Eighth Day Magazine Issue Twenty-six

EIGHTH DAY John Coghlan

QUO

Arthur Brown / Marty, Kim and Roxy Wilde / John Illsley / Sunbirds / Sigue Sigue Sputnik / Pilot / Barry Blue / Lordi / Leslie Pereira & The Lazy Heroes / Idlewild / Stone Foundation / Dislocation Dance / The Far North

ISSUE TWENTY-SIX. NOVEMBER. £5.00

... & Beyond!

www.eighthdaycommunications.co.uk/magazine / Facebook: eighthdaymagazine /

EDITORIAL

Top: Alice Jones-Rodgers Editor-in-Chief Scott Rodgers Photographer and Stonewasher Bottom, from left to right: Kevin Burke Staff Writer Martin Hutchinson Staff Writer Paul Foden Staff Writer Peter Dennis Staff Writer

EIGHTH DAY Issue Twenty-six November 2020

Wayne Reid Staff Writer Eoghan Lyng Staff Writer Dan Webster Wasted World German Shepherd Records “Different Noises for Your Ears” Frenchy Rants

Could you be an Eighth Day writer?

Please feel free to email us samples of your work!

Twitter: @EighthDayMag / Instagram: @eighthdaymagazine / eighthdaymagazine@outlook.com

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

CONTENTS 4. Sunbirds Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

100. Lordi Interview by Martin Hutchinson.

14. Arthur Brown Interview by Kevin Burke.

106. Leslie Pereira and The Lazy Heroes Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

22. John Illsley Interview by Kevin Burke.

32. Marty, Kim and Roxy Wilde Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

42. German Shepherd Records Presents: Dislocation Dance Interview by Bob Osborne.

50. The Far North Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

63 / 85 / 105.

Wasted World Another instalment of Dan Webster’s legendary comic strip.

64. John Coghlan Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

112. Pilot Interview by Martin Hutchinson.

117. Idlewild Interview and review by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

118. Frenchy’s Rants This month: Status Quo live in London?

121. Stone Foundation Interview and review by Martin Hutchinson.

122. Bruce Springsteen Alice Jones-Rodgers reviews ‘Letter to You’.

86. Barry Blue Interview by Martin Hutchinson.

127. Eagles Martin Hutchinson reviews ‘Eagles: The Inside Stories Behind America’s Biggest Band’.

92. Sigue Sigue Sputnik Interview by Kevin Burke.

128. On the Rocks Review by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

Sunbirds

Housemartin Flying South Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

4

Thirty-three years ago, Dave Hemingway was working as a purchase ledger clerk for the Crystal Motor Group, whilst filling his spare time playing drums for a variety of bands in his home city of Hull, when he received a phone call from Housemartins guitarist Stan Cullimore.

For the best part of the last year, The Housemartins had been riding high on a wave of success, which had begun with the third single to be taken from their debut album ‘London 0 Hull 4’, ‘Happy Hour’ peaking at number three on the UK Top 40 in June 1986. After their a capella cover of The Isley Brothers’ ‘Caravan of Love’ had narrowly missed out on that year’s Christmas number one spot to Jackie Wilson’s ‘Reet Petite’ and just as they were gearing up to go back into the studio to record their second album, 1987’s ‘The People Who Grinned Themselves to Death’, drummer Hugh Whitaker unexpectedly quit, for reasons which remain unknown.

Hemingway had been recommended to Cullimore and his bandmates, vocalist Paul Heaton and bassist Norman Cook by local musician Dave Rotheray, who had played bass alongside him in bands such as The Newpolitans and The Velvetones.

He officially quit his day job on 6th March 1987 and less than two months later, with humour typical of

his new band, was seen kidnapping Whitaker in the video for the lead single from ‘The People Who Grinned Themselves to Death’, ‘Five Get Over Excited’, thus marking his arrival as The Housemartins’ new drummer.

The Housemartins unexpectedly called it quits in 1988, but it wasn’t long before Heaton, who had now teamed up with Rotheray as his co-songwriter, was back in touch to ask Hemingway to join the new band they were putting together, The Beautiful South. However, this time, Hemingway, who throughout his career has famously suffered from stage fright, wasn’t required for his drum skills, but to front the band with Heaton as a co-vocalist.

Hemingway fulfilled this position for the next nineteen years, appearing on ten albums and taking lead male vocal duties on the band’s only number one single, 1990’s ‘A Little Time’ (the lead single from second album ‘Choke’), a duet with the first of three female vocalists, Briana Corrigan.

After The Beautiful South disbanded in 2007, citing “musical similarities’, Hemingway performed as part of off-shoot band The South with former bandmates Rotheray, drummer Dave Stead and third female vocalist Alison Wheeler, who had stepped in after the departure of Jacqui Abbott in 2000, following the

5

Dave

Phil

release of seventh album ‘Painting It Red’. Hemingway left The South in late 2016 and announced his retirement from the music industry.

1991) as well as engineering Robert Plant and the Strange Sensation’s 2005 album ‘The Mighty ReArranger’ and Placebo’s first two albums, ‘Placebo’ (1996) and ‘Without You I’m Nothing’ (1998), ‘Cool to Be Kind’ often finds Hemingway and his new friends blending Americana-style instrumentation with hints of grunge-inflected guitars, whilst lyrically, it remains very much rooted in towns and cities of England. As with all of the work that Hemingway has been involved with over the course of his career, it is nothing short of a joy to behold.

However, we are pleased to announce that he is now back with a brand new band, Sunbirds. And when we say ‘brand new’, we mean brand new.

Joining him are writing partner and guitarist Phil Barton; new discovery, violinist and vocalist Laura Wilcockson and drummer Marc Parnell, who has previously gained a considerable reputation as a session musician, having played with everybody from the Blockheads to Girls Aloud.

Due to the pandemic, Sunbirds are yet to make their first live appearance, but their debut album ‘Cool to Be Kind’ has just been released on independent label Nectar Records. Produced by Teo Miller, best known for having undertaken desk duties on Daisy Chainsaw’s breakthrough single ‘Love Your Money’ (‘Love Sick Pleasure’ EP,

6

Just before the release of ‘Cool to Be Kind’, we rang Hemingway at home, where he was excited to get back out onto the live scene with his wonderful new band, to discuss his career so far and most importantly, this national treasure’s plans for the future.

Good morning Dave and thank you for agreeing to our interview, it is lovely to speak to you. On 30th

Laura

Marc

October, your new band Sunbirds released their debut album ‘Cool to Be Kind’ on Nectar Records, so could we start by asking how this new band came about and could you introduce us to your line-up?

Yeah, well, myself and Phil, guitar, we got together to do a lot of demos, just guitar, vocal demos and then we sort of went on with arrangements and got together with the other two members of the band and sort of worked out the songs for a more fuller sound. We got together in a studio in London and managed to put the album together that way. And hopefully there’s quite a lot of diverse musical tastes on the album.

That’s what we’ve aimed for anyway, you know, to cater to a few tastes, because within the band, there’s quite a wide range of music that we all like, so we tried to put that across on the album really.

Yeah, well, I’d not been doing much for the last couple of years really. I’d sort of been a bit burnt out battery-wise and I’d sort of got a bit jaded, so I took some time out and eventually I got together with a guitarist I’d been working with, Phil Barton, and wrote some songs. We got together working on those and gradually we got an album’s worth and me and Phil got a band together to do them. So, we got together with Laura Wilcockson, who plays violin and does vocals and Marc Parnell on drums and so that’s the four of us really, with myself on vocals as well.

Could you tell us a bit about the writing and recording process of ‘Cool to Be Kind’ and for those who are still to hear it, what can they expect from the album?

Of course, you began your music career as a drummer, joining The Housemartins after the unexpected departure of Hugh Whitaker in 1987, so could we go right back to the beginning and ask how you came to quit your job as a purchase ledger clerk for the Crystal Motor Group to join The Housemartins and what your favourite memories from your time in the band are?

7

The Beautiful South,Mk1, 1989.

The Housemartins, 1987. L/R: Dave Hemingway, Norman Cook, Stan Cullimore, Paul Heaton

Yeah, well, I’d always been in bands around Hull. It was a big Hull musical scene at the time and everyone seemed to be in a band and I’d known Hugh, I was in the same class at school with Hugh, and we sort of did drums together in various different bands and then he went on to be with The Housemartins and obviously they got success and then he decided to quit for some reason, which is still unclear really to me, and he sort of put me forward to replace him, which I’m obviously grateful for. So, that’s how I got into the band and as for memories, it was just quite strange going from playing in small clubs in Hull to one man and his dog to actually playing big festivals and massive crowds. It was quite a big change really and sort of in at the deep end really, but it was very enjoyable as well, you know, because it was great to have that success, yeah.

After playing drums on The Housemartins’ second album, 1987’s ‘The People Who Grinned Themselves to Death’, The Housemartins disbanded in 1988 and

8

L/R: Dave Stead, Paul Heaton, Dave Rotheray, Briana Corrigan, Dave Hemingway, Sean Welch

shortly afterwards Paul Heaton asked you to join his new band, The Beautiful South. How did the decision to end The Housemartins come about and how did you come to switch from being a drummer to being one of the two male vocalists alongside Paul in The Beautiful South?

Yeah, well, I joined The Housemartins for the last year of their sort of existence and by that time, the other members of the band had become a bit really of the way the band was set up as just the four of us and Paul and Stan [Cullimore], the songwriters, decided they’d had enough really, so when that happened, I thought, ‘oh well, fair enough, at least I’ve had a year out of it and some success’ and I was okay with that, but then Paul said ‘I’m forming a new band, do you want to be part of it?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, course I do’, so we formed The Beautiful South and I assumed that he wanted me as a drummer, but it was his idea ... He said, ‘No, we’re going to do it a different way and I just want you to come

forward and do some singing’. So that’s how that came about actually.

I have read that you have suffered from stage fright over the years, so how difficult did you find it stepping out from behind the drumkit to being out front and did the stage fright become easier the bigger The Beautiful South became and the more songs you were given to take lead vocals on?

It wasn’t easy to come from behind the drums. I mean, with drums, obviously, you’ve got a shield in front of you really and I was quite comfortable with that. So, yeah, coming out front after being a drummer, it wasn’t easy, it was difficult. It took me a while to sort of get comfortable with it. I never really got comfortable with it, but as for the stage fright, it doesn’t get any easier, but I think you’ve just got to try and do the best you can. That’s what I try and do. I can’t say I’m completely over it or anything, but it makes it interesting at least and exciting [laughs], so it’s okay, I deal with it the best I can.

I suppose there is that thing where if you weren’t nervous, you probably wouldn’t be giving it your all, if you see what I mean?

Yeah, I agree with that. That’s totally right. I think you’ve got to have a bit of nervous energy there or there’s no point really.

One of your many crowning achievements as being part of The Beautiful South was of course being the lead male vocalist on the band’s only number one hit ‘A Little Time’, the lead single from the second album ‘Choke’ in 1990. What are your memories of recording ‘A Little Time’ and because it is one of my personal favourite Beautiful South music videos, what are your memories of making it?

Yeah, well, I’ve certainly got a lot of memories of making the video, with all the flour that was being thrown about and actually, we filmed the video over two days and it was fun and it was a laugh and everything, great. So we

9

Dave and Briana in the ‘A Little Time’ video, 1990

finished it and I went away on holiday and they called me back, because apparently there was a fault with the camera, so we had to do it all over again, another two days and by the end of it, after four days of being pelted with flour and that, the joke had worn a little thin by then [laughs]. But, no, it was a great video. It won a Brit Award as well [British Video of the Year, 1991]. Yeah, it was great to be part of and obviously, I’m very proud to have been part of a number one single.

That’s always a crowning achievement I think. If ever you’re in a band, you want to do well and to get a number one was absolutely fantastic. It’s something I’ll never forget really.

10

‘Blue is the Colour’ [1996]. Yeah. We recorded that near Amsterdam. It was a bit of a mad time all round really. It was a great time recording and we had some great times not recording, like when we were out and about and we just had a good laugh and it was probably the peak time of the band really. We were firing on all cylinders and for me, it’s got some really great songs on it and we just had a great time making it in a studio near Amsterdam.

So, it was fun all round, which is spot on really [laughs].

The Beautiful South released ten studio albums over their nineteen years together, but do you have a particular favourite out of them and why and could you give us an insight into the recording of it?

One thing I always found amazing about The Beautiful South was the way in which, despite Paul and Dave Rotheray being the songwriting team, the money was always divided equally. How important was this factor to the dynamic of the band and were you or anybody else ever tempted to bring songs they had written to the table?

We did a lot of albums, there’s a few that I like more than perhaps others, but if I had to pick one, I think I’d pick

Well, I think the very fact that we did ... certainly initially, we shared everything out. That wasn’t true towards the end,

but that was later on, but we did share things out and I think it’s important because what it does, it lets the best songwriters in the band, which were obviously Paul and Dave do the songwriting and in other bands perhaps, if they don’t share things out, people want to be part of the songwriting because that’s where the money is, so they bring songs to the table that are probably not as good as songs that the best songwriters create. Whereas that didn’t happen with us, because we knew we didn’t need to put songs forward of our own because Paul and Dave are the good songwriters in the band, so let them write the songs and we don’t need to try to push our own songs because of the money aspect.

So, it just took away all that need to do that and it just seemed to be natural to let the best songwriters write the songs.

The band saw a succession of female vocalists come and go over that nineteen years (Briana Corrigan, Jacqui Abbott and Alison Wheeler).

Each singer was very different in their style and approach to the songs,

but how different were each of them to work alongside?

Yeah, we were very fortunate, we had three great singers and, as you say, they were all very distinctive in their own way, starting with Briana and obviously she had a very particular sort of voice and then moving on to Jacqui Abbott, who was brilliant considering she’d never been in a band or never sang before, I thought she was really, really great to do all the songs she did and then, towards the end, Alison Wheeler came in. Each of the female singers definitely had something different to offer, you know. They were all great in their own way, so we were very fortunate in that aspect and I think the songs we did with them reflect how different they were, but they all certainly had something to offer in a different way.

Paul’s songwriting was often very clever in the way in which he was able to write from the man’s perspective and the woman’s perspective, but a story I have seen

11

The Beautiful South Mk2, with Jacqui Abbott

many times over the years is that Briana’s decision to leave the band was partly due to ethical disagreements over some of Paul’s lyrics, notably on ‘36D’ from ‘0898 Beautiful South’ (1992) and ‘Worthless Lie’ and ‘Mini-Correct’ from ‘Miaow’ (1994). How much truth is there to this story?

Yeah, it’s true, ‘Mini-Correct’ especially, Briana seemed to take issue with it really and decided to leave, sadly, but I can’t say I agree with her view on that. Paul wrote songs from a feminine aspect, you know, it was pro-women, not against them, so I think she couldn’t see it that way and so, he didn’t do anything wrong in my opinion. So, anyway, Briana couldn’t see it like that and decided to leave, sadly, but we were fortunate enough to get Jacqui in and the band went on like that.

The Beautiful South split on 30th September 2007, with the reason cited as “musical similarities”. Just ow amicable was the split and

12

The Beautiful South Mk3, with Alison Wheeler

personally, did you feel that it was the right time to stop?

Yeah, it was perfectly amicable and I think it was the right time. Paul had obviously wanted to do other things and we had been together nineteen years and that’s a long time in a band.

In the music industry not many bands last that long, so we’d done everything we wanted to do and, yeah, I think it was the right time to do it. Paul was ready to move on and the rest of us moved on in different ways. I think you’ve just got to savour the good times we had and the longevity that we had and we did well. So, yeah, it was all perfectly amicable, so no problem.

You actually retired from performing live at the end of 2016, but will you be returning to the stage to promote Sunbirds and ‘Cool to Be Kind’ once the pandemic is finally over and are you excited about performing live again with a brand new band?

Yeah, I do still like performing live. To be honest, I was a bit jaded and a bit

tired and I needed to recharge the old batteries really, so I was waiting for the right songs to come along, the right band to come along, which I believe Sunbirds is. And yeah, we are planning on doing lots of dates and to get back out there and in fact we haven’t done any gigs yet, so the next gig we do will be our first, so it’s exciting. It’s like starting out again really to be in a new band and obviously, unfortunately, with the pandemic, we don’t know when live gigs will be available and we’re going to be able to do them, but we’re certainly keeping an eye on it and as soon as there’s some light at the end of the tunnel, hopefully sooner rather than later, then we’ll be able to get out there and do some gigs. We’re certainly looking forward to doing that, yeah.

How has it actually been to release and promote an album during all this?

Yeah, well, we’re lucky enough to have actually finished the recording before the lockdown, so that was good, because if we’d been caught in the

middle, that would have presented other problems. But we got it all finished and it comes out officially on 30th October and yeah, I’ve just been speaking to people, like yourself, and we’ve just been trying to get information out that we have got a new band out there, we’ve got a new album out there and we’d just like people to get to listen to it obviously and see what they think about it, you know.

So, it’s all exciting stuff and looking forward to promoting it and doing gigs with it.

Thank you for a wonderful interview, it has been lovely to speak to you.

We wish you all the best with ‘Cool to Be Kind’ and for the future.

Thanks Alice, and you. Thank you very much.

‘Cool to Be Kind’ is out now on Nectar Records. sunbirds.co.uk www.facebook.com/sunbirds

13

In This Crazy World with

Arthur Brown Interview by Kevin Burke Photography (this page) by Mehmet Yildirim.

14

A Human Perspective from the God of Hellfire.

The sixties was the decade of revolution, not only with ideals and politics but in music. It became a time of change. Of course rock and roll was still relatively new, but a select few artists pushed the boundaries of sound through experimentation, and created something timeless. At the forefront of the UK’s musical exploration was the influential Arthur Brown. Over five decades later, he is still as creative as ever and very much relevant in this surreal landscape.

Coming to prominence in 1967 with the outfit The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Arthur has woven a tapestry of influence. His look and stage theatrics inspired what became known as shock rock, but it goes further into progressive rock and metal. His debut album, ‘The Crazy World of Arthur Brown’ upon release was a monumental hit on both sides of the Atlantic. Produced for Track Records by The Who’s manager Kit Lambert, with Pete Townshend in an executive role. The lead single, ‘Fire’ hit the top of the charts in the UK and Canada, breaking the top five in the States. This heralded the arrival of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown and although only lasting until 1970, they left an imprint through music,

influencing all from David Bowie, Alice Cooper to Marilyn Manson, along with genres such as shock rock and metal.

At the start of the century, with a brand new band, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown returned and since have released a string of studio albums up to last year’s excellent ‘Gypsy Voodoo’. Most recently, in July of this year, Arthur Brown released an electrifying cover of The Animals classic ‘House of the Rising Sun’. This new recording featured former Big Country bassist Tony Butler and Fairport Convention’s Dave Pegg, all with the aim of raising awareness of the Help Musicians charity, an independent UK body for professional musicians of all genres. Along with this, news filtered of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown upcoming 2021 UK tour. Dubbed ‘A Human Perspective’, this tour kicks off on May 27th at Waterside Arts Centre, Manchester, and will take in several dates until June 12th.

So, as October brought an annual chill to the atmosphere, the original God of Hellfire melted the icy air.

The distinguished gentleman shared with me his hopes for next year, and

15

Photograph by Wes Orshoski

how he is still driven to create and dazzle. Furthermore Arthur indulged me with snippets from his astonishing past, which at times might seem unbelievable, and bizarre ... but it’s all true.

When stepping on stage is there a switching of personalities between Arthur Brown, the boy from Whitby and Arthur Brown, the God of Hellfire? You almost take on a persona?

God willing you’ll be back on tour in May next year with ‘A Human Perspective’ shows.

Yeah, I take on the persona, and then the energy with that kind of music. It’s sort of like, you know the athletes when they’re running, they get into a certain place, you know-the zone, and for me when I get on stage, I’m in the zone.

God willing, indeed. We had it all arranged for last year, and we had the first three gigs in to build up to the tour, and that’s when the first covid stuff hit.

After all this time do you still love the stage, get the same adrenaline rush as it were?

Yeah! It’s still there, a beautiful experience. For me, in the middle of it, I go completely quiet. I watch it all happen, watch myself doing those things. Even though my body might be leaping around, I’m quite at peace.

So it’s like taking a rest, a beautiful vacation.

16

When you write songs, such as on last year’s ‘Gypsy Voodoo’, are you mindful of how they will come across on stage?

It’s sort of like a complete show, so that the visual side of things is extremely important. The technology today has come so far, that the ability for the lights and the sound to interplay, you can continue a guitar solo with the lights these days. That allows us to present a lot of beautiful imagery, and we’ve changed all the dancing styles to meet that. When I was playing in the

Photograph by Wes Orshoski

seventies, the last band, we had a drum machine, Kingdom Come. We had a multimedia show, now the technology has made it possible to do, and fulfil what that was only beginning to explore. So for me it’s like a beautiful arrival after all these years.

Where did the idea come from to use that drum machine, the Bentley Rhythm Ace, on Kingdom Come’s 1973 album ‘Journey’?

It was indeed, there’s not many interviewers that know that. As with a lot of things it was a combination of imagination and what was going on.

In those days the drummer ran off with the van and the bass player’s wife, and we’d had a couple of drummers we had problems with, and we had a tour in six weeks, so it was like ‘Oh gosh! Let’s try something new’. The idea for the drum machine came up, and I became the drum machine operator.

The influence you’ve had, and are still having is phenomenal. I read you went to Paris in the mid-sixties to

Arthur on stage in 1968

work on your theatrical skills?

I went over there with a kind of R&B unit, and there was a place where all the artists would hang out in those days, it was a kind of wild club with a fantastic audience that pushed you beyond what you would normally do.

We were playing a lot of sets, three sets a night, five on Sunday, so there wasn’t a lot of time to do rehearsal, so what I used to do was extend the numbers, and then gradually brought in the ‘skits’ if you like. There was one where President De Gaulle had put out something that long haired people could be stopped at the border and their hair cut. So we used to do the Pope cutting General De Gaulle’s hair on stage. I realized that’s something the audience really loved, and so did I. All of that stuff came in then. I learned how to stage dive, this was about sixty-five so it was early stuff and so it led gradually to a wilder and wilder stage act. When I came back to England I wanted to start a multimedia club but I couldn’t raise the money, so I started a multimedia band, and that was The

17

Crazy World.

You weren’t happy to sit within the perimeters of a beat group. Was it always your plan to push forward, experiment and I guess innovate?

I couldn’t ‘not’ do it, it’s just my nature to do that. So at certain points I’d feel this..like something inside pushing me to move on, do this, do that. And that led to all sorts of strange things [laughs].

When ‘The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown’ album came out and went top ten in the US and the UK, was it a pressurized adventure putting it all together?

You know it’s as with most artists, you’re a product of your own talents, the audiences expectations, and all the other people. If you took a club like UFO, where there was experimental dance troupes, politicians, poets, all kinds of people, and the beginnings of the experimental light shows and stuff.

You can’t help but be influenced by it.

18

In my case, I kind of pulled it all together. In terms of the album, then you have a team if you like. Because there was the band and myself, and Pete Townshend came in and put together the demos with us and he was quite influential because we’d never been in a proper studio at all. Then [Kit] Lambert and [Chris] Stamp. Kit Lambert’s father was a classical composer, so Kit was very much influential in bringing in the brass and the strings on the album, and he was only too happy as it was, and what me and Vince [Crane] were doing. But, I like opera and I like the idea of returning themes, and everything that came in the album. So I felt it was a team effort.

Arthur continued, giving a further insight into the band itself.

Also if you look at the band. The drummer was Drachen Theaker, his background was rock, modern jazz. He was also a tabla player. Visiting Indian musicians, because there wasn’t a big World Music scene then, were playing

round restaurants and they would use him for that. For a while then he was the percussionist with the Scottish National Orchestra. He was the only drummer at the time, I think Ginger Baker didn’t have it, but he had the complete Smithsonian collection, which he’d painstakingly bought up gradually, of African drums, you know rhythms, chimes and all of that. So, he brought all that into our music, and a lot of time, some people would think it was Vincent who was the creator of the riffs and stuff, but a lot of it came from Drachen’s rhythms. He loved avant-garde, electronics and avant-garde jazz, Vincent loved classical rock, modern jazz, and some folk, he wasn’t so much into, and disliked synthesizers. I was into rock and roll, avant-garde stuff, I liked folk, I liked Indian music, Spanish music. So the mixture of that with Townshend’s sensitivities and Kit Lambert, that’s what brought the album out in its form.

I thought, well if we are going to do an album, everyone does on their first album what’s been on their minds really, and draw on that.

Was it frustrating then to have the follow up album ‘Strangelands’ shelved by the record company (released 1988)?

Well, it was a question of my limitations of what I wanted to do at that time. Giorgio Gomelsky, The Yardbirds manager, and Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger, all those people. He had a record label called Marmalade, and I used to hang around with Giorgio a bit. He was one of the big figures of the scene, and he said to me, ‘Wow, I really like this album, would you like to put it out?’ We had done a tour in France on the back of it, and getting together an act which would reflect it. Basically, I wish I had done it. But we had other pressures, and Kit Lambert wanted to put out the song that appeared later on the Kingdom Come [album] called ‘Space Plucks’, it’s a beautiful tune.

Lambert was quite influential on the people that worked with him with his ethic, his ethos. So he used to say, I know he said it to us and I’m sure he said it to The Who. ‘Now you’ve got a hit, you’ve got a duty to the people

19

who made you a hit’, that includes in a big way the audience. He said, ‘You got to realise they will want you’, because it was the underground audience who for a while became the whole of prog, and all that came out of it -’they will expect you to move on’. So we were never going to do anything that sounds like ‘Fire’, we’ll do ‘Space Plucks’ and we’ll do orchestral. Then he and Chris went down some strange scenes and everything fell apart for some time in the management. So that was never done as a single, and I did put it on ‘Galactic Zoo Dossier’ [1971], the first Kingdom Come album.

On a lot of concert posters from the late sixties, I see your name on top and a lot of acts underneath (Alice Cooper, The Stooges) who were influenced by you. Were you aware at the time that they were taking notes, as such?

Certainly through the press, we became aware of what they were doing with reports of their concerts, and through radio and TV occasionally. Particularly

20

with Alice Cooper, he would be heard to say, ‘Without Arthur Brown, there would be no Alice Cooper’. And I thought, ‘Oh well, that’s nice’. He obviously has taken some influence, and good luck to him, he’s taken his own direction. He did use the Crazy World makeup pattern as well [laughs].

In later years, in the early nineties or late eighties, I did a gig in Chiswick Town Hall. At the end I was in the dressing room and the lady who was looking after getting all the place tidy, came to me and said, ‘There’s someone who wants to see you in one of the other rooms’, and I said, ‘Who’s that?’, and she said ‘It’s just a music person’.

I said ‘Who’s that?’ and she said, ‘Oh, Bruce Dickinson’. I didn’t know who he was. So I walked in and as I went over, Bruce said, ‘You’ll never know how many millions I made off what I took from you’. And I thought, ‘Wow!’ I didn’t know that. He used to particularly come watch Kingdom Come. That’s how it all happens, you notice [things]. Then there was another one where George Clinton suddenly did a big article where he said, ‘When my

old style was going out of fashion, I knew we had to change it. Went over to England and I saw Arthur Brown there’ [Laughs]. And he said, ‘I seen the God of Hellfire, and he set fire to his head, after that I knew where I was going’. But that’s how we found it out that we had actually influenced people.

Of course I kind of view it as a music community, and everybody influences everybody else. People like me drew from James Brown and Elvis Presley, vocally some Screaming Jay Hawkins, it works that way.

There’s one final thing I want to ask you - I once saw an old poster where the Crazy World shared a bill with The Doors. Was there a connection between what you were doing with the stage theatrics in the UK and what Jim Morrison was doing in the States?

Once you’ve seen someone perform you do, if you really watch them and are really taken by it, there is an influence in there, whether you consciously have it or not. I remember there was an article in one of the big American cultural newspapers, and it said ‘Two valid forms of theatre in rock, they are Jim Morrison and Arthur Brown’. Obviously not the costumes, there was certain things about each other’s stance … and we did actually meet once. I was introduced to him by Kit Lambert in a drinking club where you went after gigs at night drinking.

So in he came, off went Lambert, it was

just him and me. The radio was going, and we stood there, looked at each other [hums], and then after about three minutes he said, ‘Who’s that on the radio?’, and I said ‘Oh, I don’t know”.

So he said, ‘Ah, okay’, and then he walked out, that was it, that was our meeting [laughs]. But yeah, Morrison was more like method acting, mine was a bit different with the costumes and things, and the structure of the music.

But he was a master of that form.

On that Arthur, I would like to say thank you and it’s been an honour to speak with you, and I look to new music, the Human Perspective tour and of course the New Day Festival in August.

Thank you. I love that [festival], there is always such a great atmosphere at it. thegodofhellfire.com www.facebook.com/ arthurbrownmusic

21

John Illsley Love Over Gold: Flying Solo and the Straits Interview by Kevin Burke.

22

In 1985, Dire Straits were the biggest band in the world. Their four previous albums had laid a creative foundation for the release that fired the band into the stratosphere with ‘Brothers In Arms’. Released in May that year, that album would go on to sell an approximated thirty-million copies, and send the band on a 248 date tour, lasting almost a year after the album’s release. Within a decade of ‘Brothers in Arms’ release, and one more studio album later, Dire Straits called time on the music world and another band was left to exist in a world of once-was legends.

Today, the legacy of both Dire Straits and the music they created is kept very much alive, from both original members, frontman Mark Knopfler, and this man, bassist John Illsley.

For a long time, John was rather quiet, until 2005 when he stepped once again under the spotlight as a solo artist. Since the release of the Celtic fused live album ‘Live in Les Baux de Provence’, a collaboration with traditional, Irish collective Cunla and Greg Pearle, John has released a further five studio albums, including last year’s sublime ‘Coming Up for Air’.

2019 proved a busy year for John Illsley, with a stripped back, acoustic tour celebrating Dire Straits in ‘The Life And Times of Dire Straits’, culminating in a DVD and proposed dates for this year. Although those

dates are cancelled due to the ... well, you know, the hopes are to reconvene that legacy tour. Although it is a quarter of a century since that outfit dominated the music world, their influence and musicianship, along with their catchy tunes, still blister across the airwaves. That, in itself has led me to seek the former supergroup bassist out to discuss his recent music and the legend that remains Dire Straits.

After a very shaky start due to a breakdown in phone coverage, I nervously got down to business, as John did with me. We got down to discussing his re-emergence in the mid-noughties, and even stretched through the highlights of his career.

You returned in 2005 with the Irish traditional music group Culna and Greg Pearle. Was that a style of music you had an interest in?

Well, that’s always been in the background in pretty much everything I’ve dealt with over the years. I’ve never really indulged in it, in the way that I did with the Cunla boys. It happened quite spontaneously to be honest. They were playing in a local pub up in Leicestershire and I happened to be there with a friend of mine who got them over. Anyway, I met the boys and sort of liked them, got up on stage with them and one thing led to another, and we had a bit of fun for a few months.

23

That work with Greg Pearle then carried onto ‘Beautiful You’ in 2008?

Greg was writing pretty much off and on, all the time that I was with him. So I basically said to him, ‘if you’re serious about doing a record I’ll do with you’. I had to stop him drinking and smoking for a week or two beforehand [laughs], which wasn’t easy. But once we got that underway we could sit down and get the songs written properly and the musicians together to play on it. I did enjoy working with Greg, I liked him as a man very much and still do.

You got Paul Brady on that album also, if I’m right?

Yeah, Brady was around, he just happened to be in town and I called him to come down and do something on one of his fellow Irishman’s records, and he shot down to Guy Fletcher’s studio. I’ve known Brady for many years, he came out on the road with the Straits.

24

The live album from 2007, ‘Live At Les Baux De Provence’, contained some reinvented covers of ‘Cocaine’ and ‘First We Take Manhattan’. You wanted to give a different slant to old classics?

In a sense. When you’ve got a fiddle player like Johnny Owens, Johnny is an amazing fiddle player and was with the Cunla boys for quite a long time; when you stick an Irish fiddle on most things, it takes on a completely different musical slant obviously. So I think as soon as you do that, you end up with a more traditional sound. I liked the reinterpretation of the songs, if you’ve got a good song you can interpret it in many different ways. There was a mixture of Dire Straits stuff and some stuff we used to play in the pubs in Mullingar and Dublin around the place, it was a bit of a mixed bag really. I wasn’t going to record it but suddenly thought, it was a beautiful setting down in France, which was not too far from where I have a house down there. But I managed to get a French recording company to come in at the last minute

and we managed to get through it before it started to pour with rain. It was a good night and I have to say the boys were good that night because I said to them, ‘Okay, there’s no drinking before we go on stage tonight’, [they replied], ‘No, no, John, we can’t do that’. And I said, ‘You’re going to have to, because we’re recording this and I don’t want any fuck ups, to be perfectly honest’, and ‘You can have half-a-pint of Guinness before you go on, and after you can do whatever the hell you like’, and they did.

Your live album ‘Live In London’ then from 2015, featured that same Leonard Cohen song- ‘First We Take Manhattan’. Is there something about that song to make you repeat it so frequently?

I just like Leonard’s approach to songwriting, always have done. For me him and Dylan are the two masters of the craft but with a different approach.

But that was the one song I used to like playing, but there’s so many other Leonard songs one could have a go at

but you’ve got to be careful, if you start covering other people’s songs the comparisons, obvious comparisons are made, unless you can give it a certain different slant then leave it alone ... and we rocked it up a bit.

What did surprise me most on that album was ‘Another Brick in the Wall’, which stuck out.

(Laughs] I’ll tell you something about that Kevin, we decided to do that right at the last minute. We did it in the sound check, we were just banging it in the sound check to check things out before the concert started and I said, ‘Let’s bung it in the set’, and we did ...

It’s fun playing other people’s music, I’m not really against putting different people’s music in a set. I’m not sure about putting them on an album, occasionally a live album. There’ve been songs written, they’re good to play, I’m not precious about sticking to the rules.

Last year you were exceptionally busy, not only with a new solo album,

25

John (left) with Dire Straits

but you also did ‘The Life and Times of Dire Straits’ live shows. Do you hope to reschedule those shows for next year?

Let’s hope there is some normality soon, that is a difficult question to answer. We’ve got dates booked in March, but I can’t see that happening really at the moment. A lot of these venues are shutting down in the UK, they just can’t survive. In order to book a tour you have to book a year in advance, if that gets cancelled you have to book another year in advance, who knows?

It was obviously an enjoyable experience to revisit those Dire Straits classics in a stripped back set like that?

It was. What I was trying to do was go back, remind myself of as much of the journey as I could. There was quite a bit of chat about the past and then getting on and playing the songs in an acoustic way rather with a full band. I really enjoyed that and I think the

26

audience enjoyed listening to it. It gave it a different slant, there’s some things you couldn’t do, I mean ‘Tunnel of Love’ would have been difficult to do with an acoustic band, you need the dynamics of the drums to give it a bit more. But we did ‘Money for Nothing’ and ‘Sultans of Swing’ and all that sort of stuff. I threw in a few of my own songs to keep myself happy. But it was an enjoyable thing to do, I think the audience enjoyed talking about those early days which is not very well documented. You know, how the band started, what we got up to, how things happened and at what time they happened, just little antidotes. I think people found it quite engaging.

I remember personally buying ‘Brothers in Arms’ at the age of thirteen, but it opened up the back catalogue of Dire Straits. Did you find that the previous work got rejuvenated?

I suppose at that particular time it was a bit of a culmination of the band’s history. Because there had been four

albums before ‘Brothers ...’, if you don’t count the ‘Alchemy’ album [1984], the live album. Those four albums already reached a lot of people round the world, not just in a few places, but all four corners. The band had gotten a lot of history behind it at this time, even though it was a very short period of time, we’d been going seven or eight years by the time ‘Brothers in Arms’ came out. You’re probably right actually, there was a culmination of all the different areas of style that the band had visited. We took quite a lot of care over ‘Brothers in Arms’, mores time, we investigated different ways of doing the songs before we went to Montserrat [AIR Studios], before we got to the recording studio. By the time we got to AIR Studios we were pretty ready to put the tracks down. There was a couple of hiccups because some of the equipment we took over didn’t work properly, but apart from that. Things change when you start recording something properly as opposed to just rehearsing it and thinking about different ways of doing a song. But we went there pretty

planned out how we wanted to approach it, as a consequence of that it was a very pleasurable album to make.

We recorded at Montserrat and mixed it at the Power Station in America, in New York. Which we’d used quite a few times. We’d used it for ‘Making Movies’ [1980] and ‘Love Over Gold’ [1982], one of the best studios in America ever, you know. We knew if we finished the album there, we’d get an album the way we wanted it to sound. It’s interesting when you work out how you get to a certain point, you sort of get to those points because that’s the momentum of planning a lot, recording a lot, looking at different things, trying different ideas out. Mark [Knopfler] has always been keen on trying new sounds and new ideas. So there was a constant reassessing what we were doing.

The eighties was a time of alternative and electronic music. People who were buying New Order albums and Siouxsie and the Banshees were also buying ‘Brothers In Arms’, it appealed across genres. Do you feel

27

28

that’s part of it’s success?

amazing songs.

I think this goes back really to the core of the band. Mark’s the writer who is able to span not just generations, but also different nationalities. The music that we made, [such as] the first album was selling all over the world, the second did and the third and fourth.

Somewhere in the make up, I’m sure someone can analyse it, I’m not going to bother to analyse it, the fact of the matter is his writing in some way or another seems to cross cultural and national and age barriers. Which I think is quite unique. Also with ‘Brothers in Arms’, you’ve got to remember that MTV was just starting to hit Europe, CD’s were just starting, the album sold very well on CD. They pushed it because Philips owned our record label and they were the ones that developed the CD. So the combination of that, you had four other successful albums under our belt, I think that’s why ‘Brothers in Arms’ sort of kicked off pretty quickly and obviously ‘Walk of Life’ and ‘Money for Nothing’ and ‘Brothers in Arms’, they’re pretty major, and

John continued: It’s a bit like looking at a painting, good paintings you can look at forever, and I think if you write a good song I think you should be able to listen to it for a long time. What’ll you remember about Dire Straits, it was never a fashion follower. We always ever did what we wanted to do, we weren’t interested in following Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Clash or whatever.

We never fitted into any of those genres because we came out of the Punk thing in the UK; well, Dire Straits is not a Punk band, never was, the name sounds like a Punk band [laughs], but that was the only thing. It’s always had it’s own style, the band always had it’s own style.

Yeah, you guys came out originally of that Pub Rock scene, but with different variations with Blues and Rock.

It’s a combination of different styles of

music, which then of course become completely yours.

When you create an album that sells 30 million copies, the pressure on the band must have become immense?

Well, there’s always pressure on, pressures to do other things. I think the pressures to be honest came later with ‘On Every Street’ [1991]. The expectations for ‘On Every Street’ after ‘Brothers in Arms’ was very big. You always get the spike if you like in an artist’s life. It’s a bit like ‘Rumours’

by Fleetwood Mac [1977] or ‘Hotel California’ by The Eagles [1976], just particular moments where something just goes off the chart. And if you could figure that out a lot more people would be doing it.

There was no live album of the ‘Brothers in Arms’ tour like ‘Alchemy’ or the later ‘On the Night’ (1993). Was that something that was ever considered?

No, I don’t know why actually, that’s a

good question, I don’t know the answer to that. I can’t remember whether it came up in conversation, I just can’t remember. I think we had ‘Alchemy’, and I think if you do a live album after every tour, it would be a bit mechanical. In some ways, I wish we had because the band was really playing well there, it really was good.

There was a lot of stuff that was recorded from the tour, bits and pieces, and I think at some point in the future somebody might put stuff together.

One snippet that’s there from the time of course is Live Aid. That must be a career high?

Yeah, Bob Geldof wanted the band to be the last act, but we couldn’t do it. In some ways I’m rather pleased, because then we would’ve had to follow Queen, that might have been difficult to follow Freddie Mercury and all that. So it was a great day and an amazing achievement. I think Bob did an incredible job, an inhuman job, putting all that together. I think what it did was it started possible follow ups. You want

29

Dire Straits, Live Aid, 1985.

L/R: John, Jack Sonni, Mark Knopfler

to raise some money, you throw some bands together and put them on stage in Wembley, and you make yourself a few million quid. It’s not quite as simple as that, it’s a difficult thing to organize.

If you remember rightly Kevin, we did the Nelson Mandela Birthday tribute concert in 1988. That was very difficult but the fact the band had some history with South Africa, we agreed to do the show and headline, with Eric Clapton on guitar. Once you get that rolling, there was quite a few people who joined in - Stevie Winwood, Stevie Wonder, Sting, Whitney Houston, Tracy Chapman, George Michael, Peter Gabriel, Billy Connolly, who did a lot of introductions and stuff. I think it went out to 600 million people in the world, almost twice the population of America. It was also sent out to a lot of African countries, that was a pretty big moment as well. So you have two concerts within three years of each other, one for money to cure the hunger in Africa and the other a political concert which was rare, to get a political concert with that sort of

30

audience. Of course, Nelson Mandela got released 18 months or two years after, I can’t remember exactly.

Am I right Clapton broke a string on the guitar that night?

Doesn’t do that very often … he obviously got very excited playing with his favourite band. Yeah it was great having him on stage, he added quite a bit to that situation. He was quite happy to stand at the back and just play rhythm guitar, he didn’t really want to play any solos at all but Mark insisted.

When the ‘Brothers in Arms’ tour ended, were you happy to slow down and take a breather?

Yeah, rebuild another kind of life that you have. I had a daughter a couple of years after that tour and spent some time in Australia. So yes It was actually rebuilding one’s self back to some kind of normality which in a way is difficult.

It’s very difficult after all that stuff and it was just as bad after the ‘On Every Street’ tour, getting back to some sense

of normality, whatever that is?

Yeah we are all searching for that right now!

[Laughs] You’re not wrong there.

Finally, do you still enjoy playing those Dire Straits songs now, with your ‘Life and Times of Dire Straits’ as much as you did back then?

Yeah, yeah, I mean a good song you can play a million times, it doesn’t change the fact it’s a good song, and it’s still enjoyable to play. When you’ve

got musicians like Robbie McIntosh playing with you, every night is slightly different.

Thank you John.

‘The Life and Times of Dire Straits’ DVD, along with John Illsley’s back catalogue, is fully available from his website, along with news of (hopefully) upcoming shows. johnillsley.com www.facebook.com/johnillsley

31

Running Wilde with

Marty, Kim and Roxy Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

32

In the late 1950s, Marty Wilde (born Reginald Smith on 15th April 1939) was the ultimate pop star, a teenage heart-throb and one of the first amongst a generation to emulate the American rock ‘n’ roll craze that was infiltrating the airwaves throughout the United Kingdom.

After being discovered by pop impresario Larry Parnes whilst performing under the name Reg Patterson in 1957, between mid-1958 and late-1959, he was a seemingly unstoppable force on the UK hit parade, scoring five top ten hits with his backing group, the Wildcats.

These hits included the timeless ‘A Teenager in Love’, which peaked at number two in May 1959.

Marty’s reign as a leading teen pop idol was brought to an end when he met and fell in love with Joyce Baker, one sixteenth of the all-female Liverpudlian vocal group The Vernon Girls. At his time, pop stars having love interests was enough of a tabloid taboo, but when Marty and Joyce married on 2nd December 1959, it was nothing short of a press sensation. Joyce gave birth to the couple’s first child, Kim on 18th November 1960.

For much of the sixites, Marty largely moved into all-round entertainment and could be seen appearing as Conrad Birdie in the original West End production of

‘Bye Bye Birdie’, which ran for 268 performances from July 1961 onwards. During this period, he also appeared in several films, including the Michael Carreras and Alan Klein written 1963 pop musical ‘What a Crazy World’. Later in the decade, he returned to his first love, music, and became a go-to songwriter and in 1968 alone, he and co-writer Ronnie Scott (not the jazz musician) scored three UK top ten hits with ‘Jesamine’, a one hit wonder for The Casuals (number 2); ‘I’m a Tiger’, performed by Lulu (number 9) and ‘Ice in the Sun’, the second charting single by Status Quo (number 7).

The very same year saw his self-performed song ‘Abergavenny’ become a top ten hit all over Europe and in Australia.

The seventies would find Marty experimenting with the glam rock genre, but after this foray proved less successful, he began working with his son Ricky (born less than a year after Kim). At the age of eleven in 1972, Ricky had had some success as a pop performer himself, giving us the lost classic single ‘I am an Astronaut’ and even appearing alongside Donny Osmond on the cover of Look-in magazine under the headline “Is Ricky Wilde the New Donny?” in June 1973. By this point, Ricky had traded life as a pop star for a career behind the scenes, already showing his considerable talents as a songwriter and producer.

33

Roxy, Marty and Kim in Kim’s back garden

Fast forward to 1980 and the now nineteen / twenty-year-old Kim was also gearing up to take the music world by storm and with help from her Dad and brother as a writing and production tour-de-force, became one of the decade’s ultimate pop stars, racking up eight classic top ten hits, starting with the era-defining ‘Kids in America’ in January 1981.

‘Kids in America’ peaked at number two in the UK, became a top 30 hit on the US Billboard Hot 100, as well as a top ten hit in Australia and topped the singles chart in Finland.

Just when you thought that the Wilde family couldn’t deliver any more talent, Roxanne “Roxy” Wilde, born 1979 and named after The Police’s 1978 breakthrough single, has been making waves in the music industry for the last two decades.

Roxy and her band, which became known as Dimestars, signed with Polydor Records in 1999 and went on to support Kylie Minogue during her 2001 tour. After Dimestars split in 2002, she appeared as a backing

34

vocalist on every Kylie tour for eleven years, has also toured with the likes of Ellie Goulding and Altered Images vocalist Clare Grogan and is a great pop artist in her own right.

Marty’s new album, ‘Running Together’ is quite simply one of the greatest musical achievements of 2020. Now in his eighth decade in the music industry, ‘Running Together’ is not only the 81-year-old’s first ever completely self-penned collection of songs, but it is also the first time that he, Kim and Roxy have been brought together on one album. Not only that, but Ricky is still very much part of the Wildes’ pop magic, appearing as co-writer and producer.

Just some of the many highlights on this stunning 15-track album include a reworked version of Kim’s 1981 number 12 hit ‘Cambodia’ (‘Select’, 1982), the single ‘60’s World’, which is currently working its way up the United DJs Heritage Chart and the emotive, tear-jerking finale ‘Eddie’,

Marty in 1958

Preparing to take our questions

a tribute to Marty’s friend Eddie Cochran, who died in a road accident in 1960.

Upon hearing ‘Running Together’, the album instantly became a contender for our Album of the Year, which will be announced in next month’s Christmas Spectacular and we got in touch with Marty, Kim and Roxy to conduct the following, very special, eight-decade spanning interview.

Firstly, hello Marty, Kim and Roxy and thank you for agreeing to our interview. This interview, being with three members of one family, each aged twenty-years apart, is a first for us, but the reason for it, the stunning new album ‘Running Together’ is a first for all of you, being the first time you have all appeared on one record. Could we start by asking how the idea for you all to collaborate on ‘Running Free’ came about?

Marty: ‘Running Together’ started forming in my mind around about 2017

as I had been asked to start a charity running event and when I saw people running together, I thought how that physical engagement wasn’t dissimilar with peoples’ involvement with each other, and thus the idea for an album was born, and called ‘Running Together’.

Marty, you were discovered by music impresario Larry Parnes whilst performing at London’s Condor Club under the name Reg Patterson way back in 1957 and just as he did with Billy Fury, Duffy Power, Dickie Pride, Vince Eager, Johnny Gentle, Georgie Fame, et al, he rechristened you Marty Wilde. What were your first impressions of Parnes and what was he like to work with?

Marty: My impressions of Larry were formed early on, when I quickly realised he knew much more about making an artist famous and making money for himself than he did about music and fashion. He decided that I should wear a white silk pyjama type stage outfit for one of my early shows,

35

L/R: Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent and Marty, ‘Boy Meets Girl’, ITV, 20th February 1960

and one in particular for a show I performed at the Elephant and Castle. I was so embarrassed and never allowed him to advise me on dress sense again, but I will say his lack of knowledge of music and dress sense never got in the way of my career again, and although, as a typical strong thinking manager, he would have made many enemies I’m sure in the industry, strangely enough, to me, he was wonderful and without Larry, I would never have been the star I became.

What are your favourite memories of those days, specifically between mid-1958 and late-1959, when you became one of the UK’s leading rock ‘n’ roll singers and a teenage heart-throb and at that point in time, could you ever have imagined that 63 years after you first came to prominence, you would still be such a popular presence in the music industry?

Marty: One of my favourite memories was having breakfast in a North East boarding house, when one of my

36

musicians who I had sent to get the music tabloids opened up one of the music papers in front of me so it covered my breakfast, and said excitedly, ‘Endless Sleep’ [1958] is in the charts! And that was to be my first major hit that fired up my career. I could never have imagined at that young age, when I was 17, that I would reach this age that I have reached and still be wanted by the public and the industry, although I must add, I always said - even at that young age, that Rock ‘n’ Roll and the influence that it had on world music would last for many decades.

The late-fifties are represented on ‘Running Together’ with not just one of our many favourites, ‘Rockabilly Dreams’, but also the closing track, ‘Eddie’, about your friend, Eddie Cochran, whom you worked with back then. What are your memories of Eddie, both on a professional and personal level and could you tell us a bit about how you came to put your obvious love and respect for the great man into a song all these years after

his tragic death in a road accident on 17th April 1960?

Marty: Working with Eddie was without doubt one of the highlights of my career, as he was such a wonderful artist to work with - charismatic, yet modest about his talents and full of fun and life. All of us young Rock ‘n’ Roll artists were totally in awe of him, but not once did he ever act conceitedly to any of us, and really to me, he just was one of the boys, and someone who you could laugh with, or discuss different styles of music from around the world, which of course showed in his guitar playing, as he was an excellent country picker as well as a Rock ‘n’ Roll guitarist.

Of course, ‘Running Together’ features a wonderful newly recorded version of the 1981 Kim single ‘Cambodia’ (‘Select’, 1982). So, Marty, could you tell us a bit about how you came to write ‘Cambodia’ and, for all of you, why did you decide to re-invent this particular song?

Marty: I can remember writing the lyrics to this song sitting in the front foyer of RAK records in London, the words just seemed to flow from me.

‘Cambodia’ has always been a fascinating country that was tied in with the Vietnam war, and I thought the story of a pilot who would lose his life doing clandestine work for the Americans was an interesting subject.

This assumption was proved to be right, as Kim’s wonderful record of ‘Cambodia’ was a worldwide hit - and in particular, went triple platinum in France alone. I wanted to sing it on my ‘Running Together’ album and make it much more of a ballad with the accent on its lyrics.

Talking of songwriting, for this issue, we have just interviewed John Coghlan of Status Quo and, Marty, of course, back in 1968, you and Ronnie Scott were responsible for writing the band’s 1968 second hit single ‘Ice in the Sun’. Was ‘Ice in the Sun’ written specifically for Status Quo and how does it feel to be part of not only the Quo’s legacy but

37

also part of the legacies of so many other highly successful artists you have written for, such as Lulu (‘I’m a Tiger’, single, 1968) and Hot Chocolate (‘You’ll Never Be So Wrong’, ‘Mystery’, 1982 )?

Marty: It was wonderful to be a part of Quo’s career, as I feel at that point in their career, they needed something commercial for a record release, and ‘Ice in the Sun’ was the ideal vehicle.

Ronnie, who co-wrote this song with me had connections to Status Quo and from the outset was determined that the song would be specifically for them. I must say, I have always been thrilled when any artist has recorded one of my songs, as obviously one takes it as a compliment, and if it has great success, it is the most wonderful feeling that any songwriter can have.

Going back to ‘Running Together’ and Roxy, you have well and truly proved that an ear for a great pop song runs in the Wilde family, having released some great music yourself and now, your Dad and Ricky have

38

written some stunning songs and parts for you to perform on this album. What were you up to when you were asked to be part of the ‘Running Together’ project and which songs on the album have you enjoyed being part of the most?

Roxy: At the time [when] Dad had the idea for putting some demos down years ago, now I was working with Kylie, Ellie Goulding and Clare Grogan and juggling parenthood. Dad’s ideas were so cool, so I encouraged him to get them down, so he asked me to demo some tracks, so I was very excited to do this. I could hear the potential of the hooks in his writing when he’d play them to me. Initially this was a little fun hobby that was a nice way of bonding over our love of music, so I’m blown away with the amazing attention the album has been getting. I really love ‘Dublin’ and ‘60’s World’. Kim’s ideas on that we’re fab too. I love singing don’t wanna fall in love again it’s a lovely song.

Of course, you have also appeared as

a backing vocalist on several tours with Kylie Minogue. Could you give us an insight into what Kylie is like to work with and what are your favourite memories from working with her over the years?

Roxy: Working with Kylie was a good eleven years or so. I did every tour. So, so much travelling and so much other stuff between with that team, they were great. She’s a doll, love her. So many memories but I have to say, celebrating her five-year remission was special and watching ‘Sex and the City’ with her at the cinema, and popping a champagne bottle; the cork went flying and she fell on the sofa with her eyes crossed pretending it had hit her. Loads more fun memories, too many to mention.

She and the touring team taught me so much. Tips from dancing, remembering lyrics, to face cream and fashion were always shared too. The ‘Aphrodite’ tour [2011] was my highlight. Everyone on that team performed a miracle each night getting that stage with water

shows, aerialists and everything together. It was epic. We got to wear the most gorgeous costumes, six or seven per night and danced throughout whilst singing, which helped the cardio skills! Defo the hardest I’ve ever worked in my life professionally. Ellie [Goulding] is amazing too. Her and a guitar is just the best thing to see and hear. Our tour of Asia was incredible and her team too are wonderful. Clare Grogan is just a gorgeous human and after nine years or so, I love all the gigs we do, her voice and our chats and the team.

There has been a wonderful reaction to ‘Running Together’, including its second single, ‘60’s World’, which is currently climbing the United DJs Heritage Chart and we are pleased to tell you that it is very much in the running for our Album of the Year. After putting so much work into the album, have you been pleased with the reaction to it and do you think it might encourage you to make more music together in the future?

39

Roxy: I’m so proud of my Dad, sister and family everyone who’s been a part of this album and our team has been fabulous and the attention this album has had is a real treat that I’m so grateful for and so happy for Dad. Dad and I are already putting together a solo album for me to collaborate our writing skills and dad’s brill melody skills on.

Thank you to everyone who’s supported this album and I can’t wait untill we get to do the tour next year together!

Kim, we would like to ask you a bit about rise to fame 24-years after your father’s with the classic single ‘Kids in America’ and its parent album, 1981’s ‘Kim Wilde’. How eager were you to follow your Dad and brother Ricky, who at the age of eleven had had some success as a pop star with the single ‘I Am an Astronaut’ in 1972, and could you give us an insight into what working with your Dad, acting as songwriter and your brother, acting as songwriter and producer, on such classic singles and albums was like?

40

Kim: From as young as I can remember, music played a huge part in my life. As a child growing up in the ‘60s, it was incredible hearing The Beatles, The Ronettes, Cilla Black and The Kinks as they belted out those incredible melodies and unforgettable lyrics. Mostly, I got to hear these songs on Radio 1 as Mum and Dad would drive us on those long journeys to Liverpool to my Nan and Grandad’s home in Huyton. At home, Dad was always strumming his guitar writing a new melody, and taping his ideas on his reel-to-reel tape deck. During 1968, I was eight years old and very aware that Dad was having phenomenal success with a handful of songs he’d written for other artists including Status Quo [‘Ice in the Sun’], The Casuals [‘Jesamine’] and Lulu [‘I’m a Tiger’], as well as a big hit for himself, ‘Abergavenny’.

Thankfully, many of the songs he wrote in those early years have ended up on a four-disc compilation of my Dad’s songs and recordings, including previously un-issued demo recordings, ‘Marty Wilde - A Lifetime in Music 1957-2019’. Can you imagine how

Kim, Roxy and Marty replicate ‘80s pose

proud I am now that Dad has entered his eighth decade with a brand-new album of original new songs with ‘Running Together’? A uniquely remarkable achievement, and as I write this, I know he’s in the studio recording a whole batch of fresh new ideas!

For as long as I can remember, I knew deep inside that the music world was calling me, no other subject inspired me more, and I’d developed some handy harmony singing skills from both my Mum and Dad growing up.

I hoped initially I could become a session singer, never being overly ambitious to be famous myself … I just wanted a job and to be independent.

When my career began, my Dad and brother Ricky formed a tight writing bond and were under pressure to come up with the hits. ‘Kids in America’s success whisked me off around the world promoting, but I knew my career was safe in their hands. My Dad was still only in his early 40’s, and Ricky 18. I was 19 when we recorded ‘Kids ...’ near our home in Hertfordshire. We

had all grown up together loving the same inspiring records played at home from Dad’s, then our vinyl record collections - everything from Tchaikovsky to Kraftwerk. Our appetite for great Pop tunes was insatiable, and I know all of us still feel the same excitement when we hear a great new record. One of my most recent singles was called ‘Pop Don’t Stop’, from my ‘Here come the Aliens’ album [2018]. It is an open love letter to Pop music which will always be one of the great loves of my life, and I know my Dad and Ricky feel the same.

Thank you to you all for a wonderful interview. We wish you all the best with ‘Running Together’ and for the future.

‘Running Together’ is out now on Pushka Records. martywilde.com www.facebook.com/ MartyWildeFanpage

41

German Shepherd Records Presents:

Dislocation Dance Dance Stance Interview by Bob Osborne Band photography by Phil Portus.

42

Ian Runacres, who has been releasing music under the name Dislocation Dance since 1980, is back with a new EP, released with German Shepherd Records.

The group Dislocation Dance formed in 1978 in Manchester and had a variety of line-ups before settling on the group of Ian Runacres on vocals and guitar, Andy Diagram on trumpet and vocals, Paul Emmerson on bass and Richard Harrison on drums. The debut ‘Slip That Disc’ mini-album and the group’s second release ‘Music Music Music’ (both 1981) featured the Runacres, Diagram, Emmerson and Harrison line-up. Manchester based New Hormones also issued a run of singles by the band, including ‘Rosemary’ and ‘You’ll Never Never Know’ (both 1982), before the pioneering label closed due to lack of funds. The second of these included Kathryn Way as vocalist. The early releases demonstrate a band ahead of their time who influenced a lot of what followed on the Manchester scene.

In 1982, Dislocation Dance signed to Rough Trade. 1984’s acclaimed ‘Midnight Shift’ album saw the band explore a more jazzy pop sound. A final EP, ‘What’s Going On’ (1985), saw the replacement of Way by Sonja Clegg with Herbie Bryan joining on saxophone. The band broke up in 1986, with Clegg going solo, releasing an album in 1987, and

Diagram joining James.

Runacres also launched Manchester’s BOP label. The ethos was to promote minority music from the North West, along with emerging dance and indie bands, the notable release being the 1988 ‘Manchester North of England’ compilation, featuring James and Freak Beats featuring 808 State.

In 2000, the group reformed for a tour of Japan. The original members, Runacres, Way, Harrison and Diagram were joined by Phil Lukes, who was previously in The Mancinis and Dutch Uncle. Lukes had also worked with Runacres on a project under the name Brightside.

A new Dislocation Dance album, ‘Cromer’, was released by Vinyl Japan in 2005. This featured Runacres, Lukes, Diagram, and several other performers. The band’s BBC sessions had been released on CD by Vinyl Japan in 1999, and the New Hormones and Rough Trade catalogue was issued on remastered CDs by LTM in 2006.

From 2007 onwards, the band continued gigging with the same line-up of Runacres, Lukes, Way and Harrison. They were joined by Jon Board (trumpet) and Andrew Weaver (keyboards). Runacres, Lukes, Board and Weaver began working on new material and in 2009

43

Ian Runacres

were joined by Chris Gravestock (drums). Their fifth studio album, ‘The Ruins of Manchester’ was released in May 2012. This was followed by their sixth and most recent album, on LTM records, ‘Are We There Yet?’, released in 2017 and featuring their new vocalist Sam Heywood.

In preparation for the launch of the EP, I took the opportunity to interview Ian just before the EP was released.

The new EP, ‘Discombobulation’ released by German Shepherd Records in October, marks the 40th anniversary of Dislocation Dance releases. More importantly, all income from the latest release will contribute towards crowdfunding for the treatment of Ian’s teenage son Joel, who was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in September 2019. It is one of a wide range of projects underway to raise much needed funds to help Joel with his battle against the disease.

I arrived in Manchester in the summer of 1978 with my girlfriend, who was an art student. I had no job and didn’t know a soul. But, by Christmas, I’d joined a fledgling version of the band, pulled together by lyricist and bass player Paul Emmerson. What caught my imagination about Paul’s advert for musicians in the Virgin shop on Newton Street was an extraordinary list of his influences. He basically had the same eclectic tastes as me. The early sound of the band was a consequence of my love of Pere Ubu, Burt Bacharach, Joni Mitchell, Charlie Mingus, Funkadelic, XTC, Faust, Can, Erik Satie and the wonderful TV and movie music of John Barry, Edwin Astley and Ron Grainer, who wrote

The full EP came out on 30th October 2020 and is available via all the major download and streaming platforms.

44

Joel Runacres settles in at university

Thinking back to the early days of Dislocation Dance, what music were you listening to at the time and what influenced the sound of the band?

Dislocation Dance in the early ‘80s ...

... and now

wrote the theme to ‘The Prisoner’ ... Woah! I never got over that! I’d bought ‘Spiral Scratch’ [EP, Buzzcocks, January 1977] before coming up to Manchester from Wolverhampton, so I knew Manchester was the best place to be, probably in the whole world at that point, for joining a band. I think my wacky musical tastes are really evident on our early recordings, such as ‘Slip That Disc’ EP, which is heavily influenced by the discordant and anarchic Pere Ubu. It was recorded with loads of energy and at speed at Cargo Studios in Rochdale. For the following album, ‘Music Music Music’, I went for a 1970’s TV theme vibe, 1950’s cool jazz, a splash of Nelson Riddle, 1960’s power pop and early Talking Heads, to name a few. I employed the same tactic on the single releases, like the indie pop ‘Rosemary’, the Serge Gainsbourg-esque ‘You’ll Never Never Know’ and the Studio 54 dancefloor inspired ‘Show Me’ [1983].

It all must have been a bloody marketing nightmare for our label promo team. I wouldn’t exactly say that the band was ahead of its time,

but rather that it wasn’t of any particular time, as we hopped and skipped across the genres and decades.

I can’t think of another band that’s ever done that, with such audacity. My one regret is not taking the advice of Richard Boon, Buzzcocks manager and my house-share mate, who told me to merge Nick Drake and Burt Bacharach.

That would’ve been a good idea.

Bringing things up to date, what music are you listening to now, and does it in any way shape the band’s sound?

Oh yes. If I hear new things, I just want to have a stab at the vibe. I can’t resist it. I’ve been trying to learn Laura Marling’s ‘Fortune’. Her album, ‘Song for Our Daughter’ [2020] is phenomenal. Michael Kiwanuka’s album [‘Kiwanuka’, 2019] is extraordinary - superb production and delivery, all that gorgeous plate reverb.

I’ve been learning Joy Crookes’ ‘Since I Left You’ [‘Perception’ EP, 2019] to play live. Very simple, but so moving.

I also loved the recent ‘Immunity’

45

The newly released ‘Discombobulation’ EP: A great record for a great cause

album by Clairo [2019], beautifully produced by Rostam Batmanglij.

Probably the most exciting and challenging album has been ‘Neō Wax Bloom’, by Iglooghost [2017]. I don’t understand it, but it’s brilliant. The Kiwanuka album reminded me of Paul Williams’ ‘Someday Man’ LP, released in 1970. He wrote for the Carpenters, but never quite made it on his own. A sadly underrated release. The new EP, ‘Discombobulation’ though has more to do with Niles Rodgers, The Brothers Johnson, Kenny Wells and Big Joe Turner – good ol’ Northern Soul.

Where was the new EP recorded and who is involved?

With modern technology, you can record pretty much anywhere.

Obviously, with a big budget, you get the beautiful microphones and pre-amps in the high-end studios along with gorgeous acoustic pianos and posh reverbs. But, recording at home is so much less pressured. I can basically have lots of fun with my friends.

‘Discombobulation’ was recorded in

46

my little home studio and the garden sheds of both Phil Lukes, my long-term songwriting partner, and Jon Board, trumpet. Both have very big and comfortable sheds, it has to be said.

The songs feature myself, Phil Lukes and Sam Heywood on lead vocals, plus Jon Board on trumpet and Chris Gravestock on percussion.

How important was August Darnell in shaping the direction of Dislocation Dance?

I’d say very. Especially for my 1983 album ‘Midnight Shift’. I’d been a fan of Dr Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band for a while, but bought their self-titled 1976 album on a New York subway stall in 1982, when we were on tour in the USA and I never got over it.

I loved their genre-busting approach, mixing big band swing with Studio 54 disco and, at times, quite subversive lyrics about US racial inequalities.

Their vocalist Cory Daye had the most sublime jazz phrasing and vulnerability in her voice. Sadly, August Darnell and his half-brother Stony Browder never

achieved the success they deserved.

August went on to become Kid Creole and delivered a commercially diluted version that never really captured the thrill and glamour of his brother’s band, in my view. Funnily enough, I met him at Studio 54 on that 1982 tour. He was judging an a cappella vocal group competition, in which I was taking part.

I didn’t even pass the first round; it has to be said!

What made you get back together in 2000 for the Japanese Tour?

During the late 1980’s and early 1990s, I ran a record label called Bop Cassettes ... even though we also released vinyl and CDs? After success with ‘Manchester North of England’, which Cherry Red have recently paid homage to with an identical sleeve design, I tried to launch a Manchester Motown label with Mute Records and Joe Bloggs clothing. The problem was cash flow and I went spectacularly bust before launching the new label.

After that, and to get me back on feet, I worked for Manchester City Council.

Whilst there, a Japanese singer called Kahimi Karie released a single that was remarkably like the Dislocation Dance song ‘You’ll Never Never Know’.

Kahimi cited the band as a big influence and that suddenly generated the re-release of my back catalogue in Japan. It was just a cult thing. Not a big deal, but the label, Vinyl Japan, took us out to play gigs in Tokyo and Osaka. I had to quickly reform the band to do so, including Phil on bass to substitute for Paul Emmerson, who had long given up. It was utterly brilliant and bizarre. If you’ve ever seen the film ‘Galaxy Quest’ [1999], it’ll give you a clue to just how weird and wonderful it was. The fans were so sweet and lovely it was really quite moving.

The last album was in 2017, tell us about it and the new EP and have you got anything new planned?

The last album, ‘Are We There Yet?’ was very organic. Mostly played live by the band to give it a natural feel, a bit psychedelic in places with smoky

47

soul, indie pop and lo-fi emotionallycharged torch songs. The new EP ‘Discombobulation’ is a bit different, with added elements of ‘70’s disco and soul. More upbeat in feel, if anything.

As any recording artist would agree, it takes a while I think, to listen to your own recordings objectively. So, I can only now really enjoy and be proud of the 2005 ‘Cromer’ album, which Phil and I recorded after returning from the Japanese tour. It was recorded on an old digital 8-track, so we had to commit to sounds from the outset, bouncing backing tracks to stereo to record overdubs. It’s mostly just me and Phil, with lots of Andy Diagram on trumpet and other guest players, including my wife Steph on flute. I love it. It’s quite a jazzy album with lots of improvisation, as we recorded as we wrote. It’s very special, I think. The album after that was 2011’s ‘Ruins of Manchester’, recorded with a combination of the new band members and individual recordings, so much more indie sounding than ‘Cromer’, even a bit funky, in places. As with ‘Cromer’, I’ve recently gone back to it as there are loads of great individual tracks. Plus, it was a time of consolidating the new band as a performing unit, so brings back very happy memories.

Jazz? Important for Dislocation Dance? If yes, who are the major players from your perspective?

Ah, well. It wouldn’t be very original

48

of me to say that Miles Davis’ ‘Kind of Blue’ [1959] will always be my number one. But I loved Charlie Mingus, too.

In fact, in the mid 1980s, we regularly played ‘Fables of Faubus’ [‘Mingus Ah Um’, 1959] live and even recorded a version. Faubus was a fascist neo-Nazi governor of Arkansas. He was nasty piece of work. This was a very political statement as well as being a truly wonderful piece of music. I’ve always had a soft spot for a jazzy vibe, probably generated from listening to ‘West Side Story’ as a child and the hilariously brilliant anarcho-jazz band Gong in the early 1970’s.

Having worked there myself in the past, I’m aware that Manchester Council is a hotbed of musicians.

Two current German Shepherd bands members work there. Why do you think it is?

[Laughs] It is! What other institution would employ a bunch of failed musicians? Seriously though, if you’ve not had success as a musician, and not many do have success, then working in the public sector kinda makes sense, as it attracts people who genuinely care.

You certainly wouldn’t do it to make money! I sat in a meeting recently about homelessness provision and every person in the room was a musician. We could easily have formed a band right there!

Looking back at the context of Manchester in the early ‘80s,

everything was post-punk in the eyes of the NME/Sounds, but I recall there was an active scene in the city around dance/funk - Dislocation Dance, Disjunct, A Certain Ratio, etc, etc. How hard was it to get noticed when everything in the press was about Joy Division, New Order, The Fall, etc?

In the early-1980s, the expectation was for bands to be miserable. Fair enough, I guess. Some of them were pretty miserable. But the Manchester music scene was so experimental and varied.

Bands were doing anything and everything. I think it was the freedom generated by post punk that meant there were no constraints. Most bands settled on a single sound though. I suspect the eclecticism of Dislocation Dance was probably our biggest downfall, as we must have been impossible to market. It wasn’t that we weren’t noticed. It was that each release sounded so different to the previous one. It must have driven the marketing team at Rough Trade nuts.

Nothing has changed for me there though. Why keep doing the same thing when you can do something new, eh?

‘Discombobulation’ is out now on German Shepherd Records.

Access the EP here: dislocationdance.bandcamp.com You can also access the Dislocation Dance back catalogue at LTM records: www.ltmrecordings.com/ dislocation_dance.html www.facebook.com/ dislocationdance You can also support Joel here: www.gofundme.com/ f/helpjoellivelonger www.facebook.com/ Help-Joel-Live-Longer103173274841678

49

The Far North

Magnetic Music Magnetic People by

Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

50

Occasionally, something will draw us towards a new band without even having heard their music. It is a rare phenomenon, particularly in modern times, when due to the ease in which musicians from all over the world can release their music simply by putting it up online, there is so much vying for our attention.

Wylding and Packer having previously spent over twelve years as part of indie-rock six-piece The Fireflys and their union with revered producer Nigel Stonier, husband of Thea Gilmore, who’s endless list of credits includes Lindisfarne, Joan Baez, Robert Plant and Martha Wainwright.

At first, we probably don’t know why this band appeals to us so much.

After all, in our case, the first introduction to a new band usually comes via a press release accompanied by one or two photos of the artist sent to our email. As you can imagine, we get literally hundreds of these every day. So many in fact that, try as we might, some potentially great music might slip through the net.

Having made such a great first impression, we are pleased to report that upon listening to their music, it certainly didn’t disappoint. So far, The Far North have put out two stunning singles, ‘This House Is Ours’ and ‘Runaway’, both of which are Alt-Country / Americana-tinged anthems blazing like beacons of light and hope in this strangest of years.

One such band who recently grabbed our attention, most definitely didn’t slip through the net and made us want to investigate them further were Runcorn’s The Far North, a duo consisting of singer-songwriter and guitarist Lee Wylding and wife-to-be, drummer Andie Packer.

We were initially attracted by the couples’ statement of intent on their press release to take things “back to a traditional way of crafting songs”; their impressive list of influences (Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young being just two artists namechecked); their musical backgrounds, with both

These singles were pre-cursors to their debut album ‘Songs for Gentle Souls’, an utterly magnetic eleven track collection displaying a talent for songwriting that is virtually unparalleled amongst the albums we have seen released in 2020, together with just as much talent for putting these words to a musical backdrop that will in equal measures make you smile, weep and leave you open mouthed at the awe-inspiring wonder of it all during its perfectly formed forty-minute duration, whilst always have you humming along. In short, we guarantee that ‘Songs for Gentle Souls’ will instantly become a firm favourite in your collection when it is released on 20th November through

51

Chester-based label Red Lantern Records.

We recently got in touch with Wylding to learn more about The Far North and ‘Songs for Gentle Souls’ and quickly found that the duo’s magnetism extends far beyond the exquisitely crafted music that they make.

Firstly, hello Lee and thank you for agreeing to our interview. Could we start by asking how The Far North formed and how you came to work with producer Nigel Stonier on your forthcoming debut album ‘Songs for Gentle Souls’?

Absolutely. Well, me and Andie, our drummer were in a band called The Fireflys for about twelve years and we were just about to release our fifth album. So, we’d just come off the back of the Coffee House Sessions tour, the Huw Stephens promoted Coffee House Sessions and we did something like thirty dates in March last year and we just came off the back of that and we

52

were just about to release our fifth album, ‘Only Us, Northern Lights’ and everyone just kind of left the band. It was no conscious decision, people just kind of peeled away a little bit. So, it was a little bit disheartening and at the end of it all, there was only me and Andie standing and I thought, well, we’ve put a lot of work in for twelve years, so I didn’t really want to carry it, hiring musicians and hiring new people that you’ve got to fit in with not only musically but obviously you’ve got to have some kind of chemistry with outside of the people; you know, people that are nice. So, we didn’t know where to start really, so for like a month in probably say May 2019, The Fireflys weren’t happening, the fifth album wasn’t coming out and we didn’t know what to do. Then, I just got a call out of the blue from Nigel Stonier. He’s super successful and super well-known and we’d played a show for him the year before. I think in October 2018, we played the Words and Music Festival in Nantwich for him and he was really impressed. He just said to me, ‘Listen, I really like the tunes and

if you ever want to do a more acoustic thing, you know, I would be really interested to work with you’. So, yeah, really serendipitously, he rang me up.

The Fireflys had died in what, like May 2019, so within four weeks, my phone went and it was Nigel, just out of nowhere. And he just said to me, ‘How’s the fifth album gone? Is everything alright?’ And I just said, ‘Actually, no’. So, I just told him what had gone on and that everyone had kind of peeled away and no one wanted to do it anymore apart from me and Andrea and he just said, ‘Hey man, why don’t we just get together, we’ll meet in Nantwich’, where he lives and you know ‘we’ll grab a cup of tea and we’ll have a chat and just see if we can come up with a plan and if you’d just like to do some recordings and if you’d like me to produce something by you’.

Yeah, it was just an idea; it was just an idea at first. And I thought, okay, this could work. So, we chatted, he brought along some of the latest albums he had produced, so I took them away for a good listen and he just said, ‘Listen, I’d really, really like to do this. Is it

financially viable? Can you find the find the funding? Can you get the record label to finance it?’ So, luckily for us, we’d just signed a deal with Chester-based label Red Lantern Records and we’d had a couple of meetings with The Analog Music [and Arts] Fund. There just kind of like a not for profit fund based in Chester also and I spoke to Ian [Venner], the head of the fund about this project and he was really excited about it. So, through sheer luck and serendipity of obviously meeting Nigel, Nigel ringing me out of the blue, us obviously signing that record deal that was supposed to be for The Fireflys’ fifth album and then obviously speaking to Ian at the fund, we just got it all together. So, I think in like June last year, I was just sending demos to Nigel. Some of them were old Fireflys songs, some were brand new. So, we just thought he’s obviously produced some really great acoustic country, Americana stuff and that’s where my heart kind of lies. Fireflys were always sort of an indie rock band, so to have the opportunity to do some American-based stuff, largely acoustic,

53

was an incredible opportunity for us.

So, really, that’s how it all kind of started; just with sheer luck of Nigel and the fund and Red Lantern Records all being on the same page for this project. And then we headed into Airtight Studios in Manchester, which I would probably say was late July last year to work on the album, so it all happened really quickly, like from the ashes of The Fireflys and me thinking ‘what are we going to do now?’ Me and Andie still wanted to create music, we still wanted to do something, but we didn’t have any idea. All I had was an album title, which was ‘Songs for Gentle Souls’. I’d had that for like two years in my back pocket and I had the band name, The Far North. It was like a contingency, a plan B. In case anything happened with The Fireflys, I had this. So, obviously Nigel ringing and the whole plan, it was like it was meant to be. It was really, really strange how it all happened, but I’m glad it did.

As you just mentioned, The Far North were formed from the ashes

54

yours and Andie’s previous band The Fireflys. With The Far North being a two-piece which presents itself in a very pared-down manner in comparison to the six-piece Fireflys, how different has the experience of recording and playing live been?

Yeah, it’s quite different really. I think in the studio, everything was much quicker because we had Nigel producing it and he always had a massive plan at the beginning of the week. You know, the weeks we went in, he always had a plan, like you have to do this track, you have to do that.

We had like forty-five songs to choose from and there’s only eleven on the album, so we’d honed them down and me and Andie had practiced them, so recording was like super, super fast.

I think we were only in the studio recording for, I think, twenty-one days and the rest of it was mixing. So, we only had thirty days doing the album and only three weeks were recording, so recording was so much quicker, so much faster and way more focused.

And live, we only got chance to do one

gig, unfortunately. That was at Old Trafford Stadium in March, which was amazing. Andie takes a full drum kit and then I’ve obviously got my guitar and my harmonica, so we make quite a bit noise really just for the two of us, but it’s so much easier for like the sound guy and getting everything to the venue and what not because there’s literally just a drum kit and a guitar.

And Andie also has a cajón with like add-ons, so if we ever need to like pare it down for gigs, small or off the radar or what not, we just kind of do that really. So, in terms of space and being organised and people, there was six of us in The Fireflys, so in terms of getting people to be in the studio or be at rehearsals, it’s just a million per cent easier when it’s just us [laughs]. And, you know, the fact that Andie is my fiancée as well, of course, we’re both on the same page. We live together, we practice at home, so it’s just a million percent easier just with the two of us.

As you were saying, The Far North actually made their debut live appearance shortly before the

lockdown at Old Trafford Stadium on 8th March 2020. That is a quite auspicious venue for a debut gig.

How did that gig come about and were you pleased with the audience’s reaction to your songs?

Yeah, it was amazing. I know the guys at Old Trafford and Manchester United and MUTV really well, because as The Fireflys, we were on Thursday Focus, which was a show that was on MUTV every Thursday night. We were like the house band a couple of times and they used to play our music behind the goals every week. As The Fireflys, we did really, really well and we played Paddy Crerand’s eightieth birthday party [19th February 2019] live on MUTV and that was just before the Coffee House tour last year, so when The Fireflys split up and everything sort of went south, I just got a text, I think it was in December last year, from Karen and Jamie and Lee, the guys at MUTV and they just said, ‘We’re doing like a United fan zone, where we’re going to have a lot of the old players on, including David May and Sammy McIlroy, all these

55

legends, and we need a band to play them on and off stage and kind of do a set in the middle of it all. Would you do it? I know it’s only your first gig, but are you comfortable?’ So, we were like absolutely over the moon with that really. And the thing is, I think we beat [Manchester] City like 4-2 that day as well. So, we got free tickets for the game, it was an amazing gig and I think it was 8th March, but then obviously the world shut down, what, like ten days later? So, it was really exciting and it was great to be there and the reaction from people was fantastic and obviously, we’re massive United fans, so playing to your own crowd was incredible, and then just what happened ten days later just kind of took the heart out of it a little bit. We were looking forward to doing more stuff and we were going to release the first single way before we did. So, it was amazing but I just think everything that followed, it took the shine off it just a little bit. But I can’t complain. It was a great day, it really was.

How has the experience of promoting

56

the band and your releases been without the ability to present your music in a live setting and have you made any further live plans for after the pandemic is finally over?

Yeah, in terms of live, during the actual lockdown, from March to July, the actual theory of lockdown where no one could go out, we did the Facebook live events every night. Every night we’d be on Facebook at seven, we’d do like an hour and there’s a place called The Nags [Head] pub in Manchester, and that’s the George Best pub, and they put on these events, so they’d share our feed to their page to all their kind of followers and what not. Yeah, so really, we’ve covered quite a lot of ground. We had Alan Keegan, the guy who does the voiceover at Old Trafford, he’s a personal friend of mine and he’s had us on a couple of big screens, which is really cool. So, in terms of that, we’ve probably reached more people than we would if we were kind of like out there, but you can’t beat that kind of live feeling, seeing people’s faces in a room and their reactions. But

we haven’t made any plans for coming out of the pandemic, unfortunately, because we just don’t know when it’s going to end. We could book a full tour and a lot of energy and effort could go into booking that tour in like March or April, and it’s only a few months away, March, April and we could still be in the same boat really. So, we’re really just waiting for calmer seas really, so we can decide what we’re going to do.

We have been impressed by the classic songwriting values on display on ‘Songs for Gentle Souls’, but who would you cite as your influences and to you, what makes a great song?

I think if you look at music these days, I don’t mean to sound like a philistine or anything [laughs], but I don’t think that they top 40 means anything to anyone anymore. I’m not saying it’s not proper music, but it’s so not my vibe. It just sounds like one continuous song for like four hours. It’s like the fingerprints and it means nothing. It’s so impersonal and it could have been done by a robot. It means so little to

me and the music I grew up with. To me, a great song is just a song that touches you. I first discovered music when I got into my Mum’s music when I was like eight or nine and she was into Motown. That was like a moment of realising what great songwriters these were and what great music they produced and then, I got a bit older and I was like fourteen when ‘Supersonic’ came out and ‘Definitely Maybe’ [1994] and for me, Oasis hit me like a truck. They were like massive and I was like totally into the Britpop kind of thing, so the top 40 was just full of these great bands like Suede and Pulp and Elastica, Sleeper, Echobelly, Dubstar, obviously Oasis, Ocean Colour Scene, Paul Weller, Manic Street Preachers. You had all these incredible, incredible bands and that’s when I started writing songs. I was about fifteen and I was just inspired by this massive movement and then I joined the dots to The Beatles and really got into The Beatles by like my late teens and I really got into Manic Street Preachers, but then I kind of branched out a little bit and started

57

getting into like Neil Young, things like ‘Harvest’ [1972], I got into that about 2000, I got into The Smiths, I got into The Stone Roses, all these great bands, and then, I think, by my late twenties, early thirties, I got really into Bruce Springsteen, like seriously obsessed.

So, writing these songs, they were quite natural to me, but they sounded like a Springsteen B-side or a Neil Young B-side. Because it’s my voice, it sounds like us, but if Springsteen was singing these songs, it would sound like him. It’s like that kind of alternative Americana, Alt-Country. It’s not quite indie, it’s not quite folk, it’s just me writing these songs from my heart and that’s what The Far North is, you know.

And when you see all these summer festivals, like the Neighbourhood Weekender and all this stuff, there’s such a demand for four chords and a chorus, you know, such a demand for real music. I know Gerry Cinnamon’s flying the flag at the moment and he’s great, you know, his music’s fantastic, and we just kind of want to carry on in that vein of just songs written on the guitar that you can fall in love with,

58

you know, or you can try to play them yourself on the guitar. You know, like how I felt about Oasis and Britpop and Springsteen and Neil Young and all these great bands is how I’d like people to feel about our music. It’s coming from the same place. I’m writing these songs about things that have happened to me and I’m a working-class guy, I work in a factory, do you know what I mean? And it’s all very sort of hope and blue collar and that kind of thing, so it’s very much four chords, a couple of verses and a chorus really. We’re not trying to reinvent anything, we’re not trying to be edgy or anything like that, it’s just big choruses and songs that we mean, you know. So, that’s what a great song is to me, something that touches you. But I kind of feel bad for kids who are fourteen, fifteen now.

There’s nothing ... you know, when I was fourteen, fifteen in 1994, [199]5 or what not, it was incredible! The music I listened to was incredible, you know ... Skunk Anansie, loads of great bands, they were so good! I’m not sure about the guitar resurgence, but you’ve got Springsteen’s new album [‘Letter to

You’] out soon and you’ve got Neil Young who’s just dropped an album [‘Homegrown’], you’ve got obviously our album coming out, so if you want to look for it, there is some really great brand new guitar-based music out there. You know, our music’s not going to trouble the top 40, it’s not made with that in mind, it’s made because I want to create these songs that mean a lot to me. Anyway, it would be awful! I mean, where would we fit?! I don’t even know who’s in the top 40 now.

There’s nothing now. I don’t know what you could get into now. I don’t know what you’d listen to. It’s just music for people who don’t really like music. It’s just been manufactured to hit the charts, to be played on the radio, you stick it on in the background and I’m not a stick it on in the background sort of guy. I still like to consume music. Like, when a new album comes out, like Springsteen’s album’s out in a few weeks, I will be putting it on my headphones on the bed, you know, nice cup of tea and I’ll be away for 45minutes. That’s me, you know, I will dissect it, I will listen to it again and

again as an album. Just think, we’re the generation of people who still do that.

We were also wondering about the album’s title. Why did you decide to call the album ‘Songs for Gentle Souls’?

I think the title just came to me. I think when I was in The Fireflys and I thought about writing like more gentle songs and songs about love and hope and loss and, you know, unity and strength, I came up with the title probably about two or three years before I formed The Far North and I just thought it would make a great album title with these songs that I was writing. You know, they’re not political songs, they’re not aggressive songs, they’re not getting back at anyone, they’re not revenge songs, they’re literally songs for ... You know, there’s a song on the album called ‘Stronger Together’ and the first line is ‘You don’t have to be strong all the time, It’s okay to show your weaker side’. That’s saying for us, and for me

59

as a songwriter, I’m broken and I’m vulnerable, I feel the anxiety of this pandemic, I feel anxiety anyway because the world’s just a bit of a horror show anyway and, you know, totally disregarding the pandemic, life’s just awful. It’s just a safe space for people to listen to these songs and everyone can relate to them. There’s a song called ‘Sleep Tight Songbird’ about one of my best friends who died recently, he was a songwriter and obviously, like ‘Runaway’ is just about me and Andie kind of like in that 1970s road movie; kind of like, yeah, everything’s terrible, but we’ve got each other, let’s get away from it all, you know. There’s other tracks like ‘Stronger Together’, where it’s like as long as we’ve got each other, then I’ll be okay and I hope she feels the same.

It’s just eleven songs about love, hope, loss, strength, unity and finding some strength somewhere in this world of hell and that’s where the title came from. I suppose once I had that title, I could then kind of engineer the eleven songs that would feel great on an album with that as the title. Everything was

60

fourth or fifth guessed with this album, everything was like thought out to the N-th degree. Every note and every line of every track, everything that I wrote, every note that I sang, every note I played, every note Andie drummed, you know, we had the orchestra in there, everything about the album was just so meticulously planned out.

Obviously, a lot of the performances were spontaneous and we played from the heart every single time, but I think that ‘Songs for Gentle Souls’ is just a great title. I just think that if our music appeals to people like us, music fans that are a little bit broken and need a bit of an arm around the shoulder ... because I do, I certainly do ... then maybe it’ll be like a meeting point for people. I don’t know, it’s just how I feel really.

Together with the classic style of songwriting displayed on ‘Songs for Gentle Souls’, the album harks back to those days before the advent of downloading and streaming when an album was something designed to be listened to in its entirety from start

to finish. With this in mind, what are your views on the way in which downloading and streaming have corrupted the album as an art-form?

Well, that’s it. People say you should just release singles and people don’t buy albums, people don’t listen to them, and first and foremost, as a massive music fan, I do digest albums, I do listen to them from start to finish.

I’m not going to like every track by every artist I like, but I will listen to an album all in one go. I think it’s just a headline that streaming is ruining music, because any music fan will find good music and any music fan will fall in love with good music. You know, you don’t need to go out and buy a £30 vinyl, you don’t need to get the deluxe heavyweight vinyl of ‘(What’s the Story) Morning Glory’ [Oasis, 1995] to enjoy it, it’s on Spotify to be enjoyed, you know. A lot of people seem to be down on Spotify and streaming, but for me, for ten pounds a month, if I put my headphones on, it’s incredible quality and I’ve got every band I could ever want. I know there’s that thing about

artists aren’t getting paid, but I don’t really care what Thom Yorke from Radiohead gets paid, I don’t really care what James Dean Bradfield from the Manic Street Preachers is getting from Spotify. You know, these are people who’ve been very, very, very successful, so I’m not really interested in whether or not they’re getting paid enough. I know how that might sound, but I’m a musician who works a full-time job. I work 45hours a week in factory and my music is on Spotify, so for me to not care and for me to want my music on Spotify, I don’t think there’s a case for Taylor Swift or Thom Yorke or Lars Ulrich and all these people who go ‘We don’t get paid enough!’ These people are multi-multimulti-millionaires. Do you know what I mean? I work from nine to five in a factory. For me, it’s a redundant argument that streaming is killing music. I’m a massive music fan and I just want to get my music out to as many people as possible and if that means we don’t get paid enough on Spotify, then so be it. It’s just the way it is, man, you know.

61

Has the spare time that you will almost certainly have had during the pandemic given you chance to work on any new material for possible inclusion on a follow-up to ‘Songs for Gentle Souls’ and what else can we expect from The Far North in the future?

Yeah, I’ve written loads and loads of songs, so many songs. I think we’ve already set aside about thirty songs for the second album, so we hope to start recording the album within the next twelve months. So, obviously, by the time ‘Songs for Gentle Souls’ is out on the 20th November, hopefully we’ll start recording the next album in the next nine to twelve months. But yeah, we’re always writing songs everyday.

I mean, I think it was Bob Dylan who said, you know, ‘Write fifty songs and throw forty away everyday’. So, I write songs all the time and some of them are absolutely terrible, but there might be that one a week where I think, oh, that’s alright, I’ll send that one to Nigel and maybe it might need a little bit more work in the last chorus or something ... So, my spare time, if I’m not watching Man United, I’m writing songs or, you know, me and Andie are practicing, we’re coming up with new bits or something to do with music, you know. It’s just all-encompassing and I’ve found if it wasn’t for music, I don’t know what I’d be doing or where I would be. I mean, the full-time job thing is eight hours a day and it pays my mortgage and it pays for guitars and

62

it pays for us to eat. I mean, I don’t think anyone’s heart is truly in their full-time job. I give it 110 percent when I’m there. but for me, music is that thing that’s always been there for me and it is something that I would like to do full-time, but the way the world is at the moment, I’ve no idea how it is all going to pan out. So, we’re just trying to create this music that will hopefully connect with as many people as we can. You know, and I’m talking to you now in my car on my break from work just looking at a chemical factory, so in twelve months, who knows what I’ll be doing [laughs], I don’t know.

Having been engrossed in ‘Songs for Gentle Souls’ for the last few weeks, we doubt that Lee will be looking at that chemical factory for long. We wish him and Andie all the best with the album and for the future.

‘Songs for Gentle Souls’ is released through Red Lantern Records on 20th November. www.thefarnorth.co.uk www.facebook.com/ thefarnorthmusic

John Coghlan

QUO

... & Beyond!

Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers JCQ photography courtesy of John and Gillie Coghlan.

64

As the late-sixties’ ideals of peace and love faded, Status Quo, who had previously embraced psychedelia and chalked up top ten hits with the 1968 singles ‘Pictures of Matchstick Men’ (number 7) and the Marty Wilde penned ‘Ice in the Sun’ (number 8), grew their hair long and changed musical direction for a soon to be trademark boogie-woogie shuffle sound and ultimately became the very definition of a seventies rock band.

During this era, Status Quo did it all. In short, they lived fast, made their millions and spent them on everything you would expect a rock band at the top of their game to spend them on. However, their original line-up, commonly known as ‘The Frantic Four’ (vocalist and lead guitarist Francis Rossi; rhythm guitarist Rick Parfitt; bassist Alan Lancaster and drummer John Coghlan), unlike some of their contemporaries, all survived this decade of excess to tell the tale. In late September, I had the honour of hearing this tale first-hand during a video chat with Coghlan.

If Status Quo were the ultimate seventies rock band, then Coghlan was the decade’s ultimate rock drummer, providing the last word in powerhouse backbeats to all of the band’s best remembered hit singles, such as ‘Paper Plane’ (number 8, 1972); ‘Caroline’ (number 5. 1973);

‘Down Down’ (number 1, 1974); ‘Roll Over Lay Down’ (number 9, 1975) and ‘Rockin’ All Over the World’ (number 3, 1977). He unexpectedly left the band during the making of their fifteenth album, ‘1+9+8+2’ in 1981, but would reconvene with Rossi, Parfitt and Lancaster in 2012 for a one-off jam session at Shepperton Studios, the result of which can be seen in the documentary film ‘Hello Quo!’, released in the same year. Following this, ‘The Frantic Four’ embarked on two sell-out reunion tours in 2013 and 2014. Status Quo continue to this day, but with Rossi as the only original member, having seen a succession of members come and go and the sad passing of Parfitt on Christmas Eve 2016.

Since the day that he downed sticks and called time on what many consider to be the classic era of Status Quo, Coghlan has gone on to play with everybody from Thin Lizzy frontman Phil Lynott, Chas and Dave’s Chas Hodges and The Move / Wizzard’s Roy Wood in the early-eighties supergroup Rockers to Jimi Hendrix Experience bassist Noel Redding and Thin Lizzy guitarist Eric Bell in Redding, Coghlan & Bell in the late nineties.

He has also toured extensively with his bands John Coghlan’s Diesel and most famously, John Coghlan’s Quo. With John Coghlan’s Quo, Coghlan

65

The Spectres, c.1963

has taken the sound and aesthetic of his former band’s glory days and created something remarkable. He, along with guitarist and vocalist Mick Hughes; bassist and vocalist Rick Chase and guitarist and vocalist Pete Mace may still treat their thousands of adoring fans to renditions of all the Quo classics, but they are just as adept at producing their own, brand new music ... and wonderful it is too!

Take for instance, the band’s latest single, ‘Lockdown’, released in the midst of the ‘you know what’ back in May. Along with its brilliantly entertaining socially-distanced accompanying video, ‘Lockdown’ may in part detail the struggles we have all faced in this time of uncertainty, but instead of ruminating on them, it is more a joyous, heads-down boogie celebration of what is to come once normal service has been resumed.

After numerous Email chats, during which John’s wife Gillie invited us

66

down to Burford in Oxfordshire to conduct the following interview in person, it was decided that due to logistics and the ongoing pandemic, it would be easier to conduct it via video-link. So, having connected with the couple and chatted for a while, largely about plans regarding the release and touring of John Coghlan’s Quo’s much anticipated forthcoming full album of all-new material, due for release in the Spring next year, we got the interview underway.

Firstly, hello John and thank you for agreeing to our interview, it is lovely to speak to you. Could we start by going right back to the beginning and asking how you first became interested in music as a listener and how you came to start playing the drums?

It goes back to the sixties, I suppose.

My parents liked ballroom dancing and they used to take me up to the Crystal Palace Hotel near where I lived. There used to be dance bands playing at the

Status Quo in 1967

weekends and I just watched the drummers and took it from there really.

My Dad bought me a drumkit, I learnt to play the drums, taught myself and of course, rock ‘n’ roll wasn’t about then, it was all dance music and that’s what I learnt.

In 1963, you joined guitarist Francis Rossi, bassist Alan Lancaster and keyboardist Jess Jaworski as part of The Spectres, who had briefly been called The Scorpions. How did you come to join the band and in those very early days of working with your future Status Quo bandmates, could you ever have foreseen the glories that would come a few years later?

No, not really, because we didn’t know.

It was just quite a thing to be playing a musical instrument, I suppose and just joining a band. I was in the air cadets at school, so we put a little group together in the squadron and Francis and Alan came out to visit us. Well, I say visit us, they just heard the music and we were playing just [The] Shadows, instrumentals, as everybody

was doing that at the time and they said, ‘Can we listen?’ and we said, ‘Yeah, no problem’. So, then what happened was, they asked me, ‘Are you doing anything besides this band?’ and I said, ‘Not really, no’ and they asked me to join their band. So, I went to Forest Hill the following weekend where Jess Jowalski, the keyboard player, had his keyboards set up and that’s where Alan and Francis were practicing. So that’s how it all really started, yeah.

The original Status Quo line-up was of course completed by the arrival of rhythm guitarist and co-vocalist Rick Parfitt in August 1967 and the band officially changed its name. What are your memories of meeting Rick for the first time and after he joined, how do you feel that the band and the dynamic within it changed?

What it was, we went for an audition in London years ago, because they were looking for bands to play the summer season down in Butlin’s, Minehead in Somerset. So, really, we somehow got

67

through that and we travelled down to Minehead in Somerset and checked into Butlin’s and found where we were playing, I think it was twice a day in the Rock ‘n’ Roll Ballroom, and then we all go to the theatre and it was this guy called Rick Parfitt, who was singing with two girls called The Highlights. The two girls were identical, so you couldn’t tell which was which really. I’m still confused to this day, because we have seen them a few years ago. So, anyway, Pat Barlow is the manager at this time and Pat said, ‘You ought to get Rick in the band’.

We said, ‘Why?’ and he said, ‘Well, he’s got a great voice’ and sure, that’s what happened and we did and Rick loved it. And so, ‘65 I think that was and then, I can’t remember where we first actually played together, it was probably when we got back home after the season. The only difference with those camps now is that, in those days, you weren’t allowed to stay on the camp, you had to find a B and B local.

Yeah, it was quite strange that and we used to walk home at eleven o’clock at night with a guy who was a drummer

68

friend of ours and he played in the orchestra in the theatre and we used to spot what we thought were UFOs at night [laughs]. It was the alcohol, I think! So, anyway, we stayed in Mr and Mrs Fitz’s in Minehead and they used to argue a lot and shout and it was quite entertaining, but now we have the Quo convention in Minehead. I think its every other year. Anyway, that’s changed now and the Butlin’s one, I think, is going to be in 2022 and then there’s the one in Scotland which we’ve done, which was great. Anyway, so, yeah, they’re really good fun and these days, the camps look after musicians really well now, especially in Minehead. They put you into fabulous accommodation by the lake at the back, so you’re away from all the attention and we were right on the steam railway line, the Taunton to Minehead Steam Railway, which was great fun and yeah, it’s good, you know. Yeah, good days.

The first two Status Quo albums, ‘Picturesque Matchstickable Messages from the Status Quo’ (1968) and ‘Spare Parts’ very much

leant towards the psychedelic rock that was popular at the time, before you shifted towards a much harder rock sound and introduced the now trademark Quo boogie-shuffle sound with the non-album single on 1970’s non-album single ‘Down the Dustpipe’, whilst third and fourth albums ‘Ma Kelly’s Greasy Spoon’, released later that year and 1971’s ‘Dog of Two Head’ (1971) are very much seen as transitional albums.

What do you feel prompted this change of direction towards hard rock and as a drummer, how liberating was it for you to play in this new style?

Well, I think really what happened was, in the early days, because we did the Gene Pitney tour ... It was 1968, ‘Pictures of Matchstick Men’ and I think it was the psychedelic thing and we weren’t really a psychedelic band, but the record seemed to latch onto that and we did the Gene Pitney tours with Amen Corner, Don Partridge, Gene Pitney and all those type bands and it was good fun but, of course, what

happened in those days was ... like you mentioned ‘Ice in the Sun’ ... Marty Wilde wrote that and funnily enough, I saw Marty Wilde recently and he’s looking well and I think he’s got a single out with his daughters [Kim and Roxy] at the moment [‘60’s World’] ...

But anyway, besides that, you know, Bob Young was our road manager at the time, he used to drive us about in the van and set the gear up and all that, but I think Bob said ... I’ve skipped a bit ... What it was, if you didn’t have a hit record in those days, you weren’t on Top of the Pops, you know, you didn’t get many gigs and it was quite frustrating because we loved playing to the audience which were out there, so he [Bob] said, ‘I’ve got an idea, why don’t you ditch the pop scene idea and grow your hair long, let’s put some jeans on. We got a deal with Levi’s jeans, with T-shirts, did what they call ‘heads down boogie’ and we released ‘In My Chair’ [October 1970, number 21]. That did well and I remember, it was very strange because Bob suggested ‘Let’s do some universities and colleges’, which we did and what

69

was weird was all the students were saying, ‘Status Quo’s on next week.

Well, they’re a pop band, why are they here?’ and, of course, they were very surprised with the change of direction, although we did still play, I believe ‘Ice in the Sun’ and ‘Down the Dustpipe’ and ‘... Matchstick Men’. But, it was heads-down boogie and it did change us and oh, it was wonderful and I remember a guy at one gig, he was the guy that introduced all the acts and he said to us, ‘Look, I’ll walk on stage, introduce you’ and you walk on, right?’ and we said, ‘No, don’t worry about that’. We were trying to be cool.

Right, how stupid’s this? We just liked to walk on, right, and not be introduced and he insisted, so we said, ‘Oh God, okay, get on with it, you do it’. Now, remember this, there was a strong smell of cannabis in the room because it was all students and we smelt this and it was really funny and this guy, he walked on stage and this massive cheer from the students and he said, ‘Here’s Dave ...’ whatever his name was and they were all cheering and shouting and he said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen,

70

welcome to’ whatever it was called, ‘and I’d like to introduce the band. I know you’ve been waiting for this band for quite a long time, so ladies and gentlemen, they’re here’ and he forgot who we were! [laughs]. So yeah, that was a great start! And there was the smell of cannabis in the room, it was relentless and he insisted on introducing us as Status Quo and he forgot who we were! [laughs].

Inevitably, the change in direction took the media surprise, not least Radio 1 DJ Tony Blackburn who dismissed ‘Down the Dustpipe’ with the comment “Down the dustbin for this one” live on air. In spite of this, the track reached number 12 on the UK top 40 and remained in the top 50 for 17 weeks. What are your memories of the media reaction towards the new sound and was the success of the single a relief?

Well, I think really, it was quite strange, because I think a lot of people loved it and some people still loved ‘Ice in the Sun’ and ‘... Matchstick Men’ and all

that stuff. Aah, and we just said, ‘No, this is what we’re about now’ and we just plodded on with it, you know, we just went for it because we saw a good market in that, so we stuck to that and with my band, John Coghlan’s Quo, I’ve got a great following of fans, we do all the seventies stuff. Being honest with you, and I’m sure that you’d agree, the seventies was Status Quo really, rather than what it is now. So, we just kept doing that and I do that with my band now and we’ve got a single out called ‘Lockdown’, which went to number four in the Heritage Chart [United DJs] and we’re recording an album at the moment, which will hopefully be released in the new year.

So, all the songs we’ve recorded are all written by the band, all by members of this band, there’s no covers.

1972’s classic ‘Piledriver’ album saw the band switch labels from Pye Records to Vertigo Records and you took on production duties yourself for the first time. Could you give us an insight into the writing and recording process of ‘Piledriver’ and

how did you find producing yourselves in comparison to working with a producer from outside of the band?

I think the band was interested in producing ourselves, because I think we had a style, we knew what direction we were going in and no disrespect to John Schroeder or any other person who produced the band, but I think we gave it a shot and it seemed to work and we were happy with that. I know Pip Williams came along and he produced us as well [‘Rockin’ All Over the World’, 1977; ‘If You Can’t Stand the Heat...’, 1978 and ‘Whatever You Want’, 1979] and he was good. Pip was great; good guitarist Pip Williams.

But, yeah, you know, there’s loads of different ideas and there was one guy and I’ve just forgotten his name, bass player ... Was he in Deep Purple?

[Roger Glover, producer of the 1976 single ‘Wild Side of Life’ / ‘All Through the Night’]. I’m not sure now.

Yeah, I can’t remember his name. I’m getting old [laughs] and forgetting people’s names! But, yeah, we thought

71

we would have a go at producing ourselves and we didn’t look back and I just think ... It was quite a long time ago. I mean, if Alan Lancaster was here, he’d probably give you a different insight into it, but Alan now, well, he’s been living in Sydney, Australia for donkey’s years. He’s out there.

You, of course remained with Status Quo for the remainder of the seventies and what is considered to be their classic period. There must be so many incredible memories of both recording and touring, but are there any moments that you would consider to be your proudest achievements with Status Quo? I suppose a nice achievement was playing Wembley Empire Pool [26/05/74] and also places like the Royal Albert Hall, we did two shows there [02/02/71 and 07/02/71]. I think one of them, as far as I can remember, was supporting Elton John, at the Royal Albert Hall. There was a favourite gig of ours which we did many times, it was called Hammersmith Odeon, that

72

was in London, a great gig. We did the reunion tour there [2013]. We’ll talk about that later. There was a geezer in America and we liked doing the Whiskey a Go Go, which was in L.A., Hollywood, that was an achievement, but there was Randwick Racecourse in Australia and I think that was with Slade, Lindesfarne and Caravan [28/01/73]. That was a big tour of Australia, I think that was probably a great achievement. There was so many and, like I say, if Alan Lancaster had been here or our dear friend Rick Parfitt was still here, I’m sure he could tell you some great stories that I’ve probably forgotten about. But we were lucky, you know. We were lucky that the fans loved us and we were honest boogie and honest music and I think people picked up on it. Like now, with my band, they fly to come to the gigs because it takes them back to the seventies.

There are so many tales surrounding your departure from Status Quo during the recording of what would become the 1982 album ‘1+9+8+2’,

but how did you leaving the band actually come about?

I just think there were a lot of strain and stress and we were tired and they were taking quite a lot of things that they shouldn’t have been taking really and I wasn’t into that, I just liked a drink, like everyone else. I think we weren’t getting on and I just think the stress was showing and I’d just had enough by then and we had an argument and that was it. I remember the headset I had on, I was trying to hear what they were playing and I couldn’t. I think it was just one of those things and the next day, I flew home to Heathrow and Colin Johnson, who was our manager at the time, met me and said, ‘What happened John?’ and I said, ‘Well ...’, told him and I got on the other plane and flew to the Isle of Man where I was living, me and Gillie took a year off and we just went around the world, went to sunny places and relaxed. But, of course, once soon as you do that, you soon know who your friends are in the music business because you’re not associated with it anymore. That

happened to an actor friend of mine, who was in a very well-known soap years ago. He said exactly the same sort of thing. But, you know, you just move on and I’ve played with lots of bands. I played with the Diesel band [aka John Coghlan’s Diesel], I put that back together; I played with Phil Lynott; I played with Chas Hodges and Roy Wood and that was a band called the Rockers ... I played drums on that, but the only thing is, there is a video and it’s Bev Bevan playing drums on it.

I can’t remember, I was away somewhere and I couldn’t make that date for the video, so because Roy, obviously, is a friend of Bev’s, so, you know, Bev mimed to the drums for the track. There were loads, there was Partners in Crime, there was lots of stuff and it was good fun, but then an agent I know called Peter Darton up in Lancashire said, ‘Why don’t you go and put a band together John and go and play all your hits’ and he got me together with some band from ... and my managers said it was okay and it was good fun and got me started. And now, it’s still the same band, but just

73

with different members and the band now is the best it’s ever been, it’s fabulous. There’s Mick Hughes, there’s Pete Mace, Rick Chase and it really is good. Like I said to you earlier about John Coghlan’s Quo, my band, is the fact that we’ve wrote some songs, in house as we call it and we’ve done the video and we’ve all done it, just with the four of us. But anyway, I hope you’ll hear the album, which I’m sure you will after Christmas.

2012 saw the classic line-up of Status Quo reunite for the first time in 21 years for a special one-off jam session at Shepperton Studios in Surrey as part of the film ‘Hello Quo!’ This was followed by a nine date UK tour, which started in March the following year and culminated with a show at Wembley Arena on 17th March 2013.

This was followed by a second reunion tour in 2014, running from 28th March to 12th April and consisting of six further dates. How was the experience of reuniting and touring with your former band mates and were any of the old animosities

74

still present all those years later?

Yeah, there was talk about it, then Francis got in touch with us and said he wanted to do a reunion tour and so we rehearsed all week at Shepperton Studios and it was quite strange actually, because it was quite different from the early days, because time had moved on. I think it was a thirty years gap, so really, it was a bit rusty at first and they asked what songs we wanted to do and I chose ‘(April) Spring, Summer & Wednesdays’ [‘Ma Kelly’s Greasy Spoon’], one of our album tracks and we did the usuals, you know, ‘Caroline’ [‘Hello!’, 1973], ‘Down Down’ [‘On the Level’, 1975], ‘Paper Plane’ [‘Piledriver’], all the stuff we had to play, that were hits. So, it was good fun, but then when we did the first gigs, it was strange because me and Alan Lancaster weren’t used to using what they call ‘in-ears’; you know the in-ears they use, it’s like instead of having monitors. So, the ones we had were crap, so on the second tour, they actually sent someone round to our houses. A girl came round and they take

a mould of your ear. It was quite strange. They take a mould of your ear, so stuff doesn’t actually go in your ear, thank God, but they sent them off to America, made them up and they worked very well. I’ve still got mine, but I don’t use them now. But, they actually just mould to your ear and then when I got on to the drum kit, Lance Miles, who was my drum tech, he plugged me into a system and the great thing is, you get perfect guitar sound, perfect vocals, perfect drum sound and you have a little switch beside you, a volume control and you can control everything. The great thing is that when you take them out of your ears, bow to the audience and all that, there’s no ringing of the ears. They’re really good and I thought they were a great idea. But the only thing is, you can’t hear the audience clapping, so when you finish a song, ‘BAAAM!’, you just see people clapping, but you can’t hear it! It’s quite odd [laughs], you know.

But, the good thing about the up to date touring was the fact that it was Bob Young; myself; Alan Lancaster with Dayle Lancaster, his wife; Gillie, with

me. We had our bus, our own bus, so we slept upstairs at the front and Alan and Dayle slept at the back and Bob was in the middle of the bus and do you know, it worked a treat. Francis and Rick were on their bus and the other two buses were full of road crew and caterers, because we had catering on the road as well, which was like absolutely perfect. The good thing about it is that once you finish the last number, you bow to the audience, walk off stage, get on the bus ... the first bus will be Francis and Rick, they’ll get on theirs, then the next bus would come round, pick us up, we’d get on and we’d go on to the next gig, through the night and it was a great way to sleep.

And no hotels, because we had those on the days off, but it really didn’t make a difference because, like I said, most of the fans can afford hotels now, not like in the old days, but when we did have days off in hotels, the fans were lovely, they were great; they didn’t hassle us and it was good, everyone got on very well. But I must admit, that is the way to tour, you know, not in a van or an old car where you’re all cramped

75

together. But, no, it was good and if you wanted to go to sleep, say ... Like, an example, coming off stage, we’d go and get on the bus and the caterers, the girls would say, ‘Look, what do you want on your bus when you come off stage?’, because there’s a microwave, there’s a fridge full of wine and beer, so we used to just get on the bus and open the fridge and go, ‘Ooh, I’ll have something to eat and I’ll have a glass of beer or a glass of wine’. And the funny thing is, Rick Parfitt would always come on our bus when we stopped for fuel on the motorway or something.

He’d get off his bus and come on to ours and he’d bring his acoustic guitar and we’d sing songs all night, you know. He’d say, ‘Bloody Rossi’s gone to bed, he’s miserable’ and next thing, Rick would be on our bus, until we’d stop again and he’d get off our bus and get back on his and go to bed. You were free to do whatever you liked and, in the morning, we’d get off the bus, say ... Like, I remember one place ... We were in Wolverhampton; we were playing two nights at Civic Hall [13/03/13 and 14/03/13]. The road was

76

closed, it was just four buses and four artic trucks parked in this road by the gig, so I heard the doors opening on the artic next to us and all the flight cases being run down the ramp at the back, going ‘vroom, vroom’ as they used to run down with the cases and that would be the kitchen coming out. And they’d put the flight cases into this big room, which was allocated for the kitchen.

So, the girls would unpack that and set up the kitchen and they’d go into town and buy some fresh food, you know, fresh eggs, fresh bacon and sausages and come back, cook it and breakfast would be served about nine, nine-thirty and we’d have breakfast with the road crew. All the band and everybody that was involved would be in this big room having breakfast. You know, then we’d just go back on the bus, go back to bed if you like and watch a movie on your bus, you know and do you know? It was really good. And then, lunch at midday, same thing again and it would be dinnertime at four o’clock, because if you’re on stage at nine, you don’t want dinner at eight, because it’s not a good idea ... you’ll get indigestion!

[laughs]. But, do you know, it all worked and everyone was great and it really did work a treat and if any young band wants to do that, I recommend it.

It’s a bit expensive, but, at the end of the day, you’ll feel better for it.

Sadly, the world lost Rick Parfitt on Christmas Eve 2016. We won’t dwell on this, but what are your favourite memories of Rick, either on a professional or personal level?

I think maybe, going back to, I’ve mentioned this before in some interviews, the fact that in the early days, Rick lived with his parents in Woking, near Byfleet, and I lived with my parents in Upper Norwood, Crystal Palace, and Rick would ring me up if we had a couple of days off. He’d say, ‘Old spud, it’s Rick, do you fancy going into town, London, for a drink?’

I’d say ‘Okay’. So, he had an old Singer Gazelle car, he drove from Woking to pick me up in Upper Norwood, Crystal Palace, then we’d drive from there into London, which would take about half an hour from

my place. We’d go to the Marquee [Club] in Wardour Street, see Jack Barrie, who was the owner and have a drink with him. If we didn’t like the band, we’d go to The Ship pub, which was a couple of yards down the road, go in there for a drink and then we’d go to La Chasse, which was upstairs, a drinking club. I never found out what happened there, really [laughs], but it was upstairs with a little bar and we’d have a drink. It was probably a brothel or something and we probably didn’t realise at the time, but we don’t know what it was. Anyway, we’d have a drink down there, then there was this other little club. I think it has some Swiss name. It had some terrible paintwork as you went down the stairs.

It was red paint and white paint, which is the Swiss cross. Then you think about it: How many drinks did Rick have and how many drinks did I have and then he drove me home, he drove me back to Crystal Palace and then he drove to Woking, you know, and you probably couldn’t do that now! But Rick loved his cars. He was a Porsche man, then I was the first one to buy a

77

Range Rover and so, Rick loved it and he bought one, then Francis bought a Range Rover. Alan Lancaster wasn’t really interested. There was a film made with us driving Range Rovers [‘Off the Road’, BBC, 1976]. That was because I belonged to a club called the All-Wheel-Drive Club. We used to go off-roading with Range Rovers, Jeeps, trials and all that. So, that was that. And he had a Rolls Royce and I got a Rolls Royce later on when I was living on the Isle of Man. I wish I’d have kept that Rolls Royce because I had this idea some time ago, it’s a bit a late now, but what I could have done, I could have charged a fortune to do weddings, couldn’t I? Drummer from Status Quo driving us our wedding! [laughs]. I could have charged thousands! If I didn’t now, I might not charge so much because I’m not in Status Quo anymore!

You have been working with John Coghlan’s Quo for a number of years and continue to draw new fans and sell-out shows all over the world. Do you still get the same excitement

78

from playing songs from Status Quo’s back catalogue all these years later and as part of a different outfit and why do you feel that the band’s music still continues to be so popular and attract people to it now?

It’s still the same. When we do a meet and greet after ... well, we did, not in this COVID thing, we don’t, but the thing is that fans loved it and I remember meeting some of our fans that have been fans since the seventies and they’re so pleased to meet me, they said ‘We can’t believe how good the band is’, and then ‘Can I have a photo taken?’ I mean, some of them have been in tears, saying they loved it so much. Even on the reunion tour, there were grown men crying I was told, because it took them back to their youth and took them back to fond memories and even now, the fans love it. They think of ‘... Matchstick Men’ and it takes them back and someone remembered ‘In My Chair’, they got married when that was released, they were in Spain or somewhere ... But what we’re doing is providing their

memories by playing those wonderful songs that were hits that, you know, people loved. Yet, it’s still a buzz, I still enjoy it, my band enjoy it, so everyone has a good time. And also, there’s a lot of respect from our fans, which I love. They respect us, they come to see us and they don’t really hang out annoying us [laughs] like some did in the old days. But it is really good and we do really appreciate the attention and we appreciate them buying our record and stuff. But, yeah, it’s good.

In May this year, you released the absolutely brilliant single ‘Lockdown’, which was accompanied by a great video. Could you tell us a bit about the writing and recording of the song and the making of the video and what can we expect from the album due for release in the new year?

Pete Mace, our lead guitarist and vocalist, he’s got lots of equipment at home, recording equipment, so we all went over there and put stuff on and

that was a quick way of doing it and some other tracks, I put drums on separately, with my drum kit, my Yamaha. But, yeah, it’s worked a treat and the great thing about it is that the songs are great. I know you haven’t heard any, you’ve only heard ‘Lockdown’ of course, but I’m pleasantly surprised with what’s come out. It will take you back to seventies Quo. I mean, we didn’t really turn round and say, ‘Look, let’s make an album that’s going to sound exactly the same as Status Quo in the seventies’, that was not the intention. We’ve been saying for three years ... fans have been saying to us, ‘Look, why don’t you guys go in, record some stuff, make an album? We’d love to buy it’. I kept thinking what it would turn out to be, but, you know, there is some stuff there where Mick Hughes is doing the lead vocal, which is unusual for him ... They tried to get me to do a lead vocal, but I chickened out! [laughs]. I remember once, we were on tour with Quo and I remember Alan Lancaster and Rick Parfitt said they were standing outside standing outside my bedroom one

79

evening and I was playing ... I don’t know how I did it. I must have had one of those record players that you could carry with you on the road ... and I was singing along to some song. Pretty Things, I think it was and they said, ‘He’s got a great voice!’ Now, I don’t know if they were just taking the piss or what [laughs], but no, I think the drummer’s place is playing drums.

Unless your Phil Collins. Phil had a great voice, but, I don’t know, I’d have to step forward and do it. I don’t like the idea of seeing a drummer sitting down, singing away while he’s sitting down, I don’t think it looks right. I think he’s got enough to do without having to worry about vocals. I saw Phil Collins recently on telly and, I don’t know what programme it was, it might have been an old Top of the Pops or something, but Phil was singing standing up front and Chester Thompson was playing drums. And Chester’s great. He obviously plays the drums exactly like Phil did, so that works a treat. The only treat it doesn’t work is when you get a drummer in and he plays it all different from the

80

original record. Now, I think that’s wrong, you have to play it like the original record, because that’s what the arrangement of the song was, or is.

And so, a lot of fans have said to me about all the drummers that replaced me and there was Matt Letley [20002012]; there was Pete Kircher [19821985] first, who replaced me, there was Jeff Rich [1985-2000] and there’s the guy now, I keep forgetting his name [Leon Cave, 2013-present]. Yeah, it’s all different, they play ‘Down Down’ different to me; they play ‘Caroline’ different to me. But hey, you know, that’s their idea, but I think when you see a song played live, you want it to be exactly the same as the record. But, yeah, you can go on forever about this, but, yeah, I think vocals, I could try it one day, but I don’t know. This is a true story; you know when you go into a wedding or a church and everybody’s singing hymns? And I remember once, I heard my voice and I thought, ‘this is awful’ and one time, I made out I was singing, but I was miming [laughs] because I didn’t like to hear my voice!

So, I think vocals is no to me [laughs].

‘The Frantic Four’ reuinte, 2013

Could you tell us a bit about the equipment that you use these days?

Do you have a preference for any particular brands?

The kit I use now is an old Yamaha and I can’t remember the drum size, 13[inch] toms, 16[inch] floor. I’ve also got Lugwig as well, a Ludwig Super Classic kit from my early days with Status Quo. That was used on all the early Top of the Pops and that drum kit was used on all the early albums and singles. And, I remember donkey’s years ago, a snare drum got nicked or something, so then I got Yamaha snares and I was in Stockholm playing with my band about two or three years ago and I stopped by the drum shop in old Stockholm called ... I’ve got a little drum key, which I will show you here. And guess what it is? It’s a bottle opener, look! It’s Hellstone. Hellstone is the name. Now, he said, ‘Oh, John’, the owner this is, ‘I’ve got loads of Ludwig 400 snares’ and I said, ‘That’s exactly what I want to replace the old one!’ And I got that and I used it the day ... we did two gigs recently. We

played in All Cannings, near Devizes.

It was an open-air gig at Andy Scott’s place from Sweet. That was a limited amount of people. Then we did a gig last weekend near where I live and that is a place called Abingdon in Oxfordshire. I’m in Burford. But, yeah, we played indoors to sixty people. They were all seated of course, but it was great and it was such a relief to play to an audience and they loved us and it was great and I used that Ludwig snare drum and it sounded great. If you go onto our site, you’ll see that someone’s filmed some of our songs and you can hear the snare drum cutting through and it sounds great. But, as for the Yamaha, the Yamaha were made in Japan. Now, I think some of the Yamahas now, I think they’re made by machinery in China.

I’m not sure if that’s true, but you really can’t beat the handmade kits, you know, like my Ludwig. That’s worth a fortune now and I have no intention of selling it. Unless I have to, of course.

In fact, Alan Lancaster, I think it’s okay to tell you this, but he’s selling some of his guitars and they’re actually going

81

John with Eric Bell and Noel Redding, 1999

for auction on October 13th in London, at Bonhams. But anyway, when we did the two reunion tours, I used Premier drum kits. Premier said they would love to be involved, they supplied me with a 24inch bass drum, 15[inch] tom, two floor toms I think it was. You know, the kits were great and when we finished the first tour, Lance kept the drum kit and Premier wanted it back, but he said, ‘No, I’ve got an idea there’ll be another reunion tour next year’, so they said ‘Okay’. And sure enough, Lance was right and we did another reunion tour and I used that kit and it was a great kit, but unfortunately, like many companies, they go into lockdown at the end and I think they had to have the kit back. But, having said that, I would have loved to have kept it, but it’s like anything else, where do you keep stuff? And we don’t have a large house, I have two kits here and where are we going to put the third one? Unless you’ve got a mansion, then you’ve got room to keep them.

But it’s like anything else, you can only play one kit at a time and the Yamaha sounded great and so, I thought, I’ll

82

John Coghlan’s Quo after playing to thousands of adoring fans. L/R: Rick Chase, John, Pete Mace and Mick Hughes

keep to that, you know. Oh, and Avedis Zildjian symbols, an American company. Because when I was with Quo, we used Paiste, because we had a deal with Paiste in Switzerland and they really looked after me, but then I always like Avedis Zildjian. They’re made in America, as you know, from a Turkish recipe, if you like. Yeah, I use them all the time now, Avedis and they’re great. They look after me and I get stuff I want and it’s good. Yeah, that’s my kit and the drumsticks are ...

I can’t remember the name now ... why does this happen when you get old? [laughs]. Do you know what, if you stay there a second, I’ll get a stick.

In the background, I faintly hear John say to Gillie, “I can’t remember the flippin’ name of my drumsticks” and a few minutes later, John returns.

Yeah, sorry, my wife told me. She doesn’t play drums, but she remembered it as I was going upstairs.

They’re called Vic Firth and they’ve got ‘Status Quo’ on the sticks and

they’ve also got my signature on the sticks as well, which Vic Firth printed, so all the sticks have my signature on, ‘Status Quo’ and Vic Firth, of course.

Don’t forget to mention Vic, because they’re good.

The single ‘Lockdown’ also brings us to ask, how have you and the other members of the band been coping during the pandemic and have you made any plans for once it is all finally over?

Well, I think what saved us all is having to record the album, which has kept us working, as opposed to not doing anything, because that’s a danger.

But, also, when you’ve been doing an album, like we’ve been doing, you’ve got something to look forward to later on to play at live gigs. So, this stupid thing will disappear and we can all get back to normal lives. There are many musicians that I know who are desperate to get out there and play, but the good thing about the album is, like I say, it’s kept our minds working. It’s kept us working over at Pete’s place.

And it really is good, I’m in love with the album. I’m so pleased with it and when you hear it, I think you’ll be extremely pleased and surprised how good it is. I said, I don’t want to get involved with releasing at Christmas, because everybody gets involved with ... well, I hope they do ... going out an buying presents and there’s lots of other bands releasing albums at Christmas, so we said, yeah, spring time and that gives us more time to do the PR on it and more time to get involved in it and of course, the single, that’s going to be out on vinyl copy as well. When we get back out again, you’ll have to come and see us at a gig.

“Yes, we would love to”, I reply. And with that, we carried on talking for a while. Among other things, John told me more about his plans for getting back out on the road in the New Year to promote John Coghlan’s Quo’s new album, which under current circumstances, we can only hope will happen. I went on to inform him that he would be on the front cover of this issue, to which he replied,

83

“Oh, nice one! Thank you!”, before joking, “Once seen, never forgotten!”

For a man who many, including myself, consider to have such legendary stature, John Coghlan is one of the nicest, most humble people I have ever had the pleasure to interview. Not only that, it was a joy to see that his love and enthusiasm for performing and making new music remains completely

84

undiminished even after so long in the industry and having achieved so much as part of it. We thank him for this insight into his life in music and wish him and Gillie the best of luck for the future. www.johncoghlan.com www.facebook.com/ JohnCoghlanOfficial

Barry Blue Blue is the Colour Interview by Martin Hutchinson.

86

Barry Blue is a very colourful chap.

His professional name is Barry Blue, but he real name is Barry Green (he changed it because ‘green’ is considered unlucky in the music world), and he has met Barry White!

He came to prominence in the Glam boom of the early seventies with hits like 1973’s ‘Dancin’ (on a Saturday Night)’ and ‘Do You Wanna Dance’ and 1974’s ‘School Love’. Many of his songs came from the songwriting partnership he had with another ‘70s star, Lynsey de Paul.

“I met Lynsey when she was a student at Hornsea College of Art”, Barry tells me. “She, like me was a budding songwriter and we both signed a deal with ATV Kirshner [Don Kirshner being the man behind acts like The Monkees and The Archies]. We were actually the first two signed and we were pushed together as songwriters. The working environment was based on the same principles as New York’s Brill Building. You worked in an office from about ten in the morning until about five thirty and you were expected to write a song in that time.

At the end of the week, we handed all our songs in to be critiqued. It was like having your homework marked.”

This was around 1972, but Barry had already been around for a while: “The first song I ever had recorded was by

Gene Pitney [‘Rainmaker Girl’, 1971], which I had written when I was fifteen, but because I failed to include my name and address on the envelope when I gave it to his assistant at the stage door of the London Palladium, the release was delayed until the record company tracked me down.”

Does Barry prefer writing music or lyrics? “I write both music and lyrics, but I’m foremost a lyricist. I prefer them and I’m going to go back to that. Sadly, lyrics seem secondary today. If you listen to some of the really great songs, the lyrics just jump out at you. It doesn’t happen anymore. I was also in a band called Spice which was myself on bass, Mick Box and Dave Byron on guitars and keyboards and drummer Nigel Pegrum. We were together for about a year and a half then I left to work with The Bee Gees. Six months later, Spice became Uriah Heep and Nigel went on to drum with Steeleye Span!”

Barry worked for The Gibb Brothers for a while, but not as a songwriter: “No, I was working to promote their records and also to warn Maurice after he’d been on a bender that Lulu [his then wife] was coming – Lulu hated him drinking. But I learnt a lot about songwriting from them” Then he went ‘solo’: “I became an artist by default. No one wanted to

87

Barry in 1973

record my songs, so my demo of ‘Papa Do’ [written with Lynsey De Paul] became my first record on Decca [1972, under the name Barry Green]. On my Barry Blue records, I wrote, sang, produced, and arranged everything I did which I guess was pretty much unheard of at that time” Then after 1977, there were no more Barry Blue hits, but still plenty of chart action as a writer and producer. But I wondered why he and Lynsey stopped writing together?

“There was no real reason, we were both artists and had written about thirty or forty songs together. We just went on separate paths, but we were still close friends up to her passing away. We were both directors at the Performing Rights Society which helps to look after the interests of both songwriters and publishers in the world of musical copyright. I am a committed supporter of the creators’ rights of music in all genres and styles and I’m dedicating some of my time to become more

88

pro-active in this pursuit.”

Barry also stopped releasing records.

“It was purely because I was in demand as a writer and producer”, he says. “Something had to give, as I was wearing three hats.”

And he had success straight away: “That’s right, I produced of one of the finest, if not the finest, multiracial Funk / R &B act the UK has produced, Heatwave, who went onto sell over fifteen million records with such titles as ‘Boogie Nights’ [1977], ‘Always and Forever’ [1978] and ‘Mind Blowing Decisions’ [1978].”

In 1977, he was voted number one record producer in Music Week and his song ‘Devils Gun’ by CJ & CO was the very first record to be played at Studio 54 in New York in 1977. That year, it stayed at the top of the Billboard dance charts for six weeks. Barry’s great figures speak for themselves. He has had over 45million sales and over 55 worldwide hits to date: over 40 Platinum and Gold disc nominations.

“Lynsey De Paul’s hit ‘Sugar Me’ was my first million-seller in 1972.

Lynsey originally sang the demo to present to other artists to record the song until her then boyfriend, Dudley Moore, suggested she sing it herself ... and the rest is history.”

Barry himself returned to the charts in 1989: “I formed Escape Records in 1989 and released a self-penned and produced ‘mysterious’ record called ‘Afro Dizzi Act’. It took the dance charts by storm and became one of the biggest records of ‘The Second Summer of Love’. I chose to use the pseudonym of Cry Sisco! It stayed on the UK charts for ten weeks and sold over 50,000. There were also 12” remixes by Paul Oakenfold and Norman ‘Fatboy Slim’ Cook.”

Barry has also written songs for Toto Coelo (‘I Eat Cannibals’, 1982), Five Star (‘All Fall Down’, 1985) and Siedah Garrett (‘Kiss of Life’, from the album of the same name, 1988).

“The world- famous tenor, Andrea

Bocelli recorded one of my songs on his album ‘Cieli di Toscana’ [2001] and it features as one of the proudest moments for me as a songwriter.”

But which of his hats does he prefer to wear? Artist, writer, or producer?

Pondering for a while, he admits, “Nowadays, probably writing, but back in the eighties I would have said producing. Producing is very time consuming depending on the act. Heatwave, for instance, liked to work in the evening, sometimes starting at eleven in the evening and then through the night. It can cause problems sleep-wise.”

A funny story then came to him ... “I remember when I was producing Bananarama’s album ‘Deep Sea Skiving’ in 1982, I was having a few problems with the mics in the studio.

There appeared to be lots of ‘crackling’ just before the girls’ vocals. I was running in and out of the studio and getting the engineers to change all the mics. In the end, I discovered that the ‘problem’ was

89

that the girls were devouring packets of Cheese and Onion crisps while singing, a fact that they neglected to tell me.”

Despite his stellar, and long career, Barry does have some regrets. “Yeah, there are three biggies. Firstly, my biggest musical regret was having to turn down producing George Michael because of lack of time.

The second was removing myself from producing the Jacksons album ‘Destiny’ in 1978 after spending two weeks rehearsing and recording early versions of ‘Blame it on the Boogie’ and ‘Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)’. I had to pull out of the gig and returned to the UK due to overwork and exhaustion.

And lastly, not producing ‘Don’t Turn Around’ by Aswad [1988], even though they were next door to me in the studio at the time.”

Some really good news is that Barry has just released a brand-new album, in fact a three-CD set. Entitled ‘Chapter and Verse’, it contains an edited version

90

of Barry’s autobiography, with a signed certificate, and three CDs. The first is ‘Look Blue’s Talking’ and is an interview / podcast where Barry talks about his life and career; ‘Songs From the Lost Book’ is a CD of rarities (many unreleased) from Barry’s career, including the ‘Afro Dizzi Act’ single and a 1989 remix of his hit ‘Dancin’ on a Saturday Night’ and ‘Songs From the Heart Book’ is a CD of Barry’s songs he has ‘reclaimed’. “These are songs that I’m proud of and I felt that I needed to come back to and record them in the way they were originally envisaged”, he says.

The recording of these songs reunited Barry with John Richardson, the drummer with ‘70s glamsters The Rubettes. “John and I go back a long way, all the way back to 1967 or ‘68.

We had a pub band - him, me and Alan Williams, who was also in The Rubettes later on, and when I set out to do this album, I called him [John] in”, Barry explains. “In fact”, he continues, “The Rubettes were my backing band when I toured.”

Barry has now had a career in music lasting over 50 years. “I’m really grateful to have had such a long career, some have only had a short span.”

And he’s still busy. As he explains: “I’m going to scale back some parts of my career and I want to write a classical album as I really love arranging strings. Hopefully that’ll happen next year.” But will we ever see him ‘live’? “We had an idea to go out and do small venues, playing

some tracks and then doing a Q&A. It’s still just an idea though.”

In the meantime, we have the ‘Chapter And Verse’ collection, with all the CDs being available separately, featuring fifty years of great music.

The ‘Chapter and Verse’ collection and component CDs are available from Barry’s website: www.barryblue.co.uk

91

Sigue Sigue Sputnik

Tony James & The Art of Cyberpunk

Interview by Kevin Burke.

92

“... a rock and roll band with Donna Summer’s rhythm section …”

Sigue Sigue Sputnik were unlike any other band of the eighties, and perhaps even since. They invented the future, from the ashes of Punk, creating something unique before disappearing into the ether. Formed

by Tony James (Generation X) in 1982, the band was galvanized by members Neal X (Whitmore), Chris Kavanagh, Ray Mayhew, and singer Martin Degville. Interest in the band began to take shape in 1984, as they became a coveted prize chased by several record companies. Two years later, their first single ‘Love Missile F1-11’ became a number 3 UK hit, followed by the group’s first long-player, the Giorgio Moroder produced ‘Flaunt It’.

With a look characterized by a post-apocalyptic vision, and a sound that combined old school rock and roll with futuristic synthesizer sounds, Sigue Sigue Sputnik became a cult very quickly. The most talked about, written about band of the mid-eighties stretched commercialism to the limits, selling advertising space between tracks, along with spoof ads on that debut album. This led founder Tony James

to declare, “Commercialism is rampant in society. Maybe we’re a little more honest than some groups”.

The PR machine catapulted the band into the stratosphere, lasting for a further album ‘Dress for Excess’ (1988) before the fire burnt out.

As ‘Flaunt It’ returns via Cherry Red Records, the once eight track incendiary record is now respectfully expanded across four discs. This includes a remaster, plus twelve-inch mixes and a live disc recorded at Abbey Road Studios. With all this on offer I turned to the source of Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Tony James, to grab a view into the past and insight into this revolutionary sound that erupted in the eighties. What I found was a very fresh and upbeat Mister James who greeted me across the phone line. He has an air of positivity that is both welcome and refreshing, with a sincerity that you immediately warm to.

Thank you Tony for taking time out today. With regard to revisiting ‘Flaunt It’, both the remaster, and the remixes, what emotions did it stir for you?

93

Yeah, I mean, it’s thirty-five years since we put this record out. I still think it’s an extraordinary record, and I still think it was an extraordinary group that did something that no one else has ever done. I think since then there has not been a group like that, that did electronic rock and roll in the way Sigue Sigue Sputnik did. So yeah, it’s wonderful to look back at something that was really special at the time.

The legend Giorgio Moroder became involved with the project and the album. Were you always a fan of his?

We used to listen to Giorgio quite a lot when we were putting Sputnik together, especially the ‘Scarface’ [1983] soundtrack, and the ‘Midnight Express’ [1978] soundtrack, and of course Donna Summer’s records, especially the twelve-inch mixes of Donna Summer’s records. So we were big fans of his, so it was an honour for us to work with him. He was wonderfully creative and he totally got the idea of the movie samples, the orchestral samples, putting all those in a big mix.

94

Because he was a film producer, he saw the music like a movie, in the same way as I did.

How influential was Giorgio Moroder, not just from a sound perspective, but on the direction of the album?

Certainly we marvelled at his ability to come up with things, or he’d just say it needed a piece of classical music and he’d go play it. We certainly marvelled at his ability. I think when he met us he had a very strong vision of how we wanted the group to sound, but he was able to make that vision happen. So that was very important.

Do you think the hype, the PR and I guess the image at the time overshadowed the music you were creating?

When we started, I always viewed the group as a cult group like Suicide or The Cramps, I never dreamt that it could go so huge, so quickly. But it was almost too well designed in terms of

the visual aspect, the way the group looked, what it was about, the movies, the style of the music, even down to having all-female roadies. Everything about the group was a story and of course the papers took up that, and we got so much press so quickly because there was such a lot to write about. It was an avalanche we couldn’t stop, and of course when people are writing about you all the time, it’s very intoxicating for you as an artist to be lauded and everybody writing about your every move. It becomes a rollercoaster that’s impossible to stop.

So yes it may have crashed and burned too quickly because it launched so fast, but what a great ride, and I don’t regret that.

The fourth disc of the new set, the live at Abbey Road gig, that is a phenomenal performance. Is it typical of your live sets at the time?

What people didn’t understand at the time, or it was misconstrued, was that the group couldn’t play live. The whole point of the group was we played

everything live, with no sequencers, no tapes, and that everything was spontaneous live. None of the songs had arrangements, everything was just jammed, and so the songs could be fifteen minutes long or two minutes long depending on where it took us.

That was always very exciting to play live ‘cos we could react to the audience, we reacted to the sounds of the echoes, all those elements allowed the group to be really flexible in the way we played the songs, and that was very exciting for us. Also, there was that edge of danger every time we played which made it very exciting, because the group was like an assault on the audience, the music just went ‘blam, blam, blam, blam’, all the time.

The echoes and the samples from ‘A Clockwork Orange’ [1971], it was really a phenomenal assault on the audience and that generated real excitement, even when we were playing to only three people like we did at the start, we felt we had something really extraordinary, really special. I always can’t wait to get out there and play.

95

Tony (left) with Martin Degville (1986)

It sounds like something from 1977, a pure punk attitude.

Well, I brought that with me having lived through ‘77. But yeah, it had a new attitude to it. In the mid-eighties, where groups were going with synthesizers and prog rock again, this was really punky rock and roll, anarchic group.

You reinvented ‘Twist And Shout’ at Abbey Road. Was that intentional?

We did that because we were playing Abbey Road Studios, and it was an exciting moment to play a Beatles song.

Do you think you continued on you punk journey with London SS into Sigue Sigue Sputnik?

Definitely. I never lost the idea that I wanted it to be simple, and that I wanted it to be quite anarchic and say what we really felt. The people in the group understood that, and the people in the group were picked because their

96

personalities were real. This wasn’t a group that was put together and told what to do. What I was able to do was pick the right people that I felt would create the right kind of moment, which they did. Nightmare they might have been at the time [laughs].

Listening to ‘Flaunt It’ now, it’s obvious it’s not soaked in synthesizers. Did that add to it’s longevity?

Definitely, definitely. It was a rock and roll band right from the start. It was a rock and roll band with Donna Summer’s rhythm section, that’s what it was always meant to be. It was saying, let’s get Hendrix and T.Rex and put them over Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’. Then, put the whole thing in dub and then make it spontaneous … that comes across as very exciting live, and it was an incredibly exciting group to play in.

Even your image there was that punk meets Mad Max edge to it all.

Definitely. Our favourite films at that time were ‘Mad Max’ [1979] and ‘Escape From New York’ [1981], the John Carpenter film. A very futuristic, street gang look. Which is the way the group looked when it first came out.

That was very new at the time, people didn’t have that completely freaky look. It was an exciting moment, a very young moment. Some people go, ‘Why don’t you reform the group?’.

But these moments exist in a time when it’s young and sexy, and you don’t want to see Ziggy Stardust’s grandfather on stage, you want to see Ziggy Stardust [laughs].

But do you think music needed that in the eighties, you gave the music industry the kick in the ass it needed?

For sure. Look at the storm we created.

It was suddenly the biggest group and most talked about group in the world, for a brief moment in time. You know, better to have burnt bright than never have burnt at all.

Did the success put pressure on you creatively?

Not really, because we spent five years putting it together, so every detail was understood and perfectly crafted. The pressure comes when you have to make a second album, and you’ve had so many brilliant ideas on the first record and so many brilliant ideas on the first single, it’s incredibly hard to come out with a second record that is totally new again. So the second record always seems like a disappointment compared to the first one, because you seem to be threading the same ideas. We almost set ourselves up with an impossible task to try and top what we did when we first came out. But that’s okay.

Do you think what was achieved with Sigue Sigue Sputnik has ever been repeated?

No, I don’t think there’s been an electronic rock and roll band since who’s done that with that sort of group.

You see the look with Slipknot, Black Veil Brides and various other groups

97

who have that exaggerated look, but they don’t do the same anarchic music, to me anyway.

You got to live a life of adoration and success. Was it hard then when it all slowed down?

Well, if you remember, I’ve been through the whole punk movement, so I’d been through it once before. Then I played with Johnny Thunders and then we did Sputnik, so I was used to the cycle of fame and the way movements can have a moment, and then suddenly nobody’s interested. So I was much more ready for that the second time around. Always though, in the moment, when your record is hurtling to number one, you think it will never end. It’s like a huge love affair that will always be wonderful, but in the moment you never consider those things. Afterwards I went on to do different things. I did Sisters of Mercy after Sputnik, and then we did Carbon/Silicon with Mick Jones, which we did for ten years, and now we’ve been doing Generation Sex, Generation X and Sex Pistols, which

98

we did a couple of years ago. We played some gigs and we were meant to play some this year, well obviously we are not able to. But I’ve been very fortunate to have had a successful career, and to be in three-four radically different groups, to be able to change completely and be something of a totally different kind of group. So I’ve been very fortunate to sustain that, and here we are in 2020 we can’t go play live but I’m having a great life and enjoying myself, and enjoying the fruits of everything I’ve done in my career.

That’s refreshing to hear. You are taking it one day at a time, what is going on in the world is not bringing you down?

Well, you look around and you realise what’s important in your life. Your family, where you’re living, if everybody’s healthy, and just looking at trees in the country is a wonderful thing as well. So I’m not defined by having to stand on stage, a lot of the people I know are struggling at the moment because they are defined by the person

you see on stage. They don’t have another life outside of that. I’m becoming a person in a movie [on stage], being that thing, but then I have a whole other life outside of that, which is great.

Thank you Tony, you are so upbeat and positive, it is a pleasure to speak with you.

Well, we have to be. I think it’s changing the world because everyone is

looking around and going, ‘What is of importance now? What is the value?’

And that’s very important.

The remastered and expanded edition of ‘Flaunt It’ is available now courtesy of Cherry Red Records. www.sputnikworld.com www.facebook.com/ sputnikworld

99

Good Lord!

It’s

Lordi!

Interview by Martin Hutchinson.

100

Fans of horror rockers Lordi have reason to celebrate, despite the fact that the autumn tour has been postponed due to the pandemic.

There have been TWO recent releases from the band, a live 2CD / DVD set entitled ‘Recor Dead Live’ and a new studio album, ‘Killection’.

Lordi came to prominence outside their native Finland in 2006 when their song ‘Hard Rock Hallelujah’ won the Eurovision Song Contest. The group made an immediate impact with their terrifying make up, costumes and the fact that it was a ‘hard rock’ number.

The band’s winning score of 292 was coincidentally the same score they achieved in the semi-final.

Speaking from his home in Rovaniemi in Lapland, band founder, singer and main songwriter Mr. Lordi says it was “alright” when they won: “Yes, it was alright, it’s always nice to win things. I wasn’t really surprised that we won. We were invited to enter, but I said at the time that we’d have no chance of winning the Finnish contest [similar to the UK’s ‘Song for Europe’], but if we did win through to the competition, the rest would be easy. We were already known in Europe [especially Scandinavia, Germany and Switzerland] and I always said that you should send a band that’s ‘known’. For instance, if Germany sent Rammstein to the contest, they

would win.”

Lordi, the band, was formed originally in 1992 and at first was just Mr. Lordi and the horror masks the band is famous for was still in the future.

Lordi’s music is hard rock, but with melody. The masks and pyrotechnics are for show, as Mr. Lordi explains: “I was a special effects nerd with an interest in music and the first demos were just one of the projects I was working on at that time. I’m a big KISS fan and I met up with some like-minded musicians at a KISS Convention and started thinking then about introducing the ‘horror’ element. That would have been around 1994 or [199]5.”

Why ‘Hard Rock’? “It’s what I grew up listening to. Most people grow out of it, but I didn’t. I did try to see if I could broaden my taste in music, however. I like a good melody and for me, all music is all the same, it’s just a matter of arrangements. The first ten years or so, you could have classed my music as ‘industrial metal’.”

The musicians in the band have their own characters. For example, the guitarist Amen, who has been with the band since it’s inception, is an Egyptian mummy whereas keyboardist Hella, the only female in the band, is a ‘Scarbie’ (a horror version of Barbie). Drummer Mana and bassist Hiisi complete the

101

Lordi at the Eurovision Song Contest, 2006

band. When they took part in Eurovision, a square in Mr. Lordi’s hometown of Rovaniemi was renamed Lordi Square and there were postage stamps and even a Lordi Cola!

I think it would be fair to suggest that Lordi is a cross between KISS and Alice Cooper and their shows are spectacular with pyrotechnics enhancing the horror aspect. The live show is captured in all it’s glory (or perhaps ‘gory’?) on ‘Recor Dead Live’, which is the band’s show at Z7, Pratteln Switzerland from November 2018.

The DVD includes the whole show, along with promotional music videos and a documentary film entitled ‘A Day in the Life on Sextourcism’. The Sextourcism tour of 2018 showcased the band’s latest album ‘Sexorcism’.

The 2CD’s also include the show, but without the band solos.

The show is uncompromising but spectacular, and despite the showy effect, the musicianship of the band and the melodic aspect of Lordi’s music

102

comes across. “I think it captures the essence of the show”, Mr. Lordi tells me. “We chose that venue as we’ve played there more than anywhere else. To be honest, the audiences in Switzerland aren’t as crazy as those in say The Czech Republic, where they go absolutely fucking mad. And the show is edited a bit because I talk al lot inbetween songs.”

The costumes are a major talking point and it takes between two and three hours for Mr. Lordi to get ready for a show (the other members take about an hour). I suggest that the shows must be draining with all the costumes and make up. “Yes, we get hot and sweaty”, replies Mr. Lordi, before adding, “It’s like a full body condom and my costume weighs about 23 kilos.”

“After a while you get used to it”, he continues. “When we rehearse, we just dress in our normal clothes, but any new members - and we have had a few line up changes and it’s completely different playing a live

show when compared to recording have to wear full costume.”

Their wider experience has allowed them to do that.”

The band’s new studio album, ‘Killection’ is what’s described as ‘a fictional compilation album’. It’s a clever concept; eleven brand new songs with vocal interjections from a fictional radio DJ doing a ‘phone in’. Each track has been given a parent album where the cover is based on a classic rock LP cover. If you look closely, you’ll see pastiche album covers of KISS, Ozzy Osbourne, Alice Cooper and Whitesnake, to name but four. I wondered if the songs are tributes to the artists that have influenced Mr. Lordi, or are the songs what Lordi would have sounded like back in the day. “Both!”, he says. “The concept came to me a few years ago, but the ‘Sexorcism’ album came out and I held it back.”

Lordi’s mastermind is obviously a massive KISS fan. However, as he tells me, he does have other influences:

On the eleven tracks, the band shows a diversity we wouldn’t expect. “KISS is the guideline“, Mr. Lordi affirms.

“There’s not a single other band that has changed their style like them.

“Oh yes, apart from KISS, there is Twisted Sister, Alice Cooper, King Diamond and WASP to name a few.

But one thing they have in common is that their music is melodic. Melody is number one. It’s where a song starts from, whether vocal or guitar.

You tend to get a guitar melody in the verses, but a vocal on in the chorus and a song is only as strong as it’s chorus. If the chorus is lacking then it lets the whole song down.”

And he is proud of the new collection.

“Of course! I’m super fucking proud.

I’m one of those guys who think their latest album is the best ... until the next one. It would be stupid to record and release an album that’s not as good as the last. We toured the album for about a month before Covid struck and we were playing

103

three or four songs off the ‘Killection’ album in the set. If we manage to start the tour again in 2021, we might change some of it.”

“For instance, one of the band’s favourites to play was ‘Blow My Fuse’”, he continues, “but the younger audiences weren’t liking it as much as it is more like ‘classic’ rock and more like music for their parents, but we kept putting bits of other songs into it to make people take notice of it. To be honest, I would be surprised if any band tours in 2021. People need to think of the

104

greater good and observe the rules so that we can get back to some sort of normal.”

Lordi hopes to return to the UK next February for shows in Birmingham and Sheffield, but in the meantime, the live album ‘Recor Dead Live’ and the new album ‘Killection’ are out now on AGM Records. www.lordi.fi www.facebook.com/ LordiOfficial

Leslie Pereira & The Lazy Heroes

Karma Please!

Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers Photography by Michael Bulbenko (except studio shots).

106

It is at this time of year that we start thinking about which release deserves the coveted title of Eighth Day Magazine Album of the Year.

Even in spite of everything basically going to sh*t in 2020, the music world has offered up many a treat to keep us entertained, giving us more than enough hope that our beloved industry will return to full-power once all the nonsense that the past year has brought us is finally over.

Even this late in the day, new albums from every corner of the globe are still grabbing our attention and our hearts. One such release is ‘Good Karma’, the second album by Los Angeles four-piece Leslie Pereira & The Lazy Heroes, a twelve-track, full-throttle thrill-ride of a record which in the space of forty short and sweet minutes manages to encapsulate everything we love about rock, punk and pop in one utterly irresistable package.

‘Good Karma’, which was produced

by Karen Basset of The Pandoras and The Kariannes fame and finds guitarist and lead vocalist Leslie Pereira; drummer and vocalist Jeff Page; bassist and vocalist Rob Lontok and percussionist and vocalist Paula Venise releasing with Big Stir Records for the first time, is not one of those records that you might listen to once and consign to the ‘I quite like this’ pile, but one

that we guarantee you will want to revisit time and time again. Put simply, it is a classic.

Radio stations across the US already agree, with the album’s opening title track and lead single already having racked up repeated plays on shows transmitted from all four corners of the country, including legendary broadcaster Rodney Bingenheimer’s Sirius XM programme. This punchy three-and-a-half minute statement of intent is just the tip of a gigantic and impassioned, all rockin’ and all rollin’ iceberg that will put a sizeable dent in your decision-making regarding which album has been your favourite of this year.

Whether it will be crowned as our favourite of the year in next month’s Christmas Spectacular is still open to debate, but what we do know is that we were so taken with this album that it would have been bad karma not to get in touch with Pereira for a chat.

Firstly, hello Leslie and thank you for agreeing to our interview. Could we start by asking where, when and how the band came together and could you introduce us to your line-up and tell us a bit about the bands and projects you were all involved in previously?

Myself on guitar and lead vocals; Jeff Page, drums and vocals; Rob Lontok,

107

bass and vocals and Paula Venise, percussion/vocals. Jeff Page, Paula and myself were is a band together in the ‘90s called It’s Me Margaret. I put together a garage band in 2010 to work on and help me arrange a new sound I was channeling. We had about twelve songs I wanted to record with legendary producer Earl Mankey. When it came time to record, the musicians were not interested in recording with me, so I decided to call up Jeff. He would knock out drumming parts easily and I knew it. We still needed a bass player, and he thought Rob Lontok would be a great fit for the bass parts.

We sounded so good together after rehearsing that we just kept writing new songs. The rest is history.

You released your second album, the absolutely exquisite ‘Good Karma’ on 10th October. Having had a few weeks to let the reaction to the record from fans and the media alike, have you been pleased with the feedback that you received for it?

We have never seen this kind of support

108

before with a record company. With the single [‘Good Karma’] out, already having radio play, it has been amazing.

Big Stir Records really loves music and the bands they represent, you can tell.

‘Good Karma’ is your first release with Big Stir Records, who have also issued a limited pressing of your debut album, 2017’s ‘Fight for Now’, which was originally self-released.

How did you come to work with Big Stir Records and how has the experience of releasing your new album with them been in comparison to releasing your debut yourselves?

Yes, ‘Fight for Now’ was a self release.

With a famous producer like Earl Mankey behind the recording, we got a lot of attention from the album. Jeff knew Christina [Bulbenko] from Big Stir and she and Rex [Broome] came out to see a show. They then started booking us for various shows with their own line-up. The Big Stir family are really nice people and they attract really nice people. We like really nice people.

Big Stir Records’ Christina Bulbenko (left) joins (L/R) Jeff Page, Leslie, Rob Lantok and Karen Basset in the studio during the recording of ‘Good Karma’.

After working on ‘Fight for Now’ with Earle Mankey (otherwise best known for producing The Three O’Clock, 20/20, Concrete Blonde, The Runaways and Sparks), ‘Good Karma’ was produced by Karen Basset of The Pandoras and Big Stir labelmates The Kariannes. How did Karen come to be involved in the making of the album and what do you feel that her production skills have brought to the sound of the band and the twelve songs featured on the album?

Karen is involved with Big Stir Records via The Kariannes. I went to one of her shows and thought she was an amazing musician, songwriter and singer. We asked her to record us and we all got along so well that we wanted her to mix the album of thirteen songs.

It took a minute because of the whole COVID-19 pandemic that started back in March, so one-on-one mixing with her was impossible. I know what I like in finishing the songs up, so translating that via email, phone and texting was challenging. She really did a great job

Christina’s Big Stir Records partner Rex Broome (right) spies a photo-bombing opportunity!

working with me. She knew how to bring the best out of each recorded track. The vocals sit perfect with the music and its just sounds so pro. I really enjoy listening back to the songs because she made them sound so good.

Could you give us an insight into the writing process of ‘Good Karma’ and the themes explored on the album?

After we finished ‘Fight for Now’ and started getting good attention and being asked to play out, the band just kept writing new songs. ‘Hot Tamale’, ‘Slip’, ‘Time to Rock’ and ‘If I Could’ were the first ones we wrote after ‘Fight for Now’. We played them out a few times live and they were received really well. ‘Not to Me’, ‘Waiting’, ‘In My Back Yard’ took a minute to arrange and write the lyrics for.

‘Coraline (Where Are You)’ and ‘Buy a Race Car’ were leftovers I still had not recorded, along with an It’s Me Margaret song, ‘So Hard’. Then when Paula and I were on vacation in the mountains last year we got snowed in for a few days. I finished writing

109

‘Good Karma’,’Chrome’ and ‘That’s Why’. We were ready to record thirteen songs.

We have noticed quite a few influences at play in your sound. We could suggest that there are elements of The Go-Go’s, The Runaways, The Pandoras and The Breeders in there, but we also noted strong elements of ‘60s pop and early rock ‘n’ roll too.

Who would you cite as your influences and for the uninitiated, how would you describe your sound?

Yes, it’s a no-brainer that female fronted bands tend sound like we’ve been influenced by them. I certainly admire female artists. But I have to say I listen to a lot of single-string guitar music, I like it. I like how it makes me feel. I am a pop-rock song writer, so there’s that, I just can’t seem to peel away from what I was taught. I use 13 gauge guitar strings, so I play really hard and fast. I am smart, so I have some sass to my lyrics, almost cat-like.

Talking of that ‘60s pop element, you

110

obviously have an ear for a catchy lyrics and hooks, but to you, what makes a great song and what makes you tick as a songwriter?

I took a few songwriting courses over the years, and played in many bands as a guitar player. I can tell you, I’ve been writing music since I was really little. My first instrument is the piano, and jingles would pop in my head and I would have to sit down and play them over and over until the parts flowed together. I really love writing with this band in a jam-type session. Jeff starts a beat and I play something that is channeled in me. I have no idea where it comes from. I will pick up my guitar and little beginnings just come out. If I like it, I will record in a voice memo and continue on with other parts. A hook will blurt out and I’ve got the beginning of the lyrics. For instance, when writing ‘Good Karma’, I would just say ‘What!’ and that was the beginning of the song. It’s fun and messy and I’ve been doing it since I was small. Repeat, repeat, repeat, until you got it.

Unfortunately, the world is still in the grips of the pandemic with little chance of being able to perform songs from ‘Good Karma’ live at present. In addition to this, the album was actually finished after the world had been forced into lockdown. Did you manage to present any of the songs featured in a live setting beforehand and how has the experience of finishing, releasing and promoting an album in the midst of COVID-19 been?

We are setting our sights right now to play live streaming in ‘The Cave’ soon.

Locking in the sound and lighting so the cameras can pick up the performance. I like to think I’m a professional, so I want it to be good, not sloppy or confusing. We will get there and I know everyone is looking forward to it. We have a very good team on our side with Rex and Christina from Big Stir Records. I’m not worried.

Have you made any plans to get back out on the road after the pandemic?

The plan is to play live on the internet.

Rob and I just set up ‘The Cave’ for recording live with cameras and a pro PA system. We really are looking forward to rehearsing again, writing new stuff and being together. It’s nice to have a goal.

Thank you for a wonderful interview.

We wish you all the best with ‘Good Karma’ and for the future.

‘Good Karma’ is out now on Big Stir Records. bigstirrecords.com/ leslie-pereira-the-lazy-heroes www.facebook.com/ lesliepereiraandthelazyheroes

111

Pilot David’s Flying High

Interview by Martin Hutchinson.

112

Seventies hit makers Pilot are best remembered for the massive hits ‘Magic’ (1974) and the chart-topping ‘January’, which in a bizarre twist of fate, reached number one in the charts on the first of February 1975.

The band came from Scotland and comprised of David Paton and Billy Lyall (both former Bay City Rollers from Edinburgh) on bass and vocals and keyboards, respectively; Stuart Tosh, an Aberdonian, on drums, and Ian Bairnson from the Shetland Islands on guitars.

Whilst this is the ‘definitive’ line-up, it is unusual to note that on the four albums released by the band in the seventies, the band had this line-up just for the second album ‘Second Flight’ (1975). For the first, ‘From the Album of the Same Name’ (1974), the line-up was Paton, Lyall and Tosh (the PLT in Pilot) with Bairnson as a guest.

For the third album, ‘Morin Heights’ (1976), Lyall had left for a solo career, although all three remaining members played on his solo album from the same year, ‘Solo Casting’, which also featured Phil Collins as drummer on most of the tracks). By the time Pilot’s fourth album, 1977’s ‘Two’s a Crowd’ came along, the band was a duo, with just Paton and Bairnson.

After that, the band split. All four band members played on the first Alan Parsons Project album, ‘Tales of

Mystery and Imagination’ (1976).

Meanwhile, Paton and Bairnson also became the ‘go to’ men as session musicians, with David Paton eventually going on to play with the likes of Elton John, Rick Wakeman, and more recently Albert Hammond.

The first three albums, have all been released previously on CD, and there have been numerous compilations (one of which was compiled and annotated by yours truly), but with this new release, a box set entitled ‘Pilot: The Albums’, we have the fourth album on CD for the very first time. The reason it hadn’t been issued before on CD was that it was recorded for a different label.

Speaking from his Edinburgh home, David Paton tells me that he likes the box set: “I’m delighted with it. The remastering is excellent too”, he says.

I mentioned to Cherry Red (who has released the set on their 7T’s subsidiary) that I was particular about the quality of the finished product, and they have delivered.”

David is particularly pleased about the inclusion of the ‘Two’s a Crowd’ album. In the past, it has proved problematic to release the original because of the rights. In fact, David and Ian Bairnson got together in 2001/2 to record the album ‘Blue Yonder’, which included eight re-recorded tracks from ‘Two’s a Crowd’, two brand new songs and the only commercially released

113

Pilot are presented with a gold disc by ‘Diddy’ David Hamilton, 1975. L/R: Stuart Tosh, David Hamilton, Ian Bairnson, Billy Lyall and David Paton. Courtesy of the David Hamilton Collection

live Pilot track ‘Hold Me’. Since then, there have been a few released under the name ‘A Pilot Project’, the name being a contraction of ‘Pilot’ and ‘Alan Parsons Project’. More later that later.

before the release of the debut album.

Entitled ‘Pamela’, the single sank without trace and is strangely not mentioned in the aforementioned liner notes.

“It’s [‘Two’s a Crowd’] a great recording and good as it was, ‘Blue Yonder’ couldn’t quite match what producer Alan Parsons recorded. I hadn’t listened top the original version for a long time and it just jumps out at you.”

“It [‘Pamela’] was a stupid song”, recalls David. “We were recording and John Cavanagh of EMI came into the studio with the song and told us it had been a hit in Europe.

We didn’t want to record it but Alan Parsons said we could knock it off in an hour. We did and Stuart sang lead vocals on it. The B-side ‘Ra-Ta-Ta’ was already recorded.” Having heard the song, in my humble opinion I reckon it would have been a sure-fire Eurovision winner. “None of us really believed in it and we didn’t want Pilot’s name on it. And I’m glad.”

And David thinks that the band’s music has stood the test of time very well. “It still sounds fresh to me,” he says. “If you write melodic pop songs like Pilot, they’ll stand up for a long time.”

As well as a 16-page booklet with adequate notes by Michael Heatley, the four-CD set contains a number of bonus tracks which include B-sides, solo singles from David and Billy Lyall (sadly no longer with us) and a single recorded by the band and released under the name Scotch Mist shortly

114

As well as the two big hits, Pilot also charted with ‘Just a Smile’ and ‘Call Me Round’ (both 1975), the latter being the basis for a David Hamilton radio jingle. In fact, ‘Just a Smile’ had been issued as the band’s first single a year earlier, but didn’t chart, so a revised

Pilot live in Japan, 2005

Pilot live in Japan, 2005

version was recorded. “We didn’t do much to it really,” says David. “I think we added strings – It was one of EMI’s standard sayings, ‘You need to add strings!’ It wasn’t really a case of re-recording it, more a remixing.

EMI wanted to ‘tart it up’ a bit and we also added some more backing vocals. It was a song we all believed in.”

topper with ‘Dreadlock Holiday’ in 1978. As for David, he’s still very busy: “Yes, I’m doing a new solo album and I’ve got fourteen songs that need mixing and I’m also writing my memoirs.”

David’s Pilot Project albums are keeping the band’s legacy alive. He tells me, “They’ve done really well and I’m delighted about them.

Especially in Japan where Pilot is still massively popular.”

David and Ian have toured Japan in recent years. “Yes, it was three years ago that Ian and I did our last trip to Japan. Alas, Ian didn’t play on the Pilot Project’s second album as he is suffering from Alzheimers these days.

I’m also still in occasional touch with Stuart.”

After leaving Pilot, Stuart Tosh joined 10CC where he enjoyed another chart

Looking back on the Pilot days, he has fond memories. “They were great days and I’m particularly proud of that first album. We had a lot of material written and demoed before we approached EMI about a deal, so there wasn’t any trouble picking tracks. I think that ‘Just a Smile’ and ‘Magic’ were especially strong and the album kicked off with those tracks. I’d play them to anyone. We evolved with our second album, we were more polished, especially with Ian’s guitar. I’d played guitar on the first album, but Ian had the finesse.”

And Pilot has another claim to fame.

In 1973, EMI launched a stand-alone EMI Record label and three of the first signings were Cockney Rebel, Pilot and Queen. In 1975, there was a ‘friendly’ rivalry between them to see who would

115

get the first number one. It was Pilot who won with ‘January’, and they were replaced at the top of the charts

by Cockney Rebel with ‘Come Up and See Me (Make Me Smile)’. Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was actually the fourth EMI record to top the charts, with the third being ‘Whispering Grass’

by Windsor Davies and Don Estelle.

Pilot’s legacy continues as their two biggest hits are still radio staples and ‘Magic’ has featured in many movies.

Always under-rated, this collection will help towards giving the band the recognition it deserves.

116

‘Pilot: The Albums’ is out now on 7T’s, a subsidiary of Cherry Red Records. pilotmagicmusic.com www.facebook.com/ pilotmagicmusic Page 112: Pilot in 1975.

L/R: David Paton, Ian Bairnson, Billy Lyall and Stuart Tosh.

Below: David (left) with our very own Martin Hutchinson in 2016.

Roddy (far left) with Idlewild in 1998

Idlewild Aye, Aye Captain!

Interview and Review by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

Back in 1998, one observant reviewer, the name of whom has since been forgotten in the midsts of time and music, described Idlewild’s sound as being like “a flight of stairs falling down a flight of stairs”. They weren’t too far off the mark, with the Edinburgh four-piece’s early live shows and Paul Tipler-produced debut six track mini-album ‘Captain’, released in January of that year through Steve Lamacq’s Deceptive Records label, providing a much needed jolly rodgering of shouty but melodic noise infused with a cavalcade of spiralling guitars and lyrics expressing claustrophobia, frustration and exhilaration to an indie scene which, suffering greatly from the fag-end of Britpop, had become a little stagnant and unsure of its own future.

On 20th November, Idlewild celebrate the 25th anniversary of the band by unleashing ‘Captain’ on vinyl for the very first time as well as casting it adrift into the unchartered land of downloading and streaming. The raw, unfettered energy exhibited on its six tracks lends itself perfectly to this new format, with the angst-ridled, snarling brilliance of ‘Self Healer’; ‘Annihilate Now!’; ‘Captain’; ‘Last Night I Missed All the Fireworks’; ‘Satan Polaroid’ and ‘You Just Have to Be Who You Are’, if anything, sounding even more exciting now than it did in 1998.

“At the time, we didn’t have much experience in the recording studio”, vocalist Roddy Woomble tells us. “We were known as a chaotic, noisy live band. Producer Paul Tipler had his work cut out to try and turn our songs into something more cohesive.

‘Captain’, which we had decided to name this first collection of songs, not only surprised us with its direct, punchy melodic maelstrom, it surprised almost everyone who heard it. Tony and Bruce at Deceptive had the confidence that we would record something promising and were delighted that Paul had managed to capture the live energy of Idlewild, while bringing the songs together and pulling out the melodies. It made a fantastic introduction to Idlewild, and after its release, word of mouth started to spread”. idlewild.co.uk

117

Frenchy’s Rants

This Month: Status Quo Live in London?

The twentieth part in an exclusive series by Flicknife Records co-founder Marco ‘Frenchy’ Gloder.

118

It’s been a bad month! My gallbladder got its knickers in a twist sending me screaming in pain to A&E, where I met Lucifer. He had a tooth abscess, the poor sod. Not practical in his line of work. We had a good chinwag about the state of things and he told me that Trump was in his crosshairs! On the other hand, it might have been the fever because he was wearing double denim and ‘70s Ken Market boots ... and long, long hair. The nurse said it was just a mirror!

I stayed in hospital for sixteen hours, we all had to wear masks and stay two metres apart with no family, carers or even Francis Rossi allowed in. The first doc hit me in the stomach and asked ‘Does it hurt?’! Cheeky bastard! He sent me to have blood tests, ECG, Xray and an infusion of antibiotics which you and I know as an I.V drip. I got sick in the bog afterwards, psychedelic curry all round. Still, it made me feel better. Then I was put in a cubicle, on a bed and told to wait. I waited and waited and waited and at 1.30am, when this little funny geezer breezes in the cubicle and declares he is the SHO and everything everyone else has done so far was a load of shite and what I needed was an ultrasound! Be here at 8am prompt (prompt?!) and piss off for now. So I did ... all over the floor. Next morn, I was there at 8am sharp (thanks to my darlink wife) only to be told that ultrasound didn’t open till 9.30am! You gotta love the NHS. In the waiting

room, I sat two metres away from an old boy who told me all about his stomach troubles and diarrhoea!

Lovely. At 9.23am, I was called in: “Mr. Marco Glider”, shouted Lucifer.

Like everyone else, he got me name wrong, but it told me the fever was back. “I’m off to see the Quo in an hour, so let’s do this quick”. The Quo? As in Status Quo? That would have explained the double denim, but where were they playing at noon? What rock band plays at noon?! As I was wheeled in the ultrasound room, Lucifer had gone and the SHO was in charge.

“Where are Status Quo playing?”, I asked. “Oo iz staatouss kwo?”, he snorted. By then, I wasn’t sure myself.

“S’awrite, you can go ‘ome: yool have surgery in eight weeks, key’ole surgery, we’ll take it all oot ... and don’t call us, we’ll be in touch”. Unreal. Needless to say, I haven’t heard a word since, so I don’t know if I’m having the keyhole surgery or not.

What you must know is the Quo is my wife’s favourite band: she can sing every word of every song from ‘On the Level’ to ‘Just Supposin’ and when ‘Down Down’ comes on, you better move away coz the tornado is on its way! She’s dragged me to more Quo gigs than I care to remember, but I got the right formula in the end: a few pints, bit of grass and some devil’s dandruff and there is no way you can stay still. You have to shake your head and do all the naff things coz your body won’t allow you not to and your brain

119

agrees with your body ... you just have to hope that no one sees you! So, when I told her that Status Quo was playing in an hour somewhere in London, naturally, her first question was: “Who told you that?”

“Lucifer”.

‘Darlink, you got a high fever. You were imagining things, as you always do when you have a fever’.

So, in the end, there was no Quo, no double denim, no high heeled boy called Lucifer, no gig, nothing. It was all in my head. Powerful thing, your brain. But what there was and always will be, if we can fight for it, was the NHS; brilliant as always at putting you back on track and all they ask for is a smile, a thank you and a fair wage packet. Heroes one and all.

“It wasn’t like that! He had high heel boots on! And double denim!”

www.flickniferecords.co.uk

“Riiiight. Is that one of your biker mates?”

“Nooo! Lucifer as in the Devil”.

And that’s my point: Hospitals, they’re weird places. If you go to one to visit a friend or relative, you’re never quite sure why you came: everything smells off and everyone looks at you like it’s your fault they’re sick. But if you’re not well, a hospital is a confusing place: you meet all kind of weirdos who tell you strange stories and because you’re at a low ebb, you believe them. Having said that, the NHS do a fantastic amount of good work: to watch those young nurses and doctors keeping it all going ... you want to hug them and cry and tell them what good people they are and how sorry you are that you’re sick, coz you don’t want to add to their load. When we

120

eventually win the war against COVID-19, I reckon they should all get a medal and MBE or something like that. But really, they should be told about the Quo! Although, what are the chances of them ever playing live again? Slim, I’d say.

Page 118: Frenchy with Status Quo fans, wife Michelle (right) and Suzanne.

Below: Quo playing in London?

‘Help Me’ and ‘Love’s Interlude (ii)’.

Every one of their twenty-two years experience in playing together is inherent in the band’s music and ‘Is Love Enough?’ has built on their growing stature, as well as presenting a more mature approach to their songs.

Romancing the

Stone Foundation

Interview and Review by Martin Hutchinson.

The eight-piece Midlands-based soul band Stone Foundation have just released their sixth studio album, ‘Is Love Enough?’ It was preceded by the single ‘Deeper Love’, which features Paul Weller as lead vocalist.

Also featured are up and coming soul stars Laville and Durand Jones, and actor Peter Capaldi who provides the album’s spoken finale, ‘Love’s Outro’. Don’t worry folks, he doesn’t sing, just recites words written by Vincent Van Gogh.

The album was produced by the band’s founding members Neil Jones and Neil Sheasby and was recorded at Paul Weller’s Black Barn Studios. Weller and Stone Foundation have collaborated before on albums, and not only does he have lead vocal duties on ‘Deeper Love’, but also provides backing vocals to the track ‘Picture a Life’, and plays guitar on ‘Af-Ri-Ka’,

“This time we wanted to sing songs about love”, Neil Jones tells me.

“Right now it seemed to us that we needed more of that LOVE than ever”.

The other Neil, Sheasby, chips in: “We felt it was the right moment to move the big subjects such as hope, compassion, empathy and indeed love to the forefront of our writing.

We wanted to attempt something ambitious”. He concludes, “It was a joy to create, one of the most productive periods for us, the ideas just flowed”.

‘Is Love Enough?’ is out now on 100 Percent Records. www.stonefoundation.co.uk www.facebook.com/ stonefoundation

121

Bruce Springsteen Past, Present and The Boss Alice Jones-Rodgers reviews ‘Letter to You’ Photography by Danny Clinch.

122

Sometime around the release of Bruce Springsteen’s 1973 debut album ‘Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.’, The Boss’ self-confessed hero and key influence on those early works and in some way, everything that has followed since, Bob Dylan reportedly warned him that he “better be careful not to use all the words in the English language on his first album”.

Dylan needn’t have worried because a full forty-seven years after that record and having used the power of the written word to talk about subjects ranging from coming of age in your hometown (more often than not New Jersey) and the desire to escape those surroundings on 1975’s ‘Born to Run’ and 1978’s ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’; teenage pregnancy and the crippling effects of unemployment on 1980’s ‘The River’; criminals on the run or awaiting the electric chair on 1982’s ‘Nebraska’ to the grief felt in the aftermath of 9/11 and the need to find some sort of hope for the future on 2002’s ‘The Rising’, whilst always in some way making a stand for the common man, such as the average blue collar workers who have often dominated his output, Springsteen returns with his twentieth album and first with his legendary backing group The E Street Band since 2014’s ‘High Hopes’, ‘Letter to You’.

This time, however, as he reaches the grand old age of 71, we discover

Springsteen attempting to find the words to help him come to terms with the passing of three close friends who he has worked with over the course of his six decade career, these of course being two members of his legendary backing band, the E Street Band (organist Danny Federici and saxophonist Clarence “The Big Man” Clemons, who died in 2008 and 2011, respectively) and his bandmate from first group The Castilles (1964-1967), George Theiss, who died in 2018. With these losses and his own advanced years, Springsteen has also developed a heightened awareness of his own mortality. On ‘Letter to You’, he largely dispenses with the character studies that have previously dominated his output and as opposed to writing songs very much rooted in the present and looking towards the future, the twelve tracks featured here look inwards and towards his own past.

With the death of Theiss, Springsteen found himself to be the final living member of his first foray into the world of performing and making music, or as he puts it on the fifth track of ‘Letter to You’, the ‘Last Man Standing’, which finds him reminiscing with the help of “Faded pictures in an old scrapbook, Faded pictures that somebody took”.

‘Last Man Standing’ also serves to preserve the memory of Clemons with its sax solo played by The Big Man’s nephew, Jake Clemons. Such memories of those who have passed in some way inform every one of the

123

twelve tracks on ‘Letter to You’, from the opening ‘One Minute You’re Here’, which with its stark, unadorned and ethereal quality echoes the sound of the bleak and unforgiving ‘Nebraska’ or ‘I’m On Fire’ from 1984’s stadium filling ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ to the closing ‘I’ll See You in My Dreams’, an uplifting full-band lament which references Dylan’s ‘Death is Not the End’ (‘Down in the Groove’, 1988).

Less subtle Dylan influences can be heard on the three tracks which Springsteen has resurrected from the early days of his career for inclusion on ‘Letter to You’, all of which pre-date ‘Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.’ These tracks not only add to the sense that this album was made in order to find some sort of solace in the present by looking at the past, but are also fascinating insights into The Boss’ early years. Of these numbers, it is easy to see why ‘Song for Orphans’ was left on the cutting room floor in the early seventies. That isn’t to say that it is a bad song, because it is far from it, it is wonderful, but at that point in time, sounding as it does a little like an amalgamation of Dylan’s ‘My Back Pages’, ‘Chimes of Freedom’ (both ‘Another Side of Bob Dylan, 1964) and ‘Visions of Johanna’ (‘Blonde on Blonde’, 1966), it probably would have caused listeners to dismiss Springsteen as a Dylan copyist. Remember here, that in 1972, he was even signed to Columbia Records by Clive Davis after attracting the attention of John

124

Hammond, the man who had some years earlier signed Dylan to the label.

Meanwhile, ‘If I Were the Priest’, which was covered by original lead singer of The Hollies, Allan Clarke in 1974, is similarly informed by the grand songwriting master, a fact made more obvious by Springsteen’s Dylan-esque vocal inflections and the partnership of Roy Bittan’s joyfully illuminating piano and Charles Giordano’s swirling organ, which appears to consciously appropriate the feel of ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ (‘Highway 61 Revisited’, 1965). For us, the best of the rediscovered songs, however, is ‘Janey Needs a Shooter’, a song that was in fact attempted for every one of Springsteen’s album from ‘The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle’ (1973) to ‘The River’.

Why ‘Janey Needs a Shooter’ was never included on any of those albums is something of a mystery, but it finds its perfect home on ‘Letter to You’, becoming just one of its many standout moments.

Speaking about ‘Letter to You’, Springsteen has said that the last thing the world needed was a political album offering a reaction to Trump’s presidency. However, he does appear to very subtly still offer his two-penneth with lyrics such as “the criminal crown has stolen the throne” on ‘House of a Thousand Guitars’ and on ‘Rainmaker’ with its protagonist who “says white’s black and black’s white, Says night’s day and day’s

night” and their supporters who “come to make damn sure, my friend, This mean season’s got nothing to do with them”. Whilst talking about the latter track, with its inventive musical backdrop consisting of a slow lead-up of a little more than a solitary slide guitar, a piano and minimal percussion evoking an unforgiving, desolate landscape before erupting into one of those massive, full-on, almost evangelical choruses that The Boss and his bandmates are most famed for, this would probably be a good point to further discuss the sheer brilliance of The E Street Band on this album.

‘Letter to You’ was recorded live by Springsteen and the eight member strong backing group (Bittan, Giardono, Clemons, guitarist Steve Van Zandt, guitarist Nils Lofgren, backing vocalist Patti Scialfa, bassist Garry Tallent and drummer Max Weinberg) with producer Ron Amiello in just four days at Thru Hill Recording, Springsteen’s home studio in Colt Neck, New Jersey, in November last year. Only a few overdubs, such as guitar solos, handclaps and “gang vocals” were added afterwards.

Whether that gang are backing up The Boss on something as delicate as ‘One Minute You’re Here’, adorning it with that highly effective and affecting low in the mix, pulsing percussion, Bittan’s beautiful piano line and subtle but nether-the-less wondrous string section or on songs as full of classic Springsteen gargantuan chorus-driven,

stadium-friendly, full band delivered bombast as the album’s sprightly and heartfelt title track, an ode to the blood, sweat and tears that go into his songwriting; the following thrill-ride hurtling down the track before breaking out of speakers in a fireball of exhilarating energy, ‘Burning Train’; ‘The Power of Prayer’, which sings the praises of healing through music; the magnificent celebration of living in the present, ‘Ghosts’, which even comes complete with that false-end followed by the “1,2,3,4” summoning the band back in for one last hoorah that we had been waiting for since the start of the album or the even more glorious account of “the bitter and bored in search of the fourth chord”, ‘House of a Thousand Guitars’ and even after losing two key members and having spent as long in the business as Springsteen himself, The E Street Band are still simply the greatest backing band in rock ‘n’ roll.

For all the darkness on display within the album’s subject matter, the live approach to making ‘Letter to You’ has made for something utterly joyous: a real rock ‘n’ roll band all in the same room, doing what they do best, quite literally singing from the same sheet.

Despite the fact that the album was recorded before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, in these times of social distancing and uncertainty over the future of live music, this approach is just one the many aspects of ‘Letter to You’ that makes it exactly the album

125

the world needed right now.

Earlier this year, Dylan presented us with his thirty-ninth studio album, ‘Rough and Rowdy Ways’, a record that for all its great moments was a somewhat cumbersome and plodding affair, but with ‘Letter to You’, his musical offspring, who back when three of its songs were written sought so hard to ward off detractors who claimed he was a Dylan wannabe has, twenty albums in, given us what can truly be considered to be one of his best works to date.

Ghosts of the dearly departed may haunt every facet of ‘Letter to You’, but it is in no way the farewell note from

126

Springsteen that many have suggested it to be. If any proof were needed, just listen to that triumphant cry of “I’m alive!” on ‘Ghosts’. Now, with those stadiums readying themselves to welcome The Boss back where he and The E Street Band belong, ‘Letter to You’ is an album that was in every way designed for the purpose; one that seeks to find peace with the past in order to herald a new beginning.

‘Letter to You’ is out now on Columbia Records. brucespringsteen.net www.facebook.com/ brucespringsteen

through to their breakthrough in the breakthrough in the early seventies.

Then he tells us of their glory days, when they were one of the biggest bands in the world, but with nothing held back. We get the behind the scenes view of the arguments, drink and drug excesses, and some members’ resentment about the ‘take over’ of the band by Glenn Frey and Don Henley.

Eagles: The Inside Stories Behind America’s Biggest Band

By Ben Fong-Torres

Review by Martin Hutchinson.

THE back-cover blurb states that the story is “Fifty years of music, breakups, lawsuits & redemptions”, and I heartily agree. The history of the Eagles reads almost like a soap opera and it has all the ups and downs, tragedy and humour that all good stories should have. Now, Ben, a former music editor of Rolling Stone magazine, has put it all together in this easy-to-read, lavishly illustrated book.

In chronological order, Ben tells us of the early lives of the fledgling band, the struggles and successes of its members,

Then the break-up, when we were told that the band would only get back together “when hell freezes over” and when they did get back together, what did they call the resultant 1994 live album? ‘Hell Freezes Over’.

Utilising his own (and other) interviews with various members of the band, we get the whole story - and it’s brought right up to date with the tragic death of Glenn Frey in 2016 and the 2019 tour, which featured Glenn’s son Deacon, but was curtailed due to the pandemic.

I can’t think of a better book about this iconic band. Just one small criticism: we could have done with a discography.

Welbeck Publishing ISBN: 978-1-78739-437-7 Hardback. 192 pages Fully illustrated. eagles.com www.facebook.com/ EaglesBand

127

On the Rocks Who You Gonna Call?

Review by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

Bill Murray has been typecast. For any other actor, this would be a severe disadvantage. But not Murray. No, because Murray has become typecast as himself ... or at least, in more recent years, largely due to films such as 2003’s Sofia Coppola directed ‘Lost in Translation’, what we now assume Murray to be like: a world-weary, dry-witted, deadpan, charming, funny but slightly infuriating presence who is fond of the finer things in life, such a nice tipple; one who you just know will whisk you away from the mundanity of everyday life for a whistle-stop tour of all the swankiest drinking venues and sort out any problems you may have in the process.

For many, this has become ‘the Bill Murray fantasy’. So much so, that it is often now almost impossible to

128

differentiate where whichever character he is playing ends and where the actor begins. It is a complex web that became even more tangled when Coppola teamed up with Murray once again for the Netflix television special ‘A Very Murray Christmas’ in 2015, a film in which he plays himself ... or does he? We’re not sure, but what we do know is that the spark for what would become Coppola’s latest film, ‘On the Rocks’ was ignited after her friend told her a story about her friend and her playboy father hiding in the bushes spying on her husband. So, “who you gonna call?” (arf, arf) to bring this character to life on the big screen? None other than Murray.

This time, Murray has been teamed up with Rashida Jones, who plays his, or rather his character Felix’s (confusing, isn’t it?) daughter Laura Keane, a writer who’s work has suffered greatly since she tied the knot with Dean, who is just starting to become a successful businessman and entrepreneur, and has given birth to two young children.

Whereas she used to write into the wee small hours, she is now forced to work during the day, something that try as she might, she finds impossible. As her creative output wanes, her imagination searches for a new outlet and she starts to wonder whether her new husband is cheating on her. He has been going on an awful lot of business trips recently and had become increasingly distant.

He is even away for her birthday.

Surely, this is just the result of her

anxieties about the changes that have been made to her life manifesting themselves in a deep distrust of her husband. Or is it?

Who better to call than your dear old Dad to sort this mess out once and for all? Upon meeting with Felix, Laura tells him her concerns. “Raise your hand if that sounds fishy?”, Felix implores. “He’s not like you. He’s a great guy, a great Dad”, she tells her dinosaur-like, Martini generation, lifelong philanderer father, to which he as casually as you like replies, “Sure.

It’s nature: Males are force to fight to dominate and to impregnate often.”

Thus, the seed has well and truly been planted in Laura’s head that Dean is playing away from home and she and her father go on a spy mission to find out exactly what he is up to, following him and checking his phone.

Felix relishes the opportunity to play the private detective to uncover the truth about Dean. However, what soon becomes clear is that having spent a lifetime chasing women and generally being disreputable, all the caddish Felix actually wants to do is spend more time with his daughter, rather perversely leaping on the very notion that Laura’s marriage might be on the rocks like a thing possessed in order to impart his (note the use of very strong inverted commas) ‘knowledge’. What follows is a thrills and spills trip around New York, taking in all of its sights and famous locations, such as Manhattan’s

legendary speakeasy, the 21 Club (the pair occupy the same table where Humphrey Bogart proposed to Lauren Bacall, no less), during which Felix, in true Dad-style, offers up a barrage of useless information and cringe-worthy Dad jokes and whereas ‘On the Rocks’ begins by being about the relationship between husband and wife, it actually ends up being about the relationship between father and daughter.

Many critics have written ‘On the Rocks’ off as being a very slight film, but we urge you to scratch beneath the ‘life of privilege, but something has gone wrong’ surface that also formed the basis of ‘Lost in Translation’ to discover its myriad depths. Yes, for the most part, it is a screwball comedy, but it is also a film about how fathers and daughters, men and women and people of different generations interact with each other.

Is it as good as ‘Lost in Translation’?

Well, that film probably still stands as Coppola’s crowning achievement, but certain parallels can be drawn between that film and this, not least in the way that Murray works as wonderfully with Jones as he did with Scarlett Johansson ... and similarly, prepare yourself for the final scene. Meanwhile, the supporting cast, not least Jenny Slate, who makes a very entertaining cameo as Laura’s friend Vanessa, provide the perfect foil to Laura and Felix’s shenanigans in a film that is far more than the sum of its parts.

129

www.eighthdaycommunications.co.uk