn and Ian had been working on these ... Martyn had bought a synthesizer and he’d been working on electronic backing tracks. And this is true, you can ask Martyn and Ian, they actually said, ‘Well, now Glenn’s gone, who are we going to get to sing these songs?!’ [Laughs] And Martyn said these words, ‘I’ve got a mate at school, I don’t know if he can sing, but he’s got a fantastic haircut!’ And that was Phil Oakey! And so they got Phil, they gave him the backing track on cassette and they said ‘Right, this is the backing track, can you go away and write some lyrics and melody for this and we’ll see if we can make it work’ and he came back and he’d written ‘Being Boiled’ [The Human League’s debut single, released in 1978] and then that was it! I’ve never, ever, for one second regretted not being the singer, because, you know, the original Human League, for me, are an immense band. Well,
both Human Leagues are incredible, but at that point, I was a real fan of The Human League. I loved Phil’s look and Phil’s voice and we were friends as well and I absolutely loved them. So, I’ve never regretted it one moment and in fact, I even took photographs of them. In fact, I had a front cover of Sounds magazine with a picture that I’d taken of The Human League ... I’ll send it to you!
Finally, and going back to Holy Holy, do you have a favourite song to perform with the band and why?
There’s a couple, but one of them is ‘Life is Mars?’ [‘Hunky Dory’, 1971], I guess. For some reason, it’s one that I still actually kind of choke up a little bit on. I loved it when I was growing up, I think it’s an amazing song, we perform it really well, it sounds great and it always really comes from the heart and it touches me. I love singing it and I’m honoured to be able to sing it with those people.
Aaw, amazing! Thank you so much
Glenn and Tony
much for a wonderful interview, it has been so lovely to talk to you. We wish you all the best with the upcoming Holy Holy tour dates, all your other upcoming musical activities and for the future.
Holy Holy’s nine-date The Best of Bowie Tour runs from the 2nd to the 13th March. For all upcoming tour dates and news on Glenn’s various music projects, visit the links below:
