Eighth Day Magazine Issue Forty-three

EIGHTH DAY JIMMY WEBB SIMPLE MINDS / ALICE COOPER / THE SOAPGIRLS / ALABAMA 3 / SUNFLOWER BEAN / JO-JO & THE TEETH / LAPELS / RED GUITARS / MANDY MORTON AND SPRIGUNS / ES.

ISSUE FORTY-THREE. APRIL. £5.50

SOMEONE LEFT THE CAKE OUT IN THE RAIN: THE GENIUS OF

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EDITORIAL

Top: Alice Jones-Rodgers Editor-in-Chief Scott Rodgers Photographer

EIGHTH DAY

Bottom, from left to right: Dave Hammond Staff Writer Martin Hutchinson Staff Writer Paul Foden Staff Writer Peter Dennis Staff Writer

Issue Forty-three April 2022

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

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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. Simple Minds Interview by Martin Hutchinson.

8. The SoapGirls Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

44. Alice Cooper Interview by Martin Hutchinson.

49 / 61 / 95. Wasted World Another instalment of Dan Webster’s legenday comic strip.

122. Cambridge Calling ... and Beyond!

By Dave Hammond.

128. Jo-Jo & The Teeth Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

142. Frenchy’s Rants This month: Beam Me Up, Lem!

50. Alabama 3 Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

145. Duran Duran Martin Hutchinson reviews ‘Baptism of Fire: A Year Living & Working with Duran Duran’

by Ian Little.

62. German Shepherd Records Presents: Es. Interview by Bob Osborne.

146. Red Hot Chili Peppers Alice Jones-Rodgers reviews ‘Unlimited Love’.

66. Red Guitars Interview by Dave Hammond.

149. The Trammps Martin Hutchinson reviews ‘Burn Baby Burn: Disco Inferno (The Trammps Albums 1975-1980).

76. Jimmy Webb Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

86. Sunflower Bean Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

96. Mandy Morton & Spriguns Interview by Dave Hammond.

114. Lapels Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

150. Ambulance Review by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

Twelve and Six Subscriptions available from our website.

Glittering Past: 45 Years of

Simple Minds Interview by Martin Hutchinson Photography (this page) by Paul Cox.

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“... 45 years later, it’s given us everything, a life beyond our dreams, and a purpose.”

Legendary Scottish band Simple Minds are undertaking a celebratory UK and Ireland tour starting on 31st March in London and ending on 17th April in Dublin. Originally planned for 2020 as a celebration of 40 years of hit-making, the band’s formation in 1977 means that the band, which started out as a Punk Rock outfit is now 45 years old.

Childhood friends Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill formed the Punk band Johnny and the Self-Abusers. On the same day as releasing their first single, ‘Saints and Sinners’ on 11th November 1977, the band split, with Kerr, Burchill, drummer Brian McGee and bassist Tony Donald putting together the first incarnation of Simple Minds.

Between 1976 and 1995, Simple Minds released eleven albums. There was an unbroken run of six top three albums, which included three consecutive chart-toppers with ‘Sparkle in the Rain’ (1984), ‘Once Upon a Time’ (1985) and ‘Street Fighting Years’ (1989). Singles

included ‘Promised You a Miracle’ (1982, UK#13, ‘New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84)’); ‘Waterfront’ (UK#13, ‘Sparkle in the Rain’); ‘Sanctify Yourself’ (UK#10, ‘Once Upon a Time’); ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’, which, propelled by its use on John Hughes’ Brat Pack classic ‘The Breakfast Club’ (1984) became a number one in the US and Canada, as well as achieving Platinum status in the UK, Canada and Italy and ‘Belfast Child’ (‘Street Fighting Years’), which topped the charts in the UK, Ireland and Holland. The band also became a commanding live act. They have toured constantly and were voted the world’s best live band by Q magazine in 1991.

Vocalist Kerr, now 62, has guided the Simple Minds’ ship since it’s formation in 1977 and, along with guitarist Burchill, is still the bands’ focal point.

Just ahead of joining up with the rest of the band for rehearsals, I caught up with Kerr, who began by telling me what he had been up to during lockdown.

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Jim Kerr (right) and Charlie Burchill.

Photograph by Dean Chalkley

“Funnily enough, it’s two years ago this week when our newly begun world tour came crashing down”, says Kerr ruefully. “I found myself back in Sainsbury’s in Glasgow wondering what the hell had happened! At the time, I was scared and confused, but we all thought that we’d be back touring by the summer, and now, two summers later, here we are. And we’re really excited to be going back out.”

But Kerr and the band have been far from idle: “That’s right, a few months into lockdown we turned our attention to writing and recording a new album. It’s within touching distance of being finished, but we are breaking off to do the tour around the UK and Europe which takes us into the summer. We hope it’ll be released in the first part of next year.”

Kerr and Burchill met when they were just eight years old and apart from the musical bond, they are both fans of Celtic FC. Kerr explains how they met

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each other: “The first day I met Charlie was when we moved into a house in a Glasgow housing scheme.

As my mum and dad were moving our few sticks of furniture in, they told me to go out and play. Just down the street were a bunch of kids and that’s when I met Charlie. We’ve been playing together ever since! We started making music at school, we were in class together and we had some mates who had the same taste in music. We formed a few bands at school, and Simple Minds is really a continuation of that passion for music.”

Kerr’s original musical influences came in the early seventies, as he explains: “Well, people of that generation were into Glam Rock, and especially for me, people like Marc Bolan, David Bowie and Roxy Music. We had a fantastic music venue, the Glasgow Apollo, and really great audiences.

We really immersed ourselves in the live music scene.”

Thinking about 45 years of Simple Minds, Kerr is philosophical: “There’s two different trains of thought.

Firstly, it’s how lucky are we that we’ve conjured up this thing and 45 years later, it’s given us everything, a life beyond our dreams, and a purpose. Also, time is a hard thing to get your mind round. I’m 63 this year. There’s an element of pride, but life is passing by so fast. It’s fantastic and unnerving that it’s lasted so

long.”

After 55 years of friendship and 45 years of being in Simple Minds, Kerr admits that he and Burchill do have arguments: “We don’t have many blow ups, but when we do you don’t want to be around. We have never had fisticuffs, but it has come close sometimes. There’s usually one every album. We know it’s coming and we ask people to leave the studio when it happens. It’s daft really as we shout at the top of our voices and everyone can hear what we’re saying. They don’t last long and they’re usually out of frustration. Neither of us like arguing, but it illustrates our passion for the music. Also, we tend to get more and more ‘Glaswegian’ as it goes on! I remember once when we had one of our iconic arguments, we were working with a recording engineer who’d seen it all in his time.

After it had finished, he came up to us and said ‘I’d like to shake you by the hand. That’s one of the best band fights I’ve ever seen!’”

For this tour, celebrating 40 years of hits, Kerr tells me that the band want to do something for everybody: “The setlist is gonna span through the ages. Yes, there’ll be the songs [hits] you expect to hear, but we may do some obscure songs and maybe a cover. There’s a lot of boxes to be ticked”. He adds with a twinkle in his eye, “And, if we’re feeling cheeky, we may do ‘Dead Vandals’ [the flipside

of ‘Saints and Sinners’], a song we recorded as Johnny and the Self Abusers!”

After so long, there must be some highlights. Kerr ponders before saying, “Yes, well, obviously there’s things like Live Aid, our first time on ‘Top of the Pops’ and the first hits; all iconic moments for us. But I have great memories of our very first gig.

There was only thirty people there and they went mental! It felt like such a victory! You need that encouragement. We had no reputation back then and we were hoping that they’d get on our side.”

Simple Minds 40 Years of Hits tour will be heading out around the country from late-March to mid-April with a few dates in the summer. For all dates, tickets and other Simple Minds news, visit the links below: www.simpleminds.com www.facebook.com/simpleminds

Photograph by Dean Chalkley

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Clean Up the World!

Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

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“... we’re just a very quirky family that believes 100% in following your dreams.”

At the ripe old ages of 26 and 27 respectively, French-born, South African-raised sisters Camille (Millie) and Noemie (Mie) Debray, aka The SoapGirls, have seen all the horrors that the mainstream music industry has to offer. The charismatic siblings began their career at ages 8 and 9 as child street performers on the streets of Cape Town, singing whilst selling handmade soap for charity, thus earning the name ‘The SoapGirls’.

By the ages of 12 and 13, they had cut their earliest songs in the studio, with one of the tracks, ‘Boys Boys’ finding its way onto a 2009 Japanese compilation album entitled ‘Do the Independence (and Bridge Build Burn By Yourself)’, leading to a record deal with Universal Records South Africa two years later. Their debut album, 2011’s ‘Xperience’, hit the number one spot on the South African charts and the duo embarked on a national tour and appeared on a number of the country’s TV shows, including ‘Idols

South Africa’, where their daring stage attire made them one of the most talked about, and hated, acts to have been featured.

Disillusioned by the lack of creative control they had been afforded and the poor treatment they had been subjected to whilst signed to Universal Records, the Debrays fought to end their association with the label for a full four years, a time which they used to save up money by waitressing whilst planning out their next move. Once free from their contract, gone was their early label-controlled Dance-Pop orientated sound in favour of self-released, wholly self-sufficient, full-throttle Punk Rock, complete with a boundary-pushing image and attitude to match.

The SoapGirls’ new found freedom was first expressed on their 2015 album ‘Calls for Rebellion’ and expanded upon with two further offerings, 2017’s ‘Societys Rejects’

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Millie

and 2019’s double-disc ‘Elephant in the Room’. After entertaining the masses with over 100 weeks of lockdown livestreams, 15th April sees Millie and Mie return with their new single, ‘Breathe’, the first taste of their upcoming fifth album, ‘In My Skin’, expected in July. And with their new material comes an extensive world tour, known as the ‘Don’t Give a Damn Tour’, which starts in the UK on 9th April at a secret venue in Rotherham.

When I recently caught up with Millie and Mie (and their mother / manager Sam Debray and assorted pets) at their home in Cape Town via Zoom video chat, the pair were more than a little excited to be getting back out on the road, with Millie starting the conversation by saying, “We feel like bees on Red Bull and crack because we’ve got to like pack up the house and make sure everything’s ready for when we go and packing is NOT our forte! I don’t know, it’s just fucked up! It’s the same with the tour, because we just don’t know

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what to expect, because it’s just crazy, but we’re just going for it!

Kind of, that’s all we know!”

And so, after we had shared hair care tips and Millie had very kindly told me, “This is gonna sound really weird, but you remind me of Drew Barrymore. I was wondering who you remind me of! Your face looks like her’s, I don’t know why!”, we set about delving into the wild and wonderful world of South Africa’s most exciting export.

Firstly, hello Millie and Mie, it is lovely to speak to you. Could we start by asking you to introduce yourselves and tell us what each of you does in The SoapGirls?

Millie: Right, we are The SoapGirls, Millie and Mie, and how we got the name The SoapGirls is actually quite a quirky but ... I don’t know, it defines us.

When we were kids, we used to street perform and we used to sell soap.

Mie: Baskets of soap, yeah.

Mie

Millie: Handmade soap that our mum made. You get Girl Scouts in South Africa, but not like the American version where people go out and they do good deeds, it’s not the same, but we wanted to do something like that and we decided, ‘Well, let’s just do it!’

So, we took soap and we went door to door and we were trying to raise funds for like a children’s hospital or something that we could help and then our mum was like, ‘I don’t really like you guys going door to door’, because it’s a dangerous country, South Africa, and going into strangers’ houses, it’s not that safe and we were eight and nine, so we were like ‘Okay, well, let’s go down to the harbour , because it’s open and everyone can see you and it will be safe’.

Mie: And it’s right down the road from our house. It’s a tiny little village. So, we’d go and spend every day there and street perform and meet people from all over the world.

Millie: Yeah, we went 365 days a year, even if there was no one and we met

one person, it was our mission to make someone smile and it gave us a sense of purpose. I mean, when you’re a kid, you always want to do good deeds and that’s what got us started. We kept seeing newspaper articles of things happening all over the world that we wanted to help. And it wasn’t that we were very well off ourselves, but our mum always brought us up to look beyond our own situation and see everything that’s going on and never walk past someone that’s hungry and think it’s normal. You should, if you can help, help someone.

Mie: But also, through doing what we were doing, we gained like a new found confidence, I would say, and it showed us that, hey, we really enjoy entertaining people.

Millie: And so, what it was, we were able to do something that we were very passionate about, which is uplifting and helping other people and even if you, yourself, are not in a good place and you can do that for other people, it gives you something that nothing else

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can do. It’s a sense of, I don’t know, like, purpose. We would go and raise funds and people were quite ugly as well. I mean, we learned to have a really thick skin, you know. So, we would go up to people and just start bursting into song.

Mie: Some people were really sweet, some people were fucking awful!

Millie: And it taught us to really not give a damn! I mean, we knew what we wanted to do and they told us, you’ll never raise that much money and we did! We raised even more than what we set out to do! We bought incubators, humidifiers, and people called us ‘the soap girls’. At first, we were ‘the ladies in pink’ and then it was ‘the soap girls’! Everyone would drive by and go, ‘Hey, the soap girls!’

So, that’s just our name and we started getting into music professionally from when we were twelve and thirteen and also, from when we were selling the soap and street performing, we met all met all kinds of people and we happened to meet someone that had a

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recording studio and the guy was like, ‘Hey, I’ve got a recording studio, do you want to come and maybe do some songs? Because you sing’ and we were like, ‘Okay, yeah, cool!’ Yeah, because we hadn’t actually wanted to do that and life’s a weird thing. As soon as you realise what you want to do, you start finding that roads start feeding you in a direction and you’re like, ‘Okay, cool!’

So, we went and ooh, we had some very bad experiences!

Mie: Yeah, we learned fast that people are pretty fucked up!

Millie: Anyway, it shaped a lot of things and we started learning what we wanted and yeah, we just kept at it and eventually, we even got signed to a record label [Universal Records] and that was the whole other thing that made us very determined.

Mie: It taught us really that we would never want to be in that same situation again, where somebody else is dictating to you how you should be and what your sound should be because they

have this idea of you and that’s just what you have to be. And we were like, ‘We don’t ever want to do that again’.

Millie: So, we were very determined to be completely DIY, which again, has taken many, many years to be able to even save up and just do our own music. We produce everything ourselves, we’ve worked from like absolute scratch to like follow our dreams and again, when people say, ‘Who are The SoapGirls?’, I don’t know, we’re just a very quirky family that believes 100% in following your dreams no matter what and just making the world, in your own way, a better place.

Mie: And also spreading our message of just freedom and believing in yourself and doing what you want to do.

Millie: And also, don’t, under any circumstances, define what you can or can’t accomplish.

Mie: And also, other people’s labels of you ... don’t let that affect you, just be who you are.

Let’s skip forward to the here and now because 15th April sees the release of your new single, ‘Breathe’, our first taste of your forthcoming fourth album, ‘In My Skin’, due for release in July. What can you tell us about the new single?

Millie: So, it’s been over two years of doing the lockdown shows. We’ve done one hundred and, I think, four weeks straight of livestreams, which has been an insane adventure, something that we didn’t think we would ever do, but obviously, COVID changed a lot of things. But, through all the livestreams, we’ve connected to people in countries who would never have heard our music, or found it, so it’s been really cool and we were able to record our fourth album, ‘In My Skin’, and ‘Breathe’, this new single, we are extremely excited for, because I think ... I don’t know, what does the song mean to you?

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Mie: A lot of people hold on to like baggage and shit that has been weighing them down and I think, especially in the last many years, a lot of people have had regrets about things that they didn’t do, but if you keep bringing your past with you and carrying a weight around with you, you can’t exactly go anywhere, you can’t move forward. So, I think that’s really good and really cool and fitting that we’re going to be releasing that song and getting out on tour again, because we haven’t been able to tour properly for years now, so ...

Millie: And also the music video for the song was quite a weird video. I mean, there’s nothing controversial ... okay, well, we don’t think about it, but there was some themes that the police in South Africa ... we kept getting stopped whilst we were filming it, so we had to cut some of the scenes, because they were just ruined. So, that was pretty annoying! I mean, we were going to leave the cops in it, but it didn’t go with the whole vibe of the video. I was just walking down the

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road and I was wearing bodypaint and tape and no bits were out, or whatever, and someone obviously complained in a house somewhere and the cops showed up!

Mie: Like two patrols, two big cars and we were just like ...

Millie: One went fast, another one went and then they came back and they were like, ‘Oh, what’s going on here?’

And we were like, ‘We’re busy filming a music video’ and they were like, ‘Oh, but it’s indecent exposure’, and I was like, ‘But I’m covered!’

Mie: But, it’s a bit ironic, because they were called and within ten minutes they came over ...

Millie: Normally, no, that never happens in South Africa!

Mie: You don’t get that, even if you’re house is being burgled!

Millie: If you’re being stabbed!

Mie: I almost hate them, yeah!

We’ll be there next week?

Millie: Yeah, it’s weird! I don’t know, people have some strange priorities when it comes to what is shocking to the public. It’s very weird, I don’t know! And I hope people enjoy the video, so we’re going to release the single on the 15th [May] and the video.

Yeah.

It has been three years since your last album, the two-disc set, ‘Elephant in the Room’. What can you tell us about your new album, ‘In My Skin’, at this point in time and how do you feel it differs from ‘Elephant in the Room’?

Mie: Ooh! Millie: Well, this album isn’t a double album! [Laughs]. It’s very tricky, because once we start writing, it’s very difficult to stop and then we can’t decide which songs to put on the album. I think it’s probably our most

emotional. I mean, a lot of times, we’ve almost been anti-political in what we write. Even in the beginning of hearing a song, if you listen or look at the lyrics, you’ll be like, ‘Aah, okay!’

Mie: And I think we went through a lot of different things and we’ve grown as artists, so, yeah, it’s more selfreflective?

Millie: I think, yeah.

So, do you think with the period in which you wrote and recorded ‘In My Skin’ having been the time of lockdowns and things like that, it has made you write in a more self-reflective sort of way, perhaps?

Mie: Definitely, yeah! And also, I think it showed us maybe a different part of ourselves and also, maybe people in your life, you kind of saw different parts of them.

Millie: I mean, bad situations bring out either the best or the worst in people

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and I think it’s the same like ... I don’t know, the breakdown in friendships, or relationships, just things that you notice and that. And having the time to like write, because we had more time than usual. Normally, it’s off tour, write, get out on tour again! And, like, I don’t know, it was just different.

Mie: And there’s even a song on the album about how a lot of things, especially in this country, were handled with the lockdown and everything.

That really showed us, wow, the people in power really don’t give a fuck about us.

Millie: There is no humanity if someone can beat to death someone for not wearing a mask or drinking a beer, because alcohol was illegal here, even though the person in charge had dibs on the black market for their own alcohol and to us, that was just like, ‘Wow, okay, this is ...!’

Mie: Like, people will farm out orders without considering what they’re doing to someone else, the harm that they’re

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inflicting on to others in the name of doing something good. That to us was just like, ‘Woah, okay!’

Millie: Of course, people don’t realise that’s how Hitler brainwashed people too, so you need to think and not just follow, like, the crowd and use your own intuition.

Well, it looks as though all that is starting to happen with Putin over in Russia, doesn’t it?

Millie: And history just repeats itself.

It’s actually kind of scary when you look at what’s going on and you’re just like, ‘Wow!’ Mie: But people to me are so shocking, because they blame the Russian people for decisions that their government made, even though they were living in a communist society, so how the fuck would it have been the normal civilians’ choice to go to war?

Well, it would seem to be just one person, Putin, wouldn’t it?

Millie: Exactly! I just think people need to have more compassion. Just think how you would like to be treated in the same situation and I guess you can’t really go wrong, because no one wants to be treated like shit or indecently, yeah. And I think also, it’s unfortunate that a lot of people are frustrated and unhappy, obviously because of everything that’s happened and then anything where they get a sniff of any hatred towards one party or the other, it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, let’s do it!’, even if they don’t understand the full picture [laughs], which is stupid!

But, so, each song on the album, I don’t know, it’s an in-depth reflection of how we’re reacting to things we are seeing.

Yeah, that’s brilliant. I can’t wait to hear the full album!

Millie: Yeah, you’ll feel something, because it’s shit that we know other people feel as well. You can’t not, because everyone’s different, but at the same time, you get a feeling from things.

Mie: And also as well, I think it depends on where someone is at a point in their life. You listen to a song when you’re in a certain area, or whatever, of your life and it doesn’t really like hit anything with you, but then maybe a few years later, you hear it again and you’re like ‘Holy shit!’ Music is crazy like that!

Amazing! I’m really looking forward to hearing the album! The single is great!

Both: Hey, thank you!

Millie: It’s [the album] is also very diverse. I mean, the one song on there, the song ‘Kill Me’, that’s probably the [laughs] scariest song we’ve ever done!

But like, I don’t know, it’s quite a harsh song, but it’s interesting, because you have ‘Breathe’ ... so, it’s like a rollercoaster. There’s some very sweet moments on the album and then the rest is like, ‘Woah, okay!’ That’s what we’re looking forward to live.

Mie: There’s a song on the album

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called ‘Medicated Bubblebath’ and I think this is where you can use that song as like a measure to see if people are really listening to what it is that you’re saying in the music. Because they might think ‘oh, that’s a fun melody’, or something, but when you actually break down the lyrics and read what it is that we’re saying, it’s pretty ...

Millie: ... scathing.

Mie: Scathing, yeah! [Laughs].

Millie: And the thing is with music, it’s always open to interpretation, so we love when someone ... they make up their own mind about what something means to them.

To be honest, I think that’s a big mark of a good song, where people can listen to it and you can have all these different interpretations of it.

And I like it when songs aren’t explained to you and you can sort of draw your own meaning from it. I think that makes it more special for

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the person who is listening as well.

Mie: Because you’ve created your own memory.

Millie: I completely agree. You know the song ‘Alive’ [‘Ten’, 1991] by Pearl Jam? Eddie Vedder, he said it wasn’t meant to be like an uplifting song, he said it was a real downer song and he was shocked, but he said it changed the way he felt about the song, because people used it as like an uplifting anthem ...

Mie: ... as opposed to a suicidal sort of song.

Millie: But it wasn’t intended, so he said it made him look at the song completely differently. That’s crazy!

Mie: But, I suppose it’s the same as like a painting by an artist. Like, everyone can look at a painting and feel something different. You know, maybe see it from a different angle. Yeah.

How does the composition of a

SoapGirls song usually happen? Is it a case of you both sitting down in a room together or will one of you come up with an idea which will then be expanded upon by the two of you?

Millie: With us, there’s no kind of formula, like, but it works very similar how we do it.

Mie: No song that we’ve ever written has ever been planned out, or pre-thought out, if that makes sense.

We just ... either she’ll come in and I’m playing around or whatever on the guitar and she’ll say, ‘Don’t say anything!’

‘Dude, I’ve got the verse!’ And then she said, ‘Oh, I’ve got the chorus, man!’ And yeah!

Mie: Genuinely, one time, she was playing bass and then ...

Millie: ... I was singing a different melody and she said ‘Don’t you do that melody, I’ve got the melody!’ I was like ‘Okay!’

Mie: Like, ‘I heard this’, yeah.

Mie: You’re a liar, you don’t shave!

Millie: And even on some songs, we will sing completely different verses, like two songs we’ve put together, because we’re not agreeing with the direction of the song and it’s like ‘I insist this is my way, you do it your fucking way’ and that’s it and people are like ‘It sounds like two different songs and we’re like, ‘Well, it pretty much is!’ But it works! [Laughs]. I don’t know, generally, we’ve been through something and we feel very, like, passionate about it.

Millie: Shut up! And then I said,

Mie: Strong about it.

Millie: In one of the places that we stayed, in the house, we had a music room and there was a shower and she was playing the guitar and she didn’t know that I was writing out the lyrics on the shower tiles with like shaving foam and I was like ‘Sweet!’

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Millie: We’ll see something on the news, or witness something and be like, ‘Fuck, we have to write about it, otherwise we’re going to go insane!’

But usually, it’s always the music first, either guitar or bass, and then we hear the melody. But, one time, I was vacuuming and, I don’t know how, I heard a melody and then the song ‘Liar’ [‘In My Skin], which is on the album, [laughs] that’s that song! But, it’s also interesting, because whilst we’re writing, we record on our phones, just so we don’t forget anything and we hear it back and it’s like ‘Wow, it sounds like a completely different song!

Millie: And then she’s like, ‘Do you need a chorus or anything?’ and I’m always like, ‘Dude, the chorus is yours, do it!’

Mie: And it’s like ‘What the fuck?!’

Millie: People who don’t know what to expect would probably need therapy afterwards! The first and the last show of every tour is batshit crazy, yeah! All our shows are crazy, but these ones we can get away with a little bit more!

And then, on the 13th in Exeter, we have a show at the Bierkeller; the 14th is The Griffin in Bristol and that’s my birthday and the 15th is The Nambucca [London] and the 16th is in Guildford

Millie: Not so much the lyrics, more like the way that we sing them, it’s like ‘Woah!’ It’s cool!

Mie: Usually though, she comes up with the lyrics though. I will then just sing some gibberish and she’s like ‘The lyrics are terrible!’ and I’m like, ‘Don’t worry about it, just listen to the melody.

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The release of ‘Breathe’ is accompanied by the extensive ‘Don’t Give A Damn Tour’ of the UK and Europe, starting on 9th April at a Secret Venue in Rotherham ...

Millie: So, the first show that we have is on the 9th of April. It’s actually closed off to the general public ...

Mie: ... because it’s a private show [entry for fifty people only].

[The Holroyd] and after those shows ... if anybody wants to get to those shows, we hope everyone reading knows there’s four shows in the UK and from there, we go into Europe and there’s forty shows back to back in Europe and then back to the UK for two more shows and then after the UK, it’s America, back into Europe again. I think there’s maybe ... how many shows?

Mie: I’ve no idea yet, but normally on a tour before COVID, we would try to do about 150 to more shows a year.

Millie: We love it! I mean, for us, there’s nothing better than just doing shows.

Mie: And also, for us, because we’re coming from the tip of Africa, you need to, if you’re going to get out, like really go hard! Otherwise, there’s no point. I mean, otherwise, stay at home!

Millie: And also, you get accommodation when you’re doing the show, but afterwards, you’re fucked!

Mie: When you’re doing the shows, you’ve got to have places to stay, yeah!

Wow, how do you find it being away from home for that much of the year?

Is it just something you have got used to?

Millie: You’re in a tour van and being on the tour, you’re in your own bubble.

I mean, like, you’re in the world, but not of it. It’s just crazy and even, on tour, you can’t give a shit about dumb things. It’s literally just music, get in the car, next show!

Mie: We don’t really miss anything from home besides our animals.

Obviously, that’s one thing that we hate, that we have to leave them.

Millie: And especially because we rescued a cat in the lockdown and she had kittens and we kept the one kitten and it’s just really shit and our brother as well, he’s staying behind. So, that is pretty heavy.

Mie: We go for eight months, so it’s quite a long stretch to be away for.

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But, I mean, it’s a strange thing that you don’t really miss your band, because you kind of feel like you belong everywhere but you don’t belong anywhere.

Millie: Yeah, I don’t know, it is really cool. I’m just so grateful to be doing it.

It was our dream since we were kids, so no matter how difficult it is, it’s just the amazing energy and the fans and all the people that we’re meeting, they make it work.

Mie: And also, although it’s extremely hard, it kind of really breaks everything down and strips it all away and it shows you that if you don’t love this, because it’s very difficult ... it’s not an easy thing to do, to be away for like eight months ...

Millie: If you can wash your clothes, it’s like a rare treat!

Mie: But if you really love it, then you’ll take all the shit, so yeah!

Millie: But, honestly, it reminds us of

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when we were kids and we street performed and we were able to make people smile and happy. So, at the shows, it’s that same like exchange of energy or like a reminder to people to believe in themselves and go out and do what they want to do.

Mie: Because also, there’s a lot of ugliness in the world and I think it’s good for people to have a space where they can kind of ...

Millie: ... be themselves!

Mie: And also, it’s like our own little fucked up world that we’ve created.

Millie: It could be called a cult, or whatever, but it’s really cool! Just a whole bunch of different individuals and who are also of the mind to care for animals, to care for like vulnerable people in society and just for people to not care about what people think about them.

Mie: And also, like, just let loose!

Yeah!

Millie: Not too loose! No shitting on the stage! [Laughs].

Mie: No shitting on the stage!

Millie: I would have a good laugh if someone did decide to just take a shit on stage, but ...

Mie: ... I would throw up!

Ew, that sounds horrible!

Millie: We’ve had some very fucked up shit happen at our shows. Like, we did a show in England and I’ll never forget this. These two guys started performing oral sex on each other!

Mie: Yeah, and it was like, ‘Okay!’

Yeah, it was like a ‘Brokeback Mountain’ [2005] moment and we were like, ‘Okay!’

Oh my goodness! Do you attract this sort of thing quite often then?

Mie: I will say I have seen a lot of things, yeah!

Millie: I think after a while nothing shocks you and that kind of scares me!

Because eventually, you’re kind of like, ‘Wow!’ and other people are shocked by stuff and you’re like, ‘Woah, is this meant to be shocking?!’ We must be fucked up, [laughs] because it doesn’t even surprise us!

Mie: I mean, I never really get distracted on stage, but we played a show in Italy and the stage was kind of weird where you could see far off into the bathroom and the door was like open and this couple there were literally just having sex and I was just playing and I was just like ‘Wow, okay, whatever!’

Millie: And then you get people who like want to crowdsurf in a wheelchair, which is fucking cool, but one guy like almost took out a whole load of people and in a bad way! It was just like, ‘Woah, fuck!’ And we didn’t know where to look! Anything goes, anything!

With your earliest singles and debut

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album, ‘Xperience’ (a number one album on the South African Album Chart) having been released in 2011 on Universal Records and you having released three albums on your own label, simply called The SoapGirls since (‘Calls for Rebellion’, 2015; ‘Societys Rejects’, 2017 and ‘Elephant in the Room’, 2019), we dare say that you will have played in many of the destinations on the itinerary previously, but are there any places on the upcoming tour that you are particularly looking forward to playing and visiting?

Mie: Yes, Germany! Definitely!

Millie: I don’t know, it’s tricky. I really enjoy playing in France and also the UK. Mie: Every country, we like different parts about them, but one thing we are looking forward to is seeing our fans again because it’s been so long.

Millie: It feels like a family, so I don’t know, it’s cool, it’s a special bond. At

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our show, there’s no wall between us and everyone that’s at the show.

Mie: We don’t like that, when you have a band and they’re like on the stage and make it known that there’s such a big difference, like ‘oh, you’re just peasants down there’ kind of thing.

Millie: I hate that shit, yeah! We’ve been at shows [by other bands] and we’ve just been like ‘Damn, they’re making it seem like they’re doing us a favour, let’s get the fuck out of here!’

Going back to those early days of The SoapGirls and, as you said earlier, The SoapGirls story began back in the mid-2000s, when aged 8 and 9, you were street performers in Cape Town, South Africa selling handmade soap for charity, thus earning the name “The SoapGirls”.

What are your memories of those days and how did you end up becoming recording artists from that?

Millie: Oh, okay, so, what happened

was, we went into a recording studio and we started recording like different songs and everything ... God, they were awful! And we kind of started figuring out what kind of style and it was interesting.

Mie: The songs were so bad that ... we still have them on disc and when we leave to go on tour, we hide them away like with all the other shit. They were terrible! It’s kind of sweet because you can hear that we were just kids, but we started recording and then we got a song called ‘Boys Boys [Mix2]’ that got onto a Japanese compilation disc [‘Do The Independence (And Bridge Build Burn By Yourself)’, 2009].

Millie: And we, at the time, thought to be signed to a major label was the best thing that could ever happen, because we didn’t have the budget for music videos and we thought that it would be like in the movies, but it wasn’t! So, we were like ‘Sam [Debray, mother and manager], we have to get signed!’ So, people heard the Japanese compilation disc and the A&R guy from Universal

Music South Africa came down.

Mie: We met him at the airport and we just like broke out into song and he was like, ‘Kids, fine, it’s cool, man!’

Millie: We were just so excited! And we got signed and it was all so eye-opening. People were very ugly after we got signed. People were very bitter and it was crazy!

Mie: Because we still like selling the soap and stuff and even this one guy, I think he like stood and played guitar or whatever, he came up to us and he was just like screaming and going insane, like ‘How did you get signed?! I’ve been trying for years!’ It was bad! Not that it matters, he should know better, he should be uplifting to you.

Millie: Yeah, were like ‘Woah, dude!’

People were really ugly. So, we started recording, but a lot of shit happened.

We had an album that never got released, because the sound engineer that we were working with was an absolute piece of shit. We didn’t even

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have bank accounts or anything and the record label paid an advance into that guy’s bank account and he snorted it up his nose and had a heart attack. But he lied, because he told us he’d just had a heart attack, but because we’d raised funds for the public hospitals, we knew people who worked there and I said, ‘Did this guy come in with a heart attack?’ and they were like, ‘Yeah, but it was self-induced, because it was cocaine’.

know anything about drugs and stuff like that.

Mie: Yeah, and it was like, ‘Woah, okay!’ But the guy from the record label said ‘Don’t say anything, because you’re going to make me look bad, so just leave it and we’ll scrap that album and ...’

Millie: Imagine, you’re fourteen and fifteen years old ...

Millie: But it was horrible. So, you’re recording and we couldn’t make money in other way and we were fucking starving and I mean, because of the guy taking all the money, nothing was coming in, so the idea of strawberries to us was like luxury! It was bad! We were just trying to carry on, but the guy also was really volatile. We didn’t

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Mie: His moods would change.

Millie: So, one day, you’d go into the studio and he’d start screaming and kicking like the gear and stuff and he had a gun that he pulled on us. But he wasn’t like fucking around ...

Mie: ... so we were just like terrified!

Mie: ... and you’re just like ‘Oh, this is how people record!’

Millie: Yeah, we started not liking it as much, because we thought ‘Why is it so fucking difficult?! What the hell’s wrong with this guy?!’ And eventually, that album was scrapped and then I think the guy just like disappeared and then we got into other studios and it was just like effortless and we just thought ‘wow, this is like how it’s supposed to be’ and we were

recording ant that, but, again, when you’re with a record label, they will only release the songs when they decide it’s time for them to be released.

Mie: The worst thing was, they were like doing a meeting and you were thinking about what could you order on this menu!

Mie: So, you can record a whole album, not be able to perform the songs, they hold it for years and it’s sitting on a shelf somewhere and you can’t do anything about it.

Millie: Fish and chips, man!

Millie: So, that was kind of our situation as well and it was a fuck up and we had no money, but then we would have to get flown, for the image or whatever, to go to these events, these music events. And we were starving!

And I mean, the car, we were like ‘Park it round the back, don’t let anyone see our car!’ [Laughs].

Mie: And then there would be a buffet and I would be just like straight for the buffet, taking food!

Millie: We were checking the diary to see when we had a meeting with the record company, because it was an excuse to get some food!

Mie: They would cancel the meeting and the whole week, you had been like ‘I’m going to get food!’ and then it would be like ‘Fuck!’

Millie: ‘Motherfuckers!’ [Laughs] Mie: In meetings, they would talk and I was literally not giving a fuck what they were saying, all I cared about was the food in front of me! And one day, we got very desperate and we actually just gatecrashed a film set and started helping ourselves to the lovely food and people were like, ‘Who are these guys?!’

Millie: We were like, ‘Oh yeah, we just know the director!’

Mie: And then, eventually, the director came out and he said, ‘Hey, who are

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you guys?’ and we said, ‘We know the director’ and he said, ‘I am the director!’ ‘Ohhhhhh!’

Millie: We were just like ‘Thank you so much for the food!’ [Laughs].

Anyway, the music was on the radio and we didn’t even have the money to own a fucking radio! Other people would phone and go, ‘Oh, I heard your song!’ Or, if we randomly walked into a shop, we would hear it, but otherwise, no. I don’t know, it took us years to get out of that contract.

Mie: It sucked! I don’t know, they’re very weird in South Africa. They don’t do anything original, they have to try and emulate what’s going on in America, but that’s a stupid thing and honestly, it was hell! It was a relief when we told them to ‘Go and fuck themselves!’

Millie: They would put you in men’s magazines, like FHM and, don’t get me wrong, that’s great if that’s what you want, but we were really young and it wasn’t what we wanted.

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Mie: Nobody asked us, yeah.

Millie: I mean, they had a problem if we wore miniskirts and we dressed how we wanted to, but then they would put us in a men’s magazine!

That is really weird, isn’t it?!

Millie: We’re all for women being empowered and being naked, but the thing is, there’s a difference ... if it’s you, yourself, being comfortable in your skin and it’s your decision, then fuck, yeah! But it shouldn’t only be okay when men decide that a woman can be sexy and this is how we want to portray them. It’s not that we’re fighting against it, it’s just that everything we stand for is about being comfortable in your own skin and whether someone else understands it or not, that’s not your problem, that’s theirs. So, for us, it was a struggle.

We absolutely fucking hated it! Even the music videos ... oh God! It was just bad! We had no say in our image.

There was this music video that we did for ‘Hurricane’ [‘Xperience’, 2011], I

was very naive and very like in a bubble kind of thing and we had to have this guy ... they were like, ‘Okay, there’s going to be this guy and you’re going to have to kiss this guy’ and I was like, ‘What the fuck?!’ Even the guy ... I was like seventeen at the time and he was like fifty and it was like ‘How old are you?!’ But yeah, that didn’t happen, thank God! I’m not saying he was ugly or anything, but I was not comfortable.

Mie: It was just very weird. I mean, they would put you on radio and, for instance, we were very different, so we didn’t drink, we didn’t smoke, we didn’t have boyfriends, hadn’t even kissed anyone, and the record label, they were funny, so you couldn’t be sexy, or whatever, on your own terms, but oh no, no, you had to be what the market wanted. But we were very like in a bubble, we didn’t know about this shit and we did a radio interview and they were like, ‘So, what do you drink?’ And we were like, ‘Well, water and juice’ and he said, ‘No, come on, what do you really drink?’ So, then we

were getting annoyed, so we were just like, ‘Each other’s piss!’

Millie: He said, ‘What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?’, ‘Drunk each other’s piss!’ Ooooh, we got into so much trouble for that! And then they were like, ‘Who do you have a crush on?’ And we were like, ‘I don’t fucking know, man! Kirsten Dunst!’

And then you get called into a meeting and it’s like ‘You’re not meant to say things like that!’

Mie: ‘You’ve got to be family friendly!’

Millie: And all this shit and it’s like ‘Okay, wow, man!’ Everything we said, we would have to hear how we said it! We would have to hear how we said it wrong!

Mie: [Laughs] It’s like some abusive relationship!

Millie: It was really awful! So, eventually, we even got asked to be guest performers on ‘Idols South

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Africa’ [based on ITV’s ‘Pop Idol’.

The SoapGirls appeared on the show in 2011]. Oh my God! Mie: And bear in mind, we’d never had like any in-ear monitors and we’d never sung with microphones on TV on a massive stage like that. That was the first time, so it was kind of like lambs to the slaughter!

Millie: And so, that show, going on air, until that moment, we were very nervous, but I remember in my diary entry, when we got on stage, I felt this peace and I knew that, okay, this isn’t our genre of music, but this is what I want to do.

Mie: But I will say one thing I did remember, when we walked out on stage, when people looked up and the lights went on, they were like [gasps in shock], because our outfits were apparently the devil incarnate, but it’s ridiculous, because ... the outift that we wore, it wasn’t even scandalous or shocking at all, but it was this native’s outfit, so it was a top and like shorts

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and then like native’s chaps.

Millie: But they had to approve all our clothes, so we sent them a Photoshopped edition of it, where the shorts were like really pulled down and it looked very like dawky and they went, ‘That’s fine’.

Mie: But the day of the thing, when they saw the outfit, it was too late to say anything, because it was like ‘Well, this is what we’re wearing’.

Millie: They were shocked! But also, the crazy thing was, the song was the second most downloaded song in the country, which was really cool, but the backlash! Wow! Just because of what we wore! See, on their Facebook page, they’ve usually got a few hundred comments and there’s thousands of them! And we didn’t have any normal personal social media, so we couldn’t know anything about them and we were in Heat! magazine, People magazine, Kill those bitches, they’re disgusting!’; ‘They should be hanged!’; ‘Kill them!’

It was bad and we were very young, so

we got home and we were shellshocked! I think I sat in a cupboard for a week! And then the people from the record label, they said, ‘Oh, just lay low and we’ll deal with it’.

Mie: They didn’t come out to defend us, which they should have. They should have said, ‘Excuse me, they’re young girls. Why are you enticing hatred towards them?’

Millie: But they never did, so that was really shit and then, so, after that, we actually just were really over the whole thing. We were like, ‘Nah!’ And again, it took years, still even more time to get out of the contract. It was awful! And we had a huge fight with the guy who took over the MD [managing director role]. That got us out of the contract, but then we were blackballed in the music industry. And where we stayed, we had everything robbed, so we had all instruments robbed, and our mum had to keep us safeguarded. We could not even afford rent, nothing, it was awful!

Mie: Every time the landowner would come for the rent, we would hide!

Millie: Yeah, it was bad! But, again, we just kept uploading videos on YouTube and like, eventually, we had these people in America that were like ‘Oh fuck, we want to bring you over ...’

Mie: ‘... and you can come in the studio and do some of your new songs’.

Millie: So, we went over and was this before we waitressed, or after? So, yeah, eventually, we went to America and it was just like we were in this amazing studio, we did the songs, we were in New York and we met some really cool people, and they played the songs back to us and it was what we’d left [with the previous record company].

Mie: It was just not what we wanted to do. And once, they offered us a lot of money, like a contract, and we said to Sam, ‘This isn’t what we want. It’s the exact same thing’.

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Millie: We could see where it was going to go. So, we said to them, ‘Sorry, no’.

Mie: And actually, we just left. We actually have a lot of our stuff left in America, we got out of there quick!

Millie: So, we left and we came back and people were like ‘You fucking idiots!’ and we were completely fucked, so we were also in a really bad situation in this regard. We were born in France and we spent our earliest years there and then we came to South Africa under fucked up circumstances.

Mie: Our mum escaped from our dad.

Millie: We had to escape a situation.

So, he, technically, in the eyes of the law, would have kidnapped us. So, we had to lay low and we just assumed that because, you know, she’s [their mother] got South African citizenship and we grew up here that we would be naturalized, but no! So, we were illegal immigrants as well, because our father didn’t want to sign the papers. So, that

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was a fuck up for us, so even like with finishing school, we were screwed, because they wouldn’t sign the papers unless you had a South African identity.

Mie: Do you know, even forced to leave the country ... I was just remembering it now ... to go to America. We shouldn’t have been allowed to go, but at the airport, I think we had to pay someone to just ignore the fact that we had a French passport and we weren’t supposed to be let back in. And I don’t know how the fuck we did it, but we got back in, but it was a really shit situation. So, if you’re illegal, you don’t have many options of work available unless they’re very dodgy and people exploit that, so we were like ‘Fuck, what are we going to do?’ and I’m not joking when I say there was a time I was going to sell my blood or an organ or something, because we were that fucked. And then we eventually got legalized, because someone from the Home Affairs was like ‘I’m sick of this! I can just see what’s going on’. And she risked her own job and she put the necessary

Photograph by Scott Smith

stamp on what we needed.

Millie: We actually went to bars and we were like, ‘We could be ‘Cayote Ugly’ [2000], man!’ I just remember going on the internet and studying as many cocktails as I could and going ‘How the fuck do people do this?’ and it was gibberish to us! And then we would go into places and they would know us from being The SoapGirls and they would be like ‘What the fuck are you doing here?!’

Mie: Can we take a photo?’ and we were like, ‘We guess, but we’re doing our job!’

Millie: And people were like, ‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous, man! Look at this, it’s The SoapGirls, man!’ So that really sucked! People didn’t hire us, they just took photos, so we went to a place that we knew.

Mie: It was close to where we used to sell the soap and the owner knew us because he had like watched us grow up.

Millie: And he was like, ‘Okay, I’ll give you work’ and we were like ‘Oh my God, thank God!’ No, actually, to get the job, we studied the menu and had to learn the items off by heart.

Mie: We had to learn the items off by heart and we went to him and told him every single item and he was like, ‘Fuck, nobody’s ever done that before!’

Millie: He said, ‘Did you cheat?’ And we were like ‘No, no, no!

Mie: But we were fucking desperate!

Millie: So we started that and that’s how we wrote our song ‘Champagne Cocaine’ [‘Call for Rebellion’, 2015], it was him, because I think the restaurant industry and that, people think ‘oh, it’s just easy! You give people food!’ and no! It’s a whole other world! It was very interesting. It wasn’t anything we’d been used to and our eyes were opened. We were like, ‘What the fuck?’

Mie: I remember this one table I went

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Photograph by KKFP Photography

to, there were people who recognised us from our music and that and they were like, ‘Oh my God, you’re The SoapGirls!’ and I remember I just burst into tears, because they were like, ‘What are you doing here?!’ And I was just like, ‘I don’t know, man’ and I just had to go, because I was like, ‘Sorry, I don’t know’. Yeah.

Millie: It was really shit, but it was interesting and at first I hated it and then I was like ‘Hang on, I’m going to actually be great at this and I’m going to save up, I’m going to buy a fucking bass guitar, I’m going to fucking buy an amp’ ... because all our shit had been stolen. Oh yeah, and people taunted us and people would laugh, like ‘Oh, what a fall from grace!’; ‘Oh my God!’ and take photos of you while you were working.

Mie: People were dicks! We spat in their food anyway!

Millie: Even the owner of the restaurant, he forbade any of the other staff from taking photos of us and

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people couldn’t say that we worked there and shit, which was cool, but it was a weird situation. So, I was like ‘Fuck this, I’m going to make money and get what I need. So, we started writing songs, a double shift every day, and while we were working, we’d have the song and the melodies in our head and we would just save up and we started buying back all the gear that had been nicked and yeah!

Mie: Then a guy from England contacted us ...

Millie: Because we kept uploading videos on to YouTube.

Mie: ... and he said ‘Okay, well, I really like your music, would you come to the UK and do like a tour or something?’ And we were like, ‘Er, sure!’ But we’d heard many people make promises, many a times.

Millie: ‘Oh, I love what you’re doing!

I’m going to ...’

Mie: And we were like, ‘Okay, yeah,

Photograph by Grind House

sure’. But, so, it was really awesome and it was kind of like fate. I’m just so grateful that it happened. He heard the music and he was like, ‘Well, I’m going to bring you over to the UK and you can do like a little mini-tour’. And it did happen, but we needed an album to tour with. We were like ‘Fuck, we need an album to tour with!’

Millie: We had the songs! Don’t get us wrong, we had fuck-loads of songs!

Mie: So, we had to go into the studio and record sixteen songs in two days, just under two days. It was just mad!

So, yeah, we recorded that, but even just to be able to get to the UK as well, we worked like maniacs, like double shifts. I think it was almost illegal, the hours we were working! There’s a mountain, it’s called Chapman’s Peak, I don’t know how many kilometres, but when we drive it now, we’re like ‘How the fuck did we do this?!’ We literally walked from one end to the place that we worked at and then back again because we couldn’t afford the petrol or the toll to get over. In the shoes that we

just knew what we wanted to do.

Millie: On the first tour that we went to the UK, when we came back, we went back to waitressing again for a few year, but we never told people. So, people would be like ‘Oh, are you enjoying your time in South Africa?’ and I would be like in the toilets or whatever replying on social media!

But, I just drank, because I hate stress and shit. So, it would be really funny, the barkeeper would just keep giving me alcohol and I would be like shot, shot, shot and she’d be like ‘What the fuck are you doing?!’ And I was like ‘Get out of here, man!’ But we always had a vision, because we knew like this is shit right now, but ...

Mie: And there was a time when we were making a hell of a lot more money waitressing than with music!

Millie: Because we would leave the tours bankrupted! [Laughs] Or with a lot less money than we started out with!

Because the difference between the currency of England versus the rand

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Photograph by Marc Antone-Panda

in South Africa is quite big and we also have to pay for the rent and there’s also our brother and like all the food for the animals and stuff while we’re here and for while we’re on tour. But again, it was just such a good thing for our work ethic, I guess. There’s no time to waste, so we’ve always been determined. That’s why when we’re on tour or whatever and anyone gives us shit, there’s no time for it, because, Jesus, life is so short, it’s like ‘Fuck you! I didn’t come this far for you to be an arsehole to me!’

Mie: So again, we used all experiences, even from like waitressing and the all the people that we met to write about things and it was good! We were exposed to loads of different kinds of people, yeah.

There seems to be a lot of misconceptions about The SoapGirls, which usually seem to be based upon your stage attire. Is this something that bothers you and how do you deal with it?

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Mie: Initially, I think it did. But what bothers me, I get pissed off at people just asking me ‘Why are you wearing this?’ Because they wouldn’t ask a guy performer. Like, they wouldn’t ask the guy from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, ‘Oh, why did you wear just a cock-sock?’ If you’re a female, you’re always having to justify why you dress like this!

Millie: It’s ridiculous that Halloween is the only time that you are allowed to dress differently and that’s nuts! For us, one of the things that we’ve always stood for is freedom of expression.

And I mean, we’re not here to tell everyone ‘Wear paint’ or ‘Take off your clothes’ and ‘That’s how you have to be free’. Freedom means different things to different people, but for me, the biggest thing about freedom is what makes your freedom beautiful is that it’s yours and you have no right to try and diminish the freedom of another person because you don’t agree with their freedom.

Mie: And I also think it’s very

important for people to see, especially females, because whenever under usual circumstances, if a female is in a strip club or if a female is a prop for a male band and she’s just like twerking, or dancing, or not wearing much, then that usually is fine ...

Millie: ... because she’s just a slut ...

Mie: Yeah, and she’s doing what she’s supposed to do, but if people are confronted with a female that is playing an instrument and dressing how she wants, not wearing much but she’s not asking for anything, that’s just her, she’s just being, then somehow people, they can’t wrap their heads around that.

It freaks them out!

Millie: So, for us, you see, the thing that I disagree with about society is that they’ve reserved a woman’s body almost exclusively for sex and pornography. There’s nothing wrong with being sexy ... don’t get me wrong, if that’s what you want to do, go for it, but that’s just not all that a woman is.

Mie: I don’t like the fact that someone will think that ‘oh cool, we don’t wear a lot, so, yeah, we’re like strippers!’

Both: Noooooo!

Millie: I mean, that’s someone else’s freedom and it’s great, but we’ve had people book shows with us and ...

Mie: We had a show in Belgium and it was one of the worst fucking shows we’ve ever played. The venue owner, he thought it would be a good idea to book us and have a ‘titty night’.

Millie: So, topless bar staff and strippers.

Mie: I mean, that’s cool, that’s fine, but it really highlighted that what we’re doing is very different.

Millie: Nudity doesn’t have to be sexual. You can sexualise it in your head if that’s what you want, but you’re not going to see us rubbing our boobs and being provocative, it’s not our thing!

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Mie: The type of crowd that it attracted and the minds of those people that were there were so depraved and fucked up that it is literally the only time that I have played a show and wanted to kill everyone in the room!

Millie: I jumped on someone’s back, I kicked someone! There were so many altercations, it was pretty heavy! It was bad, man! We did a show also, I think it was in Austria, and they had a burlesque show on before us ...

Mie: Which is cool!

Millie: But again, it highlighted the difference. I was watching it, but I didn’t find it very comfortable. And not for all the nudity, not for what they were wearing, I just don’t like a spectacle made of the nudity. Like, I don’t care if people are naked, I love nudism! I am a naturist, so for me, it’s just like whatever, I don’t care, but when someone is shaking their tits with tassles on, I don’t know where to look!

It’s very weird for me, because it’s just boobs, so what the fuck?! And it’s the

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same with a guy. If a guy’s shaking his dick, it’s like ‘what the fuck?! Where do I look?!’ It’s weird! Don’t get me wrong, it’s just skin, but if you making it ‘ooh, dirty!’, I feel like ...

Mie: People are just going to associate you with that mindset of ‘oh, she’s not got any clothes on, it’s for my entertainment and she’s there to arouse me’ kind of thing, which is not what we do.

Millie: It’s interesting, even on Instagram, I’ve seen like posts ... I find the photos, a lot of them are very artistic and it’s great, but the problem I have is that it’s only okay for a woman to be sexy when it is for the benefit of a man, which kind of irritates me. It actually does piss me off. And for us, someone can think ‘ooh, I’m going to see tits!’, but I promise you, if that’s your mindset, you’re going to leave that show ...

Mie: ... you’re in for a rude awakening!

Photograph by Andras Paul

Millie: So, we did that show with the burlesque thing before us and as we got on, someone wolf-whistled us and I just hocked back the biggest loogie of my life and spat and I said ‘Fuck off!’ and I was like ‘What the fuck do you think this is?!’ and people were just like ‘Woah!’ ... ‘It doesn’t matter what I’m wearing, it doesn’t matter that you can see my tits, I’m just here to do music!’

You’re either going to get it or you’re not. ‘If you really want to check out tits that much, there’s a lot of shit out there, you’ve come to the wrong place if that’s all you want!’ But if someone is that way inclined, you know what?

That’s their freedom and I’ve got no problem with that.

Mie: Some people will dismiss us and say ‘Oh, people only come to your show because they see tits!’ It’s like, first of all, I’ve got very tiny tits! I doubt many people are going to buy a ticket and fly all the way to Europe and go ‘I’ve gonna fly all the way to Germany and I’m gonna see those little raisins!’ [Laughs]. There are plenty of women out there on the internet and

they are very well-endowed!

Millie: I mean, I’m in my granny pants! When I’ve got my period, I deliberately wear white or very light coloured clothes. I rip out my tampon because it annoys me after a while and I bleed out freely and people are like ‘What the fuck?!’ But, there you go, that’s my fucking freedom! Not everyone can afford a tampon! There you go, you want to understand what it is like to be a woman? ‘Fuck off!’

Mie: I’ve thought about this a lot, but I think maybe people get annoyed or angry and they’re like ‘Oh, it’s sexual’, or whatever, but then I think that says more about that person. So, maybe they are affronted or annoyed with the feelings they are having about themselves or maybe they’re frustrated.

Maybe they’re gay, or ... I don’t know.

Millie: I don’t know, I think it’s really awesome to challenge peoples’ perceptions. I think it’s refreshing for men who’ve never been around women in a wholesome situation ... or as

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Photograph by Steve White

wholesome as Rock ‘n’ Roll can be ...

Mie: I wouldn’t say we’re wholesome!

Millie: ... and they’ll be having a conversation with me after the show and I’m topless and a lot of guys, after, they’re like, ‘Hang on, fuck!’ They said, ‘They never in their lives thought they would talk to a topless woman and be able to look her in their eyes’ and they said ‘They actually don’t even care anymore!’

Mie: Let’s just say, in your town, if the norm was for everyone to walk topless, people eventually wouldn’t even bat an eyelid, it would be normal.

Millie: But then the porn industry and also the industries exploiting women’s bodies couldn’t sell it to people, so, of course, they have to make it a thing, a shameful thing. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with being sexy.

I love gorgeous people and sexy people, but, for me, at our shows even, I’ve seen people that are dressed and they go onto the stage and they’re

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Photograph by Steve White

literally fucking the stage and the stage monitors and I’m not prudish, but I find that a bit uncomfortable! But just because a woman’s wearing clothes, ‘Oh, she’s a fucking great woman!’

And it’s like, ‘what the fuck?!’

Mie: And also, there’s a singer called, I don’t know if you’ve heard of her, Anita? And she’s from Brazil? Anita.

And she’s very provocative in her dancing and her stage shows and even music videos, but because she’s from Brazil, then people excuse it and say ‘Oh, it’s a cultural thing’. But, if we were to do that, they would say ‘You fucking slags! They’re disgusting!’

Millie: But the very same people who have an issue with us, they will go apeshit at us, but they all watch ‘Love Island’ [ITV2, 2105-present] and they don’t mind that! I think if we were actually very sexual and had stripper poles, they wouldn’t mind as much, but because we’re just us and we don’t want anything from anyone ...

Mie: Trust me, if I wanted to be

Photograph by Steve White

provocative, fucking hell, I would!

Millie: But that’s not what we’re about and it is annoying when ... for instance, we did a Rock festival, it was like a Rock and bike festival, and they told us before we went on stage, ‘Please don’t do anything too un-family friendly. So, you’re outfits, make sure they’re family friendly’ and we were like ‘What the fuck?! Okay!’

Mie: And the band that was on before us, they were a Guns ‘n’ Roses tribute band and on each side of the stage, were two females on stripper poles!

And that’s fine, because it’s family friendly, right?! Because the females didn’t have instruments, that’s fine!

They were just being what they’re supposed to be, objects.

Millie: It’s the same for us, if we were like singing, and then we had guys in the band and they were grinding and humping the stage, people would be like ...

Mie: ... ‘Fucking empowerment!’

Photograph by Steve White

Millie: ... and if we had hairy [arm] pits, it would be like ...

Mie: ... ‘What a fucking powerful woman!’

Millie: If I had like massive rolls out ...

Mie: ... ‘You are a real woman!’

Millie: ... and hairy pits and hairy face, people would be like ‘So brave, I love her!’

Mie: But if you maybe shave your armpits and you, I don’t know, wear sparkles and glitter ...

Millie: ... ‘Fucking slag! Get out!’

Mie: We’ve had wives forbid the band from playing with us!

Millie: Because apparently, we’re going to steal their husbands! I mean, that’s really ... we’ve just come on tour just to fucking steal peoples’ husbands!

Fuck, yeah! It’s like, are you fucking

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Photograph by Steve White

kidding me?! Like, what the actual fuck! It’s weird, isn’t it?! But also, I will say, just going back onto the mindset of our fans, what was really refreshing for me, where we were at the show where people travelled to see the show in Austria where they had the burlesque show, the fans came up to us and, it was mostly guys, but they said, ‘Look here, we’re not trying to be funny or anything, but we’re actually going to leave and come back’. They said, ‘It just feels a little bit strange’. It was weird for them. There’s nothing wrong with people ... but I saw a woman bending and I saw like everything and there’s nothing wrong with that ...

Mie: I even took a picture!

Millie: No, man, come on! But it was just weird, because it was everything that we’re not. I mean, we might not be wearing much ...

Mie: There’s nothing wrong with women being sexual or sexy, but it’s just not what we’re doing.

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Millie: So, we were just like ‘Woah!’

Mie: I didn’t even know where to look! I mean, I love wearing a thong and being cheeky and fun or whatever and sure, fuck it, whatever ...

Millie: I love people who push boundaries, I think it’s necessary, even if we wouldn’t do that ourselves, but it just wasn’t what we’re about, like, at all!

Mie: People say to us, ‘Oh, you’re just selling sex or whatever’.

Millie: But sex does sell. People are stupid as well, they know that they’re attracted to the forbidden, so put that onto everyone that’s different, but maybe their perception of what you’re doing is actually different to what you’re doing and they should remember that.

Mie: Maybe they’re just selfprojecting.

Millie: I don’t know, but don’t just

assume why someone’s doing something, if that makes sense.

an arsehole! Make your life count, stand up for what you believe in!

Finally, do you have a final message for our readers and your fans?

Millie: Yes, and also come to our shows!

Millie: Yes, final message is, you only have one life, so it is up to you to live it 100% true to yourself. And also, first of all, thank you to our fans because seriously, without you guys, everything would be impossible.

Thank you for a wonderful interview, it has been really lovely to chat to you both! We wish you all the best with the ‘Don’t Give a Damn Tour’, ‘In My Skin’ and for the future.

Mie: And also, thank you to everyone who supports live music and independent bands and music just in general.

Millie: Everything would be impossible without the people who go out and support the music, but more than that, you have one life, it’s not up to anyone else to impose their limitations on your own existence on your existence, so you just be yourself.

Mie: And also, we have limited time in this life, really. We don’t know how much time we have. I mean, we could die tomorrow, so don’t spend it being

The new single, ‘Breathe’ is released on 15th April via the duo’s own label, The SoapGirls, with their fifth album, ‘In My Skin’, due for release in July.

The SoapGirls are on tour now. For all dates, visit the links below: thesoapgirls.com www.facebook.com/ thesoapgirls

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Alice Has a Cult Following!

Interview by Martin Hutchinson Photography by Jenny Risher.

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“... my whole career has been a highlight. The most shocking thing is its longevity ...”

Two acclaimed headliners from both sides of the Atlantic will be touring UK arenas in what will be 2022’s must-see event. Rock n Roll Hall of Famer Alice Cooper returns to the UK alongside rock icons The Cult.

Renowned for their unforgettable live shows, we can anticipate a dark, twisted trip through Goth, Psychedelia, macabre theatre and straight up Rock anthems when these two giants take the stage.

Building once again on his legendary status, Cooper scored a top five UK chart album with ‘Detroit Stories’ last year. The record showcases his roots in the legendary Detroit Rock scene of the late-’60s and early-’70s, celebrating the place where his sound and show came into its own.

Before he heads our way, Cooper is undertaking a tour of Canada and the US and he was preparing to set off for the first date when I caught up with him at his Phoenix, Arizona home, where he tells me that there are no health issues

with him and the band. “Everybody has passed everything”, Cooper says.

“And we’re raring to go.”

Alice actually fell foul of the dreaded COVID in 2020: “That’s right, both my wife, Sheryl and I had it at the same time. Funnily enough, I didn’t have the main symptoms, but it made me really weak and even walking to the kitchen and back was an effort.”

But it wasn’t all bad, as Cooper explains: “I wondered how I was gonna get through it all, and then I found out that everything was closed down except the golf courses, and since I play golf six times a week, that was great.”

One thing that didn’t come to a halt in Alice’s career was his radio show, entitled ‘Nights With Alice Cooper’, which he is ale to record both at his home and whilst out on tour. “I started the show in 2004”, explains Cooper.

“That’s eighteen years and it’s fun to do. I love playing the music, I’m like

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Alice Cooper, the band, in 1971

a knight in shining armour for songs that you don’t hear much.”

The singer, who was born Vincent Furnier, then tells me a little about how the show is recorded. “I usually record the shows about ten days in advance”, he begins. “I record it on my laptop using Pro Tools. I look at the script, which I ignore; I have 50% of the say on the script anyway and basically do what I want. I never get tired of it, and it’s the same with touring.”

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tour of the UK, Cooper recorded and played live with the original Alice Cooper band, who he split from in 1975 (In the early days, ‘Alice Cooper’ was the name of the band and the singer took it as his own name when he went solo): “That’s correct. In fact, I’ve been working with them a lot, especially on the last few albums and we’ve done a lot of writing. It’s not the same without Glen Buxton [the original band’s guitarist, who passed away in 1997] though.”

But what if he wasn’t a musician? “If I wasn’t doing that or my radio show, I’d probably be writing. In my songs like on the ‘Paranormal’ album [2017] and ‘Welcome to My Nightmare’ [1975], I had little scenarios that made them somewhat of a concept. The new album, ‘Detroit Stories’ [2021] didn’t start out as a concept album, but all the songs have a connection with the city.

Plus I used all Detroit musicians.”

And it was a great experience for Cooper when the original band played live during the last tour. “Yeah, the shows were sparkling, and then it got dangerous”, he says. “They play it [the music] with a lot darker attitude and I sing a bit differently with them, Songs like ‘Eighteen’ get darker and heavier. I’m really looking forward to joining you guys in the UK. I haven’t been over in so long and I usually get there three or four times a year.”

On the ‘Paranormal’ album and his last

And Cooper is a bit of an Anglophile,

as he tells me: “England was the first place to ‘get’ Alice Cooper. They saw the different layers in the shows, as lots of things were going on. And they enjoyed that we upset people!”

Rock and Roll hits and the theatrics that’s expected. At the end, everyone’s covered in confetti and stage blood. May be some on the audience too!”

Cooper has gathered an excellent group of backing musicians to accompany him: “Yes, my touring band is the best around and they’re the tightest band I’ve had. Nita Strauss has been voted the ‘Guitarist of the Decade’ and she’s been with me since 2014.

Also, Ryan Roxie rejoined me ten years ago. He’d had a break for a few years after being with me from 1996 to 2006. On bass, we have Chuck Garric, who’s been with me for twenty years; Tommy Henriksen is a guitarist who joined in 2011 and Glen Sobel has been my drummer since 2011.”

He admits, “I feel more at home on stage than off. The ‘Alice Cooper’ character is the opposite to me. He’s fun to play; an arrogant, condescending villain. Any actor loves to play people they’re nothing like.” Cooper then becomes ‘Alice’ again, smiles and says, “And all the hits too. It’s impossible not to love the show!”

Cooper likes to keep things fresh for his fans: “We have a brand-new show for this tour. It’s Alice Cooper’s haunted house where anything can happen. There’ll be two or three different characters and of course the

As we’re talking hits, Cooper confides that he has no particular favourite.

“That would be like picking a favourite child”, he says. “I have had hits in different periods, so they are all different. But, if I had to pick an album that is the essential ‘Alice Cooper’, I’d pick ‘Killer [the 1971 album that spawned the hit ‘Under My Wheels’].”

Cooper has had a long and

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distinguished career in music, approaching sixty years now and naturally there have been a few highlights. “Oh gosh, a whole bunch of things”, he states. “We were the first Rock band to play in Brazil and there were 158,000 people indoors, and then there’s the first time you get a number one. Really though, my whole career has been a highlight.

The most shocking thing is its longevity and the knowledge that you’re giving them [the fans] their money’s worth.”

More good news for Cooper’s legions of fans is that we can expect some new material: “That’s right. I am working on two albums that were written

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during COVID. That’s all we could do while we couldn’t tour. I’ll be recording the vocals after this tour.”

A night of shock rock and manic theatrics are in store when Cooper takes to the stage!

‘Detroit Stories’ is out now on earMUSIC. Cooper will be touring the UK from 23rd May to 1st June.

For all dates and tickets, visit the links below. alicecooper.com www.facebook.com/ AliceCooper

Alabama 3 Divine Intervention Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

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“I love the wars between America and Britain, ‘Who’s first?’ and we just thought, ‘well, we’ll go back to the source’.

“Larry Love, do you remember when I came upon you in that place of suffering in the valley of darkness? I took away all your pain and put love in your cold, cold heart and from that day forward, told you to go out and spread my word through music sweet, pretty, Country Acid House music. From that day, Larry, you not only joined my church, you embraced my whole philosophy, my whole way of life, because remember little man, don’t you go to Goa”, recalled The Very Reverend D. Wayne Love in his American Deep South drawl during the opening moments of Alabama 3’s 1996 debut single ‘Ain’t Goin’ to Goa’. And thus began an account of how one of the strangest and most imaginative bands to emerge in the ‘90s came about which has since passed into legend.

But far from being junkies looking for sobriety and enlightenment via the twelve-step plan, who one day, strung-out on methadone, see a spirit

and become faithful followers of the First Presleyterian Church of Elvis the Divine (UK), the genesis of Alabama 3 actually came about at an all-night squat party in Peckham, South London in 1995 when the Possil, Glasgow-born Jake Black (soon to be reborn as The Very Reverend D. Wayne Love) met Welshman Rob Spragg (soon to be rechristened Larry Love). Spragg began singing lyrics to a Hank Williams song over an Acid House backing track, whilst Black, a die-hard Jazz fan, added some Bebop Skat to the mix.

Two years later, Alabama 3, who, just to confuse music journalists of the day even more, were actually an eight-piece with no ties to Alabama whatsoever, released their debut album, ‘Exile on Coldharbour Lane’.

With both its title and sleeve imagery being a homage to The Rolling Stones’ ‘Exile on Main St.’ (1972) and the combination of Country, Blues and Acid House contained on it

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Alabama 3, 1997

being wilfully out of step with the prevailing Britpop scene of the day, the Union Jack waving NME awarded ‘Exile on Coldharbour Lane’ one star and proclaimed it to be “a monumental waste of time”.

Alongside other singles taken from ‘Exile on Coldharbour Lane’, ‘Ain’t Goin’ to Goa’ ((1996, UK#90 / reissued 1998, UK#40); ‘Speed of the Sound of Loneliness’ (1997, UK#72) and ‘Converted’ (1998, UK#100) sat ‘Woke Up This Morning’ (1997, UK#78 / reissued 1998, UK#79), which would soon be picked up by screenwriter and producer David Chase to be the theme tune for his latest project, ‘The Sopranos’ (HBO, 1999-2007).

A further twelve Alabama 3 albums followed (‘La Peste’, 2000; ‘Power in the Blood’, 2002; ‘Last Train to Moshville Volume 2’, 2003 acoustic album; ‘Outlaw’, 2005; ‘M.O.R.’, 2007; ‘Revolver Soul’, 2010; ‘There Will Be Peace in the Valley… When We Get the Keys to the Mansion on the Hill’, 2011 acoustic album (does

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not feature D. Wayne Love); ‘Shoplifting 4 Jesus’, 2011; ‘The Men from W.O.M.B.L.E.’, 2013; ‘The Wimmin from W.O.M.B.L.E.’, 2014 and ‘Blues’, 2016) and with each, the band’s fabricated story continued to entertain many, but mystify others.

Sadly, on 21st May 2019, The Very Reverend D. Wayne Love, in the words of the band, “passed over to the higher ground”, his last words reportedly being “Tweet, tweet, Possil Fleet”. Despite this terrible loss, Alabama 3 vowed to continue to spread his message, coming together to record their thirteenth album, last year’s ‘Step 13’, soon after. Now, following nearly three years off the road, Alabama 3 have returned to the live arena for the fifteen-date ‘Step 13: The Divine Intervention Tour’.

Two days before the tour began, we caught up with an understandably anxious Larry Love as he was busy making the final preparations for getting the getting the colourful cast of characters who make up Alabama

3 back out on the road. “Busy with nerves, Alice, yes!”, he says after I suggest that this must be a busy time for him. “We’re starting in Cambridge on Thursday [17th March]. It’s good, yeah! It’s like getting some forty-eight legged centipede on the road, but we’ll get there! It’s a bit like ... it must be like one of those freakshows back in the day, [laughs] in the 19th Century!

I’ll have to ring up Evans Trainers and book all different circuses!”

When I ask him if he is pleased to be getting back out there, he replies, “Yeah, we are, yeah! I mean, apart from that we haven’t done it for about three years and I’m a bit terrified, but I think once the first gigs are done, yeah, it’ll be good!”

Anyway, thank you for taking the time to join us interview, it is lovely to speak to you and I will try not to keep you too long! Could we start by going right back to the beginning and asking where, when and how Alabama 3 first came together?

Yeah, it was probably about 1994/95 and I was messing around with kind of computers and samplers at the time. I was mixing in old Blues records with sort of Techno music and then I met Jake [Black, aka The Very Reverend D. Wayne Love], the one that died [on 21st May 2019] at some party in Peckham and I just started singing Hank Williams songs over Techno music and he started DJing and it went from there really. It was a really stupid idea, Alice, but it seems to have lasted!

But, our idea was to mix ... where everyone else was sampling James Brown and Funkadelic and stuff like that, I liked the idea of sampling old Blues and Country records and at the time, everyone thought we were a novelty, but hey-ho, we’re still standing!

Absolutely! Alabama 3 formed in 1995 and you released your first album, ‘Exile on Coldharbour Lane’, featuring the singles ‘Ain’t Goin to Goa’ (1996, UK#90, reissued 1998, UK#40); ‘Woke Up This Morning’ (1997, UK#78); ‘Speed of the Sound

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of Loneliness’ (1997, UK#72) and ‘Converted’ (1998, UK#100), in 1997. This was the era of Britpop and Cool Britannia, but you decided to mix Country and Blues with Acid House to create a sound all of your own. How much was the sound of Alabama 3 a reaction to what was popular on the UK music scene at that time?

I think we decided to talk in American accents because we were all a bit like ‘Britpop’s was only there because Kurt Cobain died’, you know what I mean?

I love the wars between America and Britain, ‘Who’s first?’ and we just thought, ‘well, we’ll go back to the source’, you know what I mean? If Oasis are stealing off The Beatles and The Beatles stole off Little Richard, then we’ll steal off who Little Richard stole off! So, we thought we would return to the source. Britpop in the sense of all that Union Jack waving and everything like that, I thought was a bit naff. But yeah, the Britpop press didn’t like us at all and they called us ‘a novelty act’!

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Despite other much more positive reviews, there is a very famous NME review which awarded ‘Exile on Coldharbour Lane’ one out of ten and described it as “a monumental waste of time”. With the NME having been such champions of the Britpop scene and your music having been such a reaction to what was going on at the time, did this review give you a feeling of mission accomplished?

That’s it, yeah! I remember that, yeah!

Sort of [felt like mission accomplished], yeah, because I was a bit ... because I liked journalism and all that and I thought some journalists would be a bit more imaginative, but yeah, it was a bit like we were that far out! I couldn’t blame them really, because they were making a living out of hanging out with Liam Gallagher and waving Union Jacks and when we said, ‘No, we’re all from America’, they didn’t really like it and we refused to do interviews unless we put on these cod-American accents, which didn’t help at all! [Laughs].

You took the idea of the myth and legend surrounding Rock ‘n’ Roll bands a step further by giving each member of Alabama 3 a pseudonym.

Until his sad passing on 21st May 2019, there was The Very Reverend D.Wayne Love (real name Jake Black) and there has been a long line of other members, whilst the core line-up of the band these days consists of yourself, Larry Love (Rob Spragg) on vocals; The Spirit (Orlando Harrison) on keyboards; Rock Freebase (Mark Sams) on guitar; LOVEPIPE (Steve Finnerty) on guitar and Harpo Strangelove (Nick Reynolds - son of Great Train Robber, Bruce) on harmonica. I told my mum I was interviewing you last night and even though she has known your music for at least twenty-five years, she still thought you were from the Deep South of America!

those years ago confuses people?

I hope so, yeah! I mean, the thing we said where we all met in rehab, we were just taking the piss out of ... not taking the piss out of, we were referencing N.W.A. ‘Straight Outta Compton’ [‘Straight Outta Compton’, 1988], we had ‘Straight Outta Rehab’ [at an early gig, Alabama 3 were billed as Straight Outta Rehab, suggesting that they all strung-out on methadone and saw a spirit]! We were just making it up that we found the step twelve with Elvis, people still believe that though!

Yeah, I mean, I’m glad people still believe we’re American, you know. I mean, that’s a compliment on our stylisation. I mean, there’s not three of us, which always causes a bit of confusion! [Laughs].

I’m an American in a Welshman’s body, yeah!

Incidentally, I remember my mum having your debut album, ‘Exile on Coldharbour Lane’ in the car when I was a teenager!

Today, do you still find that all the myths you built around yourself all

Oh no, that’s awful! I’m so sorry!

[Laughs].

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With the sadly departed The Very Reverend D. Wayne Love (left) in 2009

Oh no, it was great! We loved that album, so ...

Thank you, it’s nice to know we’re a good family band! [Laughs].

Clean family fun?!

That’s exactly right! Put that on the byline, ‘Larry Love promises clean family fun! All ages welcome!’

Obviously, no interview with you is complete without asking about ‘Woke Up This Morning’, which of course became the theme tune for ‘The Sopranos’ (HBO) in 1999 until the show ended in 2007 after six seasons. How did ‘Woke Up This Morning’ come to be chosen as the theme tune for ‘The Sopranos’ and would you say that your association with the show and becoming known to many for that particular song has been a blessing or a curse?

First off, yeah, HBO were releasing it on cable channel in 1999. Someone got in touch and said, ‘Oh, someone

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wants to use a track for £500’ and we went ‘Yeah, alright’ and about six months later, it was over the programme! So, initially, we didn’t sign a very good deal with them and secondly, the story is that David Chase [creator / executive producer of ‘The Sopranos’] was driving down that freeway where Tony Soprano is and ‘Woke Up This Morning’ came on the radio and he thought it made perfect sense. He said it was all about gangsters, but I said ‘I wrote it about a woman called Sara Thornton, who’d had enough of her husband abusing her, so she shot him’ [Thornton actually stabbed her husband in 1989 and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Her conviction for murder was overturned in 1996]. It’s a song about female empowerment and why we sometimes need to use guns. But, it’s been a real blessing, you know. I mean, thank God, we didn’t write the theme music for ‘Friends’ [NBC,1994-2004]!

Do you know what I mean! There’s nothing wrong with the ‘Friends’ theme tune, but having to play that all your life! So yeah, it’s been really good.

People have got into us through that, so it’s been a blessing I would say, Alice.

suppose this had worked out in your favour, hasn’t it?

Well, it’s funny you should say about the theme tune for ‘Friends’, because that was by The Rembrandts (released as a single on 23rd May 1995 and featured on the album ‘L.P’, released on the same day, pop pickers!), wasn’t it? What the heck happened to them?! But you’re still going!

Yeah, I mean, I would say to any new musicians now, it’s like ‘There’s no point looking at record sales, we have to be a bit more kind of ... you have to cast your net wide’ and I’d say to young people, you know, ‘Get used to doing films of your songs and get your friends who’ve got cameras to make films and everything and get used to putting your music to score’, you know.

With Netflix and all these streaming services, there is kind of work out there, but you’ve just got to look and you’ve got to think a bit differently about how you kind of raise your revenue, do you know what I mean?

You’ve got to be careful you don’t end up doing Cornflakes adverts! We got requested about fifteen years ago, ‘Could we have ‘Woke up this morning, got yourself some Bran?’ I was like, ‘No!’

Exactly! Maybe they’re living in Brixton pretending they’re American!

[Laughs].

They could well be! One advantage of having ‘Woke Up This Morning’ used as ‘The Sopranos’ theme tune I guess is that it opened the door for your music being featured on many other television programmes and films. With the way the music industry has changed over the course of Alabama 3’s career meaning less people are buying records and so forth, artists have had to seek out new ways of making money, so I

Moving on to present day and your thirteenth album, ‘Step 13’ was released last September. Could you

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give us an insight into the writing and recording process of the latest album?

Yeah, it was an effing nightmare!

Because we’re all booked to go into a residential studio up in Lincolnshire for about two weeks and what happened?

COVID! So, we were like the last ones who couldn’t get a booking for a studio and we went straight into lockdown just as we were doing the album, so we ended up where we were all separated around the country and I ended up doing the vocals in my toilet in a flat in Brixton! [Laughs]. But I think there was a gap where we all had to be tested and everything and then we rushed into a studio for about a week! So, it was a bit chaos! But, with what was happening, I can’t feel sorry for myself, but it was a bit of a, yeah, difficult process. And also, Jake died the year before and it was our first album out without him there, so I was very concerned all the way through about how it was going to sound, but it I think it turned out alright in the end, do you know what I mean?

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Yeah. Well, it’s a great album, anyway!

Thank you!

So, nearly twenty-seven years after Alabama 3’s formation, do you find that you still have as many ideas for what you would like to achieve musically and lyrically now as you did back at the beginning?

Yeah, I mean, going back to your first question about our style and the Country and Western and Blues and stuff like that, I knew that the older I got, the more room there was in those genres ... I mean, Country and Western and Blues and that sort of stuff, you can sing that when you’re 79, do you know what I mean? It’s not like I’m just doing an Indie band, in terms of what we can do, the fields we can plough up for inspiration, they still remain wide open. You know, I only need to play some Hank Williams and I could get inspired again to write another song, so in that sense ... you know, we’ve just started working on a new album now

and we did a load of film score stuff a couple of months back. So, as I say, Alice, to have that template, we can go anywhere, do you know what I mean, because of the style and make ‘a stupid idea’ and ‘a waste of time’, as the NME said, but I’m still able to do that, which I really like. And I think my voice is going to be good in about ten years time, do you know what I mean? When I’m about 70! [Laughs]. And then we’ll be on our fifty-seventh album!

But I’m starting to get good now as a singer. It’s like George Jones and Tammy Wynette ... the older we get, the better we get, you know!

In two days time (17th March), you are back out on the road for the fifteen-date ‘Step 13: The Divine Intervention Tour’. What can people expect from an Alabama 3 gig these days and do you still get as much pleasure playing to a crowd in 2022 as you always have?

Yeah, we’ve gone for ... because we believe that our dear leader [Jake Black aka The Very Reverend D.Wayne Love]

has ascended ... he hasn’t gone to heaven, he’s on this other plateau with the lizards and Elvis and all that, so we don’t believe he’s particularly gone, so it’s going to be like a cult-like sort of atmosphere in that we’re all bowing down to some strange deity, but with really good Rock ‘n’ Roll. But, yeah, we’re really looking forward to going back out on the road. I think a lot of it, it’s not just about our music, it’s about the energy that comes from people gathering together, you know, and we like to create a church-like atmosphere or fervour. But yeah, you know, we’re always excited about it. That’s why I’m so fucking nervous, do you know what I mean?! Because I’m excited, but I’m kind of scared! But yeah, we really thrive off a crowd, but it’s our first tour in two and a half years, so yeah! I’m looking forward to it, but I hope it’s going to be alright!

It’s going to be great, you’ll be fine!

Thanks!

Last question and in these days of

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war and pestilence, we were wondering, do you have a final message for all the converts to the First Presleyterian Church of Elvis the Divine (UK)?

Thanks Alice! Alright, give my love to your mum as well, yeah? And tell her I’m American, right?! Alright Alice, God bless mate, I’ll see you soon, yeah?

Let’s give the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse a rest for the night and come down and shake your shimmy!

[Laughs].

‘Step 13’ is out now on Submarine Cat Records.

Alabama 3’s fifteen-date ‘Step 13: The Divine Intervention Tour’ runs until 29th April. For all upcoming dates, visit the links below:

Amazing, that is absolutely perfect, thank you! And thank you for a wonderful interview, it has been such a pleasure to talk to you. We wish you all the best for the tour and for the future.

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www.alabama3.co.uk www.facebook.com/ thealabama3

German Shepherd Records Presents:

Es. The Gold Coast Sound Interview by Bob Osborne.

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Former Dream Circle member and one half of lower case letter devoted duo sycloner Daniel Cunnington recently introduced us to a new solo project called Es.. With a deliberate step towards a simpler, more reflective sound, the new endeavour has resulted in four singles and one EP since launching in December 2021.

The style is Lo-fi, the sound is laid back and the mood is mellow.

Coupled with evocative video interpretations, the music is instrumental with the occasional “found sound” inserted to add ambience and context to the pieces.

Coupling the hip sounds of Nu-Jazz with soulful vibes, Daniel’s prolific output reflects a man in love with composing and making music.

The DIY ethos of the Lo-fi movement is consistent with the intent of the German Shepherd Records approach to music production and delivery.

The Es. project, therefore, fits well with the labels intent to release a range of different genres. Another aspect of the run of singles and EPs is that stunning cover art for the releases, which feature vivid colours and stark and unique representations of iconic architecture.

I took time out to interview him in early February as work was underway to release the first EP in the series.

Es. is a pretty unique name for the project, what inspired it?

Well, nothing cool or profound here.

From an art viewpoint the letter ‘S’ is beautiful with its shape and curves. I also like that Es. spells ‘S’, simple!

Why did you begin the Es. Project, you are already pretty busy with sycloner?

I love creating music and art, it is all about expression and communication.

When writing some new music, I imagine the parts first in my head, then work them out on the instruments before recording. Last October, I walked past my old art college and reminisced about how it felt to have come from the country, straight to the city for study. Some loneliness at first, but it got better with time. We have all felt the same I am sure. Expressing those emotions musically felt right. The aesthetics which came to mind were Jazz-tinged, nostalgic with a touch of melancholy in one style and groovy, bass-driven and brassy, the other. This has informed the current Es. style, it felt great and true.

What are the main musical inspirations for the project, specific artists?

I listen to and play a lot of music, all the way from the Renaissance to yesterday. This all sits nicely at the back of the musical imagination and

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forms a type of sound palette. I think that early Hip-hop has a beautiful looseness to it and a vibe of fresh excitement. I like the simplicity of the beats and chord progressions, often just a repeated melodic figure. The Lo-fi Chillwave movement has these elements too and both styles are very related. I love to write some tracks with just one chord, with the musical interest being created with the textures and melodies on the instruments. The Indonesian artist Jordy Chandra has written some lovely music in this style.

How would you describe the music in terms of genre? Lo-fi, Nu-Jazz, Trip-hop?

Gold Coast Sound! When I started writing these tracks, I wasn’t aware of a particular style base they would belong to. So, I did some research and realised that Es.’s music is Lo-fi, Jazz-hop and some recent tracks leaning towards Dream-hop. Here in Australia, we have intense sunlight levels. All colours are super-defined, so I reckon that has had a big influence on my sound relating to

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the clarity of parts.

What is your writing process?

I run a lot, at least seventy miles a week. That is when I write music. The mind clears after a few miles and that is when I turn on the creative switch. I would have worked out a rough idea first, a piano run or a bass line, but will work out the other parts which sound right, dash home and figure them out on the instruments. Sometimes, it is like ‘How the heck am I going to play this, it is so difficult!’.

How do you go about recording the material in terms of gear, software, process?

The actual recording process is pretty simple. Probably giving away secrets here! Most importantly I very rarely use any EQ, so the primary sound has to be just right, whether it be the flute, electric piano, bass or otherwise. I record each part separately, upload to the DAW, then the next part and so on.

If I hear a line for an instrument I don’t

have, I will use a midi keyboard. The DAW I use is just a standard one and I use a Zoom mike. I do all of the mastering, mixing and so on myself, just by feel.

With four singles (2021’s ’Drive’ and 2022’s ‘Club’, ‘Dream’ and ‘Speed’) and one EP (this February’s ‘Café’) so far, what have you got planned next?

After the ‘Café’ EP, I have another one nearly completed. No title as yet, but the intention is to release it in July.

There are three tracks on this new one.

The first is Gypsy-flavoured, textured with piano and guitar, the second is all guitar and Dream-hop in style and the third is bass and beat driven and firmly Jazz-hop.

shoot myself or use snippets of public domain video and combine them. There are some excellent resource sites online. It is all a palette to create something emotive and meaningful in the creative arts realm.

Check out the Es. project at: esdc.bandcamp.com www.facebook.com/ Es-107901435019959 www.youtube.com/channel/ UCZsGMLRWHmN9UGv_TjtHDVA

On the subject of Videos, can you describe how you put them together and get inspiration for content?

The videos are really important to me and I try to express the emotions of the track in them. The footage I either

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Red Guitars The Hull Legends That Refuse to Fade Dave Hammond talks to a band going out on tour forty years after they first formed.

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“I think it’s fair to say we are still lefties at heart.”

The Red Guitars released two critically acclaimed studio albums, 1984’s ‘Slow to Fade’ and 1986’s Tales of the Expected’, and a string of influential singles during the early to mid-’80s. Their brand of idiosyncratic Indie Rock allied with political commentary struck a chord among the readers of NME and Sounds, enabling them to play BBC sessions for John Peel, Kid Jensen, Janice Long and Simon Mayo (collected and released as ‘Seven Types of Ambiguity: The BBC Sessions’ in 1993) as well as appearing on Channel 4’s ‘The Tube’ along the way. The band dissolved in the late-’80s with several members getting involved in other projects.

Interest in the band has remained over the years with the occasional one-off live performances. The original members of the band Jeremy Kidd (vocals); Hallam Lewis (lead guitar); John Rowley (guitar); Matt Higgins (drums) and Lou Duffy-Howard (bass) - are back together, rehearsing hard for a tour that will take place throughout late April, taking in London, Glasgow, Brighton, Manchester, Birmingham

and a hometown gig at the legendary New Adelphi in Hull. No easy task with members dotted around East Yorkshire and one in South Africa. I posed a number of questions to band members about the tour and what they’ve been up to in the intervening years.

It has been 35 years or so since the original Red Guitars disbanded. I’m aware of some of the activities followed by band members since then, though not all. Could you give us an idea of what you’ve been doing in the intervening years? After all, it’s over half a life time ago for all of you.

Hallam: In the immediate aftermath, Lou and myself joined up with Grant Ardis [of My Silent War fame, amongst others] to form The Planet Wilson and make a couple of albums, but I’m guessing that this may be one of the bits that you already knew about? Then there were a few bits and bobs over the years, was busy with childrearing at the time, including a stint with the band Cooldrink and some instrumental playing, again with Lou in Trancevaal.

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Photograph by Syd Shelton

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I was at the same time involved in a number of artsy film projects, such as The Hull Fast Film, for which I composed some quirky soundtracks.

Then in 2006, I moved out to Cape Town to set up a ‘gourmet fast food’ business with an old friend, which fairly quickly fell apart. But I enjoyed being back in the place I was born, so since then I’ve been teaching guitar and drums locally and playing live in a variety of set-ups, but mainly doing Blues and Soul stuff with a band called The Bootleggers ... the local scene is unfortunately pretty conservative. All the time, in the background, I have continuously dabbled in songwriting, composition and production, and have a large backlog of half-finished material, some of which I’m kind of hoping may see the light of day with the reincarnation of the Red Guitars.

Beautiful South’, 1989] and I produced the demos that got Kingmaker [Hull based trio and Peel favourites] their deal. I eventually started my own mobile recording setup and became very adept at recording choirs and Brass Bands ... it’s harder than you think ... but as the technology became easier and cheaper so paying work dried up and I retired happily about eight years ago. I still have a great collection of microphones and pre-amps and I’ll probably dig them out to work on the Red Guitars ‘difficult’ third album!

John: When the band split, I went into studio work and made a living recording other bands in local studios.

I actually have Gold and Platinum discs for my work on the first Beautiful South album [‘Welcome to the

Lou: I’ve been involved with Loudhailer Electric Company [with partner Rich and Jeff Parsons, formerly of Hull based punk band Dead Fingers Talk] for a number of years now, playing a blend of original Psychedelic

Jerry: I got involved with computers, worked with a company that designed and build digital installations for museums, built and maintained web sites and taught online system programming.

Rebel Rock from across the ages, with tacit nods to Garage Punk, Psychedelia, Americana and Acid Folk / Rock, telling stories of road trips, myths and legends and sci-fi. Three albums to date, released on DHM records. I’m also a member of Agent Starling along with renowned hurdy gurdy player Quentin Budworth. Lots of hurdy gurdy tunes, drones, vocal harmonies, bass grooves and strings with an experimental edge. We’re halfway through recording our third album.

As a Hull lad myself, I’m aware of the esteem you’re held in locally and the fact you were favourites of the likes of John Peel and the NME, but could you tell me what prompted you to get back together now, after so long away?

Hallam: It had been slightly ‘in the air’ for some time I think, ever since I played with Jerry in Brighton in 2008, but it was being approached by a promoter who wanted us to do a tour that gave us the final push in to doing something about it.

Jerry: Steve Homer of AEG Presents emailed me and asked if the original Red Guitars were interested in doing some gigs.

How have rehearsals been going?

It must seem a little strange getting everyone back in the same room again, especially with Hallam being based in South Africa most of the time? Have the old songs got the adrenaline flowing again?

Hallam: You’d have to ask the others!

I believe it’s been going really well and have seen some video footage that looked great. We’ve spent quite a bit of time on Zoom meetings, especially sorting out the various guitar parts to make sure we’re not treading on each other’s toes, and then I’ve spent a lot of time preparing stuff and playing along to recordings my end. I’m really looking forward to getting together with everyone and finally have a proper live run through of everything, and the vibe with everyone seems to have been great and really positive. It’s been really interesting to revisit the old

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material after such a long gap, and I’d have to say that, in all modesty, it has made me really quite proud of what we achieved. There are so many little nuggets of musical and lyrical gems tucked away in there that it has been a real pleasure to rediscover.

John: Yes, it’s been really nice.

Amazingly, we have the original 24 track, 2-inch tapes of all the original recordings which have been a god send as I don’t think we would have been able to remember some of the really tricky bits. It’s amazing listening back to them and I think we are all pretty impressed at the quality of the writing and playing.

Jerry: The rehearsals have been really good fun and we’ve been able to connect with Hal via Zoom. We have embraced some of the new technologies available to gigging musicians and we are really excited about playing live.

Lou: Rehearsals have been fab. We’ve had several days at O’Rileys [excellent

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venue in Hull] and I’m especially looking forward to playing Manchester, which is my home town.

Talking of the old songs, I remember seeing something on social media a few years ago asking people to come up with suggestions of updated lyrics for the brilliant 1983 debut single ‘Good Technology’. Some of the original lyrics where representative of what was happening at the time and stand up well to this day, but did you get any good contemporary suggestions which might be worthy of inclusion in an updated version?

Lou: We ran a competition as a bit of fun to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the single and were overwhelmed with what was sent back to us. The original had quite evocative and prophetic lyrics by Stuart Ross, including such as ‘We’ve got computers that can find us friends.’ Several whole songs of new lyrics were sent back and though we ended printing many of our favourites on the Loudhailer.net website, it’s hard to beat the legendary Eddie Smith’s

[poet and lead singer of The Gargoyles] line ‘We’ve got photographs of men on the bog’!

Hallam: Funnily enough, Lou sent out a list of those just recently and I was having a look through them – there were some pretty good ‘uns in there and there was some talk of maybe incorporating one or two, but I’m not sure till I get there if that’s going to happen. Off the top of my head, the one that I remember was something along the lines of ‘whatever happened to those jetpacks we were promised’, only more lyrical obviously …

John: ‘Good technology’ is a really important part of my life. It was the song that John Peel played and it broke the band. I don’t think there would have been a Red Guitars without it. It was the song that we were known for and it evolved over time. While it’s a relatively simple three chord song, the devil is in the detail. It’s really a call and response song between the lyrics and the guitars. Each line has its own response that we perfected playing it

live. Then in the studio, we had access to some very early synths, which gave us some great textures. For me the words are cast in stone and while some of the alternative lyrics are great, they can never replace the originals, which I think are pretty perfect.

Jerry: There were some fantastic suggestions but, tempting though it is to use some of them, we feel duty bound to stick to the original lyrics for this tour.

Several of the original band’s songs where quite politically motivated, a commentary on the times (bearing in mind it was Thatcher’s heyday).

Thirty odd years on, do you still have those same motivations and beliefs, or have they changed as you’ve got older?

Hallam: Inevitably, I think one’s attitudes hopefully deepen and become more informed and nuanced as one gets older, but I don’t really hold with the popular idea that one has to somehow turn in to a rabid right winger as you

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get older! I am still continually appalled by the constant drift towards greater inequality, in fact I have tried to work some of this in to a song ... working title ‘Trickledown’ ... but not sure how successfully, so don’t watch this space just yet ... not to mention the horrors of the current government, and for me, personally, I felt the whole Brexit mess to be a political tragedy on the grandest of scales. So, I guess I’d have to describe myself nowadays as various shades of centre left – although I did find Corbyn to be an exciting breath of fresh air at first! Sadly, the timing of that was also messed up by the Brexit débâcle, amongst other things.

tracks or has the passage of time caused some of the lesser-known songs to be re-evaluated and included in the checklist?

John: Ha! I loathed Thatcher and the conservative mindset. If anything, I hate them more now.

John: I think we all have individual favourites. I love ‘Fact’ [1983 single] because it’s a great lyric with a fantastic simple chord progression.

There was a magic about the compositions that Jerry and Hallam came up with over those early years.

Some of the songs were real bastards to play. They still are ...

Jerry: I think it’s fair to say we are still lefties at heart.

What songs can we expect from the band at these gigs? Will there be a run through of the more well-known

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Hallam: As I said above, it’s been a real pleasure rediscovering all of the songs but, yes, there have been some ...

‘Astronomy’ and ‘Cloak & Dagger’ [both from ‘Slow to Fade’] spring to mind ... that we maybe didn’t appreciate as much at the time but are really great to come back to. Mind you, they’re not always that easy to translate into an equivalent live performance version, but we are hopeful! It’s definitely part of what I’m looking forward to achieving …

The tour is due to start in April, covering many major cities. Are there any plans to tour again after this, covering venues that might have been missed this time around, or is it a case of ‘let’s see how we go’ before making a decision?

Hallam: Well, yes, the latter, but there have been some pretty positive noises coming from the promoter. So, nothing definite yet, but hopeful that there may be more opportunities around the corner - I believe the word ‘festivals’ did crop up, and the Hull gig, in particular, sold out so fast that it would seem churlish not to give people another chance.

John: It’s a let’s see. It’s quite amazing that we are all still alive. That could easily change ...

Jerry: We agreed with the promoter that, if it goes to our mutual satisfaction, we’ll do some more shows. There were other venues that wanted to put the Red Guitars on but we thought we’d better make sure we

were up to the challenge before committing further.

Following on from the last question, has the spark of inspiration ignited enough to consider writing and recording any new material? I’m sure there’s enough going on in the world that would warrant a commentary from the Red Guitars.

Hallam: This, for me, is undoubtedly the most exciting part of what could come out of this. I would love for us to do some new material. Getting back with the rest of the band really helps me to appreciate the magic of ‘chemistry’ that makes a great band tick and makes the whole idea of the band as a format / medium so interesting and intriguing. I do think we were lucky enough to land on a combination of individuals that really worked well together and it would be brilliant to see that back in action again. I think we were always able to be critical of each other and the songs in ways that were constructive and created a ‘sum of the parts’ without too much destructive

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tension. I know the others are keen too, so yes, optimistic.

John: It would be nice to think so.

Writing songs isn’t hard. Writing great songs is really hard.

Jerry: We are working on some new material. Fingers crossed it turns out well.

Just as an aside from your current endeavours, are there any contemporary bands or artists you’re currently listening to which you would heartily recommend for others to listen to?

Hallam: Hmm, although I am always curious, I’m afraid I only occasionally dip in to what’s around and my daughter has probably been my main source of new music in recent years that means I’ve probably heard and enjoyed more contemporary hip hop than I should have! I have a handful of old favourites that I love revisiting ... South Africa’s Abdullah Ibrahim is always great, though a little too ‘Jazzy’

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in places for some. Likewise, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed listening a lot to Martin, Medesky and Wood, especially with John Schofield on guitar, but these don’t really count as contemporary any more, and as I say are possibly a bit on the Jazz / instrumental side for some tastes. What can I say? For songs I still think people like Leonard Cohen and Van Morrison are hard to beat, so I’m afraid you’ll just have to call me an old fogey! Sorry. Always open to suggestions from others though! Oh yes, and Alabama Shakes are pretty darn good! There’s no doubt more that are just not popping in to my head right now.

John: That’s tough. I still listen to new music and occasionally get a bit moist!

Friends send links to stuff all the time.

I’ve been enjoying a band called Wet Leg recently. I tend to be dismissive of most Pop music, but I’ll listen to anything as long as it’s not Jazz.

Jerry: The Supremes are seldom out of my cassette player.

Lou: I’m currently listening to Jordi Savall and Benedicte Maurseth who both have new albums out. I tend to pick up new sounds from listening to many Radio 3 shows and independent radio shows.

Finally, give us a plug for any other bands or activities you’re involved in?

Hallam: If anyone fancies a visit to Cape Town, you can usually find The Bootleggers playing somewhere or other on a weekend!

John: Ten Million Aliens [a collaboration with pianist John Senior, bassist / guitarist Rich Banks and a host of samples] have had an album finished for about three years but I don’t know whether it will ever see the light of day.

In the end it’s just about being creative and doing stuff. Nothing much else matters.

Jerry: Fragile Creatures [Jerry’s son Adam is lead singer for the Brighton based band who will be supporting Red

Guitars at the Brighton and London shows].

Thanks very much everyone, and best of luck with the tour. I, for one, hope it’s a success and it leads to more gigs and, hopefully, new music from the band.

‘Slow to Fade’ tour dates: 19th April: The Old Woollen, Leeds 21st April: Night and Day, Manchester 22nd April: The Attic, Glasgow 23rd April: New Adelphi, Hull 28th April: The Green Door Store, Brighton 29th April: 100 Club, London 30th April: O2 Institute, Birmingham www.redguitars.co.uk www.facebook.com/RedGuitarsUK

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SOMEONE LEFT THE CAKE OUT IN THE RAIN: THE GENIUS OF

JIMMY WEBB INTERVIEW BY ALICE JONES-RODGERS.

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“... my music was being played in outer space! ... it’ it’s wonderful, but also kind of crazy at the same time!” time!”

Oklahoma-born Jimmy Webb holds a curious position within the pantheon of music. On one hand, the now 75 year old songwriter is one of the most celebrated, still being the only artist to have ever received Grammy Awards for music, lyrics and orchestration, but on the other, he is one of the most vastly under-appreciated. One could not possibly imagine never having heard such greats as ‘Witchita Lineman’; ‘By the Time I Get to Phoenix’; ‘Galveston’; ‘MacArthur Park’ or ‘Up, Up and Away’ and nobody could fail to acknowledge the importance of such songs in the evolution of popular music, but the fact that Webb’s stories of everyday life and unrequited love, all rich in imagery and hidden depths, have more often than not been popularised by other artists working in all manner of genres, including Country, Soul, Pop and Disco, ranging from The 5th Dimension, Glen Campbell, Richard Harris and Frank Sinatra to Art Garfunkel, Diana Ross and the

Supremes, Donna Summer and Barbra Steisand, has made Webb something of a cult figure; the man behind the hits, but far less often at centre-stage.

Having secured chart hits for other artists across the world many a time ever since his achieving his first commercial recording in 1965, when at the age of nineteen, working as a songwriter for Jobete Music, the publishing arm of Motown Records, his song ‘My Christmas Tree’ was featured on that year’s Supremes festive album ‘Merry Christmas from The Supremes’, Webb first struck out as a singer-songwriter in his own right in the late-’60s, going on to release thirteen studios and one live album between 1968 and 2019.

He has also written a guide for songwriters entitled ‘Tunesmith: Inside the Art of Songwriting’ (1998) and one of the greatest autobiographies you are ever likely to read, ‘The Cake and the Rain: A Memoir’ (2017).

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These days, Webb is a more prolific live performer than ever before and 27th May this year sees him bringing his latest tour, ‘An Evening with Jimmy Webb’ over to the UK for ten dates. When he joined us via Zoom video chat a few weeks ago, he was already enjoying being back out on the road stateside and began the following interview by excitedly telling us: “Yeah, I’ve been having a lot of fun. I went down South to my ... you know, I was partly raised in Texas and partly raised in Oklahoma, so I did two gigs in Texas and two in Oklahoma and they both went really good. You know, it’s my first time out since COVID two years ago. I came off the road in March of 2020, so I’m back!”

After a little technological tweakery

by Webb’s assistant Pete and a bit more chatting with the pair, we began our deeper look into the life, career and genius of a gentleman who’s service to music across nearly seven decades are second to none.

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Firstly, hello Jimmy 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 found you had a gift for songwriting and became interested making it your career, which has now spanned an incredible fifty-seven years?

Well, you know, my mother put me on the piano bench when I was six years old and she was quite insistent that I practiced every day. I was very bored by that, I didn’t care for it at all, but I worked on it for a while. Her dream was for me to become the church pianist. My father was the minister.

I worked very hard for my mother, I loved her, and when I was twelve years old [in 1958], I became the church pianist and eventually I was kind of like the musical director in it. I transitioned to organ. It was a Hammond B3, but I learned to play that. I also played cornet and I still play cornet. I have a horn. I don’t practice enough, but I still play. So, around age twelve, I began to realise

Jimmy with The Supremes, 1965

that I could get a lot of attention from the members of the opposite sex by sitting down and playing some of the songs that I heard on the radio. I found that I had this gift where I could just listen to something and play it. And so, it was while I was doing it, I would make up my own arrangements at church for ‘Amazing Grace’ and things and I’m using different chords and I’m really being very adventurous, you know, and trying different things and it was somehow or another that I realised that I was easily capable of making up my own music, which I started doing about age twelve. And then I began to imitate songs that I heard on the radio and then eventually, I started, in Oklahoma City, when I was twelve or thirteen, I wrote a song called ‘It’s Someone Else’ and believe it or not, about twenty years later, it was recorded by Arty [Art] Garfunkel [as ‘Someone Else [1958]’ for the 1977 album ‘Watermark’]. So, I was writing songs that were decent. I mean, I don’t know how great they were, but they were passable, when I was about twelve.

After a stint transcribing other people’s music for a small music publisher in Hollywood, your first job as a songwriter was with Jobete Music, the publishing arm of Motown Records and the first commercial recording of one of your songs was ‘My Christmas Tree’ by The Supremes, which was featured on their 1965 festive album (and seventh album overall) ‘Merry Christmas from The Supremes’.

What did you learn from those early days working as a songwriter for Jobete Music and can you remember how it felt to have a song that you had written released on record for the first time?

Well, yeah, my first real job was at Motown and Motown on the West coast, not to be confused with Detroit, but this is Los Angeles and I worked for Motown there as a contract writer there for a while and I fell in love with the people there and they treated me like a sort of a mascot, I guess. I was the only white kid in the building, Alice, and I learned a lot about human

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Jimmy whilst working for Jobete Music

beings, about race, about how we should treat others and, at the same time, I had my first song placed on a real recording, which was a Christmas album by The Supremes called ‘Merry Christmas from The Supremes’ [1965]. I wrote a little song called ‘My Christmas Tree’, which I thought was a brilliant title! Don’t you? [Laughs]. So, at any rate, I remember that was the first cheque I ever got, for $350! I called my father, ‘the minister’, back in Oklahoma and I said, ‘Dad, you were wrong!’ [laughs], because he thought I was never going to make any money!

One of the things I have always felt about your songwriting is that it is very often steers clear of the average verse-chorus-verse-chorus formula.

I seem to recall hearing that when you presented ‘By the Time I Get to Phoenix’ (first recorded by Johnny Rivers for his 1966 album ‘Changes’ and later recorded in what is regarded as its definitive form by Glen Campbell as the title track of his 1967 seventh album and released as a single in the same year, reaching

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number two on the US Billboard Hot Country Chart) for example, it was suggested that you added a chorus, but you refused. As a songwriter, how much do you listen to advice from others and how often is it actually acted upon?

Well, the staff at Motown ... actually, their publishing arm was called Jobete.

So, the staff there, they weren’t crazy about ‘By the Time I Get to Phoenix’ because it was three verses. There was no chorus and they kept saying to me, ‘It needs a chorus, It needs to go [sings in a very showy manner] ‘By the time I get to Phoenix, oh yeah!’’ And they were very sort of upset and I said, ‘No’.

I sort of put my foot down. Because I had been very much the student, but I really put my foot down and I said, ‘No, I’m not going to put a chorus in ‘By the Time I Get to Phoenix’’. I said, ‘It’s a story and it’s just the three verses. That’s the way it is’. And they said, ‘Okay, well, you can take it because we don’t want it!’ So, I put it in my knapsack and I kept that one until it was recorded by, first Johnny

Rivers [‘Changes’, 1966] and then Glen Campbell [‘By the Time I Get to Phoenix’, 1967]. But, I’ve written a book called ‘Tunesmith’ [‘Tunesmith: Inside the Art of Songwriting’, 1998] and it talks a lot about how there are dozens, if not hundreds, of different ways to write a song. It doesn’t have to be just a verse and a chorus, there are a lot of different permutations and I’ve tried to give a name to all those things and create a system for young writers so that they can identify the different parts of the song. Like, for instance, you could have an intro, verse, chorus, bridge, verse, chorus, right? Well, I’ve sort of charted that all out and it’s just as an aid to young songwriters, to show them that there are a lot of different ways to write a song.

I also remember noticing that when you delivered ‘Witchita Lineman’ (recorded by Glen Campbell for his 1968 album of the same name and released as a single, reaching number 3 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and number 7 on the UK top 40), you regarded it as an incomplete song

due to it not having a third verse or middle eight. Is it right that you were actually surprised when you learned that Campbell had recorded it?

Well, it was a couple of weeks later and I had run into him in the studio and we were quite friendly. You know, I have never got upset when someone said they didn’t want to record a song, because that just comes with being a songwriter, but I hadn’t heard from him and I was at Armin Steiner Sound Recorders in LA and I walked in and he was there and I said ‘Hello’, of course and I said ‘I guess you guys didn’t care for ‘Witchita Lineman’, I never heard from you! You know, I had written a note and said ‘This is not finished, but if you like it, I’ll finish it’, or whatever and he said, ‘You mean ‘Witchita Lineman’?’ I said, ‘Yeah!’ He said, ‘We cut that!’ And I said, ‘But Glen, I wrote you a note and said the song wasn’t finished!’ And he said, ‘Well, it is now!’ [Laughs]. So, and he was absolutely right. It didn’t need any more work, it didn’t need any more

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words, it just needed that beautiful guitar solo that he played and then, you know, it was perfect and he had it exactly right.

Your first big hit came in 1967 when ‘Up, Up and Away’ was recorded by The Fifth Dimension and reached number 16 on the US Billboard Hot 100. That song was featured on their 1967 album of the same name, which included four of your other songs (‘Which Way to Nowhere’; ‘Never Gonna Be the Same’; ‘Pattern People’ and ‘Rosecrans Blvd’). Two years later, is it right that ‘Up, Up and Away’ and ‘Galveston’ (recorded

by Glen Campbell for his 1969 album of same name and released as a single, reaching number four on the US Billboard Hot 100) were both featured on a cassette listened to by the astronauts aboard Apollo 11 (July 16-24th 1969)? Can you how it felt to know that the astronauts’ listening for the mission had included your music?

Ah-huh. Well, I’ve heard that story. I

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know that ‘Up, Up and Away’ was played on Apollo 10 [May 18-26th 1969], I remember that. And the commander of that mission was Tom Stafford, who was also from Oklahoma and I know that it was played as a wake up song for the astronauts on their way to the moon. So, my music was being played in outer space! [Laughs]. You know, which is absolutely ... you know, it’s wonderful, but also kind of crazy at the same time! But, and so, I do believe that one of my songs [‘Galveston’] was played on the Moon mission [Apollo 11]. I think it was Buzz Aldrin who had a bunch of Country songs on a ... you know, it was a tape. It was his sort of mixtape that he took with him. It was very gratifying. I don’t know what it means in the larger scheme of things, but I got a kick out of it! [Laughs].

Another song that I wanted to ask you about is ‘MacArthur Park’, originally recorded by Richard Harris for his 1968 album ‘A Tramp Shining’. That single became one of the biggest hits of that year, reaching

number two on the US Billboard Hot 100 and number four on the UK singles chart. Even with people having heard The Beatles 1967 output with songs such as ‘I Am the Walrus’; ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and the ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ album, ‘MacArthur Park’ must have still sounded really audacious for 1968, with it featuring four separate sections and being seven minutes and twenty-one seconds long, but it was played by radio stations all over the world in its entirety. Exactly a decade later, Donna Summer took ‘MacArthur Park’ to number five in the UK and number one in the US and featured it on the US chart-topping album ‘Live and More’. Where did the idea for a classically-influenced song that could be played on radio come from and what are your memories of writing that song?

Well, it was actually ordered. It was a request from a very famous Hollywood record producer named Bones Howe, who also produced The 5th Dimension,

and his other group was The Association and he said, ‘Can you write me a kind of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Classical thing’, but he said, ‘I want to have movements, like an actual Classical piece’, and he says, ‘I want there to be fast bits and slow bits’, and he said, ‘But I want it to be very Classical’.

And I said, ‘That’s going to be hard to do in three minutes’ and he said, ‘Make it as long as you want!’ So, he was really the instigator of that and after I’d written it, there’s all kinds of stories about it, but the truth is that The Association didn’t have enough room on their album to put it on there. In the old days, there was a limit to how much music you could put on an album. So, it was too long for them to put on their current album, so it kind of went up on the shelf until I was working with Richard Harris on it and I played it in his apartment at 37 Chesham Place in Belgravia and he slapped his hand down on top of the piano and said, [impersonating Harris] ‘I’ll have that!’

And, you know, that was sort of the end of it. He became a mad man about it!

Again, he was the primary instigator

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and insisted that it would be, as he used to say, [impersonating Harris] ‘It’ll be a huge hit! And I’ll be a Pop star with Jimmy Webb!’ But, he had no lack of confidence, Richard and so, he didn’t know that you couldn’t do anything.

He was a wonderful character and inspired me greatly in my life, because he didn’t know the meaning of impossible! And so, the thing came out and I think the two most surprised people in the world were Richard Harris and Jimmy Webb when it became a hit! It was too long, it was absolutely too long to be a hit, but everybody played it anyway, Alice, you know!

All of your songs are so packed with imagery, but the story in ‘MacArthur Park’ particularly continues to mesmerise listeners all these years later. We are sure you have been asked this many times but who exactly “left the cake out in the rain” and did everything that is mentioned in the song actually happen?

Well, there is nothing that is mentioned

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in the song that didn’t happen. It’s not LSD, it’s not ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ [The Beatles, ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’, 1967], everything that I wrote about actually happened in ‘MacArthur Park’, including the cake in the rain and the young lady who I was in love with [Susie Horton], who wore the yellow cotton dress. The old men playing checkers by the trees were always there. Everyday, they were always there playing checkers. And I was living in Silver Lake [Los Angeles] and I could walk to MacArthur Park and I could meet my girlfriend and she was the love of my life, so when I lost her ... she didn’t die or anything, but I lost her and I was just writing about the time that we spent together in the park when life was beautiful. So, really, that’s all. There nothing mysterious and it’s not meant to offend anyone or send anyone up, or make anyone angry, even though it did! It did make a lot of people angry, for reasons that I have yet to understand [laughs] to tell you the truth!

How strange! I don’t quite understand that either, but ...

[Webb laughs].

Anyway, I will make this the last question and let you get off, although I could chat to you all day! Starting at Cadogan Hall in London on May 27th, you are about to bring your show ‘An Evening with Jimmy Webb’ over to the UK for ten dates.

You have actually been touring the show in the US since the 5th of March this year, so what can UK audiences expect from ‘An Evening with Jimmy Webb’ when you arrive over here?

Well, UK audiences know me pretty well and I’m going to play some hits, I’m going to play some new material, I’m going to tell some stories that are hopefully going to make them laugh, because I like to do that. So, it’s just an evening ... I like to think of it as entertainment. I’m not out there to play political football, I’m just out there to enjoy my audience and hopefully they

enjoy me and we’ll have an evening where you can bring your children if you want and everyone will be happy at the end. And I must thank you for helping me.

Oh, you are so welcome and can I just say what an honour it has been to speak to you, thank you! We wish you all the best for all the remaining dates on the ‘An Evening with Jimmy Webb’ tour and for the future.

Alright, well, you should come see me!

I would love for you to come see me Alice, okay? Love you, bye bye.

The ten-date UK leg of the An Evening with Jimmy Webb’ tour begins at Cadogan Hall in London on 27th May. For all upcoming dates and tickets, visit the links below: JIMMYWEBB.COM WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/ JIMMYWEBBMUSIC

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Sunflower Bean The Sweet Taste of Success Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers Photography by Driely Carter.

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“... everyone is competing for attention, especially in such a digital way; it’s hard to just be a human.”

As they were for many, the lockdowns of 2020/21 were a time of self-discovery for New York’s Sunflower Bean. Shortly before the pandemic put paid to touring plans for what must have felt like a lifetime for a band who had rarely been off the road since 2015, the three-piece consisting of vocalist and bassist Julia Cumming (she/her); guitarist and vocalist Nick Kivlen (he/him) and drummer Olive Faber (she/they) had been revelling in the critical and commercial success of their second album, 2019’s ‘Twentytwo in Blue’, and the glowing reviews for its accompanying live dates. However, the restrictions imposed on the world gave Cumming, Kivlen and Faber the opportunity to assess where to take Sunflower Bean next and work soon began on their third album, with Faber having used the downtime to acquire the relevant

skills to act as the band’s co-engineer alongside UMO’s Jacob Portrait, who having worked on ‘Twentytwo in Blue’, also provided production and mixing. The result is the Psychedelic headrush ‘Headful of Sugar’, released on 6th May via Lucky Number.

Whereas Sunflower Bean described ‘Twentytwo in Blue’ as an “ode to the fleeting innocence of youth”, ‘Headful of Sugar’ is an album inspired by the lived experience of late capitalism. And with such weighty subject matter explored across their growing catalogue, it is no surprise that the band caught the attention of Manic Street Preachers, who recently called upon Cumming to add her vocal talents to ‘The Secret He Had Missed’, the second single to be lifted from their latest chart-topping latest album, last

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year’s ‘The Ultra Vivid Lament’.

your records, isn’t it?

To discuss ‘Headful of Sugar’ and the excitement of getting back out on the road for its current supporting tour, which reached the UK for eleven dates on 30th March, as well as Sunflower Bean’s rise to becoming one of the most talked about Rock bands in the world today, Cumming recently joined us via Zoom from a hotel room in Dallas for the following interview.

Yeah, so, I mean, our drummer, Olive [Faber], spent a lot of time learning about engineering in the past couple of years, which she did in order to really give us the chance to have more control over our music and be able to demo and do a lot more stuff and, you know, during the pandemic, that really, really came in handy and because of her skills, we were really able to write a lot. We wrote a lot of songs, we wrote the whole time and we worked with our producer, Jacob Portrait, and he was kind of like our coach, just saying like ‘Keep going!’ and ‘Keep trying!’, you know, and I think it’s really cool that the album stayed really between us four. I think that there’s a lot of pressure these days for artists to collaborate with a ton of people and, you know, to go to LA and do all this crazy stuff, but I think that our record got to really stay close to the source because of how small the team around it has been. I mean, we did work with Shamir, who I really love and another friend of mine, Suzy Shinn [both

Hello Julia and thank you for agreeing to our interview, it is lovely to speak to you. Firstly, congratulations on your great new album, ‘Headful of Sugar’, which is released via Lucky Number on 6th May. Could you tell us about the writing and recording process of this album, because this is the first album you recorded in a home environment (at Sunflower Bean Studios) and, alongside UMO’s Jacob Portrait on production and mixing duties, the first time your drummer, Olive Faber, acted as engineer on one of

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Shamir and Shinn receive co-writing credits on ‘Stand By Me’], but those are the only two people besides Jacob Portrait and us that are involved with the record.

So, this is your third album, following 2016’s ‘Human Ceremony’ and 2018’s ‘Twentytwo in Blue’.

Having recorded it in such a different way to the first two albums, did you find that working in this way, without being constrained by such things as studio costs, gave you more time to be able to experiment and to do something a bit different?

Yeah, definitely. I mean, and I think, you know, when you think about the word ‘experimenting’, like, usually in a studio, that means, you know, mic placement, that means, you know, you get out all this gear and plug things in and you try things and like, it’s really, really fun, but because of these circumstances, the way that we experimented was really more about ‘What’s the most extreme way that we can say this?’; ‘What’s the clearest way

we can say this?’; ‘What’s the loudest way we can say this?’ You know, and we really tried to work in what we call ‘primary colours’. You know, big vocals, big bass, big drums, you know, which we’ve really felt is kind of really the modern sound. But, you know, a lot of the tracks, they took place over such a period of time that there are these little things and parts of them and layers that are on them that could never be recreated in one studio, so I really like that, you know. I really feel like my favourite music that has ever been created is like music that doesn’t fit into one box; it kind of has like an unplaceable magical feeling and that was what I was really trying to put into this album. Yeah, just something that felt different and felt unique.

You described ‘Twentytwo in Blue’ as an “ode to the fleeting innocence of youth”, but what was making you tick as songwriters when you were working towards what eventually became ‘Headful of Sugar’?

I think that when we did ‘Twentytwo in

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Blue’, it was really trying to grapple with that power of young adulthood, the almost clumsy rebellious power that comes with being that age and, you know, we have always used writing as a way to, yeah, just try and make sense of our circumstances and I think with ‘Headful of Sugar’ we were able to, yeah, be more confident and kind of sit and say what we needed to say, rather than try to say it. I think with this album, we were, without wanting it to be a pandemic record, we were very, very affected by the way that we all do have to live right now, digitally and, you know, with the rapidity of information and entertainment and all of that became this sort of cultural sugar that was kind of swirling around in our heads and we sort of used the ways that we like to write, sometimes Poppier, sometimes harder, sometimes more Psychedelic, to try to create a lot of duality in the songs, whether it’s lyrically, sonically ... you know, a lot of the songs are about what they’re about, while also using this sound to add a layer to it. Even with ‘Roll the Dice’, which is our most recent single, you

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know, it’s a very abrasive song and it does kind of bring up this element of discomfort that we accept in order to survive, you know, the kind of gambles and risks that we need to take with our future, especially financially and then, also that element of, you know, ‘I just wanna win, win, win!’, you know, that is ingrained in all of us and it’s something that we have to accept in ourselves, when you look in the mirror, that we can post all day about this, or we can be angry about that, or we can know that something’s wrong, but at the end of the day, we’re all alone on this big rock trying to fight for our survival. You know, on the record, we get really personal and we also get bigger and we try to tell that full journey through the whole thing.

There is a very sort of rebellious streak running through ‘Headful of Sugar’, in that it might have quite deep subject matter relating to disillusionment with the modern world and the lived experience of late capitalism, but there is a very joyful and euphoric feeling to the record.

Did you go into making ‘Headful of Sugar’ with the sound that you wanted the record to have in mind or was it more something that became apparent as you were working on it?

It definitely became apparent as we were working on it, but we did have a lot of ideas that we wanted to stay true to and a lot of that was, you know, we wanted ourselves and the record to be very tangible ... yeah, to kind of not feel like a university sort of record, to not feel like we were like these superheroes coming down and trying to save us, just because, in this time as well, everyone is competing for attention, especially in such a digital way; it’s hard to just be a human. So we really wanted to keep everything with the record, like, kind of grounded in reality and when it came to its sound, we wanted it to be loud and powerful and punchy, even when we were being more subtle, or even when we were being euphoric. You know, so, whether it was kind of more like a ballad, or more like a festival rager, or like a heavier Rock moment, we just

tried to keep an ethos of what we thought was important in the song, which was really that rhythm and that vocal, and keep that really loud.

In the last two years or so, the world has obviously been massively affected by the pandemic and its various lockdowns and previous to this, you were revelling in the aftermath of having released a massively critically acclaimed album, ‘Twentytwo in Blue’. Do you feel that, in a way, the pandemic, although it was hard work for everybody, might have given you a bit of breathing space to be able to contemplate which direction to take the sound of Sunflower Bean in for ‘Headful of Sugar’?

Yeah, I think that the pandemic gave everybody a lot of space to consider everything about their lives and everything about they want to make work and I do think that it was good for us, ultimately, even though we could never have seen it coming, to get a little bit of space from kind of the typical

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Indie cycle of two years on, six months to make a record, go back. So, I do think that was good. I mean, I think everyone has lost so much, you know, that it’s hard to ... it’s hard, it’s just hard, it’s hard for everyone, but I do think the fact that we got a little space and time to develop as writers is also priceless, in a way, because, you know, I do think we are very different writer-wise than when we started, which is cool.

The pandemic was also a time in which you collaborated with Manic Street Preachers on ‘The Secret He Had Missed’, the second single from their fourteenth album ‘The Ultra Vivid Lament’ (2021). You have previously supported the band, but how did you come to collaborate with them and how did you find the experience of working alongside James Dean Bradfield, Nicky Wire and Sean Moore on that track?

Yeah, well, that relationship started around ‘Twentytwo Blue’ and they were really supportive of that record

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and that was kind of how we learned about them. We had heard of them, but definitely, the place that they hold culturally around the UK and in Wales is really exceptional and yeah, we’ve just always found them to be incredibly kind and generous and supportive of new music, which I think is the hardest thing to do as you get older. So many people get so bitter, or get so discouraged, and I think it is really cool to see anyone with that sort of status really try to share it with other artists and I think that is really cool. And, yeah, they basically reached out to me and about the song [‘The Secret He Had Missed’] and the record [‘The Ultra Vivid Lament’] and we talked about it and, you know, what it was really about and kind of the sounds and the sonic inspiration. At first, I heard the piano, which I knew was not always the biggest element of the Manics’ sound, and I knew that they were developing that during the pandemic and I was kind of like, ‘Is this like a Billy Joel kind of thing?’ and they were like, ‘No, it’s more like an ABBA kind of thing’ and I was like, ‘Oh!’ You

know, so, it was really fun to play with that part of my voice and, yeah, get to be a part of their history. And also, you know, the record went to number one and that’s my first time being part of a number one record in the UK. So, yeah, I feel really proud of that song and to be able to work with them on that.

Prior to the pandemic, to say that you toured extensively since your formation would be something of an understatement, wouldn’t it, because you have had basically been out on the road since 2013, was it?

Yeah, I would say 2015/16 onward.

We know that you have had the new album to work on, but how did you find the experience of having the ability to get out on the road taken away from you and how have you found being able to get back out on the road following the lifting of restrictions?

Yeah, you know, it was definitely a real

loss of sense of self. You know, I don’t think that I realised how important it was, which is kind of silly, because I should have known, but I think it really is the last step. You know, you can make these records and you can talk about the records and people can listen to them and tell you what they think, but there is nothing as special as going to a venue with your friends, you know, dancing, screaming, jumping and hearing these songs that you care about and there’s nothing more magical than to create these songs and play them for people live with instruments. You know, it’s worth fighting for and it is worth doing all the time, even when it’s a hardship or even when it’s a hard circumstance. So, you know, I think I really did lose part of my soul, you know, and there are still different restrictions state to state here, but it’s just great to be with the fans again and yeah, every night has a very special privileged feeling to just be there and do it. So, you know, I would say I’m still getting my sea legs back, but in some ways, they never left.

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Talking of gigging, the end of this month sees you coming over to the UK to play eleven dates, starting at Junction 2 in Cambridge on 30th March. Are there any dates that you are particularly looking forward to playing or places that you are looking forward to visiting whilst you are over here?

Yeah, I mean, we’re super-excited for the whole tour. The UK is like a second home for us and I think that, you know, it’s just going to be great to be back. Yeah, Camden [Electric Ballroom, 7th April], I think is going to be great; Manchester is obviously going to be awesome, we’re playing Strange Waves [1st April], which seems like a really cool festival and every time I see the line-up and everything about it, I’m just really excited and I always like Glasgow [Stereo, 2nd April]. My grandmother was from Glasgow. She grew in the slums there and she always wanted to be a singer.

She made some demos and it was not possible for her to be a singer, so she raised a beautiful family instead and that’s great, but, you know, I think every time I’m there, I feel a certain, you know, feeling like I’m carrying on her dream in a way. So, yeah, I always give her a shout-out when I’m there.

Finally, what do you feel that you have taken from the experience of recording ‘Headful of Sugar’ that you might carry over to following records?

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I would say to never settle, it’s not done ‘til it’s done, you know, and that you should always keep trying. I think that was the experience of ‘Headful of Sugar’, you know. There were a lot of circumstances that could have gotten in the way, but everyone really believed in it and fought for it and came together for it. And, yeah, I think I learned a lot about perseverance with this record and, you know, that’s what life is about.

So, yeah, it taught me a lot.

Thank you for a wonderful interview, it has been really, really lovely to talk to you. We wish you all the best with ‘Headful of Sugar’, your current tour and for the future.

‘Headful of Sugar’ is released on 6th May via Lucky Number. Meanwhile, Sunflower Bean are currently touring the UK. For all upcoming dates, visit the links below: www.sunflowerbeanband.com www.facebook.com/SunflowerBean

Mandy Morton and Spriguns After the Storm Interview by Dave Hammond.

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“... it was dragging that 1970s sound into the 21st century, and giving me an opportunity to tell the story of the band, the way I saw it.”

When Mandy Morton started singing with her sister in an attempt to raise some funds for a local Amateur Dramatic Society, little did she realise it would lead to the recording of seven albums of critically acclaimed music, signing to a major record label and touring around various parts of Europe. The legacy of music she left with firstly the Spriguns of Tolgus, then Spriguns and latterly with her very own Mandy Morton Band has, like so many other Psych Folk bands of the ‘60s and ‘70s, grown in stature, with copies of some of the early vinyl albums exchanging hands for in excess of £1,500. The good news is that all seven albums and a bonus DVD of a live recording of the band from the late-’70s have been gathered together in one package, along with comprehensive liner notes, by Cherry Red Records and is

now available to purchase. I caught up with Morton for an interview about the releases and the history of the bands.

Thanks very much for taking the time to speak to me Mandy, it is very much appreciated. My first question is why and how did the compilation come about, nearly forty years after the last release from the band?

Thanks very much for the invite, it’s great to be talking with you too. The way it happened was that Cherry Red Records, who have promoted this, got in touch with me to add the liner notes to the two Decca albums they were going to release [‘Revel, Weird & Wild’, 1976 and ‘Time Will Pass’, 1977]. Obviously, I didn’t own those tapes, Decca had the tapes so they could licence them whenever they felt like it. So, when Cherry Red got in

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contact with me, I then said to them, you know, what would be really nice is if my album ‘Sea of Storms’ [1979] was re-released, because it’s never seen the light of day as a CD, other than a bootleg copy swimming around out there, which is awful. Anyway, they went away to think about it and then they contacted me, I suppose at the end of 2020. And they said, ‘You know, we’ve been thinking about ‘Sea of Storms’, but another thought we had is why don’t you release everything?’ It was a bit of a shock to me, because I thought ‘well, how’s that going to work?’ You know, it’s sort of ten years worth of material forty odd years ago, is this is going to be tricky, even though I owned a lot of the tapes myself. I said, well, how’s it going to work? And they said, ‘You’re the governor, you’re still alive and kicking’, which is great, because a lot of the re-releases that they do, people are no longer here. And they said it was a wonderful opportunity to tell a story of Spriguns first hand from somebody that had been in the band right from its inception. So, I sat down and wrote a potted biography on the

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band, as much as I could possibly remember. The salient points of how the band progressed and moved on was simple enough, just through the music, that was a simple thing to do. Then I had to raid my tape boxes to find out if I really, truly did have any of the master tapes that were in good nick, because that’s another thing - forty years of tape deterioration is not great!

And luckily, because of the way I’d stored them over the years, they were able to do this process you’ll know about, this baking of the reel-to-reel tapes, and creating new digital masters, which they did beautifully. I have to say the sound that’s created in the box set is just fantastic. I’m so thrilled with it. And so that’s exactly what it was, it was dragging that 1970s sound into the 21st century, and giving me an opportunity to tell the story of the band, the way I saw it. I mean, you know, I’m sure there’ll be lots of different versions, but I was also getting pretty fed up with there being all sorts of weird internet sites that were telling me what my songs were about, that were talking about members who had never

been in the band. I thought if I then put down in my own words, the way I saw the band and its progress, that at least would be nice for the fans. And then the added bonus, of course was the live DVD. Yeah, absolutely. If you don’t mind, can we run through the albums in chronological order and comment a little bit about what it was like at the time, going right back to the early days. Before you released anything, I think it was just yourself and your sister and possibly Mike Morton as well, who were just playing around locally, raising money for the amateur dramatics society you were part of …

Yeah. Mike didn’t come into it straight away. My sister, brother-in-law and myself and a friend, we formed this band called Simple Folk. And it was literally for an amateur dramatics society to actually raise funds for their next production because, you know, if you’ve ever been in amateur dramatics society, you’ll know that penny

pinching is the thing. So, we just sort of wandered around local venues, just singing the traditional songs of the day, straight out of the Joan Baez songbook, little bit of Pentangle, little bit of Fairport, all that sort of stuff. But then I’d started dating Mike, and one of the first presents that he gave me was tickets to see Steeleye Span at the Lady Mitchell Hall in Cambridge. We went along to see Steeleye and on that night, my whole life change, because at that point in time, I’d always viewed folk music as being you know, ladies sitting on stools, singing traditional songs, or in the folk club with everyone beering it up and some poor person in the corner desperately trying to be heard.

That really was my experience of folk clubs. But then, when Steeleye Span came to the stage, I realised that there was so much more drama in these traditional songs if performed properly.

And on that day, as we left the Lady Mitchell, I said to my sister, right, I’m out of here. I’ve seen something I want to do. And Mike and I are going to pursue that and we formed a duo at that point. Neither of us could play much of

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anything, really. I mean, I could play a reasonable guitar. In Simple Folk. I’d been their multi-instrumentalist, for some reason, playing bongos, glockenspiel, dulcimer, and guitar as well as a bit of singing, although my sister did most of the singing. And so, we transformed ourselves into this duo, performing some of the material, but more updated, of the Steeleye [Span], Fairport [Convention] and Pentangle catalogue. And it was at that point that the landlord of the Anchor Folk club in Cambridge said to Mike and I, ‘Why don’t you start a music club? There are not enough students coming into this pub at the moment and I want to fill the pub with students on a Friday night’.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Yeah, I know while you were at the Anchor, because the sound equipment there wasn’t necessarily the best, you decided to try and raise some funds by recording a cassette, which became, effectively your first album, your first recording ...

Yes, I could never believe that was ever

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going to be our first album. I mean, at the Anchor, more people joined us on stage, which was lovely, and it became very organic. And in the end, Chris Russell and Rick Thomas joined us sort of permanently at that stage. In our kitchen in Cross Street in Cambridge, we just literally had a four-track mixing desk, and reel-to-reel tape recorder, and a friend pressing the buttons for us who later became our sound engineer.

We literally just performed the sort of stuff that we did at the folk club every Friday night on ‘Rowdy Dowdy Day’ [1974], which on reflection now turns out to be a set of bawdy ballads. When I actually look at the material now, its very eye-raising. I don’t know whether we’d get away with it now, to be perfectly honest. I spent an awful lot of my days making cassettes out of the reel-to-reel, we made our own photographic covers and then at the Anchor we would sell them on the door in hopes of raising a bit of money to buy a decent PA system. So that was the very beginning of our recording career, though it was never meant to see the light of day other than to the

people that went in the Anchor.

Do you know if there’s still any copies of that cassette floating around then? Do you know of anyone who’s got copies?

They do turn up from time to time. We have a Spriguns Facebook page and, from time to time, some of the fans will post their treasures on that site. So there are obviously some about. I have one copy and luckily, I was able to forward the cover of that to Cherry Red records so they’ve been able to use that for the release. Our next foray into recording was ‘Jack With a Feather’ [1975].

Yeah, just reading through my notes, I believe it was recorded for a small label who took you away for the recording in a little country cottage out in the wild somewhere?

Yes, yes, basically, what happened in short was that a couple of guys wearing suits turned up at the Anchor folk club one Friday night and I happened to be on the door at half-time as people came

in, and they bought a cassette, and then they went to the bar and sat there drinking all night. I didn’t give them a second thought other than the fact that they really stuck out like sore thumbs.

We thought they were from the brewery because it didn’t look at all like our sort of fans. And a few days later, the phone rang and the one of these guys said, ‘We’re from a Alida Star, a small recording label. We’ve picked up your cassette at the weekend, and we would very much like to record an album with you’. And we were gobsmacked. I mean, we thought if they’ve listened to the cassette, surely they thought this is not our thing. This is just fun. This is what we do on Fridays. Anyway, they were absolutely genuine about it, they gave us a date, we told the band and they thought it was an absolute hoot.

We took off to Leicester ended up in this little cottage, which had been flooded recently because the whole of the carpet was soaking wet. And with what I now know about electricity, we were probably taking our life in our hands by using electric equipment on that day! Anyway, we cut ‘Jack With a

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Feather’, a lot of material very similar to ‘Rowdy…’ and some new things. We cut that whole album in a space of about eight hours. And then went off and didn’t really think much more about it. Next thing we had through the post was the master tapes. And Mike said, ‘Well, why don’t we press them?’

So that was ‘Jack With a Feather’ which now, extraordinarily, is one of the rarest Folk Albums of all time, which to me is just absolutely astonishing. But, you know, it’s just in its time. 500 copies were pressed, which obviously makes it extremely rare. But the big thing about that was that it did lead to the major Decca contract.

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us for it to be organic, because we never dreamed at that point that anybody in the music industry professionally would be interested in the sort of outfit like us, because there were a lot of people like us in folk clubs.

You mentioned Decca Records. So, the people that came along to see you from Decca had previously rejected the Beatles?

And with ‘Jack with a Feather’, it was a real DIY affair, because you printed it all yourself as well.

Everything was done by yourselves, preceding what happened post Punk when independent, DIY labels became the norm. You were pre-dating that really?

Yes. I mean, I’m very proud to hear that. Hugh Mendel was one of the people in the A&R department, along with someone whose name I can’t remember. After we’d had an interview with the managing director at Decca, we were sent down to the A&R department to be signed. And it was those two people that had the first conversation and originally listened to the early Beatle tapes, which I imagined must have been appalling quality! And they turned them down, but they did sign the Stones!

Yeah. And I think it was important for

At this point you signed a three

record deal. And the Spriguns of Tolgus became Spriguns. Could you tell us where the Spriguns of Tolgus name originated?

Mike and I used to holiday in Cornwall a lot. At the time we were a duo, and we wanted to be called something just a little bit different, maybe a bit magical and mysterious. So, Spriguns is a mythical Cornish pixie that was reputed to sit on clifftops and spit at people. Tolgus was a place renowned for its tin mill, where they took the raw tin and turned it into all sorts of stuff. It was just a lovely sounding name, so we became Spriguns of Tolgus. As soon as we got to Decca, they said, no, no, no, people aren’t going to go with that length of title, so let’s just stick with Spriguns. We went to Decca via Tim Hart of Steeleye Span, who had heard ‘Jack with a Feather’ and a recording of one of his songs, ‘Seamus the Showman’ and he became something of a mentor and produced our next album, which was wonderful.

That first album with Decca was

1976’s ‘Revel, Weird and Wild’. A couple of things struck me about that release, one is that there’s a lot more vocals from yourself and there’s a lot more songs that are written by yourself, some along with Richard Powell, which was a big step forward from the previous two albums.

Yes, it had to be, because we couldn’t just carry on making albums like ‘Jack With a Feather’. The material was lovely and because I’d already become very, very interested in Folk and magical ballads, through spending a lot of time at Cecil Sharp House where there’s a fabulous library, poring through these tomes to find any ballads that had not been made popular by Steeleye, Fairport and Pentangle. I needed to have something different so I spent a long time gathering together some ballads that perhaps other bands hadn’t covered though subsequently, of course, in later years, they did end up covering them. But we found them and then started putting music to them, which is where Dick came in. And Thom Ling, of course, another

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Cambridge member of the band, fabulous violin player. And that really was the way that we put together all the material on ‘Revel, Weird and Wild’.

And, because I was the female vocalist, and that’s what Decca wanted, that’s what they got.

Also, there was more additional instrumentation on these songs, a bit more electric guitar, a few more keyboards. And I think you also have the great BJ Cole (legendary pedal steel guitarist) playing on it as well?

Yes, BJ was a great friend of Tim’s.

Wonderful player, and he did the most beautiful things on ‘When Spring Comes In’. It was lovely. It was all a bit of a shock, really, because we’d come from a Folky band meeting up on a Friday night, you know, beer and fags and a bit of music, to suddenly this prestigious outfit that were living in this extraordinary Hotel in London. It was a very strange life and then at weekends, when we went home to Cambridge, we were eating beans on toast because we had no money. So, Decca picked up the

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tab while we were physically working for them, but then we were cast aside instantly as soon as the studio time was over.

Yes, I think you did comment in the liner notes that it you had mixed feelings, mixed emotions, seeing the album coming out. Obviously, there was great joy about that, but then realising, well, actually, this is this is gonna be our lives going forward now …

Yes, I mean, we were called to do all sorts of Rock star type things for Decca; photoshoots, and things like that. And it was on completely another planet, compared with the reality of our life back at home where we were sort of penny pinching and living from hand to mouth.

The next album, which was 1977’s ‘Time Will Pass’, was again a big step forward in terms of song writing, and probably the quality of the songs as well. Some brilliant writing on there, and some lovely

arrangements as well, especially the ones with Robert Kirby’s (another legendary Cambridge figure, famed for his work with Nick Drake, Vashti Bunyan, Sandy Denny, Elton John, etc) orchestral instrumentation.

It was lovely because for the second album, Sandy Robertson, who had produced Steeleye work and many other notable bands, including the legendary Albion band, was brought in by Decca for the second album, and Sandy, of course, was known for these quite lavish productions. He contacted Robert Kirby, and then contacted me and said, I’ve isolated three tracks, which I would like to send to Robert.

So, I want you to record them acoustically just you and the guitar, and send them to Robert because I want him to do orchestral arrangements on them. And of course, some of those acoustic tracks are actually bonus tracks on the box set. And equally, we had another personnel change at that point, and brought in Dennis Dunstan, and Wayne Morrison from Australia, to sort of really beef up the centre and

backline of the band. And that worked beautifully because Wayne was a no nonsense sort, a really quite heavy rock drummer. I think he brought an awful lot of life to it. Wayne is a superb lead guitarist, and also a great vocalist, he worked very well with me too.

Just going back to what you were saying about bringing in additional musicians that beefed up the sound, I keep going back to the version of ‘Blackwaterside’ on ‘Time Will Pass’, which is really quite heavy.

Yes, I insisted that that went on the album because that was one of our live show pieces. Spriguns were very much a live band and we didn’t take any prisoners. We really were very, very energetic and very Rock heavy on stage. A lot of that, I think, was probably smoothed out a bit on the recording of ‘Time Will Pass’. And in some respects, I think it would have been nice if it had been slightly rough around the edges. But of course, once we actually started to get out there and promote the album, we put the sort of

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dynamics back into it again. But it is it is a lovely album to listen to it. I was very pleased with the writing on it.

Absolutely. And lyrically as well there’s an anti-war song on there, ‘Letter to a Lady’ …

But there’s always an anti-war song!

Unfortunately, there’s always a war to be anti about!

Around this time, you were touring bigger venues and finding that maybe a little bit unusual compared to what you’d been doing before.

Yeah. I mean, Decca in those days, and they probably still do now, stuck an upcoming band on tour with a much more famous band to sort of put them in the spotlight. So, we ended up playing the support to Roy Harper, which was going to be a wonderful opportunity. But the strange thing was that we were also on an electricity blackout situation in the country at the time of the tour. So that was pretty weird. We were playing all manner of

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times during the evenings to try and counter when they were going to pull the electricity supplies at the venues!

And Roy had just recovered from a terrible illness and he still wasn’t that well. There were nights when he would only do half his own gig, and the band would actually carry the rest of it. And there was other stuff going on. I wouldn’t want to say too much about it other than the fact that we felt very unwelcome. We were given all sorts of lovely display material by Decca and on the first gig at West Runton Pavilion, Roy’s roadies just dumped it off the cliff into the sea. As far as they were concerned, Roy didn’t have any lovely, nice, posh publicity boards, so why the heck should we! But it culminated in a gig at the Rainbow, which I will always remember just from looking up at the roof and seeing the stars and also seeing the row of notables on the front row, including all our Decca A&R department and a lot of very famous faces from Roy Harper’s friends. And hey, old Spriguns just got up there and let them have it. That was special. And you know, that poster to this day,

whenever I see it in my archive makes me smile. It was just a wonderful moment. And I still have a T-shirt, but it doesn’t fit anymore. So, yeah, I think there was a period after that, of us possibly losing a little bit of control, and wanting to gain back that control.

So, you set up your own record company, which was quite a brave thing to do at the time.

Yeah, we were quite brave. And when I looked back on it now, what happened really, with Decca was I owed them another album. But the personnel at Decca changed and all the people that had been looking after us and actually genuinely loved the band left. And they were replaced by some, I don’t know, almost business executives who hadn’t necessarily any great depth of interest in music, just an interest in making money. Punk and new wave was flying high at the time, their attitude was, well, this is what we’re going to promote from now on. And then they looked at Spriguns and thought, ‘well, they’re lovely, we’ll just make them

middle of the road’. And I think they felt that songs like ‘White Witch’, which of course had the lavish production and the orchestration from Robert Kirby, would be the way to go.

And that was something that absolutely didn’t interest me at all. I wanted to stay in the, you know, the acid folk scene, I did not want to move into a lovely, smooth sort of KTel type album situation. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it wasn’t for me, and Mike and I agonised over it. Then I decided that I would go to Decca and explain how I felt. And they very graciously allowed me out of the contract. And then I started to write ‘Magic Lady’ [1978]. Mike formed our own new record label, Banshee records, and we did feel a freedom to be able to write the songs I wanted to write as well. It was massively freeing. And again, I always think of it as being my black magic album because, well, these subject matters interested me. I think looking back on it now, it was very much to do with my own life and my own feelings. I’d come out of a horrible childhood; an awful lot of things had

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not surfaced. I believe that they surfaced in those albums, which was great, because the point is that it was wonderful therapy for me to actually get some of the anxieties of my younger self out into the music and make it productive.

It was quite cathartic writing some of the songs at the time, then?

Yes, it was. I couldn’t honestly tell you where it was all coming from, I mean, literally, the songs would fall out of me.

They were always preceded by a bit of a grumpy mood. And I always knew that there was something on the way that was going to be delivered quite magically, in the middle of a night. And that’s literally how songs came to me.

And they are very anxious, they are quite sad, I think, in their thoughts and also the way lyrically that the thing is put together. People always talk about their mental health these days, as if it’s, you know, second to their existence. I had no idea at that time, that my younger days had formed so much anxiety within me, and I was able to

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get rid of it. They always say that, if you’re cross with somebody sit down and write a letter to them and then burn it. And in a sort of way, that’s what I did. Except I didn’t burn it. I made it into plastic or metal or whatever goes into making records and CDs these days. On reflection, the one track that probably counterbalances all that on the album is the title track, ‘Magic Lady’, which I think was a late addition to the album. Yes, it was. In April 1978. I had almost completed writing ‘Magic Lady’ [it was released in November of that year] and a friend of mine, Caroline Pegg phoned up one Sunday morning and said, ‘Did you know Sandy Denny had died?’ Sandy had been absolutely massive in my appreciation of music once I discovered her. It was the way that she wrote, the way she spoke, the way she sang. Very much like the sort of stuff I was doing, although I never in my career ever emulated her and never even attempted to sing any of her songs, because for me, they were more sacred than that. And even to this day, I have to say, I can’t stand anybody else singing a Sandy Denny song, because

it’s not the same. Sandy was a spiritual person. And she was going through some really tough stuff. And that came out in her music, and you can feel it in everything that she’s saying. So, when I found out that she died, I like many other 1,000s of her fans, I felt that so badly. I couldn’t play her music for a year after that. I decided that the only thing that I was able to do was to retitle the album, call it ‘Magic Lady’ and write a beginning and an end to the album as a tribute to her and not for any other reason than the fact that I wouldn’t have continued with music unless I’d been able to do that. That album itself, did get some really good reviews. I think it ended up in the Melody Maker end of year chart in the top 10 Folk Music albums as well. We were absolutely delighted. And literally, it was so homegrown that Mike was touring up and down the country to record shops, just selling two or three copies into each shop.

That’s how organic we were at the time, while I was busily thinking in terms of getting a tour and stuff together. But yeah, ‘Magic Lady’ was a

very surprising success for us.

And the other thing that was a little bit surprising, was how well it went down in Norway, which led to you leave the country for a time …

Yes, indeed. I mean, thank God, good old Norway and Denmark. It actually came to our rescue during punk and new wave because I mean Steeleye and Fairport, they sort of packed up for a bit because gigs were getting few and far between in this country. And I think we were very lucky we were invited to do a month residency in Oslo. And it was a sort of a Bernie Inn with lots of beer and music and sailors, mostly drunk. We took Thom Ling [fiddle player] out there and as a three piece we did, like four forty minutes sets a night, but had days off to just wander around that beautiful city and sit on the docks and have a look out at the ocean and stuff. And there I started to write ‘Sea of Storms’ [1979]. But while we were playing in the evenings, several record companies came along to see us.

We were offered two deals, one with

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EMI and the other with Polydor of Norway, who wanted to release ‘Magic Lady’ in Scandinavia. They did love Folk Rock, and they liked the stories. I mean, obviously, even from the Viking days, stories were everything in Scandinavia, and they just loved English Folk music, particularly performed in a Rock way. When we came back to England, I recorded the ‘Sea of Storms’ and subsequent album, finished them at Spaceward Studios in Cambridge and then licensed to Polydor Norway. We then started to widen the net, and to play more and more in Scandinavia to promote that album. We took in Denmark, as well as Norway, and we travelled literally from one big venue to one tiny venue, perhaps in a little village in the mountains across the Arctic Circle. It was a real adventure. I couldn’t do it again. No way!

Did that adventure in Scandinavia feed into 1979’s ‘Sea of Storms’ in any way? Did it cause you to think and do things differently to if you’d spent all that time in England?

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Yeah, I think it would have been more wistful that album, I mean, tracks like ‘Land of the Dead’ were totally about Scandinavia. And of course, people misconstrued the fact that the ‘Land of the Dead’ was talking about England, not Scandinavia. And once you actually turn that round, you realise what’s going on. It was just the freedom of that country and the way that people were, they had a completely different outlook to the people in the UK. We were going to through some really heavy politics in the UK. The Scandinavians, what was foremost in their mind was a good and healthy life, you know that the kids came out of school at two o’clock in the day so they could spend time with their families for the rest of the day. People got up at five o’clock and went to work so that the rest of the time they could be skiing, swimming and just enjoying their life, staying fit, and free. That really caught fire with me. I thought, this is just an amazing lifestyle, and the laid back Danish people were fantastic, welcomed us into their homes after the gigs and you know, we never slept. I

don’t think we ever slept on those tours. We spent all night sitting up talking and moving on to the next gig.

And with ‘Sea of Storms’, I think you were stretching yourself, there’s a bit more experimentation. There’s a lot more synthesisers. There’s a sitar on one track. There’s another track which is quite reggae tinged really.

And there’s even a track, ‘Compline Anthem’, which features some nuns on it!

Yeah, so that’s really interesting. We’d reached a stage where I could actually start to afford to bring in session musicians who I picked because of the way they play their instruments. So, we had John Lingwood from Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, who was fantastic from a reggae point of view and then Terry Cotton with the Sitar. I felt that something very, very simple and hippie-like would be a lovely thing to have as a contrast on the album. So, there we sat cross-legged in the studio I couldn’t do that again today! And then of course, the synthesisers, which

were becoming more and more popular in the UK at the time. I wanted to move on with the times. I wanted there to be a really harshness to some of the music.

Because I was actually in control, it was like a chocolate box. It was like picking what should I have next and it was really lovely to feel it all come together. For me, I think it was the pinnacle of a career which had been building all the way through. I felt that was the album I wanted to make and I’m very proud of it still today. I can still listen to that one, quite happily, and transport myself back to the studio, which is lovely.

There could have been a hit single off the album in ‘Ghost of Christmas Past’. If you had slipped it in to a different sleeve with a twenty-yearold Synth-Pop duo on the cover, it might have been a smash. But I suppose because it was associated with Spriguns and Mandy Morton, it perhaps wasn’t viewed as such?

Yes, I think so. And I mean, we’d made that decision years ago. If we’d stayed

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with Decca, with the middle of the road aspect of it, then yes, we would have had probably a mega hit with the ‘Ghost of Christmas Past’. But for me, it was something that was just nice to revisit, briefly, to make it a little bit more Christmassy. I also removed one of the more depressing verses for the Christmas single. Not many people picked up on that. The verse goes, ‘What have I to show for all these wasted years’. That song was a very personal song to me, because it took me back to being four years old, in Suffolk, with my mother coming home from hospital, and me hiding behind a curtain at Christmas. And that was the imagery that was there. In a very troubled childhood. That was something that still stands out to this day as a magical moment.

And that takes us to the final album in the set, which is 1983’s ‘Valley of Life’, which is effectively, is a solo music, because at that point, Mike had got himself another job, and was less involved in the music itself.

Yeah, we decided to part company. It had been a stormy sort of few years.

Lots of money troubles, obviously, because we were perpetually trying to keep the band on the road and keep ourselves sane and in one place. But looking back on it now, Mike and I grew up together in those ten years, we had an absolute blast. There was no doubt about it. It was all about the band. But Mike had a very brilliant

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mind. He was a wonderful teacher and inevitably he was offered a wonderful opportunity to head the St. Andrews Tutorial Centre in Cambridge, which was a very high-profile job. At that point, we had decided to remain friends but to go our separate ways. I thought for a long time about whether I would continue the band then decided that maybe there was one more album because like I’ve always said, you know, music to me was a terminal disease. So essentially, if I wasn’t doing it, there was going to be a problem. I pulled around me a lot of local people, good musicians from Cambridge, to form a band to go into the studio at Spaceward again, and to make ‘Valley of Light’, which was really an out and out Pop album, because everybody at that time had sort of labelled me ‘the dark lady of Folk’. I wanted to sort of, you know, come out into the sunshine for a bit. Listening back to it now, the time worn subject matter is still there underlying everything. There’s an awful lot of sarcasm, there’s an awful lot of trying to be bright and making the best of things when things weren’t that great. I love ‘Valley of Light’ because it is quite an optimistic album in some respects and it did give me another two years work on the scene.

But when the BBC came calling and suggested that I might like to start a new career, I was ready to do it. I toured extensively for ten years, I wondered where my twenties disappeared, too. And I was also now a single woman with big responsibilities,

and I had to have an income. And, you know, when BBC Radio Cambridge just started offering me a decent salary, which would probably have taken me a whole month to earn if I’d been with a band, and the fact that I could see my dog more often, and I could appreciate my lovely Cambridge house, that was a no brainer. So, I spent the next 26 years on the radio.

really good way. Of course, she’s much more famous than me, but if she discards a plot that is rather bizarre, then you can guarantee that it probably will end up turning up in one of my books and vice versa. It’s a good combination.

And another string to your bow is your writing, with your Cat Detective agency books. How many now?

Yes, indeed. I mean, COVID, like with a lot of radio shows, did for us for a little while. I’d concentrated on faceto-face interviews with people from theatre and music and writing, all that sort of thing. And of course, you know, with lockdown, it started becoming impossible. And then of course, we started relying on the internet. We try and put out a show sort of every month or so, which are very, very well received. But we sort of wait quietly for a candidate to come along that we want to feature on the show. They can still be heard on Mixcloud.

Well, the tenth one will be published in May. And I’m writing the eleventh at the moment. So, I started the first one to raise money for the Blue Cross animal charity because Nicola, my partner, and I actually made a point of adopting elderly tabby cats, long-haired tabby cats, of which we’ve had a few.

Essentially, I made them into detectives, self-publishing a book to raise money for an animal charity. A London publisher picked the book up in Heffers book shop in Cambridge and said, who’s written this? This is lovely.

And before I knew it, well, I’m writing the eleventh. It’s my annual knitting as a lot of people in the writing trade say, it’s something I do in the winter because I love my gardens in the summer. In the winter, when it’s all grim and nasty, both Nicola [Upson, also an author] and I will be found at our desks, beavering away on murdering people, and encouraging our detectives to solve the crimes in a

And are you still doing the Eclectic Light show as well?

Yes, I know, having listened to your wonderful Syd Barrett special and your reports from the Cambridge Folk Festival. It’s been wonderful talking to you Mandy, I wish you all the best for the future.

Thanks very much Dave, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it, take care. www.cherryred.co.uk/artist/ mandy-morton-spriguns

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Lapels Shouldering the Future of British Rock

Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

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“... we’re in it for as long and far as it’ll take us.”

Rising from the East Midlands in 2018 with a ready-formed songwriting nous steeped in Britpop, Mod culture and Classic Rock mixed with an uncanny ability to treat even the smallest gig as though they are playing to a sold-out Wembley Stadium, the last few years have seen Lapels swiftly become the Indie band of the moment.

After signing to Marquee Records, a label which, under license from London’s legendary Marquee Club, is dedicated to nurturing British talent, the four-piece, who’s ages range from just 17 to 23, have so far released some of the finest and most memorable singles since those by Arctic Monkeys during their early days in the form of ‘Warning Lights’ (2021); ‘All Things Down to You’ (2021) and ‘The Life and Times’ (2022).

With an EP, another single and a debut album reportedly all ready to go, Lapels’ line-up of songwriting team Nathan (lead vocals, guitar and piano) and Andy (vocals and guitar) along with Will (bass) and Adam

(drums) are all primed to mount a full-on attack on the mainstream.

And with age on their side, together with an unrelenting passion for songwriting and boundless energy for live performance, this is a band who we are positive will one day be providing the blueprint for future generations of Indie Rockers.

Always liking to be the magazine to bring you the next big thing first, in the following interview, Nathan brings us up to speed with all the goings on in the Lapels camp over the last four years and provides us with a snapshot of a band who will very soon become a household name.

Firstly, hello Lapels and thank you for agreeing to our interview, it is lovely to speak to you. Could we start by asking where, when and how Lapels came together and could you introduce us to your members?

We all came together as a band in early 2018, I think, which consisted of Adam on drums; Will on bass; Andy on guitar and vocals and myself, Nathan on guitar and vocals. Prior to us all being

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Andy

Nathan

the band, Andy and I used to play on our own as like a duo sort of thing, just to get ourselves out there and get some experience playing live whilst we were trying to get a bass player and a drummer on board. We managed to get Adam in the band through a mutual contact of mine and Will came in as Andy and I vaguely knew him from college, so we gave him a shout and got him in and we’re all based around the Midlands, so Burton/Derby area.

same situation really with Will, as when we tried him in the band the first time, it didn’t really click, so we just left it and it wasn’t until the second time we drafted him in that things started to work and then it all fell into place. I think it helps our songwriting because naturally Andy and I were coming from slightly different places, so we’d be suggesting stuff during the writing process that the other one wouldn’t have necessarily thought of and we both have different strengths, which obviously we recognise and use to our advantage.

We believe that the songwriters in the band are yourself and Andy, but is it true to say that your chemistry as people wasn’t instant? How do you feel that your different personalities has influenced you as a songwriting team?

The chemistry between Andy and myself was definitely non-existent in the early days of us knowing each other. We met at college but never really saw eye to eye for a couple of years and it wasn’t until after we’d both left college that we reconvened and started playing together. It was the

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Talking of songwriting, how does the writing of a Lapels song generally come about? Is it a Lennon / McCartney sort of scenario, where one of you will come up with a song pretty much fully formed and the other will suggest edits to bring out its full potential?

It differs every time. It can work like that whole Lennon/McCartney thing where one of us would have the bare bones of a song and the other would

Will

Adam

just add on to it and bring the best out of it and I’d say that was the case for a lot of our material, but we have also written songs completely independently where the other person doesn’t really need to add anything to it and we have written some where it has been more collaborative from the start.

by any other band, what would it be and why?

In terms of musical influences, what were the pivotal bands who inspired the sound of Lapels?

It’s hard to narrow it down really to any particular band because it’s all subconscious and I suppose different influences come through on different songs we’re working on. I think it just tends to happen on little things, like one of us would go, ‘This song wants that kind of ‘White Album’ [The Beatles, 1968] Macca bass sound’ or something along those lines, or trying to get like a [Graham] Coxon tone on a lead bit or something, but subconsciously there will be loads of little influences here and there that have moulded our sound.

If you had to pick a favourite album

That’s a difficult one, it fluctuates for me depending on what mood I’m in.

At the moment, I’d say it would be a toss up between The Beatles ‘Revolver’ [1966], Ocean Colour Scene ‘Moseley Shoals’ [1996] and Arctic Monkeys ‘Tranquillity Base Hotel & Casino’ [2018]. Revolver doesn’t need any explanation really, it’s The Beatles ... I love albums that I can listen to all the way through and not skip any track and that’s why I’m a big fan of ‘Moseley Shoals’, I just think it’s a great album with great songs and I love the musical dynamics throughout and the production on it. ‘Tranquillity Base...’ took me a little while to kind of get into, but I kept listening to it and now I can’t stop. I’d go as far to say that it’s a modern day masterpiece. It’s just so inventive and outside the box but still somehow retains classic songwriting within, which is what makes it so good in my opinion. A few honourable mentions from the other lads: The Libertines ‘Up The Bracket’ [2002];

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The Kinks ‘The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society’ [1968] and Arctic Monkeys ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not’ [2006].

You are obviously a very young band, with your ages ranging from 17 to 23, which is very refreshing when we have noticed that the age that bands start out at these days seems to be getting older for some reason. What would you consider to be the advantages of having youth on your side to be and are Lapels are a band who are in the long haul?

I guess the advantage of being younger is that you don’t have as many commitments as maybe someone who’s a bit older so you can focus on the band a bit more, but it does depend on the scenario. I don’t really think that we have any more of an advantage necessarily than bands that are older, you’ve just gotta want it enough and if you do, you’ll find a way around things. I don’t really want to surmise our future too much, but we’re in it for as long and far as it’ll take us.

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You have built up an impressive following over the course of your four years together and we love the way that much of this adulation has come from people experiencing you in a live setting. However, it is inevitable in this day and age that you have to be seen to be promoting yourself on the internet, so how easy or difficult do you find getting your music heard and getting people to come to gigs in this way?

I think it’s becoming increasingly difficult and easier in different ways.

The internet is a good tool to use to your advantage when trying to promote yourself and it can really benefit you, but it’s so saturated these days that it’s hard to climb the ladder and because it’s so easy for anyone and his dog to make music and put it on the internet, it means that you have to trawl through a pile of shite to find one thing that’s decent. I don’t think as many people come to gigs either these days, not necessarily for like massive bands and artists, but it seems increasingly difficult to get people to take a punt on

an up and coming band, probably just out of laziness because you can watch anything you want from the comfort of your living room. Don’t get me wrong, there are still people that do and I encourage people to go out and watch stuff live, but I don’t think it’s as popular as maybe it once was.

On the subject of performing live, the live scene is an aspect of music that has obviously taken a bit of a battering over the last few years due to the pandemic. How have you found the experience of gigging since all the restrictions have been lifted and do you feel that people are perhaps more eager for live music now than they were in the few years leading up to the various lockdowns?

To us, it seems like the ability to go out and see a gig might have been something that was perhaps being taken a bit for granted previously.

Would you agree?

Yeah, I definitely think it has improved since the restrictions ended, because everyone’s had to live a very boring life

for the past year or however long it was so to be able to go out again and do normal things was a breath of fresh air.

And maybe now, people are more willing to just go to gigs and check bands out whether they’ve heard of them or not. Time will tell on that one.

You are now signed to Marquee Records, with whom you have released three singles, ‘Warning Lights’ (2021); ‘All Things Down to You’ (2021) and ‘The Life and Times’ (2022). Prior to this, you self-released two singles, ‘Come and Have a Go’ (2018) and ‘Get in Lane’ (2019), so how did you come to sign to Marquee Records and in a day and age where so many bands continue to self-release throughout their careers, does being signed to a label still have its advantages?

It was quite a convoluted story to be honest. I received a John Lennon painting for my birthday, I think it was, and the artist that painted it had a connection to the Marquee label, so that’s how we got our foot in the door

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with it. Although it did make it harder because I was working in Scotland at the time, so I had to join discussions on video calls, so it was a bit of a slow process getting everything finalised, but most of that is just all of the boring stuff. As for advantages, I wouldn’t really know, it’s a new thing for all of us and we don’t really have anything to compare it against, we’ll just see where it takes us.

Despite all the new technology and ways of getting music out there yourself, there is still very much a certain romanticism about a band signing a record deal, isn’t there?

Would you consider it to be one of Lapels’ finest achievements and what else would you cite as being the proudest moments of being a member of the band over the last few years?

Yeah, it was a nice achievement. Like you say, there is that kind of ‘romanticism’ about it. I think one of the main ones for me was recording our album. We went to a residential studio

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over the course of a two week period and it felt like we’d achieved something at the end once we’d recorded all of the songs and drank copious amounts of alcohol to sit back in the control room and listen to it.

Everyone did a great job on it and it sounded mint, so yeah, I’m excited to get that out at some point. It was also a nice personal achievement for me recently to go and record an EP at Paul Weller’s studio, Black Barn. I’m a big fan and I’ve always wanted to go, so yeah, it was good to get to do that.

As we just mentioned, you have so far released three singles with Marquee Records, so do you have any plans to release an album any time soon and what can you tell us about it right now?

As I just mentioned, we’ll be bringing an EP out shortly that we did at Black Barn. It’s a live EP as well, which was a good craic to do, so it’ll probably be a bit more ‘raw’ than the other singles that we’ve released. We’ve also got another single to bring out at some

point and then after that, it should be the album, but I couldn’t tell you any dates for any of it yet. We’re all really pleased with how the album turned out though and I’m looking forward to getting it out there because there’s some proper good tunes on it.

Finally, we have talked a fair bit about songwriting in this interview as we feel that as more people get to know Lapels, your ability as songwriters is a key attribute that will set you apart from many other bands. What would you consider to make a great song and, as we look forward to the release of a debut album from you, how do you feel you have evolved as songwriters over the course of the band’s career so far?

A great song is all in the melody and the lyrics. If you get them two things right you’re not gonna go far wrong.

Obviously there are plenty of other factors that embellish songs like the arrangement and dynamics and all that muso bollocks, but yeah, the melody and the lyrical content is the key.

Looking back at some of our early attempts at writing songs, I’d say we’ve evolved massively but the more you do it, the more you learn and the better you’ll become. We’ve definitely become more aware of recognising when something is good, and more importantly when something’s shit.

Thank you for a wonderful interview, it has been lovely to talk to you. We look forward to hearing more great music from you soon and wish you all the best for the future.

Nice one, cheers!

‘The Life and Times’ is out now on Marquee Records. lapelsofficial.com www.facebook.com/ LapelsOfficial

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Cambridge Calling ... and Beyond!

Dave Hammond looks at what’s happening in the music scene in the hotbed of Rock ’n’ Roll that is Cambridge, Suffolk.

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Think of the cities around the UK that have thriving music scenes and a history of well-known and influential bands and you’re probably going to come up with London, Manchester, Glasgow, Liverpool, Sheffield, etc. I doubt many will mention Cambridge or the nearby town of Bury St Edmunds. Yeah, okay, Cambridge will always be linked to Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett, but once you get past the Dolly Mixtures, the Soft Boys, Kings Singers and Katrina and the Waves, you’d probably struggle to come up with anyone else that’s made a dent in the subconscious of the music listening public. When it comes to Bury St Edmunds, the list is even shorter. Miss Black America, a band much loved by John Peel, who lived just down the road near Stowmarket, are probably the only band some people may remember.

Which is really not very representative at all.

Since I moved to the town of Haverhill, close to both Cambridge and Bury St Edmunds, I’ve gradually become aware of a vibrant music scene in both places which is spawning dozens of bands that are starting to knock at the door of national radio stations such as BBC 6 Music. Though both places, like many other towns and cities across the country, have struggled over recent years with venues closing, there are a small number supporting grass roots music (and hosting some quality bands from further afield) with regular events

being well supported by decent sized and enthusiastic audiences. The Portland Arms, Junction and Blue Moon in Cambridge and The Hunter Club in Bury St Edmunds are all cases in mind. The university city also has a number of DJs at Cambridge 105 radio that support the local music scene and help to host the city’s band competition while, in Bury St Edmunds, the influential and much respected, nay loved, Seymour Quigley (ex of Miss Black America and Horse Party) has helped build a substantial and sustainable events night under the Washing Machine banner and been key in the development of the Bury Sound competition.

Talking of the Bury Sound competition, the 2022 edition has just finished following four heats and a final featuring five heat winners. Five heats were planned, but with one being cancelled due to inclement weather conditions, the entries for that heat were split into the following two heats, which yielded a winner each plus an additional winner to make the final complete. Heats are held at The Hunter Club, with the final held at The Apex in front of, I’m guessing 250+ people. Not bad for a town that had live music banned in the late-’70s by a mean-spirited council following an alleged riot at a Clash gig. Live music wasn’t seen in the town until the late-’90s, when local councillor Jackie Smith came up with the idea of Bury Sound, to encourage local youth to get

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Collars

involved in music. I’ve attended the competition for the last five years, covering four sets of heats and finals (the competition being cancelled one year due to the intervention of some snotty little bug) and this year’s competition didn’t disappoint. The judging panel (of which I was one) didn’t have things easy and differing points of view were put across with passion and integrity. Eventual winners were the individualistic, quirky indie duo Collars, who I’m convinced will go on to greater things, while Queen Dogs picked up the Rising Star award.

Mentored by the Queens Road Studio in Bury St Edmunds, that the latter are a group of 12-14 year olds playing their own Post-Punk originals made it all the more impressive. In reality, as with previous heats and finals, all the bands entered gain something from the competition, making new contacts and fans while playing to, arguably, their biggest audiences to date.

So, what else can I tell you about music in the area? As regular readers of the magazine will realise, there is a link

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between Cambridge and Salford through German Shepherd Records.

The label has released five volumes of music featuring 90+ bands local to the Cambridge area, all under the ‘Cambridge Calling’ banner. Yep, that’s nearly 100 bands that have been operating in the area over the last five years. Those volumes, all released to raise money for various worthy causes, came about through the wealth of music being sent to me by local bands for consideration for airplay on the Smelly Flowerpot show I presented between 2011-20 on Cambridge 105 Radio. That I had a chance meeting with Bob Osborne of the label at a Distractions gig at The Kings Arms in Salford, which led to the German Shepherd Records link up, is pure serendipity. It’s also worth mentioning at this point that these weren’t the only compilations of local music that had been released over the years in Cambridge and Bury St Edmunds. In the way that the likes of Bob Osborne (along with co-label owner Ian Moss) and Seymour Quigley have unstintingly promoted new, underground music in

Jay-D

their respective geographical locations and beyond, Richard Rose has been a feature of, if not a legendary figure in, local music scenes wherever he has lived. Having spent many years in Cambridge, he’s been responsible for many compilations and flexi disc releases featuring bands from that city, Bury St Edmunds and his current home, Swansea. For more years than he may care to remember, he’s also curated the online and physical copy of the ’Repeat’ fanzine as well as being at the forefront of the ‘Love Music, Hate Racism’ campaign.

For any healthy music scene to thrive, it requires its champions, the unsung heroes, those people who help to make things happen, and East Anglia is blessed with them, even though they may not always live in the area!

Another thing that’s impressive is the variety of music being produced in the area, something that’s backed up by a batch of releases that have sprung from the area over the last few weeks. Jack Adam Marriot, working under the name

Jay-D, is an unexpected beast in that he’s a young rapper from Huntingdon, a place that, on the face of it, appears to be the most un-urban of towns. He has his latest EP out, called ‘Poet of the People’, which is his best release to date. It has a breathless intensity at times, an unusual breadth of styles (synths and big beats, Rock crossover, Lovers Rap?) and plenty of interest lyrically - anyone who squeezes “dichotomy” into a song deserves respect. There’s also a rather touching tribute to Ian Shaw, one of the presenters of the Stagger Indie show on Cambridge 105, who sadly passed away last year.

From a youngster to someone who has just released his debut EP at the ripe old age of 70-something, Russell Nightingale. The word is that veteran (he’ll probably hate me describing him thus) of the local scene, Chris Free (formerly of Cambridge based Punks The Users, currently fronting Soul / Pop / Funk outfit, The Sound of Pop Art), first heard Russell sing at a regular open mic in the city. He was

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Hungry

suitably blown away and ended up persuading Russell into the studio to produce a four track EP called ‘Merciful Saviour’. Described as ‘songs of optimism and hope’, there’s a thread of spiritual awareness and a feeling of joy throughout, all promoted

by Russell’s vocal style, his original songs and the faithful, authentic production. There’s a bit of Ray Charles, a hint of Sun Records Elvis Presley and a touch of Gram Parsons in the Blues, Gospel and Country stylings.

It’s an unexpected delight.

Talking of the Bury Sound competition, one of the finalists, the vibrant and energetic Hungry have just released their new single - their fourth by my reckoning - called ‘Love is War’. It’s an edgy, spiky guitar driven song with a hint of manic, garage energy. Throw in a short Rap section and extended guitar / bass interlude and you have something that hints at great things to come with its willingness to stretch out and explore different genres within the one song, elevating them above most Indie Pop groups. Having seen them, I

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Kammahav

can state they back up that edgy energy on stage as well. One to keep an eye on.

Another relative newcomer is Yvonne Hercules (pictured on page 122), who has recently signed to local label, Trapped Animal Records, and has just released her excellent new single, ‘Nene’. Musically, it’s quite adventurous and quite sultry sounding, mixing Soul, Folk and Blues to great effect. Her voice is deep, rich and soulful while capable of swooping and soaring unexpectedly. With lyrics that conjure up some striking imagery with lines such as “Her waters carry wisdom, you see yourself in her reflection. In her river you bathe, the matriarch that flows through everything”, the River Nene has never sounded so attractive and beguiling. I, for one, look forward to more releases from this most intriguing and interesting of artists.

And now for something a little bit different … Dan Ecclestone, solo artist and singer / songwriter / guitarist for

Ember Rev has taken to releasing his latest compositions (for piano only) through a YouTube subscription channel. Subscribe via the link below and you’ll get notified every couple of weeks or so when the next piece is uploaded. Having heard the first piece, it’s well worth subscribing. And it’s free. And, I’ve noticed, there’s a new Ember Rev track under the subscription, which is a good introduction to something that is completely different to the piano pieces, as are the ‘xylophonics’ pieces and other solo material you’ll find there. He’s a restless, adventurous soul is young Dan. Finally, for now, we need to talk about Tony Jenkins. He’s been one of the most prolific writers in the area over the last few years. Apart from singing on some early tracks by The Sound of Pop Art, writing and singing as part of Lizard Brain, fronting his own band The New Fools, he’s also one half of Kammahav along with Christian Gustaffson, former member of Swedish band, Victorian Tin. The distance between them has certainly been no barrier to them producing some quality releases over the last few years. Called ’48-54’ (no, I don’t know either- ages?

Lines of longitude and latitude?), all the music is written by Christian with lyrics by Tony. The arrangements here are perfectly pitched, lots of organ and occasional strings giving the generally guitar driven songs (hints of Johnny Marr’s playing with The Smiths at

times) a beating heart to match Tony’s distinctive vocal. There’s also a new album from Tony and The New Fools, which we’ll cover in the next issue. In the meantime, Tony, have a rest son.

Go and watch Celtic or something.

Collars: www.collarstheband.com Queen Dog: www.facebook.com/groups/ QueensRoadStudio Repeat Fanzine: www.repeatfanzine.co.uk Jay-D: www.officialjay-d.co.uk Russell Nightingale: thesoundofpopart.bandcamp.com/ album/merciful-saviourrussell-nightingale Hungry: www.facebook.com/ imbarehungry Yvonne Hercules: www.yvonnehercules.com Dan Ecclestone: danecclestone.bandcamp.com Kammahav: kammahav.bandcamp.com/ album/48-54

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Bare Their Pearly Whites!

Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers Photography by Kamila Jarczak.

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“... the way I see being in a band, or being an artist of any discipline, is our job is to just be our biggest self.”

After what they consider to have been a less than satisfactory period performing as a duo in their native Canada, vocalist Jo-Jo O’Donoghue and guitarist Rylan Woods travelled the world (or Toronto, Dublin and the Isle of Wight to be exact) in search of three other like-minded souls to form Jo-Jo & The Teeth, picking up two Isle of Wighters, lead guitarist Keir Hicks and bassist Max Battista, and Surreyman, drummer Andy Barker along the way.

This bright and vibrant collection of Rock ‘n’ Rollers, who cite their influences as being Queen, Fleetwood Mac, The Rolling Stones and Aerosmith, release their latest single, the thrillingly anthemic and crescendo-heavy ‘Don’t Get too Heavy’ on 6th May. The first taste of their forthcoming debut album, ‘No More Good News’, recorded, mixed and mastered by Jason Stafford at The Albion Rooms, The Libertines’ HQ in Margate, Kent, and slated for an autumn release, ‘Don’t Get too Heavy’ is the sound of a band with all

the right ingredients to be one of the most important and memorable that you will hear this year.

To find out more about a five-piece who have managed to effectively marry style with substance, whilst amazingly never allowing the former to overbear the latter, we recently caught up with the band’s extravagantly-attired frontwoman and namesake via Zoom video chat at her home in London for the following interview.

Firstly, hello Jo-Jo 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 where, when and how Jo-Jo & The Teeth came about and could you introduce us to your members?

Yeah, it’s just me today unfortunately, they’re all at work, but I can sure tell you the story. It’s kind of long and complicated actually. So, me and Rylan [Woods, guitar], who’s the guy with the twirly moustache, me and him

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grew up together, so we’ve actually been in a band together for years and years, since we were kids and so, we were touring the UK, just a little baby tour, in 2017, and Keir [Hicks] and Max [Battista], who are the lead guitarist and the bass player [respectively], their band, who they were in at the time opened up for us.

And there was no one else at the gig, so we just played to each other and me and Rylan both just looked at each other and we were like, ‘What have we just seen?’ We just immediately ... I think, musically, because we didn’t really have much time to actually speak to them or hang out, because we were on tour and you were just travelling as soon as the gig’s over ... but musically, we were like, ‘This is what we need!’

And we talked all night about like how we needed to find guys like this, this kind of style, this kind of playing and of course, we would never find that again [laughs]. So, we went on our whole tour, we dreamed about them the whole time and then we came back to Canada and we were in the middle of recording an album and we just

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couldn’t even finish the album! We were like, ‘There’s no point!’ We were like, ‘We need them! we need those guys!’ So, we just packed up our bags and came to the Isle of Wight, which is where they lived. I emailed them first, I didn’t just show up! And, yeah, we agreed to spend the summer just jamming and we went on a little tour together, both our bands, just to see what we could do together and we ended up never going back home! So, that’s that part of the story and then when we ended up needing a drummer ... because Keir and Max’s band were a trio and they had a drummer and they were actually in the middle of breaking up, so we needed a drummer and Keir suggested Andy [Barker], who is our now drummer and they had played in a function band together growing up.

And so, Andy came on our Western Canadian tour with us with two weeks of preparation and I don’t know how he pulled it off, but I hadn’t even rehearsed with him ... I don’t think I rehearsed with him once, because there was a death in the family and I had gone home early for a funeral. So, I

was never in a rehearsal with Andy before we were on tour! [Laughs]. So, we really pulled it out of our ass [laughs] and I was really pleasantly surprised! I had played with the same drummer my whole life and it was such a breath of fresh air to play with Andy, because the way he approaches the drums is so tasteful and he doesn’t overplay, so there’s just all this room I wasn’t used to having when we performed with a full band, yeah. So, that was the beginning and at that time, we were performing under our old band name and they were kind of our backing band, but since then, we’ve completely re-done everything and re-worked our old songs, wrote new songs and we’ve really gelled as a five-piece. That’s a really long story [laughs], but I don’t know how to make it any shorter!

So, you are originally from Lacombe, Alberta, Canada and travelled to the Isle of Wight (where you picked up two members of Jo-Jo & The Teeth), via Dublin, before ending up in London. Having lived in all these

places, what musical elements and influences do you feel you have picked up from each that have found their way into the sound and overall outlook of Jo-Jo & The Teeth?

It’s been a journey, I must say! So, me and Rylan grew up in Alberta, which is ... I suppose I never really thought of it as a Country place, because that’s just not our experience, right? We grew up in Punk bands, listening to Rock music, wearing leather, but I guess when I look at it now, it’s quite Western, it really has a more Folk and Country feel. I was just completely not aware of it until I left and realised how Western it was in fact [laughs]. So, we found our way and we knew we had to go to a city, because we’re from the middle of nowhere and we knew if we wanted to pursue music, we just had to leave. I didn’t really see a way around that one, so we started working our way East. So, we first moved to Toronto and we kind of tried our hand there, but we kind of had no idea what we were doing. I’ve always had, Rylan as well, we’ve always had a very clear vision of

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being in a band. Like, at no point did we want to be a duo. We ended up working and touring as a duo because of necessity. There was just the two of us, so that’s what we did, but that is absolutely not the way ... like, when I write songs, I don’t think of them like performing with an acoustic guitar and a stool. I think of like stage lights, I think of big latex boots, I think of [laughs] glitter, you know, I’m a real showgirl! So, that was never how I imagined things, so I think it was really hard for us at first, because playing as a duo was so unsatisfying ... so incredibly unsatisfying, because we just had these big visions of what these songs should be. And Toronto, it just didn’t stick, I don’t know why, but it just didn’t stick and we ended up going to Dublin. My mother’s from Dublin, so I just have a love affair with Ireland in general, but definitely the city [of Dublin] and now, that, I think, was a real turning point for us, because Ireland is so musical and everyone in Ireland is a singer-songwriter! I mean, everyone! You can throw a rock and hit a singer, it’s the weirdest thing and that

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was so fun, because we kind of just got to lose ourselves in music and it not be about the business and we weren’t hunting for a band, we just were writing songs and we just were singing our songs to pub crowds and we just ... me, personally, it was the first time I had fallen back in love with playing, because, you know, you do get disheartened along the way and I just had a ball there! We also made some amazing friends and I don’t know, it’s something about me and Rylan, all our friends are over 65! Those are my people! [Laughs]. I think they have better music tastes! But we made lifelong friends. They’re my people [laughs], that’s what I’m about! I guess where I was getting to is that in Dublin, is that we were playing five nights a week in pubs all over the city and it was just really about songwriting and just falling back in love with playing, you know, and it was a real ... hhhhmmmm, it was a hospital for the soul! One of my old friends always calls Ireland that. That’s what it felt like. As a songwriter and as a person, I just really needed to reconnect with

why we do this. [Laughs] Why do we do this?! It’s the worst career choice ever! But sometimes you just need to be reminded of why the hell we’re doing this, so that’s what we were there for and we were there for about a year and a half, I believe. And then we came home [to Canada] and we finished our next record, which we were not happy with [laughs], to put it mildly! I think we had just had such an authentic experience that getting back to the studio the way we did wasn’t where we were at anymore. So, we finished our record and we didn’t love it, but I thought ‘let’s finish it, let’s button it up’ and half way through making the record was when we went on tour as well and met the guys. So, we just had this really weird couple of years that were really transformative.

We toured a lot ... we were in Spain, we were all over the UK, we were in Ireland, we were all over Canada. We played and we played and we played and by the time we went to make our record, we were just like ‘I don’t even want to do this anymore! I’m not in this place anymore! I’ve moved on to

something so much bigger’ and I think I found the guys that we were supposed to do it with. It sounds so cheesy, but that’s how it felt and it was really hard to come back and finish the record when I knew that like, ‘Hey, this doesn’t matter because our future’s in England with these guys that I met once!’ [Laughs]. That’s how it felt, so, yeah, we just packed up our bags and we just fucking left! Like crazy people! [Laughs]. I honestly don’t know how I convinced Rylan to do this, because he’s much more reasonable than me! [Laughs]. Those were the years that mattered, I think, that shaped us and then when we got to England, it was more about ‘Can we make a band out of these kids?’ We didn’t know them, we had met them just that one night, but I’m a big believer in your gut instinct. Because you meet wonderful players all the time, but you don’t feel like you’re going to throw your life away and chase them back to England, right? [Laughs]. Like, that’s not a normal feeling! I just felt like ‘This is crazy, but I just have this feeling like we’d be amazing if we joined forces,

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like ‘What we could do if we could work it out!’ It wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done, but it might work out yet, you don’t know!

It goes without saying that Jo-Jo & The Teeth is a band with a very striking and colourful Rock ‘n’ Roll image, but did you have an idea for the image that you wanted your dream band to have before it came into being, did it come fully-formed or is it something you have worked on over the time you have been together?

No, it’s just what we look like!

[Laughs]. It’s simpler than it looks, I think! It’s not contrived at all. I mean, I’ve always been a very colourful lady.

I’ve been a make-up artist and a dancer.

I’ve done it all! I’m very expressive with my clothes and my make-up and my hair and, you name it, I’ve done it and I’m sure that had an effect, because I’m like the sort of person who would be like, ‘Keir, I was thinking, you would look really good with bleach blonde hair’ and he’d be like, ‘Yeah, I

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fucking would, wouldn’t I?!’ But, it’s not something we have contrived at all, they are all very stylish and very much have their own image and their own ideas of what they look like. It’s definitely not something we contrived, but I guess it’s definitely something we’ve turned the dial up on. Do you know what I mean? Because the way I see being in a band, or being an artist of any discipline is our job is to just be our biggest self. Like, a secretary maybe doesn’t do that, but a performer does. So, it’s like, the way I always see it is like, I dress how I’d want to dress if there was no limitations, if money was no object and if, you know, getting stared at an the tube [laughs] wasn’t a thing, how would you want to look?

And that’s kind of, I guess, how we’ve inspired the band to be their kind of most authentic, biggest, most colourful self. And I think it’s just been a lot of fun and I think the guys have had a lot of fun too, because, I don’t know, I’m not sure they’ve been in such colourful bands before. I don’t know, you’d have to ask them, they’re not here to defend themselves! [Laughs].

Well, it’s brilliant because even just looking at your website, the colours are amazing. So, obviously, that is going to draw attention to you, isn’t it? Which is always a good thing!

Yeah, I mean, we definitely get some looks everywhere we go, that’s for sure! [Laughs]. I’m used to that though, I’m used to that!

How important do you feel the marriage of music and image is in terms of getting a band noticed in such a competitive arena?

Oh, I have no idea! Because to be honest with you, the music industry is an actual enigma! So, I actually have no idea what’s going on. I don’t see any correlation between talent and success, or money and success. I honestly can’t figure it out! It’s crazy town! So, I don’t even bother anymore and I just think ... and I guess that’s circling back to when we were in Dublin and forgetting about all of the shit and just being yourself and loving what you do and just making music

because you fucking love it. And that’s all we can do, because I honestly have no idea what’s going on in the industry!

[Laughs] No clue! But I think the best thing anyone can do is probably just completely be yourself and just live in your own authenticity and whatever happens is what happens! You can’t choose it or contrive it. So, I don’t know, I suppose with the way that we look, people definitely know that you’re a band! Like, when you walk around, people go, ‘You’re a band, aren’t you?’ So, there is that. But, no, I don’t really know that it matters anymore. Honestly, it’s so weird out there! If you have any clues, [laughs] let me know!

Oh no, none whatsoever, we don’t understand the music industry these days either!

I think it’s chaos theory! That’s my theory anyway!

Yeah, definitely! That’s a good one, actually! How do you feel that the image of the band transfers into a

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live setting and for anybody who hasn’t seen Jo-Jo & The Teeth on stage, how you describe one of your gigs?

I personally love a good show, so I appreciate any level of showmanship.

Coming from like the Prairies and this is absolutely not in a dissing way, but every band does look the same! Denim and flannel shirts! [Laughs]. And they all have beards and they all have big-framed black glasses and long hair!

Every band looks the same, so you definitely have my attention if you look different, you know, and I appreciate a show. That’s not to say a bunch of dudes in flannel and denim don’t put on an amazing Rock show, I just mean that if you took a picture, I might not choose you out a line-up, that’s all.

But, how does our image translate to our live show? I don’t know, because I think the way that people perceive you is like none of your business. People have told me the craziest shit about what they expected us to sound like based upon what we look like and I don’t know how they got this idea!

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So, what sort of things do you get?

Oh, like crazy stuff! Like, people think I am, speciafically, like a crazy Gothic Screamo, or something weird! Not that I think that’s crazy, because I don’t, I think that’s rad, but I don’t know why you’d think that, because I wear glitter!

[Laughs]. There’s nothing dark and scary about a lady covered in glitter, is there?! I don’t know! [Laughs]. And I think people sometimes think we’re a Punk band, but I would say that we’re all ... well not all, but me and Rylan were certainly influenced by like Punk music and more so, Punk attitude, just like that be yourself, everyone can fuck off, I’m doing my thing! I think we definitely have a lot of that going for us, but I’m not sure so much that you hear it in the music. I think if you didn’t know what we sounded like, how I would describe it to you ... this is the worst question, I hate this question, because it’s so hard! Genre is like gender, it doesn’t really exist. It’s juat these boxes we’ve invented to help describe stuff to people. But if I had to, I would say we’re a Blues-rooted,

Glam, Rock ‘n’ Roll band, maybe?

We’re genre-fluid! [Laughs].

Your London debut was opening for The Libertines, Dirty Pretty Things and The Jackals’ Carl Barât and you have since gone on to record your upcoming debut album ‘No More Good News’ at The Libertines’ former recording space, The Albion Rooms in Margate, Kent. Could you tell us a bit about the writing and recording process of ‘No More Good News’ and what can we expect from the album?

Well, the way our band came together was unique. You know, we didn’t start a band together, so it wasn’t like a clean slate. It kind of was like the guys joined our band, or like our duo, so Rylan and I had songs that they learned that were old songs. And by the way, were completely transformed and completely took on an entire new life.

They’re just so good! I have so much gratitude for stumbling across them, becasue only now, songs I wrote years ago feel the way they were meant to

now. Do you know I mean? Because I’m only one person, Rylan’s only one person, and you just can’t have tht big ass sound coming out of two people and it doesn’t matter how many musicians you hire, if peoples’ hearts aren’t in it and it’s not really what they do, you’re just not going to get that sound we were after all these years.

So, what we’re doing with the new album is that we took a collection of songs where we hated the way they were recorded the first time [laughs] and we completely just workshopped the shit out of them with the new guys.

I think the issue was, we wanted to always have going forward, every song that we play live, we wanted it to be available for people to listen to.

I didn’t want to play songs that they couldn’t get, or have it so the only version of the song they could get was that old studio version where we had like musicians we hired and they just don’t have that soul of the band, you know? So, we took a collection of the songs that we are continuing to play live with the new band and we re-recorded them and we also have a

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selection of new songs. So, that’s going to be the ‘No More Good News’ album. It’s kind of like the bastard child [laughs] of mine and Rylan’s songwriting past and then what to expect going forward with the new band. And we recorded the album in The Libertines’ studio out in Margate, which is an amazing place to record.

This is going to sound so like something I’d say, but it’s just really well decorated! [Laughs]. I’m very untechnical, I really don’t know anything about studios, none of that, but the atmosphere that they’ve created for artists is so beautiful. You just like walk in and you’re like, ‘Oh yes, this is where you make a Rock album!’ You know, it’s beautiful. No detail is left unturned. The light fixtures are beautiful, you know, and the carpets, everything! They’ve just done a really good job and on top of that, the staff are amazing and so accomodating and on top of that, they have the most wonderful sound engineer and I will go on the record, I hate sound engineers!

[Laughs]. Well, that’s a little harsh, but what I mean by that is, I’m not a

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technical person, so for me, to be in the studio is very stressful because I don’t know what the fuck’s going on! I just write pretty songs and sing, do you know what I mean?! And Jason Stafford, who’s our sound engineer, he’s just the calmest, chilledest dude with such a great attitude and such a great energy and it was the fist good experience I’ve ever had in the studio.

I cannot praise him enough, I really can’t! I can’t say enough good things.

We’ve had a ball making it. I have to go back and record some vocals, but we’re almost done!

We have noticed that you stated some of your influences as being Queen, David Bowie, Aerosmith, Fleetwood Mac, The Rolling Stones, but when you were making ‘No More Good News’, were there any particular albums by other artists that you wanted your album to have a similar feel as or was it a case of wanting to harness the feel of all of those Classic Rock acts within a sound that was your own?

I mean, there’s definitely amazing albums that I would love for someone to say ‘This reminds me of that’, but no, I can’t say ... We don’t do anything like that, that’s just not how ... I’m not very good at that. If you were like ‘Jo-Jo, write me a song’, I would never be able to write a song, because as soon as I have to do something, then all the inspiraton has just fucking gone! It’s gone! And I think a lot of musicians hate songwriters like this! I’m one of them! [Laughs]. Inspiration has to literally fall out of the sky and into my lap. I’m not a machine, I can’t just sit down and pump stuff out and like, I wish I could, I’m not saying this in a negative way, but that’s a gift I do not have! I have to be completely in a place to receive! [Laughs]. So, not at all, but I think that ‘Rumours’ [1977]

by Fleetwood Mac is one of the best albums ever, just as a listener. But no, because these songs were all written at so many different times in our lives, so definitely not. But, going forward ... I can’t imagine being that organised to be honest! [Laughs]. Maybe that’s something I could see me doing in the

future, like, where we’re like ‘Right, let’s do this type of a thing’, but it’s definitely not currently how we do anything! [Laughs].

Following the singles ‘MoonChild’ and ‘We’re Just Animals’ (both 2020), the lead single from ‘No More Good News’, ‘Don’t Get too Heavy’ is released on 6th May. How representative of ‘No More Good News’ is ‘Don’t Get too Heavy’?

That’s a good question! Hhhhmmm, again, genre is fluid! [Laughs]. I don’t know of any one song I feel like represents us as a band for sure, but of the album, I actually don’t even know if I can answer that! Because I’m obviously like the writer of it and that’s obviously a bit more of a listener’s thing, maybe. But why we chose ‘Don’t Get Too Heavy’ [as the lead single] is ... this is like really logical and really practical ... because I got sick [with COVID-like symptoms] and I couldn’t finish all of the songs, we only had a handful to chose from that we’re fully finished. So, it was really

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simple and ‘Out of these four, which one’s the single?’ Instead of out of these twelve, you know! [Laughs]. We were like, ‘We have four songs, what can we do with these songs?’ and ‘Don’t Get too Heavy’ was the one ... it was between two songs and, at the end of the day, it was like a tie and I had just asked a friend! It was like, ‘Which one do you think?’ And whatever they said ... they said ‘Don’t Get too Heavy’, so I was like ‘Done!’ [Laughs]. But I think what ‘Don’t Get too Heavy’ encapsulates for our band is just like that energy. It just doesn’t stop. I totally hate singing this song [laughs], because as a singer, it’s not very dynamic. It really sits in the same part of my voice the whole time and it feels like a freight train that I’m on top of and I’m just trying to fucking hang on until the end of the song! And live, because all the guys love that song, it just has a way of speeding up, so by the end of that song, it’s going so fast, I don’t even know what’s going on! But it’s a lot of fun to do live and I think it definitely captures that like high intensity energy that I think we deliver

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live. And also, I think we write good songs. I guess that’s a matter of opinion, but when me and Rylan go to sit and write, it’s always important for me to have lyrics with substance. I don’t often write fluffy lyrics, they usually have some sort of deeper meaning, or they come from an experience, or like a storytelling place, but that song, there is a degree of that, but also it’s just fun to listen to [laughs] without getting too deep. I thinks it’s just a fun song and the feedback from most people, that’s their favourite song.

I really love the guitar licks in it too. It has a very ‘80s vibe or something!

[Laughs].

Finally, the ‘Don’t Get too Heavy’ single is about to be launched with a gig at Camden Assembly on the day of release, with special guests Bang (tbc) and Tizane and you are playing at the Fiddlers Elbow in Camden on 23rd July with The SoapGirls. Will there be a more extensive tour and perhaps festival appearances in support of ‘No More Good News’ and what else can we expect from

you in the future?

I would love that, [laughs] but again, we’re a very logical and practical band and I think we’re still in the incubation period, like with COVID especially, and gigs and tours haven’t been our focus. It’s been like, ‘Let’s get this album done’, like, ‘Get some shit done’, because up to this point, we’ve just played and played and played and toured and toured and toured, but we had nothing to package and to sell to someone. It was like, ‘We don’t have a record, you don’t have any of these things, we have this great live show though!’ We’ve kind of taken a step back actually from touring and gigging to just focus on ‘Let’s just get some shit recorded! Let’s write some new music, let’s make some shit and then we can take it out on the road’. Yes, that’s in the future, but it’s not in the immediate future. I think we accidentally missed festival season [laughs], but yeah, we would love to take it out on the road, like a proper tour, that would be amazing! We’re hoping to release the full album in autumn, but as everything

in this industry is chaos theory [laughs], as we’ve established, who knows! But my goal is to have it out before Christmas. I would be delighted if we could have it out before Christmas.

Thank you for a wonderful interview.

We wish you all the best with ‘Don’t Get too Heavy’, your upcoming live dates, all your other upcoming activities and for the future.

‘Don’t Get too Heavy’ is released on 6th May. www.jojoandtheteeth.com www.facebook.com/ jojoandtheteeth

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Frenchy’s Rants Beam Me Up, Lem!

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

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Another month gone, another step toward madness. I wonder if it’s me or if everyone else feels the same, but it’s like we’re on a fast ride, a rollercoaster ride that has gone out of control. How can we live in a world where the likes of Putin are allowed to create such chaos, such heartache?

What about Kim Jong-un? Or Trump? Although he isn’t in power right now, but he did some damage and he might be back. Xi Jinping, anyone? The lunatics have taken over the asylum!

Regardless of the rights and wrongs of the Ukraine war, North / South Korea, MAGA or Xi ‘s right to rule for life with no opposition allowed, we all need to recognise that the main powers of this world are ruled by dodgy geezers, geezers I wouldn’t want to have a drink with, geezers you wouldn’t buy a second-hand car from. You see, if they had learned to play guitar, sax or piano as children, the world might be a completely different place today: music soothes the soul and calms the mind, so it could be that a musical Putin might be Lady Gaga now, because she’s a bit of a nutter too, but a harmless nutter.

But no, instead we have an ex-KGB officer, a laughing assassin, a failed businessman and a Fascist communist leading the world’s greatest powers (notice that BoJo doesn’t come anywhere near the top five of the political heavyweights … or Biden for that matter): what a bunch of merry men! Do you ever wonder what these

loonies would be if they had taken up music instead of politics? Yes? No? Let’s try then.

First off, the man of the moment, Putin.

If he had taken up music, I think he would probably have been a drummer, because they are easy to find or make, drums, it’s not like a Les Paul Custom that you’ve got to buy because that’s the only way to own one. Drums, you can borrow the odd pans and pots from the Party, marching drums and tambourine from the regimental band and off you go. And he likes to pass himself off as a victim of the neighbouring Nazis (Ukraine to the rest of us) and an intellectual to boot.

I think he might have grown up to become ... Genesis’ Phil Collins!

(Post-Peter Gabriel because let’s face it, anything good about Genesis has Gabriel at its core).

Then we have Kim Young’un: he thinks he’s a groovy dude, always laughing and having a joke with the geezers on death-row, plus he’s younger than the other maniacs. I think as a musician, he’d have fancied himself as a guitar player; a showy, happy guitar player into Grunge and Heavy Rock who likes to beat his own drum: he’d have grown up to be Dave Grohl! “Fuckin’ listen to me, I’m fuckin’ Rock ’n’ Roll!”

Then, him who likes to blow his own trumpet, Trumpet himself. Can’t go wrong there because he’s very old, so he’d play the trumpet in a Jazz band,

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or maybe a Ska band but he isn’t cool enough to play Ska, so Jazz it is. A musical Trump playing his trumpet might sound like a long fart, but that’s never stopped anyone from becoming successful: in the music industry, what you need to be successful is not be good at what you do. No, no, what you need is a buzz! You get a buzz going and you’ll have UMG, Warner and BMG killing each other to sign you to a 65 album deal. Or maybe, Trump being quite the entrepreneur, he might start his own label and sign himself. But that would fail coz he has failed at almost everything he has tried: three times bankrupt, our Don! Yes, Trumpet would have become Herp Albert, founder of A&M and ‘Rise’ (1979) hitman. Sorry, Mr. Alpert, I’m sure you’re a nice man!

careers and everyone would have ended up hating them and hence, the circle is complete!

And finally, Mr Xi Jinping who’s got a lot to say for himself and he’s of the right era to be a bass playing lead singer. I’m sure you’ve guessed already: yes, my little Flipsiders, a musical Xi would have grown up to be Sting! Oh yeah, every step of the way!

Frenchy says of the photograph on page 142:

They would have met at university in England (humour me), hit it off and formed a band called Ministers, or Presidents, or Chairmen of the Board!

Of course, egos would have clashed and after two quite successful albums, the band would have split up, citing political differences, which makes a change from the ubiquitous ‘musical differences’. They would have embarked on hugely successful solo

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The important thing in that imaginary dimension is that none of them would have been politicians or heads of state.

Of course, it’s just a bit of fun, I’m sure the four musicians I paired with those four nutters are very nice people and it’s a given they were very good to their mums. Mind you, there’s only one major fault with all this: what if four other, even madder, more psychotic geezers had become them?! Doesn’t bear thinking about, better the devils you know and all that: you just can’t win! Beam me up, Lem!

“This was taken in 1978 at the Electric Chairs’ squat in Queensgate, London. Me and Val Haller, who sadly committed suicide while living in the USA in 2012, aged 50. He was a very nice person, despite looking like a psychopath cop on stage!” www.flickniferecords.co.uk www.facebook.com/Flicknife

assistant for their 1982 album, ‘Avalon’.

Baptism of Fire: A Year Living & Working with Duran Duran

by Ian Little

Review by Martin Hutchinson.

Featuring a Foreword by Hazel O’Connor, Ian Little’s book tells a truly remarkable tale, one that is sometimes hard to believe because of the luck he had in being at the right place at the right time.

Ian, who was a young musical novice, had the amazing fortune to be minding the studio of Roxy Music, which had been recently built by guitarist Phil Manzanera, while the band were on a tour. By the time they returned, he had worked out how to use the studio and had signed a record contract and released his own single. So impressed by his skill, he became the production

That was just the start. This coincided with the emergence on the scene of Duran Duran, who had ambitions to become the biggest band in the world and they chose Ian to produce the album that proved to be their breakthrough. This books takes us on Ian’s journey with the band to Sri Lanka, the South of France, New York, the Caribbean island of Montserrat and Sydney to create what became one of the defining albums of the eighties, 1983’s ‘Seven and the Ragged Tiger’.

But there is a downside too. The book tells the story of a meteoric rise, making an iconic album under pressure (encountering Bowie, McCartney, Dylan and other musical giants along the way), a ‘too much too soon’ spiral into addiction and homelessness in the years that followed and his fight to get his life back on track and his spiritual growth that gave him the strength to do it. It’s a fascinating insight into the music world of the excessive eighties and the pitfalls that the author encountered.

Published by Astral Horizon Press. www.ian-little.com

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Unlimited Love But Limited Appeal Alice Jones-Rodgers reviews ‘Unlimited Love’.

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Red Hot Chili Peppers are back.

However, given that, despite a still undiminished position in the higher echelons of the musical hero worship that has endured since the early-’90s when songs such as ‘Give it Away’ and ‘Under the Bridge’ from 1991’s ‘Blood Sugar Sex Magik’ brought them to full-scale mainstream attention, much of the 21st Century has found them releasing largely forgettable albums that have simply repeated a tried and tested formula and not a lot more, it was going to take a lot to inspire any excitement for this return with their twelfth album and first since 2016’s spectacularly underwhelming ‘The Getaway’, ‘Unlimited Love’. But, hoping to recapture the little something special that has been lacking from their last few releases, ‘Unlimited Love’ finds the band reunited with original guitarist John Frusciante for the first time since 2006’s ‘Stadium Arcadium’ and producer Rick Rubin for the first time since 2011’s ‘I’m With You’.

‘Unlimited Love’ is an album which puts its trump card to the fore by launching with lead single and catchiest moment, ‘Black Summer’, on which Frusciante makes his return known with some excellent harmonic-filled, Jimi Hendrix style guitar work and the now 59 year old pirate look sporting Kiedis’ voice is stronger than it has ever been previously as he sings lyrics about sailors and platypus which are

highly unlikely to make sense to anybody other than himself.

On the subject of Kiedis’ lyrics, he has never been the strongest wordsmith in popular music, but on much of ‘Unlimited Love’, his musings are positively cringeworthy, threatening to derail even the otherwise strongest of cuts musically. Cases in point are the Funky jam ‘Here Ever After’, which finds him still singing about “dangerous girls” and somewhat clichéd and cheesy subject matter in his late-’50s and ‘Whatchu Thinkin’’, on which the Native American themes are at best passé and at worst, downright exploitative. Props should be given though to sheer strength of musicianship on ‘Unlimited Love’, which, over the course of both ‘Here Ever After’ and ‘Whatchu Thinkin’’ and various other tracks has a habit of being able to turn something God-damn dreadful into something reasonably great, if still a little Chili Peppers by numbers. We feel the old adage ‘you can polish a turd, but it is still a turd’ may be appropriate at this juncture.

Kiedis should always be dissuaded against writing in the third person, as proved by both ‘It’s Only Natural’, which is only saved from complete mundanity by Frusciante’s guitar solo, and more so by ‘Veronica’, on which, despite the fact that it has been a long time since he has walked amongst them, he rather patronisingly attempts to provide a glimpse into the lives of

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working class people. At least that latter song is vaguely memorable (albeit for the wrong reasons) though, because ‘She’s the Lover’ and ‘One Way Traffic’ barely manage to leave any sort of impression at all. With the album featuring a mammoth sixteen tracks in an hour and thirteen-minutes that seems to last an entire week, these two fillers should have been prime candidates for being left on the cutting room floor.

Stronger moments on ‘Unlimited Love’ include ‘Aquatic Mouthpiece’, a Flea-driven, groove and Rap-based, horn-heavy monster with one of the silliest titles you will have heard since the last silly Chili Peppers title, which offers a meditation on the power of music; the similarly-themed ‘Poster Child’, which seems to owe a lot musically, in equal parts, to both Billy Joel’s ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ (‘Storm Front’, 1989) and the Chili Peppers’ own ‘Walkabout’ (‘One Hot Minute’, 1995) and the KISS-esque ‘The Great Apes’, on which Rubin provides a stellar production with infeasibly clean guitars and Frusciante

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provides the album’s finest solo.

Kiedis’ lyrics may be at their most hilariously bad in a Spinal Tap sort of way here, but he does manage to evoke something Rock and Rollickingly sexual and menacing with lines such as “Pixelated panther, I’ll let it purr.”

Meanwhile, the placing of the undeniably effective Psych-Rock, tom-tom bashing epic ‘The Heavy Wing’ and the affecting, acoustic ditty ‘Tangelo’ at least enables ‘Unlimited Love’ to be put back on the shelf with some amount of dignity after an often torturous listen that we do not wish to repeat any time soon ... or at least not until we feel obliged to review the next Red Hot Chili Peppers album in the hope that, unlike this album, the quality lives up to the excitement surrounding it.

‘Unlimited Love’ is out now on Warner Records. redhotchilipeppers.com www.facebook.com/ ChiliPeppers

Inferno’ of course went on to appear on the soundtrack of the film ‘Saturday Night Fever’ (1977).

The Trammps Burn Baby Burn!

Martin Hutchinson reviews ‘Burn Baby Burn: Disco Inferno (The Trammps Albums 1975-1980).’

The Trammps were at the forefront of the Disco explosion of the mid-to-late seventies. Starting life as The Volcanoes in 1965, they signed to Neal Bogart’s Buddah Records, which prompted a change of name.

Their first self-titled album was released in 1975 after some hit singles, ‘Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart’; ‘Sixty Minute Man’ and ‘Pray All You Sinners’. In fact, these three singles appeared on the band’s second album, released in the same year, ‘The Legendary Zing Album’, along with ‘Hold Back the Night’.

The Trammps were THE disco band and they toured the world celebrating their success and the Disco genre. This compilation, which comes with a clamshell box and a sixteen-page booklet, features all eight albums recorded by the band between 1975 and 1980, along with eleven bonus tracks.

Still touring today, the importance of The Trammps to the Disco world cannot be understated and this collection has their very best tracks recorded when they were at their peak.

‘Burn Baby Burn: Disco Inferno (The Trammps Albums 1975-1980)’ is out now on Robinsongs via Cherry Red Records. www.thetrammps.net www.cherryred.co.uk/ artist/trammps-the

Interestingly, the band’s 1977 fifth album was entitled ‘The Trammps III’ and was released as the follow up to the previous year’s ‘Disco Inferno’ album, which had propelled them into superstardom. The title track of ‘Disco

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AMBULA AMBU LANCE NCE Bayhem Runs Out of Road

Review by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

Subtlety has never been Michael Bay’s strong point and from the director who has most recently treated us to far more films about robots in disguise than anybody deserves comes another two hours of high-octane nonsense, ‘Ambulance’.

Despite being heavily based on the off-beat and altogether more enjoyable 2005 Danish film, ‘Ambulencen’, which manages to tell this story of a bank heist and attempt to escape in a stolen ambulance in a spritely eighty minutes whilst still managing to find time for a bit of sardonic humour in the process, ‘Ambulance’ is a film which flatlines from the outset, its stupidity and cavernous logic gaps there for all to see even within its opening scenes.

As dumb as those opening moments of

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‘Ambulance’ are, with war veteran Will Sharp (Yayha Abdul-Mateen II), desperately in need of $231,000 to pay for his wife Amy’s life-saving surgery, being talked into taking part in a $32 million bank heist by his adoptive brother Danny (Jake Gyllanhall), but the pair, despite Danny’s face being plastered all over the FBI’s website as one of the LA’s most wanted criminals, neglecting to wear face coverings, at least they are rapid, lasting only a few minutes before we are aboard the ambulance for the next utterly brainless two hours.

In fact, those opening moments of ‘Ambulance’ happen so fast that there is far too little time allowed for the relationship between Danny, the gung-ho criminal, and Will, the more sensible brother who has only taken part in the heist as an absolute last resort, to be explored, which is a shame because it could have easily been the film’s strongest aspect. Oddly though, the film is held together by neither Gyllanhall or Abdul-Mateen’s cartoonlike characters, but that of Eliza González in the role of EMT Cam Thompson, who, as everything explodes around her (body parts and all) in the usual Bay manner, is in the back of the ambulance keeping a bank hostage accidentally shot by Will, LAPD officer Zach, alive. Amongst Thompson’s activities are carrying out a medical procedure which, whilst impossible in an ambulance hurtling along at sixty-miles-per-hour, at least

provides the film with a much needed emotional shunt at this stage in the proceedings, which are otherwise big on action but chronically short on human feeling. Worse still, there also a few attempts at comedy along the way, but if you choose to watch ‘Ambulance’ in the cinema (we suggest that you stream it instead), we doubt that you will hear anybody laughing.

Okay, this is a Bay film and we were all fully aware of the trademark Bayhem that it was going to entail and there is no doubting that, if you like that sort of thing, you will love ‘Ambulance’. But, what even the most devout Bay fan probably won’t be able to overlook is that ‘Ambulance’ is too long by a good half an hour, with its final scenes,

complete with another ambulance crew unexpectedly turning up, feeling almost tagged on to the end of the film as an afterthought to bump up the viewing time to make it feel more ‘epic’.

Unfortunately though, the plot has long since run out of road, and they just make a high speed chase in an ambulance feel more like a twenty-mile-per-hour pootle along the motorway in a Nissan Micra driven by a blue-rinsed biddy ... perhaps in the wrong lane if they are feeling particularly adventurous.

‘Ambulance’ is in cinemas now. www.ambulance.movie

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