You’ve got a very Jamaican/Finley Quaye-esque voice, how did that come about? ?

Well when I was about eight my dad taught me the guitar and allowed me to use his vinyl player along with his entire record collection. I picked out everything from Aretha Franklin to The Rolling Stones and anything else I could get my hands on. So from a young age I sat and listened to that consistently before I even started to buy my own records. I also went along to my dad’s rehearsals, which was a mixture of traditional Irish music with elements of early southern American blues.

Where did your musical influences go from there?

When I was about twelve I started getting into hip-hop through my sister. Someone played me a Tupac tape and then it all went off from there. I almost forgot about any other type of music for the next couple of years. Then I started MC’ing when I was fifteen on the Irish hip-hop scene, which really got the ball rolling.

Yeah, when I started listening to hip-hop. When I was fourteen I started MC’ing a bit just at home. Then when I was fifteen I decided I wanted to start recording songs because when I was younger I used to write songs on the guitar anyway from when my dad first taught me. So I thought I might as well push that over onto the hip-hop side.

Are you trained on any other instruments apart from the guitar?

You know what; I’m not even trained on the guitar. My dad taught me four chords, which were to Stand By Me (Ben E King) and every thing else I just make up. I don’t confess myself to be the best guitar player in the world what so ever. I just make up my own chords, whatever feels good; I just get the vibe of the strings and different notes. Obviously when I play the chords to my guitar player who’s trained and knows all the musical notation he can tell me exactly what the chords are I’m playing.

Do you write all of your own material?

Everything’s written myself, but obviously sometimes there’s co writers that I work with such as producers and we sit down and write together. But everything’s got my own stamp on it. I write all my own top lines and lyrics myself. Obviously if I’m working with another producer he might do the music, like someone might play me another guitar riff that I wouldn’t of known.

Your debut album’s coming out soon, when is it expected to hit the shelves?

We’re hoping to get it out in October or November I think.

What can people expect from it, any collaborations etc.

There’s no collaborations, I didn’t want that as I found it was becoming a little bit too much over the last couple of years. Every time a new act got pushed into the limelight the first thing selling the album would be collaborations. I don’t want that, I just want to put out a classic album, I want to put out music that can withstand the test of time. That’s defiantly what I wanted to do with my debut album because it’s my first stamp on the world and what everyone’s going to judge me on. What people can expect is hip-hop inspired soulful folk music.

What do you take from each of these genres to get your own unique sound?

I love hip-hop; it’s my favourite musical genre. For me hip hop’s a mash up of all my favourite types of music, you can find blues in there, you can find soul in there, you can find so many different styles in hip hop, I think that’s why I love it so much. Everything about hip hop is soulful, everything’s got a passion behind it, everything’s about something whether it be from love or to me commenting on things I’ve seen growing up, friends, stories, political issues it’s all from the soul. I’m not trying to preach. I’m not trying to be something. I’m just being me.

With folk music, I like telling stories, I like to think of myself when I write as a documentarian, where I see something and it will interest me and will want to find out more about it. It’s as if I’m someone collecting research together to make a documentary. I’ll look up interviews, I’ll ask people and then make a story around that and put it into a song. I had a song called ‘The Found Him A Gun’ which was on my mix tape. This was about the Virginia Tech shooting in America because it really interested me that people would be desperate enough to go into their school and kill students that they go to class with and see every day. That kind of concept really interests me, why they would need to do that. It doesn’t really happen in Ireland so I just wanted to know more about it. So I went and investigated it on the Internet, I found different stories and just accumulated this knowledge about it and then made up my own little story for it and turned it into a song. People are always attracted by stories, which is where music comes from. Before there were any recording technologies everyone would have different versions of one song, which would keep getting passed around. Which made for everyone’s own version of the story.

So your song writing is heavily influenced by early blues?

Yeah definitely, I wanted to bring the roots of music into my song writing. Music from the soul!

What festivals are you going to be at over the summer?

Yeah loads, Glastonbury, Oxygen (Ireland), Lovebox, O2 Wireless, Beach Break Live.

What’s planned for Glastonbury?

I think I’m in the east dance tent on the Saturday and I might be joining Chase and Status on the Friday to do the song I had on their album.

With Azerbaijan recently winning the Eurovision song contest with a singer from Enfield in north London. If asked would you choose to represent Ireland or the UK in next years final?

I’d turn it down; it would be the end of my career. Even if my album sold one and a half copies and someone offered me a Eurovision spot, I still couldn’t do it! I watch Eurovision every year just for the laugh. It’s just a joke. So I’d have to refuse that offer!

———

You can download Maverick Sabre’s Lost Words EP from iTunes and The Travelling Man mixtape free from www.mavericksabre.com. Catch him at Festivals throughout the summer with his self titled debut record coming out on 7/11/2011, pre order it here:-

HMV

Here are a list of his forthcoming shows and festivals: -

June
7th Jazz Café - Camden Town, London (Headline Show)
16th Beach Break Live - South Wales
22 - 26th Glastonbury - Somerset

July
1st O2 Wireless – Hyde Park, London
8th Relentless NASS – Shepton Mallet
15th Lovebox – Victoria Park, London
29th Global Gathering – Stratford-upon-Avon

August
5th Underage Festival – Victoria Park, London
10th Relentless Boardmasters – Newquay, Cornwall

September
3rd Jersey Live – Jersey
8th Bestival – Isle of Wight

James Hough - 2011

A bold claim maybe? So it was good to take the opportunity to quiz Kip Berman, vocalist and guitarist with the band, about why this is, the evolution of the band and how to survive as an Indie band in 2011.

I started by asking Kip about the new album, Belong.

You’ve made a serious impact as an Indie-pop band in the UK over that last four years or so but the new album seems to signal a change in sound. Has that been done on purpose?

Well each thing we’ve done we’ve tried to improve and get better. Our first EP was recorded with drum machine and for the first album Kurt (Feldman) joined us and at last we had live drums. For the Higher than The Stars EP and our first album we had someone else mixing and we were working in a more traditional studio.

So all we try to do is get better. Is it a conscious effort? Well, all we try to do is write the best songs we can and try to record in the best way to capture the spirit of the music.

The new album certainly has a fuller sound if you compare 103 with say Heaven’s Gonna Happen Now there is a distinct difference. Has the additional guitarist had an impact there?

O Yeah! Christoph (Hochheim) helps a lot too. But I think we need to remember that there is a lot of value in songs like 103 too and we shouldn’t stand back and take ourselves too seriously, stroking our fake beards or whatever. With Heaven’s Gonna Happen Now we wanted a song that had a bigger more immediate sound that hit you in the chest. The kind of music that you don’t have to think about you just like it or you don’t. With a lot of our early stuff it was great because we saw people discovering older bands we like through our own music, maybe bands that had become neglected over time. But with this album we just wanted the songs to exist as songs, and people not having to think about why they like them.

We just want them to have a direct emotional connection to the music and a song like Heaven’s Gonna Happen Now has an almost cartoonishly outsize dynamic when the chords come in it becomes monstrously big and we love that. We grew up with a lot of music that explored that dynamic to its full potential; bands like The Pixies, bands like Nirvana. There’s something kind of timeless about a song getting really loud at the chorus. I don’t know – it’s not the most thoughtful thing in the world but we still like it!

Yeah - yeah but not in the sense that we think it’s better than anyone else’s album or we’re the best band ever. It’s more like we love these songs and we feel that we have really captured these songs that we love, and they sound like they should sound. It’s up to other people to figure out if they like it or not. We’ve worked really hard to get it right and if you put on side one and drop the needle and then flip it over and play side two then we’re happy that it sounds like us!

How does the song writing work out, do you lead it, is it a collaborative thing?

It’s kind of two-tiered. The basis of the song, the chord progression and the lyrics come from me but I’m terrible at playing drums or bass or even keyboards. There is the basic concept of the song where I’m playing some chords in my room and it sounds a bit crappy if you ever listen to that, but it sounds a lot better when everyone contributes their ideas to it like Kurt’s drums or Peggy’s keyboards. Sometimes it’s like we’re building a Frankenstein and I’m supplying the skeleton and everyone else supplies the organs and skin and brain and stuff.

I’m not going to ask about influences and who you sound like because that’s been done to death in other interviews, but in terms of that who are you aiming at with this album, who do you want to listen to it?

It’s difficult. There is a hypocrisy where people say they play “pop” music but then say they don’t care what people think. Implicit in making pop music is that you want people to hear it. You want people outside of your own bedroom to listen to these songs and enjoy them. I don’t know who those people are, maybe middle aged men, maybe teenage kids, maybe some people in-between. I don’t really know who in general likes our music; I’m always surprised that anyone does!

It’s true. You know the bands I grew up with weren’t like big bands. They were important to ME but they didn’t really register on the big picture of what rock music was or even what Indie music was. Most of them were too small to gain even a degree of Indie celebrity.

America is such a big and diffuse place. It’s not like the UK where Indie bands can get national press and get under the microscope. In America you can exist off the radar for a long time. For the first two years that we were a band no-one outside the really tight-knit indie-pop world in New York knew who we were. It was only when our first proper record came out that people started listening to us who were not people we knew personally!

Did you see much of UK and European bands, growing up in New York?

At the stage when I would have been seeing English and Scottish Bands I was living in the Pacific Northwest in Portland, Oregon so a lot of those experiences I lived vicariously by reading about them but it’s not like I got to see The Auteurs or Suede play live at the Mercury Lounge or anything. But Birmingham! That’s where Lawrence from Felt came from. Felt is one of my favourite English bands.

But they’re a cult band even in the UK!

We weren’t bothered whether he was famous or not, he’s legendary. He’s like a cult and rightly so but he’s one of those guys whose music will be more popular in the future than when he was making music with Felt and the same later with Denim. It’s one of those things that people will have to evaluate over time. It’s actually great song-writing and it’s remarkable how he has made consistently great music and basically never registered. But hopefully there will be justice in time!

People may look back and maybe some things that are popular at the moment aren’t that good, and some of the things that were ignored critically and commercially will get a second chance for people to discover them.

How was living in Portland?

It’s a great city for music too but so geographically isolated. San Francisco is a twelve hour drive to the south and the next big city is Seattle which is still three hours away and not a huge place in itself. I lived there for six or seven years to go to school and stuff. Gossip played there a lot early on and a lot of good Indie bands came from Portland like the Thermals. I like them a lot. It was a really creative community but the creativity wasn’t recognised outside of the community. Imagine if Brighton was twelve hours away from London or a seven hour plane ride, not an hour away! Portland didn’t have an outlet at that time. I think as technology moves on an people become less fixated on place and you can access music anywhere then it makes things better.

Obviously the distances effect your touring?

The scale of what it means to tour in America is awesome, and it’s cool but daunting. If you’re an English band doing a national tour you can almost cover everywhere with fifteen to twenty dates. We just got back from a US tour for a month playing every night and there’s a lot more than half the country that we missed. There’s places we’ll have to go back to this summer and play more. It’s just the scale of things

But commercially it means that you can be off the radar most of the time like us and you don’t have to be huge to survive. It would be great to be bigger but this way we’re free to keep on making music and develop at our own pace. With some English bands it seems like “make or break” on their debut record. If it doesn’t become a sensation then they don’t have the chance to make more records or have people follow their development.

With us we’ve actually been grateful that we put out an EP and no-one cared and then an album and a few people became interested and started to take notice. I’m really glad that people weren’t coming to our early shows expecting us to be good because we were pretty terrible. It’s only now that we’ve gotten up to average!

We toured with The Wedding Present in Europe and they were great every night and that was a brilliant example to a young band like us. To see the hard work and song writing up close. To see that band twenty-five years on still loved and still doing their stuff is great. It made us think - what is it like to be that band? There are newer bands who are liked now that people wont give a shit about in five years time!

Music isn’t all that disposable now though is it?

It’s not like a huge shift. Music has always been a disposable item. Look at the sheer volume, the stacks of records that have been released and how much does anyone still really care about? For every band like Television, and people still listen to and love Television, and the Ramones or stuff like that, there were stacks and stacks of anonymous kinds of records released for whatever reason. It’s true today. Even a lot of Indie bands will just disappear and only a handful will remain. In twenty years we may still be talking about Animal Collective, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs or TV on The Radio. Some of this stuff will be timeless and looked on as classic.

It’s not even about being a big band. In the early 2000s it was all The Strokes and Interpol but the bands that people are critically engaging with are more likely to be the Animal Collectives who were less commercially viable. Smaller bands playing smaller shows, or in the small print of the posters, are the ones who have emerged ten years later as these powerhouses.

You never know. It’s like Nirvana opening for Mudhoney or something. But there is a lot of good stuff that gets forgotten too. It’s just how it is. Look at Orange Juice. I feel that people look back and they are far more respected and acclaimed now. I know they had some Indie chart success in the early days but every band I know will cite Edwin Collins as extremely inspirational and important. The same with people like Jonathan Richman and John Cale who were on the periphery of popular culture but who seem to be held in even greater esteem as time goes on.

Are you all full time musicians now or do you still have day jobs?

I used to hold down an office job with Alex (Nadius) but the touring got so much that we just couldn’t sustain both. We’re lucky enough to concentrate on the music full time but Peggy (Wang) still has a job when she gets back to NY and their pretty flexible.

I don’t know why it’s surprising that we’ve got jobs. It’s always about subsidies and advances and stuff but you have to live and most Indie bands just do enough to make things meet so they have to do something else. There’s no disgrace in that and actually I feel quite lucky to have experienced real work because you appreciate the chance to do something artistic and creative. If kids are successful in music straight out of school at eighteen or something I don’t think they appreciate the opportunity that they have been given.

It’s normal for them so they don’t realise what life is like. If you’ve had a job for a few years and you maybe didn’t like what you were doing then you appreciate the opportunity a lot more.

Those days of getting super rich are long gone then?

(Laughs) If you ask most bands like ours all they want to have is enough to be able to keep on doing what they love doing, getting to make records and touring. Maybe that world of “we’re going to make you a star”, getting a load of money and getting dropped the next month is gone but it’s actually good for music. More bands have a chance to exist in this model even if we’re not all driving around in limousines and stuff.

It gives us a chance to exist and not have that looming debt or expectation. You know you can make a record and if it doesn’t top the charts then you don’t owe anyone. No-one is banging down the door asking you to re-mix the single to try to get it on the radio better.

We don’t owe anyone so any money we do make gets reinvested back into the band and recording and a bit to live on when we’re writing the next album. I’m not sure that we could have existed fifteen years ago, having to give our demo tape to some ass-hole trying to get a deal.

I’m glad that world is gone. I just want to play the songs that we make on our own terms and if people like them that’s great, but we don’t have to worry about making other people rich!

———

The Pains….. will be playing at the HMV Institute on the 14th June as part of a wider European tour.

Ian Gelling - May 2011

We caught up with Mark in between radio shows and asked him about the new book, his move to 6 Radio and live music.

Your new book will be your fourth - are you trying to keep up with Mr Maconie

We’re not in competition or anything but in a funny sort of way, because he keeps talking about his books and writing it keeps me interested.

You’ve picked 50-odd tunes for the book why did that come about?

I’ve picked one tune from each year of my life. It shows a trajectory of how music has been important at it’s time. I start in 1958 with Cliff Richard and Move It and make a case for that being the birth of British Rock ‘n’ Roll. Cliff agreed to be interviewed for the book, which was really, really kind of him. Its no skin off his nose what I’m doing writing a book! When I’m young I’m kind of looking at the records that came out in those years and what they meant in the world and as I get a older the records become more personal but I’m still trying to see then in the context of popular culture and how things have changed. Not about the big news events but more the little details of life like having barbecues for the first time, house plants or having an Austin Maxi

A bit of both really. One of the early songs is specific to me. In 1964 the Animals had The House Of The Rising Sun and although obviously I was only 6 at that time and not really aware of it, it was the first song that I ever played with someone else in my first group years later. It was the first time that I thought “I like doing this” sitting in the room with those people making that noise. Being in a group kind of tilted my world on its axis. It was like being in a club with its own rules where you could make it work for you, not like football where you play to someone else’s rules. It was like having your own gang so that record is very personal to me in that way.

A DJ really (laughing). I’ve always seen myself as someone who looks for new sounds and new records and just tries to play them on the radio mixed up with some old ones! I regard everything else as a spin-off from just doing radio shows really. I like writing books and everything but I’m not keen on spending all my time sitting in front of a computer on my own. I do like working with a team of people getting a radio programme out. I like the immediacy of it you know? I like doing live radio much more than pre-recorded. In a way I get more nervous doing the pre-recorded because if anything goes wrong you end up having to do it all over again. If it’s live you just have to get through it and it’s done!

I think Stuart regards himself as a writer who broadcasts whilst I regard myself as a broadcaster who writes. I’m certainly not a journalist and even the bits of TV I do are because I’m on the radio and perhaps seen as a trusted voice in terms of music.

Is the TV stuff still going on? Will you be doing Glastonbury this year?

I don’t know. I’m still waiting to hear. I’m hoping so, as I like Glastonbury and I’m covering the Cambridge Folk Festival for Sky this year as well. I do bits and bobs but I’m on radio five days a week so it’s like I’ve already got a full time job.

What about the production side? Are you still involved with Count Arthur Strong

I’m still doing that yeah, but just because I like Count Arthur Strong not because I want to get into production. I did it because once I’d seen him and heard the tapes I knew what needed to be done to get the show on Radio 4. So it was more that it was expedient for me to pick it up and try to make that work than any desire to produce. So I pick that up from time to time but right now I’m tied up doing six radio shows a week and with the books and gigging there’s not much space for anything else.

It’s reported that there is going to be a Count Arthur Strong TV series?

I’ve heard that, but I have nothing to do with it. I think the man is a comic genius so I’m sure something good will come out of it if it does happen. Radio is easier really because the listener can just imagine that whole world. Creating that world on the telly so that none of it jars is different really. It’s the ideas and suggestions in the show that create a picture in your mind that is probably funnier than anything you could dramatise on TV in any way.

How did the 6 Music thing come about? You and Stuart seemed quite settled in the Radio 2 evening slot.

It’s interesting. I joined Radio 2 and I was doing the evenings when Lesley Douglas was in charge and she always had the idea that I’d move into daytime. I started doing Steve Wright’s show when he was away but after the Jonathan Ross/Russell Brand thing it all changed. In the time since, Radio 2 has aimed itself at the mainstream of entertainment. At the same time 6 Music was threatened with closure but then, thankfully, saved and Bob (Shennan) who is in charge of both quite rightly wanted two distinct stations, whereas before there was a lot of overlap. It then became clear that because the music we play obviously matters a lot to Stuart and I, that breed of person would naturally gravitate to 6 Music. They suggested the move and also because we had worked the evening slot for seven years we wanted to get back into daytime again. It’s nice at six o’clock to be able to go and have a pint rather than having to prepare for the show; to have a more normal life again work-wise.

Won’t it be a bit funny hearing Jo Whiley introducing “The Organist Entertains”?

I quite like that programme! It is difficult to accommodate everybody and where they want to be. Yes hours are great but it’s obviously on a digital channel and not everyone can hear it but we’re hoping that it will grow and that it’s the future and not the radio equivalent of Betamax. We’re enjoying it and we’ve settled into it. It just seemed like the right move and things had changed. Everyone thinks their show is most important and perhaps the show wasn’t prioritised as we thought it should be. It seemed like a good idea to go where they wanted to put us and where we we fitted in better, swimming with the tide rather than against it.

Do you think the campaign to save the channel shows that it has a future?

I certainly feel that there is a groundswell of support for 6 Music from the enthusiasts but one of the reasons we feel that the afternoon slot will be successful is that technology is catching up with digital equipment in cars. Ford are putting dab in all new Focuses from next year so things will move quickly for a show where you want to have people being able to listen in the car.

It’s so far so good but in a weird way people listening isn’t really my responsibility. I can only do what I do. I’ve never really considered the size of the audience. I’ve just carried on doing what I think is right. I know that sounds very arrogant but I can’t second guess what everyone else thinks is right. If I am wrong then someone higher up the food chain will decide that and get rid of me!

Does that go back to how you see yourself, as someone who introduces the audience to new music?

It’s interesting that when I was growing up you’d go to record shops and listen to music and meet other people who’d been to gigs and exchange experiences and musical tastes, but now the whole of music is available on the internet and there is no filter. I know you can do that on-line but it’s not the same. How do you know where to start, where to go or what you might like. There is still a need for someone to offer that service on a radio show. If people trust your judgement and like what you play then it’s easy to say “well you might like this” or “have you heard this?” It doesn’t matter that someone may not like it. There is no right or wrong in musical taste. That’s why I wont have any truck with the concept of guilty pleasures. If it’s a pleasure why be guilty? That’s all music should be about, entertainment and enjoyment.

Is that what the Radio 2 Music club is all about?

Yes. I’m pleased about that programme. It’s only an hour a week but it’s so compact that you can almost hand tool it like a bespoke suit. If you do a three hour show there will be bits that run well, that run great and other that feel a bit flat but with one hour you can get it just how you want it; every record, every jingle, every segue. It’s supposed to be about reissues and classics as well as new stuff. I really hope that I’ll be doing that for a long time even if all the rest disappears. I want to be David Jacobs or Desmond Carrington, you know these guys in their 80s still doing it. I would like to think that the music club show will be in it for the long haul.

You need to get you shack on Loch Lomond then!

I quite like the idea of coming up to Manchester for one or two days a week in years time when I’m semi-retired, as a real old boy still listening to new stuff. If you love music why should you stop listening to new stuff as well as the old favourites just because you’re getting on a bit?

So who are you listening to at the moment?

Well I’ve just received the new Fleet Foxes album which I like a lot and I’ve been enjoying Cat’s Eyes which is the guy from The Horrors (Faris Badwan), who I always dismissed as a bit of joke band actually, but this new stuff is really good, redolent of 60s girl groups. I’m really liking an album by a band from Manchester called Driver Drive Faster. I’m also listening to the new Emmylou Harris album because I love her voice and I’ve got some Kate and Anna McGarrigle reissues that I’m spinning through - so that’s today’s!

What do you think of the new Elbow album?

(pregnant pause)

I think that it’s a really warm and inclusive album. I really like the first track a lot, The Birds. I have to be careful because they are all friends of mine and I think it’s great that they have had all the success and adulation come their way but for the next one maybe they need to put a hand on the tiller. I think they are of that opinion themselves. They should do and album that is rougher, a bit rockier.

Don’t you think the material comes over as more “difficult” played live.

Yes. If anything they think that it’s a return to their earlier style like the first album Asleep in The Back but I still think the next one should be rougher edged. Guy is a real communicator you know. There are not many people who could perform in arena sized shows and everyone feels that he is talking to them. He has a real natural warmth and charm and bonhomie.

You do the odd but of that yourself though. When you played with the Big Figures in Bilston last year you were full of the repartee and connecting with the crowd.

I see that as my job really. I do regard myself as the link between the crowd and the band. I’ve been doing it for so longer that I wouldn’t know any other way to be honest. I get disappointed with bands that you see where there seems to be no attempt to connect with the audience at all. I spend a lot of time on the folk circuit and I really love the fact that people talk about their songs and what they mean to them with a bit of banter, standing at the bar rather than holed up in dressing room.

People come to my gigs knowing who I am and looking to meet me half way so we have a lot of goodwill before we start.

———

Mark can be heard on BBC 6 Music on weekday afternoons with his partner in crime Stuart Maconie and his Music Club is broadcast on Tuesdays at 11.00pm

Ian Gelling - May 2011

Photos - Steve Gerrard

Firstly The Chariot

Hi guys, can you all say hello please

Josh: Hello, I’m Josh and I sing for The Chariot
Stevis: I’m Stevis I play guitar
Wolf: I’m wolf, I play the bass
David: David, drums
Brandon: Brandon, and I play guitar also

Where are you guys from?

Josh: Douglasville, Georgia, it’s kinda near Atlanta

How would you describe your music for others?

Josh: It’s punk-rock, in it’s rawest form. There’s a lot of hardcore and metal as well, but it’s still punk-rock

Who are your biggest influences

Josh: I’m really influenced by the true performance artists, guys who don’t just sing, but put everything into their art. People like Elvis Presley, James Brown or Jerry Lee Lewis, guys that threw themselves head first into their music y’know. Those guys really had passion

Josh: no it’s not, we’ve been here a few times now. I like to tour as much as we can. We’ll do like 3 or 4 tours of the US every year and we like to come over here at least once a year. When we’re touring the US we see the same kids every time, it keeps us in their heads so they remember the shows. When we come here it’s different though, new kids every time, which is cool, but not so many familiar faces y’know.
Wolf: It’s great to play to the new crowds, but it can be hard to sell yourself over and over. We love playing Atlanta as it’s kinda our home town, so those shows are the most intense. People know what we’re about and get crazy

Josh: This tour has been sweet so far, it’s probably the nicest as it’s all so well sorted by our tour manager. We’ve got a decent bus and the venues are a bit bigger than previously. We’re also playing a few new cities which is good.

Are the UK shows different to the ones in the US?

Josh: Well yeah, cause we’re always touring in the US we see a lot of the same kids, they know what we’re about, and we’ve had more chance to build up a base of kids. It’s like we know we’re going to get a good crowd when we play certain cities. I guess some are still a little slow to catch on, but we’re working on it. We can play more over there though, so we’re always in people’s minds. Over here though we have to be fresh for every show, got to convince the new guys we’re worth seeing again.

Wolf: It’s a bit like we’ve gone back like 5 years or something, playing the smaller shows and trying to get people into us again. At least now we’ve got more songs and we’re better at what we do. Well, I hope we’re better anyway.

Ok, that’s all my questions, thanks for you time.

Next MyChildren MyBride

Say hello guys

Mathew: Hi I’m Matthew and I am the vocalist for MyChildren Mybride
Robert: I’m Robert I play Guitar
Mathis: I’m Mathis I play drums
Joe: I’m Joe I play Bass
Daniel: I play Guitar

Where are you guys from?

Matthew: Technically the United states but all over the place, I’m from Alabama
Robert: California
Mathis: Switzerland
Joe: California
Daniel: Missouri
Ben: A real mix then
All: laughter

And what kind of music do you play? How would you describe it to anyone who hasn’t heard you guys before?

Matthew: Punk/Alternative
Ben: What would you say your biggest influences are?
Joe: Rebecca Black
All: Laughter
Joe: Rebecca Black - Friday
Matthew: And Corndogs
Daniel: Tioa Cruz
Matthew: Britney Spears
Ben: Pre or Post haircut?
Matthew: Post haircut definitely

Matthew: No

So what was it like last time you were here?

Matthew: It was actually really awesome, it was like four years ago actually
Joe: It was quite the experience because we didn’t have anybody with us, We toured with this band called The Serious, they’re long gone now but it was just us back then, we didn’t really have a tour manager, we just toured and played shows, it was totally punk rock.

Are you enjoying the tour so far?

All: Yeah
Matthew: Awesome, this is actually like our first tour in a bus, we haven’t done one in the states, so
being able to just not worry about anything ever

Joe: Well it’s real different because we’re not really established over here yet, this is just our second tour but really you could call it our first tour, because it’s with The Chariot and we’re doing real venues and stuff. In American we’ve done.. 50 tours? through the band’s career, so it’s like we’re very established there and in a lot of places a lot of kids will come out, whereas here we’re still trying to get kids to listen to us. We have a record out in America, two records, like all kinds of stuff on the internet, everywhere you look there’s music or merchandise, but here it’s like starting over again
Matthew: Yeah like starting over

What kind of shows do you prefer? Big festivals or floor shows?

Matthew: I like the shows that are more intimate, like one-on-one stuff, you can crawl on top of each other and make it a night that you can actually remember.

What’s it like touring with The Chariot?

Robert: The Chariot is fun, they just like to have a good time, just do what ever they feel, whatever they want at whatever time. So being with them is kinda different, but cool
Daniel: It’s the whole thing of whatever happens here, to be here with someone you know, we get tour with some of our friends and have someone to run the show. When we were here before we didn’t know what to do, where to go or anything, but now we have friends to help show us around.
Matthew: We actually just did a tour with them in the US for 5 and half weeks, and we came off that tour and straight on this one. It’s been the best of fun, we’ve become really good friends with each other.

How are you getting on with the UK bands?

Daniel: We got into a couple of fist-fights a couple times, but apart from that they’re cool
Matthew: we played with Galleons the other night
Mathis: From Nottingham
You’d recommend them?
Matthew: Yeah for sure
Joe: The band we played with in Manchester were pretty good too
Matthew: Plagues, they were good

With so many bands out there, how have you guys managed to push through?

Matthew: I guess just by sticking with it, we’ve been a band for like 7 years now. We were that band for the first couple of years, but you’ve got to keep just trying and trying, and tour and tour, whether it’s just three days or a weekend or the whole of spring break or whatever, you’ve just got to force yourself out there and play shows.

So your attitude is pretty DIY?

Matthew: All the way, we made it all the way through Europe last time, with no label, no manager
Joe: Now it’s even worse, but 4/5 years ago you had to really work and fight to get shows, and prove yourself, and if someone’s coming to see your show, like label-heads, then you can’t expect them to know about you, you’ve got to prove your worth of being in the world of known bands. You constantly have to be fighting constantly working, we didn’t even have management up till a couple years ago. We just did it all.

I think that’s all we’ve time for. Thanks very much guys.

———

Ben Duff - April 2011

I believe you just started your European tour?

Yeah it’s now day 7, we started in Vienna and we’ve been in Germany for the past 5 days. We’re in Hamburg today and it’s cold!

How have the first group of shows been going?

It’s been amazing and I’m not just saying that, it’s been the best tour we’ve ever had in Europe I think. All the shows have been sold out, which doesn’t really happen for us over here, or hasn’t really in the past so this is like a whole new chapter in Good Charlotte’s career. We’re so excited, we’ve got the new label(Capitol Records) behind us and I don’t know, it feels like we’re kids again we’re all so pumped up!

What’s the reaction been like so far on your latest album?

It’s been great. Shows are selling out which they haven’t been before. But it gets hard making set lists as you keep putting out more and more albums. We want to play the whole album but we still want to give the fans the old songs. It’s so crazy 14-year-old girls and boys are still coming to our shows. We have this whole new fresh fan base behind us so we’re still going to play all the classics for them. We can’t just play a set of the new songs; I personally hate bands that do that. We play about half of the songs from Cardiology and to be honest with you that’s my favourite part of the set.

It’s going to be The Wonder Years, Four Year Strong and Framing Hanley. We’re touring with Framing Hanley right now and those guys are great! They’re really fun good people, and they have really great shows. I haven’t met the other two bands yet but I’ve been listening to their music and I’m really excited to meet them. The Wonder Years have really good songs and I’ve seen some live clips and I’m really excited to see them play! Friends of mine in the States have been telling me that the Four Year Strong boys are super fun to party with!

From your previous tours, what’s the weirdest place/crowd you’ve ever played?

Hmm, probably our first time going to Indonesia we played in Jakarta.We played to like 20,000 people or something. I had no idea there were so many people there, apparently that’s what happens when you go to Indonesia, the shows are big because there are so many people there. To be honest with you I didn’t even know that place existed and then we go there for the first time and it’s like one of the biggest crowds we’ve played in front of. That was definitely a bizarre experience.

I don’t. I didn’t get to walk around a lot I only saw it from the bus and the venue. But I remember the show was a lot of fun.

What have you got planned in terms of UK festivals this summer?

Nothing has been locked in yet but we’re hoping to spend our summer playing festivals throughout the UK and Europe. Personally I would like to do that every summer because those are always my favourite shows. You guys know how to do festivals over here for sure!

How would you say going on tour and your live performances have changed now from your first tour back in the 90’s?

Well…I’m older and fatter now (laughs). Travelling the world definitely makes everybody a little different. I didn’t go to college but I went touring instead and it was just as educational in my opinion. I’ve definitely grown up a lot since we started when I was 16. I have a wife and a daughter now…I still like to have fun on the road but am a lot more responsible now then when we started. We always used to be the youngest band out on tour and now we’re the oldest. So I dunno there’s just some responsibility that comes along with that, like how you’re perceived and your reputation you have to uphold.

So you’re looking after all the kids on tour?

(Laughs) Yeah we’re out here changing diapers buddy!

You’ve got a greatest hits album coming out over here in just a couple of days. You must feel pretty proud?

Well Sony our former label is putting out a greatest hits CD. We didn’t really have anything to do with it, or have a say on whether or not it’s coming out. They’re just doing it and that’s that.

It still must feel pretty incredible to know you’ve achieved enough success to release a greatest hits album?

It’s very flattering to know that we have enough songs for a greatest hits album. We’re on our fifth album, but at the same time what they’re putting out is just the four albums that we made previously. So none of the songs on the album that we just put out (Cardiology) are going to be on the greatest hits, which is a bummer for us as we personally feel that this is the best album we’ve done so far.

Well thanks a lot for your time Paul!

Thank you man, take care!

———

Good Charlotte will be appearing in the UK on the Kerrang! Relentless Energy Drink Tour along with Four Year Strong and Framing Hanley. The tour hits Birmingham at the O2 Academy on 17th February

James Hough - January 2011

My first ever interview and instead of working up slowly to musical greatness, I jump in with both feet and go for the lead singer of The Cult, Ian Astbury. On a cold evening, I pick up the phone expecting to speak to Astbury’s publicist only to find myself speaking to the man directly, who kindly gave up an hour of his time to discuss writing music, Patti Smith and religion.

Everyman and Woman is a star really encapsulates the definitive Cult sound. How do you and Billy Duffy go about writing?

That one came up in the studio during our jamming. Billy came up with the riff and we made a few quick calls to our producer. Sometimes I have been called in about these lyrics, but Everyman and Woman is a star was put together pretty much through a jam.

Do you find easier to come up with a lyrical idea before putting it to music because it can be quite hard to get music and lyrics combined to create a good auditory experience?

I am always writing so usually what happens is I always end up putting it to music, using the lyrics that have a certain sentiment to me. I usually flick through notebooks and stuff off the laptop and it might help with the phrase, or even sometimes the whole lyric already written. If I can’t find it that way I try and write something on the spot. There is no real set format to the way we write.

So you are not like Prince and have microphones all round your house just in case you might sing something amazing?

Nah. I don’t need to you know? I mean if I am out and get a really good melody, I literally carry a notebook and pens with me anyway so it is pretty rare that I would I have nothing to write it down on. If I was, I would borrow one to write something down. When I was a kid, I would write on cigarette packets but then I began to realise that I always used to transfer things into notebooks. I have had 3 laptops go down. I never back my shit up so I have lost so much stuff. I prefer paper.

Yeah. It’s tangible. But then the problem is I end up with so much paper and I sometimes I can’t even read my own handwriting. But I think that the real thing is if you are putting yourself in environments where you are having experiences such as travelling, which I do a lot, it keeps ideas ticking over-stimulated by different environments. I think maybe the essence of the way I write it is always with me. It’s like a muscle you have got to exercise it. I mean if you just sit there and hope that something will come to you, without any experiences, travelling, reading or really doing anything then the whole process is going to be difficult and challenging. But I have always travelled, so I always have fresh information coming in and I try and document everything, even if it is the most banal. I try not to edit myself. I just try and get as much down as possible; then it is the editing process. Plus I have been working with so many different artists recently, whether it’s the guys from The Doors or Boris or Unkle, or The Cult. Working with different musicians has been great at making you look at different perspectives. This year alone I have recorded in Tokyo, Los Angeles, New York. I have done live shows, film work; all these different environments, working with different people. I even played the drums on a Lupe Fiasco track.

Well I think probably the profoundest India, the Himalayas that’s one of my favourite parts of the world. I feel really grounded in the Himalayas. It’s so different. Sometimes you can’t write anything. All you can do is stand there with your mouth hanging out saying things like ‘Awesome’. It’s just too much to try and articulate.

Would you connect it to a religious experience of some sort?

Absolutely. We are pretty limited with our language. I mean it sounds so trivial a religious or spiritual experience because we tend to in the West kind of play that down a lot as there is still kind of a hokey feeling around spiritualism because our language is so limited and it’s not something we talk a lot about in the culture. Anybody that alludes to having spiritual or expanding consciousness, trying to articulate that is quite difficult. It is an experience therefore it has to be experienced. It is more of an emotive, sensual realm and certainly I can stand there with somebody looking at Everest and we both look at each other and not say anything. It is self-explanatory. So trying to convey that in music or in some form of writing is hard. Maybe there is something conveyed in the emotionality you put into it. The words are almost like something to hang that emotionality on. I find that we really kind of get caught up in artists who are erudite, articulate, may be good with language or speech but then the emotionality of what they do is quite anaemic and in many ways I made the choice to follow the emotive path as opposed to being lauded over for being a great literary artist. I find myself more drawn towards the barren places in the world with emotive experiences. The emotionality comes through more in the performance. Lyrics almost become a secondary thing but now as I get a little bit older, I really do want to communicate some of these experiences or maybe at least indicate, signpost to a place. I’m a huge admirer of the biologist Terence McKenna. I love the way he describes expanding consciousness into the spiritual realm that kind of emotionality is incredibly articulate the way he describes that phenomena. I guess I get frustrated sometimes with just the format of being in a band. It is quite limiting. I am quite grateful for the fact that now I am working in film, so I’ve got another element. The wonderful thing about the visual element is that you can put something up and everybody has their own interpretation and hopefully what you get is an emotional response. I think music can do that to a great degree but I believe with the two elements combined, visual and aural, is that you can kind of get a lot closer to your intention and what you are trying to convey. I’m moving more into the visual arts as well.

Both the religious and music experience have an intangible quality. Sometimes you really appreciate a piece of music and you can’t put it into language what it is.

Why do we have to articulate it? Language is really cultivated in, certainly for the masses through the late Victorian period where sophistication and etiquette and cultivation became a cultural trend. In many ways we moved this from nature; a sensual experience. It is quite confusing because we confuse ego and language and those more material perceptions of reality with what reality really is. We tend to have difficulty articulating our sensual experiences but why should we have to. When you are in love with someone for example, no language is necessary. It’s just pure intuition and in many ways it is more our true nature. We are animal in that sense. Trying to access that emotionality and keep it as pure as possible. There is an incredible amount of fear that comes up especially in the critique of music and film, where the viewer is almost compelled to have to say something.

You talk about this idea of developing the visual and the musical. Has that built up in the last 30 years of you being in the music industry, as the best way to express yourself and express your music and it has progressed into that format?

It is weird. I came out punk rock. I wasn’t trained in anything, as a writer or a musician. I did pretty poorly at school, I wasn’t very well educated. I moved around a lot. I missed a lot of basics at school because I went to 12 schools. I travelled a lot and pretty much left school at the age of 14 and was working. Having said that, punk rock was a time when you could basically do whatever. You weren’t really criticized for the quality of your grammar. It was more about the energy of it. My career, my band evolved and became commercially successful, we had a lot of pop success. I think I slowly realized, in my mid twenties, that this is a craft that I want to get better at. I really had to school myself, learning how to be a better writer, musician, and performer. I don’t think I really started getting close to anything I was really happy with until my late thirties. There is probably a lot more discipline involved; whereas now, all my energies are put into trying to articulate what it is that I am actually trying to convey. The wonderful thing about technology that has developed is the visual elements. I bought a Cannon two years ago and started making film, which gave me another language, another way to express myself. It felt so much more liberating to express myself visually and language isn’t as important. Certainly, you have dialogue in a film but it is as important as the visual elements. I always wrote symbolically. I was always trying to convey cinematic elements through my lyrics. I had no delusion of being a poet. That wasn’t my intention. My intention was always to try and create a visual, really stimulate images that the listener could dive into and form their own interpretation. It is not an ambiguous answer as in ‘oh just paint a picture, leave it up to the imagination of the listener’; there was a definite intention; I was trying to convey something. I am trying to get better at it, being aware constantly listening to new music whilst travelling. When I am on the road, I always try and at least get to a gallery or a book shop or hunting down old vinyl or trying to take in the environments. I have been moving around since I was six weeks old. I have spent 3 years in New York. I have spent time in India, Vancouver, London, and Australia. I go to Tokyo a lot. In fact, I’ve been to Tokyo 4 times already this year.

Have do you find Tokyo where there is a definite language barrier?

I can get around it. I know some signs for the subway stops-where I need to get off at. My Japanese friends out there are very cool- they speak broken English. But the wonderful thing is the Japanese really understand sentiment. If we both look at something together they just get it. They are internally educated; an inner eye. They understand sentiment, intention. They just get it; the way they process information. I feel very comfortable in Tokyo as you don’t have to explain yourself; you can just point at things, pick things up. There is a language in that. It is a wonderful experience for me. Look at the newspapers everyday in the UK, there is so much talk, you have to explain and critique things. Instead of just getting on with it and that’s what I love about travelling especially in the East. It is such a different culture. Their internal lives are a lot richer, maybe with the influence of Buddhism. It is a far more fulfilling philosophy to live by, whereas Christianity is very judgmental, rigid, and sexist. I find the West to be more patriarchal. I was talking to McKenna about the West being an alcoholic and obese society. Whereas the East is more a psychedelic society, an intuitive culture, more of a feminine culture. Therein lays the wealth. What we are really trying to get at in the West is more into a feminine consciousness.

Mary Daley, a feminist theologian argues that in the West our lack of femininity came from the European Witch Burnings and actually women turn on women more and they do more damage and it has an effect culturally.

Absolutely. Women wear a pair of trousers and they want to be a boss in that way. But it is a very masculine way. It is not a feminine form trying to become more like a man. Gender roles seem to be so mixed up now. There are some great patriarchs out there, as well as matriarchs. The Brazilians have just voted in a female president. It’s a very 21st Century culture. They are moving forward culturally, as well as a nation it is really interesting. The pharmacology they have in the Amazonian jungle. The fact that they now have a female president and one of her priorities is to consolidate that resource and support the health of that region of the rainforests and the wealth of knowledge retained within the natives of the rainforest but also the pharmacology and what that is going to mean to civilization is very very important. I certainly vote for good feminine role models. I don’t think Sex and the City really helped men or women move forward.

There are musical matriarchs like Patti Smith, who I think are amazing role models for young women today.

I have met Patti on several occasions. In fact I used to live round the corner from her in New York and I used to see her a lot around my block. I have had the privilege of meeting with her and she certainly evokes a strong matriarchal persona. The dream of life is a gorgeous document for any young man or woman to experience. We are in good shape if we have poets and artists like her but with ageism in the culture; there is still a lot of prejudice towards elders. In the East they really respect elder wisdom, whereas in the West we always want to embrace the new young thing. It has become such an industry. There is incredible pressure on young people today to really succeed. Relax, take your time.

Do you think that sometimes with music, the more authentic and culturally rich music comes from the older members of society who have had the experience behind them to write more meaningful music?

Certainly having the experience in the arch of a life you experience so much more, whether it is seeing the birth of a child, or burying family members; actually experiencing birth and death, generational and cultural shifts. Going through different stations of life and having that perspective. Even having the technology that we have and with all the advancements of all the different platforms of communication, we are still essentially organic animal, sensual as it is still in our nature. It didn’t change at the millennium, nor is it likely too. A lot of people that I admire are in their 50s and 60s. I am a huge devotee of David Bowie; I adore Patti Smith, no question. I love artists like Picasso. I think Patti Smith’s work now in many ways is so beautiful. She is getting better and better as an artist, a poet. She is a blue collar girl, working in a factory. Moved to New York in a time that it was still an industrial society and people actually worked in factories. So much has become automated in our lives. The whole experience of making art was so much more hands on, technology wasn’t there, and you had to physically work with materials. There is something in that process that we don’t get from a digital experience. Yeah we mourn that, but I adore Crystal Castles. Alice is an incredibly powerful performer; a young woman at 20 years old is a genius using the media that is available. I can only speak from the station I’m at. I’m 48, not that that means anything. I know 20 year olds who act like they are 70. They are just dead. Marianne Faithful has done a lot of incredible work in the last few years; we need the presence of those performers, those matriarchs. There is something about Patti when you are in her presence, you can just feel this energy; a real animal. I have been in the same room as some of the bright and the beautiful young things but they give off no energy what so ever. They may be physically beautiful but there is no real. It’s a veneer. I love Vivienne Westwood as well. I think she is incredible. I much rather see women like Patti Smith, Vivienne Westwood, Marianne Faithful as our role models. We don’t honor our elders in the culture. It is geared towards the youth, especially in the UK. Keith Richards very eloquently said ‘You’ll find out’. Those who do actually go through their 30s and 40s will find out. For example the wisdom of the ancient, going back to those cultures where the elders are respected. In India there is a real understanding to the arch of life. It should be celebrated and should be made aware of. The Cult, being a pop star in my twenties, a lot of it was based upon the way I looked and then I had to struggle for decades to get any recognition based upon people not judging you by how you looked when you were 25 years of age. I am always shocked by people coming up to me asking “how come you don’t wear leather trousers anymore? Why don’t you have hair down to your arse?” I have moved through that. Those were different times. I am in a different place in my life now.

Are you happy with the place you are in your life now?

I’m much happier in my life now. When I was younger I was very self destructive. I didn’t get to process my family of origin, my childhood in a way that was. I went through a very difficult childhood, especially my teens. I didn’t get to process that until I was in my thirties and part of that was leaving the band and went off and did my own thing. I ended up in Tibet. I had to go all the way to Tibet to be recognized in some way. When I was in Tibet I was treated as another western traveler, I was treated as a human being. Judgment wasn’t put on me and that was an amazing experience. It was the beginning of a different journey for me.

Looking back at your life now, does it kind of make sense, to allow you to reach the state that you are in now?

Sure. Absolutely. I mean there was a lot of wreckage, a lot of damage. It was never good. It still amazes me that we celebrate self destruction especially in youth, like getting arrested for doing drugs. In reality there is no real growth there. Nobody wants to cope with the fact that really the biggest thrill is from a synthetic high. In Britain there is such a drug epidemic, gratification epidemic, material epidemic and spiritually it’s very very poor; dealing with that kind of embarrassment or the sadness of the loss of being connected to something more profound. These are really big things that we are dealing with right now. I am doing a documentary right now on Native American women and you go to those communities and they are matriarchal and it is structured from the elder women down; the reverence for the grandmothers, the earth the connection with nature. In the West we make a distinction between nature and human beings and that’s a huge problem. Robert Blythe said it very eloquently: especially for men he said the real problem started when we lost touch with the wild animals. When I say that, I feel that. I feel a great sense of loss in that. I grew up in North America and Canada, I moved there from environments like Glasgow, and now I am in these vast areas of forest and wilderness. It blew my mind, I was around native kids growing up, another ethnicity being around them and the way they were, more feral and wild and completely different, sensual set of values and maybe some of that rubbed off on me.

Is that what you try and convey in your music, sort of a feral state, and a sense of freedom?

Yeah I’ve always pushed that. That has always been the critique, the source of ridicule especially when I was younger was that I shoved crow feathers in my hair and put paint on my face. That was just total expression. To me it’s ritual space. I just felt compelled.

Do you still feel that your live performance has that ritual space either playing with The Cult, The Doors or performing with Boris? Do you still have that sense of a large performance being a ritual and every one being unique and different?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean it is my life. I have never thought of myself as an entertainer. I have not wanted to be an entertainer. I don’t care about gaining awards or recognition. It was about the energy of performing in that environment. I just did a show with Boris and Sunn O))) and BXI and we all played together at Sonic in Brooklyn. It wasn’t a regular gig. The building was an African American Sonic temple. The only one in the US, in an African American neighborhood and there were robed monk-like performers performing in ritual halls. This music that is part of the influence is tonalities that come from classical Indian music, to evoke certain frequencies, definitely like a high mass. The BXI project was more traditional with an arranged song/lyric. That was a profound experience. Not like a gig where you buy a ticket, go to the bar, jump up and down and buy a t-shirt and leave. It was something far different; I felt I was part of an incredible catharsis. It was very similar to sitting with the Dali Lama when he is teaching. I am far more interested to put myself in those environments. The audience was completely mesmerized, like in a trance. The power kept going out for periods of an hour or so and the audience just stayed there and I just hung out, with no one shouting or any sense of dissent everyone stayed in the zone.

And finally, if you could have written any piece of music ever what piece and why?

Wow, depends what mood I am in, today I am in a bookish mood, as I am sat at the back of the bus so listening to music over the noise of the engine is quite hard. Wow, the first single I bought when I was a kid was Life on Mars by David Bowie, so I guess it would have to be that one.

———

As I hung up the phone, I felt honoured to have had such a philosophical discussion with a fantastic vocalist who answered all my questions fully and explored a variety of topics in such detail. I’d like to thank Ian for giving up his time and to Marian for helping I type up my vast amount of notes.

Toni Woodward - January 2011

In 2008 the highly acclaimed film director Julien Temple set out to make a documentary film about the birth and all too brief phenomenon of Dr. Feelgood. ‘Oil City Confidential’ was premiered in October 2009 to very great critical acclaim and has lead to a recent frenzy of interest in Wilko, the eccentric star of the film.

The film has brought a lot of attention to a performer who is to many an unsung hero, and a legend in British music having been an influence on punk, new wave and rhythm and blues from the 1970s to the present day.

So with the advent of this new “bubble” in his career, as Wilko himself would call it, it was a good time to talk to him about the film and the early days of Dr Feelgood.

Oil City Confidential has certainly been a success- how do you feel about it now?

I can’t boast about this film because it’s all down to Julian Temple. He did a brilliant job with a pretty limited amount of material. Dr Feelgood existed before the days of video cameras so I didn’t think there was that much footage, and even how he could make a film at first. But he actually made a film that is very very good; it’s funny, it tells the story exactly right. That was what it was like – Canvey Island in the 70’s – he somehow or other conjured it all up.

Did you have any doubts about taking part?

I realised that someone like Julian is not going to start out on something that can’t be done. When we started working on it I realised how the the guy worked. He was constantly full of ideas. The first thing I heard was he wanted us to do was an interview at the oil works on the island in the night time, with these great big projections of Dr Feelgood up on the sides of the oil tanks. Now this was fantastic because when you grow up in the place you’re always aware of the oil depot, you know, something that’s there and part of the situation. You never go there, you may go past it but you never go there. That was the first time in my life I’d been there and to go in there in the night time was freaky and have these huge ghosts – me and Lee Brilleaux thirty years ago bouncing about on the side of these tanks – it was worth doing just for the experience, let alone making a film. That was the first thing we did and I thought “this guys a live one”

He was on to everything. We did a few interviews the next day and I just mentioned in passing that I ‘d got a telescope. The next day it was all “Julian wants to come around and see this telescope”. I’d never of thought of it and he was always making something out of nothing. We went through a load of photos that he asked me to dig out – promo shots of the time and all that and just photos about life that everyone has and he was photographing them himself shouting “this is great” and coming up with a load of ideas. He was so inventive but he still ended up with something that was so true.

Did you enjoy doing it or was it a chore

I did enjoy it, because of the way that it happened like that. It was something to do of an afternoon! I’d never been involved in a film before so it was interesting on that level and as he got more in to it he was asking me for more info photos and memories. I was sitting there with him trying to remember every instance of when someone had pointed a movie camera at Dr Feelgood, you know. I thought I got them all but there’s a sequence or two in the film that I had never seen before, that I didn’t know. They were researching away all the time. That episode in the oil refinery will stay in my memory!

Yes.. but I have to admit that as soon as I had some money I moved out! I’m still in spitting distance but I’m up on the hill now you see. There is something about Canvey Island; I mean I do think of myself as a Canvey Island person. When I was a lad the place was almost rural. It was all fields and fog. It was strange then; people wouldn’t go down there, it was like the Wild West down there, everyone’s living in wooden bungalows and things. In more recent times it’s developed and grown and become covered in housing estates and it’s tempting to think that the strangeness is gone. But! A year or two ago a friend of mine came visiting; a French guy. He said he would like to drive down and see Canvey Island. I told him that there wasn’t much to see but we drove around all these various housing estates and then finally we stopped for a drink and he looked at me and said “Man - zis place eez weird”. So it’s still got it.

There are some good photos of you on your Facebook that look like you’re in Canvey. Is that where they were taken?

I don’t do this Facebook stuff; other people do it for me. I do have this kind of aversion to looking at my glorious self. I’ve only seen the film through parted fingers and hiding behind the armchair and that. I remember once a few years back I’d been interviewed for a TV programme on some rock ‘n’ roll series up near the oil refinery. When it was coming up for broadcast I went out for a walk rather than watch it. It was raining and I’m walking around the block with the rain dripping down my collar and still seeing myself on people’s tellys through the front room windows.

You’re not a stage-shy sort of guy though are you? You’re no shrinking violet in performance terms.

No, but it’s not an uncommon thing. I’m a shy person really and it’s often the case. Standing up on stage people think you must be a real extrovert. No - it’s not true. When you’re on stage its a different thing you’re all in your own world then. It’s not like having to be with someone or socialise and when the shows over and people are all coming in and the room’s crowded and that, I always feel like I want to be on my own again.

The thing with Dr Feelgood is, it was definitely a band. I have some cassette tapes of some of our very first gigs right, and I remember thinking at the time that we had something. I’d never thought of doing it seriously before, and the tapes sound pretty amateurish now and I do wonder what I was on about but; we really had something and I think mainly that something was Lee Brilleaux. When I first met that guy I just realised that he was an really attractive character. He had an intensity about him that was special.

When we were messing around trying to put a band together for fun I met him a few times but I didn’t know anything about him as a musician. So I asked this bloke we knew if that Lee guy could sing at all and of course the answer was yes, and I thought well that’s it; this guy’s a star. If he can sing only slightly then he’s a star, and of course he was a very good singer!

Wilko Johnson and Lee Brilleaux

Did the two of you work it out beforehand?

We never once discussed what we would do on stage or whatever. Lee and I never worked it out. How we were on stage just started happening and you could see the reactions from the people and follow that line, the more they liked it the more you did it. There was a kind of violence to it the way the music made you feel. I say violence - more energy really. When I’m machine-gunning the audience they know it’s not real but it’s fun, it’s a kick. Like kids playing cops and robbers you know? When you’re a kid making a gun with your fingers you know its pretend but it’s exciting, you feel like you’re shooting. It’s a similar sort of thing.

What about your individual style? There’s a lot written about your combination of lead and rhythm in the style but how did it come about, were you taught the guitar?

I started playing guitar in the mid -’60s simply because I fancied myself with a guitar. I thought I could get all the girls but I didn’t know anything about music! The other thing was I’m left handed so I was playing the guitar like Paul McCartney and frankly all the other kids were better than me because I was useless with the guitar pointing the wrong way. Then I had the opportunity to buy another guitar, a better guitar. But this time it was a right handed one so I thought that I would teach myself to play right handed and tell myself that I had just begun so I didn’t feel such a duffer. At the same time I was getting to know the sort of music I liked, The Rolling Stones were becoming quite popular and that was the kind of thing I liked. Also I heard a record by Johnny Kidd and the Pirates featuring the guitar of Mick Green and I was transfixed! I wanted to play like it. I then found out that the sound was all him, there was no separate lead and rhythm guitar so I started to play like that. There were limited opportunities to actually see anyone play back then so I learnt it all by listening to records and in the end I got it all wrong and ended up with my own style!

My style is different from other guitar players in that first and foremost it’s rhythm. Its percussive like the kind of chopping and that. The most important thing is to drive the rhythm, and then all the licks and lead solos and things come in with that, but its all about the rhythm.

Is that what drives the physicality of your style?

Its like dancing. If you’re listening to a record you don’t care what you look like do you? You just want to move to the beat. You haven’t worked out the movements you make, and you don’t think about it. It’s just the way it makes you feel and that’s how I am with the music.

One of the key moments in Oil City Confidential is the release of the live album Stupidity. Did it really change everything?

It was certainly a pretty damned good feeling to get a number one record, I can tell you. Everyone believes inside themselves that they’re special and when something like that happens to you it really confirms it. Of course thereby lies the danger! If you start believing you really are that special you start to turn into rather an un-special type of person… But it was great. By the time we were properly professional and touring all over the UK we were known as being different because we had this style that was very, very different from most things at the time. But still we’d do gigs where people would look puzzled until about three or four numbers in and then they’d get it and smile and then we knew that they realised what was going on here. We were still playing places where we had to win a new audience over every night. To win them over; that moment when they see the joke, is nice. It’s strange to look back on it now but we did look very freaky. We didn’t fit the mould of a rock ‘n’ roll band at all in what we were doing, what we were playing and the way we looked.

Do you feel any different these days? Is it different with the current band?

Well I’ve played with Norman (Watt-Roy) for years but we’ve got Dylan Howe on drums now. He’s the best drummer I’ve ever worked with.and he’ s given a fresh kick to it. Norman, I’ve played with for around 25 years. He was always my favourite bass player and I still think he’s the best bass player in the world.

I remember the first time I ever saw him he was on a TV show with Ian Dury and the Blockheads. I knew Ian from olden days and that but I hadn’t met Norman. The next day people were asking had i seen Ian Dury and the Blockheads and I was all “did you see that bass player”! Of course I ended up playing with him.

I’ve got to say that he’s so good he makes everything you do sound that much better. Playing with Norman is just very, very enjoyable.

He’s relentless isn’t he?

He is! There’s always a fair contingent in the audience that have their eyes glued on Norman because he’s just very watchable. The way he hunches over the guitar and the fact that he is actually technically brilliant. He understands jazz and all sorts of frightful things. But he’s not like a showoff, it’s the feel and every now and then he’ll just give a little flash of that something or other he can do. We’ve become very good friends over the years. I’d say a large part of why I still do this and I haven’t found something more sensible to do is because of Norman

But right now its just great. The film has boosted interest in us so we’re getting a lot more work. I was in Moscow the other day and I do mean day! We were in and out of there like a dose of salts.

You’re guesting on the up-coming Stranglers tour?

Yes it was a funny one. I bumped into Jean-Jacques Burnel at the Mojo awards two or three months ago. We’re old friends actually. We shared a flat for a while just around the time The Stranglers got signed. We were pretty good pals and had some funny times together. I’d not seen him for a good while and a some time after the awards we received this invitation to guest on their tour. I’m really looking forward to it.

Like quite a few venues, the famous 100 Club is threatened with closure. Have you been involved in the campaign?

Not directly so far. Someone was telling me that we might be playing the supposed “final” night - well we dont want it to be the final night. We had the same situation with the Half Moon, Putney which was has always been a brilliant gig.

We’ve had a few close in the Midlands and JB’s in Dudley is threatened.

The thing is with these places is they’re actually cultural assets and they shouldn’t just lightly get rid of them. People think that these venues are just places where people go but certain gigs are institutions. They are great gigs and there is history and that’s why the venues have lasted so long. Closing them diminishes everybody’s opportunity for fun and makes all our lives that bit poorer. And lets face it with all the hideous struggles people are facing we don’t need any more of that.

Probably every town and city has somewhere like that that goes way back and people should struggle to keep them. Moving the venue doesn’t normally work. When they moved the Marquee Club out of Wardour Street it was never the same. Tourists visit it but it’s not that sweaty place we all remember. They should always keep the same place. People shouldn’t be ashamed about it because we are world leaders in Rock ‘n’ Roll and that’s where it comes from, places like those. People should understand that they are very important and worth clinging on to!

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Shortly after this interview it was announced that Wilko and his band will indeed be playing at the “final” gigs at the 100 club on 30th, and 31st December.

Ian Gelling - November 2010

So now we know what Mac thinks about it, what about his partner in crime, and some would say the bedrock of the band, guitarist Will Sergeant? Will is renowned as being the quiet one of the two original band members so it was a privilege to have the opportunity to talk to him recently. He may have that reputation but he was quite forthcoming about their plans for the tour and his own projects, and not afraid to throw in a bit of social commentary as well!

The band have just returned from a tour of Latin America. How did it go and what did they play?

We go there quite often. It was a bit hectic at first because of the distances. We’d do a gig and then be up at 7.00 next day, get on a plane to somewhere else then up at 5.00 and then 3.00! It wasn’t like being down the pit but hard work just the same. We had a couple of days in Mexico, which was amazing, so we could settle down a bit. We were a bit scared of going there at first because we’d heard lots of stories about some lad out of the Cocteau Twins being kidnapped and having to squirm his way out of a taxi window whilst it was speeding through the city. A few of us did go out and we got to see a couple of freaky markets that were a bit scary but they were all right.

We performed Ocean Rain in Brazil in Sao Paulo in this place called the Credit Card Hall; a fair sized place. We had a little bit of an orchestra but nothing like the size we had back in the UK. A bit smaller scale but it worked really well. We’re used to people singing along but they were singing along to the guitar bits as well – we’ve never had that before, at least not like that.

There seem to have been a few line-up changes recently, does that effect the band?

It’s me and Mac isn’t it? – we’re the Bunnymen and although it has been nice to have had a stable band for a few years all these others are sort of on the payroll. People leave now and then because they have their own stuff to do or the may get a bit fed up with it. Some people leave music altogether. Our old keyboard player has a really good job in the NHS.

We don’t gig all the time so it’s not like a full time job for these guys so they do other stuff. They’ve all got their own projects – Gordy’s (Gordy Goudie Bunnymen guitarist) a producer. He’s producing Charlene Spiteri and Texas or whatever and he’s done others like Simple Minds. He’s based in Glasgow so he’s in with the Scottish mob.

I’ve been getting into the visual side of art a lot more seriously building on what I used to produce away from the Bunnymen – the kind of “sound art” stuff.

I’m really into the New York School, the Abstract Expressionists of the ’50s and ’60s, but in terms of my own stuff it’s not like I’m obsessed with those influences, what I paint is just what comes out of my head. I’ll just start with a little spark of an idea and then develop it really, it’s really intuitive. The one on the front of the site 21st Century Fallen was sketched out as an idea in Photoshop first – I do that sometimes just to develop the idea.

Will’s Photoshop skills were for all to see in Will Sergeant’s Top 5 DIY Accidents on a local Liverpool web site recently. Is he handy with the power tools?

No! The web site were doing all sorts of Top 5’s with people and I did the accidents – they’re all true. With the drill I did that one where it get’s caught up in your jumper – I was pulliing the trigger even harder as if that would do any good, and shouting at Paula, my missus, turn it off turn it off! I was in this big panic and I could have just let go of the trigger – what a knob!

Away from my painting I’ve also been working with a girl called Eva Petersen. She used to be the singer in the Little Flames and she’s doing a few Friction nights with us coming up. She’s done a few acoustic things, a bit low key but we’re looking to take her onwards with a bit of a different sound. I’ve been writing a few things with her and working on her own songs so we’re looking to move things forward.

So is there a distinct music scene in Liverpool these days?

I’m not that involved with it. I tend to go in to the city for the Friction Nights and I go to the Art School quite a lot or maybe to Probe to pick up a few records. I don’t know how bands get on because music’s been devalued loads, just by the fact that someone can stick a tune on their phone one day and then next day they want to see a donkey eating a banana so they download from youtube and delete this amazing tune that you’ve spent years putting together. Its weird, its a very “Me Me” culture isn’t it?

Everyone’s on their MySpace or Facebook gawping at themselves all the time seeing who’s looking at them – it’s a very odd, insular kind of thing going on. It doesn’t make for any kind of creative scene – there is no scene. I mean what is there now? There’s no equivalent to Punks or Goths, there’s no new youth culture or movement is there? What do kids call themselves now?

What has replaced it now? – looking at a computer all day to see who’s looking at them and Simon bloody Cowell telling them what to buy! How that man gets away with it is untrue, it’s ridiculous. It should be illegal I think.

“In my day” (laughing) if you were on Top of the Pops or whatever, you couldn’t have multiple formats on your single and there were all kinds of rules around it. If you appeared on the programme you had to re-record the song in just three hours to perform over. Everyone used to swap the tapes for the studio recording though, but not us! So when we were doing The Back of Love it was the three hour recording that got played and people judged us on that. U2 got theirs swapped by the way.

But this bloke has his own TV show so of course he can decide what’s in the charts almost every week. How can we have a legitimate chart when he has so much power over it? He’ll be the one making all the money. His artists won’t be making that much because he has the record label, the person writing the songs; he does everything doesn’t he?

What does Will think of the argument that the rash of tours featuring artists “seminal” albums have been so successful, not because of sentimentality but because that’s what people want to hear in the face of disposable music, x-factor etc.

I don’t know about that exactly but we do believe in giving the people what they want. When we do gigs we don’t fill the sets with loads of new ones. We do the one that they want to hear, the Cutters, the Killing Moons and all that. I remember seeing New Order in one of their reincarnations and they didn’t play Ceremony. There were people in the crowd who were disappointed because of that and the fact that they didn’t do an encore even though the fans were wild for it. I know its kind of cool in a way to do that sort of thing but you’re also picking on the people who support you.

So what about Crocodiles and Heaven up Here? Ocean Rain was a real production number, a real event; how will this show compare?

An extravaganza as I like to call it! We’re even looking to recreate the original light shows, get everyone to turn up in their camo gear – it’ll be really good. We’ll be getting into rehearsals very soon. Some of the songs we’ve never played live so we’ll have to work hard on those. But it won’t be too bad – it’s not like we were geniuses on the guitars or anything back then so we’ll get our acts together. I find all the over technical stuff that people did quite boring really, we were trying to keep it simple, that’s what we were all about.

Fans ask why we didn’t do Heaven Up Here instead of Ocean Rain to start with. I can understand that. Heaven Up Here is my favourite I’m afraid. It was just the most inventive time and we felt that all of a sudden we could do anything. Hugh Jones who produced it was great. He opened our eyes to a lot of stuff, loads of new sounds and boxes of tricks. All the mad little sounds on that album were just on the guitar really except for one synth on Over The Wall.

It seem to take ages in those days top get a guitar sound together, experimenting through different effects and amps and with different guitars. Nowadays it just seems so much quicker, so much easier, -maybe it’s because finally I know what I’m doing!

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Echo and the Bunnymen will perform the classic albums Crocodiles and Heaven Up Here at the Birmingham O2 Academy on 4th December

Ian Gelling October 2010

We started by just finding out how things were with Ali and his plans for the album as he has been taking a break in his schedule due to illness:

It’s all going beautifully actually! The mid-week for the album is actually better than it was for Flying High and we’re hoping it’s going to be another top ten which would be a record. To be over twenty-five and had three top tens in a row hasn’t happened for years and years.

I’m feeling fine - I had Epstein Barr which produces serious fatigue. I’d been working in the studio in the week and touring on the weekends, all over Europe, but I was feeling really tired which was worrying.

I had to cancel dates that were planned for September and October but I’ve been touring constantly this year. I was in Hawaii and South America this year and all over Europe when we were doing the album so we didn’t miss that many. Dates like the Dominican Republic can be rescheduled for later on in the year and we’ve pushed other dates backwards into the New Year

We’ll be in Reunion and Mauritius in December for a couple of dates and a bit of snorkelling, relaxing as well. The Indian Ocean is lovely, I mean we’ve been famously deported from there before. UB40 my old band got deported from the Seychelles - well actually I didn’t, I was deep-sea fishing for two weeks, but they all got sent home. It was my fault in the first place - I’d distributed some of the local “produce” to the band and they were nabbed while I was away. Luckily I was OK!.

I’m still working on The Rhythm Method. it’s going to be my next “proper” album if you like. Great British Songs is like a concept album you know? People had been talking about me doing a Great British Songbook and when I got the backing for it I just thought that it would be a brilliant concept and we could turn it around quickly, which I did by going to Jamaica and doing it with Sly and Robbie. Six days later I had twelve wicked backing tracks. This was like the Labour Of Love albums with UB40 but instead of reggae covers, or what we found out were covers of R&B songs, these songs were a million miles away from reggae. That’s why I did them - I tried to choose songs that were so far removed from reggae.

Although we loved reggae and lovers rock as kids I was obviously very much aware of The Beatles, not so much The Stones - I was always a Mod not a Rocker. But then when we got to the ’70s it was reggae and Tamla Motown. I didn’t really listen to pop music as such. Bands like Free and The Who, well I wouldn’t have listened to that stuff so in choosing the tracks for the album I concentrated on iconic bands. I chose two Hollies tracks because I think they’re under-rated these days. I remember them featuring massively when I was growing up just as much as The Kinks, The Beatles and The Stones but now they seem to be overlooked.

On the album Hard Days Night is my favourite - it’s developed into a kind of house-reggae tune and I’m proud of how it’s turned out. We used keyboards by Lenky, you know from Sly and Robbie, The Taxi Gang, to put this little house riff together and I put a reggae track on top of it which I thought was very amusing! But all the tunes are standard arrangements - if every I cover a tune I always stay true to the melody and if its 4:4 then you can reggae-fy it.

You Really Got Me has a ragga feel, almost techno which is what I wanted. Sly and Robbie were a bit worried but I said yeah man this is exactly what I want. That’s why I wanted to use Lenky for the electronic and house feel.

Ending the album with Baker Street was important because again it’s a million miles away from what I’d normally play buts it’s an iconic tune with the famous sax lick. Its in the top ten most played tunes and actually it’s Sly Dunbar’s favourite of all the ones that we did.

Ali then went on to talk about life as a solo artist and collaboration with other musicians.

Well I think it’s ironic that I’m making the greatest records I’ve ever made with the greatest productions at a time when you can’t sell ‘em! Now that people can’t rely on their CD sales they’re all going out live. There’s a glut of people on the live circuit which means that there’s more competition. It’s lean times all ’round but you have to adapt. Music is always kind of…. it always goes up its own backside every ten years or so anyway. If you look back its like video killed the radio star, the internet has killed off CDs and something will come along to kill that off any minute now.

But you’ve just got to adapt. I’m working with some great musicians. I’ve done stuff with Sly and Robbie for about twenty years off and on and it’s great to work with them both again. When we started UB40 we couldn’t really play any instruments and we learned by copying their records, things like Mr Know-It-all by Gregory Isaacs and I’ve loved their stuff ever since through Black Uhuru in the ’70s and ’80s up to their current stuff. I used Robbie Shakespeare on all of the garage stuff I did and I sent the B15 project out to Jamaica to work with him and other people out there. They’re not only my big heroes but they’re my friends as well and I love working with them. I’m hoping if I do a volume two that I’ll get Sly and Robbie again. With them you’re working with the best and the quickest in the business.

Being solo gives me a lot of freedom to do what I want to do you know? I’ve always produced my own stuff - with UB40 we always produced our own stuff, but to be honest it was like pulling teeth. There was no leader or anything so we were fighting continually about what we wanted from each track. We could never have done a “Great British Songs”, we’d be arguing about it now - we’d still be on the list! It was like that with the later Labour Of Love albums - they were seven years apart for that reason!

Now there’s no compromise; musically I can do what I want. That’s why I’m so happy with the results. It’s like I’ve been let out, set free you know. Ironically it’s harder to sell but I’m enjoying the music. This album would be hilarious live because you could take me and the band and you could dump us anywhere in the world and we could play just this album and everyone would know every song. I’d like to have a lot of this album in the set for the next gigs. What I do now is the standards from the Labour of Love series and tracks from my solo albums but I’d like to change that.

We ended by chatting about the current political climate in the UK. How did Ali fell about things thirty years on? Would he go back to the more overtly political style of the early UB40 now that things have changed, some would argue come full circle?.

I don’t think I’ve ever written many songs that haven’t been a sort of protest song since those early days and Madam Medusa. If I write I always have an element of protest songs. If you look at the songs on Flying High that I wrote they’re all moaning just like normal, always angry, and I’m just as angry now. Especially because really nothing has happened, and now the public sector workers are losing their jobs and we have all the cuts. I was the one in ten and now it’s happening to people all over again. They keep going on about entering an age of austerity but I came from an age of austerity. It’s just coming around all over again.

It’s tough out there and maybe you could give old JB’s in Dudley a mention as it’s scheduled to close. It’s a great little venue, a great shame it’s happening and the West Midlands needs venues like that.

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Ali Campbell’s Great British Songs is available now on the Jacaranda label

Ian Gelling October 2010

2009 was really the breakthrough year for the band – how has 2010 been shaping up?

2010 has been really good for us because obviously in 2009 we pretty much spent the whole year on tour with Morrissey, which was absolutely fantastic, the first major tour that we had done and the most amazing thing that we could have spent our year doing, but in 2010 it’s been more about us and building our own fan base.

2010 has been not better, but certainly different, because we’ve not been the support act – these are our shows!

How is this tour going compared to other tours?

It’s going really well. Like the last tour we did earlier in the year it’s been really hectic and I have to say that there have only been a couple of the gigs that we have done that haven’t been busy, and this tour seems even more popular which is what we wanted

I thought that you deserved bigger turnouts for the two Birmingham gigs. What’s your expectation for the crowds?

The thing you have to remember is that we have zero PR at the moment, zero money backing us and not much of anything; we are just on our own. So whenever you see the crowds in the smaller venues and in towns and cities where we haven’t played before, then they are there purely by word of mouth and to us that’s a big achievement.

We do everything ourselves, not really through any choice of our own. We get asked this a lot and people in interviews often say how great it is that we’re really doing the indie thing, going out on our own and really doing it the old way. It’s not like that; it’s through necessity. If no-one offers anything then you’ve got to cover everything and do what a record company would do for you to the best of your own ability.

Well you’re not doing a bad job! The new single (Skeletons/The First Time) is a great package. I know you were frustrated at the Flapper because you didn’t have them available, do you have them now?

(Laughs) Yes we have them all now, and it’s all available on iTunes. The thing is although we don’t have a label or conventional money behind us we do have a lot of talented people who are our friends, and who are willing to help us. For example the artwork for that album was done by a great artist Chrissie Abbott, who works in London and is now a good friend of ours. She did our logos and she also designed the logo for the Koko venue in London. She’s really happy to help and like other people, really good people, she can see what we’re trying to do and they all want to help us.

The single cover looks pretty distinctive - what’s with the Raccoon thing?

Chrissie came up with the design. She knows we like animals so she stuck some Raccoons on there!

So how many dates have you got left on this tour?

This is our last date in the UK and then we are off to Paris and then all around Europe, through Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and then into Eastern Europe starting in Romania.

So still a good opportunity to promote the single?

Of course!- we just wanted to release something in conjunction with the tour so that people have something new for the fans who are coming back to see us and already have the album. We need to keep releasing things for old and new fans.

The single is a double header with the songs quite different from one another. Was that on purpose, are you aiming at different people?

Not really. We tried to get the most out of limited studio time so we had to choose the songs that we wanted for a Double A-Side single. We always wanted to do a Double A-Side, we didn’t want there to just be one track, we wanted more for people to get hold of. The reason we chose those two is because they are our favourites from the new songs and the were probably the easiest to record in the time available. Three days in the studio for us to do two songs is not that long! There were other songs but they were not really finished enough for this single.

Does that mean there’s another album in the pipeline?

We have some more studio time for at least three more tracks so we’re thinking of releasing an EP early next year before our next tour, or maybe coinciding with the next one.

In terms of the material all the songs on the single and the album are credited to the band. Is it really such a collaborative thing?

We all write our own parts when the idea is developed, Olivier will write the bass line, Matt the guitar part, Chris obviously the drums and I do the top line, but we all have a say in all aspects of the songs. It is collaborative; often the way a song will happen is that I’ll write a song on piano or guitar and take it in and we’ll work on it from there. Usually I’ll only write a verse or chorus or sometimes a couple of verses and we’ll all build the song around that.

You’ve more keyboards on here now and added them live a couple of times, is that something you’d like to include permanently?

From now on we’re going to have keyboards of some kind in our songs. We think it makes our sound a lot bigger and it’s really moving towards where we want to be musically, and where we wanted to be from the very beginning.

What about your personal performance? In the two Brum gigs you’ve been positively sober in your attire compared with some gigs. You still seemed to tear the place up. Does it make any difference not wearing the bows and the sparkly stuff?

High heels make the real difference. When I don’t wear them I can jump all over the place and move around a lot more just because it’s possible to do that. I still love wearing the sparkly hot pants; I tend to wear them everywhere I go!

So finally, what else have the band got planned after this tour?

Well, we have the EP that I mentioned along with the tour and that should take us up to the run of festivals throughout the summer that we love to do. After that we’ll have to see what comes along!

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Doll and the Kicks current tour moves off into Europe for the Autumn and the new single Skeltons/The First Time is available in iTunes and from their own store.

Ian Gelling October 2010

First time here, it’s a bit smaller and more intimate than I expected, we usually play at the Wulfrun. This was supposed to be just a warm up for the Deer Shed (Festival) but it’s sold out!

Are you a Slade Fan?

A big Noddy Holder fan - as a teenager I was the right age to be into Glam Rock; Slade, The Sweet, even Gary Glitter. I met him once but we cant talk about him these days so it’s not good to mention it

When are we going to get the Gedge Rooms?

(Laughs) Great idea but where would it be? I come from Manchester, The Wedding Present are a Leeds band, Seattle and LA are candidates because I’ve lived there and of course there’s Brighton. Maybe we can rename the Concorde II for the day.

Well basically it’s still The Wedding Present and Cinerama plus a load of our mates.

The Ukranians are a real festival band and we wanted them to play last year but never really got round to getting organised. Paul (Dorrington – Rose Leaf Miner) wanted to play last year as well but again we couldn’t manage it so he’s appearing this year. I’ve always had a soft spot for Klee. They are a huge band in Germany but they’ve never really made an impression here. I think continental bands in general find it hard to get established so they’re that well known over here.

To be honest although we toured the George Best anniversary first it is my least favourite of our albums. I’ve always regarded Bizarro as our first proper album. It broke us in the United States and it was the first on a major label. Before then we almost thought of ourselves as a singles band, never as an album band. It was because Red Rhino kept asking “when are you going to make an LP” that eventually we got almost all the songs we had in total together and that became George Best.

All our other album releases were thought about a bit more; they had more structure and flow about them. It seems weird to talk about planning in musical terms but that is what we had, particularly with Bizarro.

George Best is about poppy three minute songs whereas Bizarro is darker in many ways with high and low tempo songs, more layers; more intensity. We had developed, the performances were better and we produced some interesting sounds.

No not really, I imagine it would be like picking your favourite children. George Best is my least favourite but the strength of The Wedding Present is that we have constantly moved on so it’s difficult to compare. Its the same with the fans; for some Seamonsters was their favourite but with that album we lost people. One fan even told me that they thought that Cinerama was a huge backward step so you can’t please everyone.

Well, we’ve been writing songs all the time. We should have enough for a new album, maybe in 2011.

It’s a different game now. The Wedding Present have seen a lot of changes. When we started it was cassettes and vinyl moving into CDs and now iPods and the like have taken over. With Seamonsters we went on tour to promote the album. Now it’s touring that makes the money - we almost release the music to get people to gigs. I think it’s a barrier to the kids coming in.

It’s so easy to get exposure early, get your MySpace and so on but really hard for them to make any money. You need such a big following to keep going that a lot of bands can’t afford to do it anymore.

This line up is there now. Graeme (Ramsey) is more comfortable now in particular. He’s more of a multi-instrumentalist than a guitarist so it took a while to get used to being out from behind the drum kit. It’s not as easy as it looks; getting up there is not just about playing the guitar. All I do is very basic and the other guitarist in The Wedding Present has always had more to do and perhaps been more important - obviously under my direction!

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Somewhat ironcially, and shortly after this interview long time Cinerama and The Wedding Present stalwart Terry de Castro announced that she was giving up touring with the band. A much loved favourite of the fans she will be sorely missed.

The Wedding Present continue their Bizarro tour through the UK and Europe including another local appearance at the Assembly in Leamington Spa on 15th December.

David’s At The Edge of The Sea Festival is on 28th August at the Concorde 2 in Brighton.

Ian Gelling

Lee Hathaway talks to New Young Pony Club about their recent appearance in Birmingham, Ice Cream and their album Optimist

This isn’t our dressing room I’d be quite disappointed if it was. Just sitting here with an empty fridge. We’ve done tours like that, I’m sure we have with like four beers and a bottle of water. ‘Sunshine Underground’ came on tour with us and they eventually realised what everyone else was had on their riders. They were just asking for a multi pack of Walkers crisps and five beers. Then they saw CSS and Klaxons and they’re like “Shit! We can ask for all this!

To be honest you can try for anything you want but they never usually give you everything. If we do some corporate gigs it’s just like phew… They don’t get that bands taking the piss thing so they just give you everything you want. Whereas promoters know all that shit so they just don’t bother, put something really stupid in there and they just go “fuck that”. We used to have kittens on the rider but we never got any.

2nd night, it’s early days… We should have had some gigs in Ireland last week but we’ve postponed them until May now. So last night was the start in Portsmouth at the Wedgewood rooms. Everyone starts there it was good. It’s a bit of an institution now isn’t it?
Quite a strange man accosted Tahita and Lou today. He gave them a soft rabbit and a monkey, he made them kiss him – they were a little bit scared!

Yeah, he was probably one of our biggest fans he might buy all our records for all we know. The one, the only one.

Quite a lot I guess, it’s the song that most people recognise. It was the first we ever did properly. We used to call it our calling card really. That was why they kept re-releasing it cause they (the label) were like “this is the one, people pick up on this one” and we were like “yeah, but we do have other songs”. You know in a way that worked but we did get kind of dismissed just for that song. If you listen to ‘Fantastic Playroom’ there’s loads of other great songs that show a lot more depth ‘The Get Go’ and ‘Bomb’ and stuff. I don’t think we milked it like a lot of other bands who’ve got their one song

That was the label. The first release was a 7”. You can’t really count it as a release, it was only 500 vinyl copies. It was a way of getting the name out there, we don’t really consider that a release. 500 copies isn’t a release, it was put out for Dj’s mostly. Then the label put it out on this EP when we first signed with them. We thought it was a bit stupid. This song should be a proper single. The label kind of gave it away straight after they signed us. I remember saying “This is a good song, why are we doing this? We should save it for the album”. And they did it anyway. Then came back to us and were like “Right, we’re going to do it again cause that’s the big one”. You’ve already done it; you’ve shot your load already! One of the many reasons why we started our own label on to be honest.

That campaign was world wide, you can’t really say “no” to those things. I don’t think you can’t not do them these days. It’s not like it was for ‘Shell’. Everyone’s got them in their computers right? It was frustrating, everyone knew the song but at the same time no one knew it was us. If we had Radio 1 playing it that song would have been massive. But most people don’t normally hear something and take the time to find out whom it is. They need to make that connection, there needs to be that connection.

o idea, this was the great thing about ‘Ice Cream’, we put it out and it just went around the world. Before we knew it people from Brazil, Japan wherever were emailing us. We only did the 500 copies but it really spread, immediately we had this global reach. It wasn’t a lot of people but it was key people in each city around the world. Obviously DJ’s saying, “This tracks great, haven’t heard anything like this before…” They were playing it and we started building up these little pockets of support in all sorts of countries. When we finally got the album out and started touring we already had a bit of support in these countries. But then of course people didn’t know about any of that, mainly in this country. They kind of said, (in a dumbed down voice “Oh, there’s this new band. They’ve ripped off this amongst other things”.

It’s hard. I think something off the new album really; it just feels so much more exciting than the old stuff. I think ‘Stone’ maybe (general all round agreement). We played the album to people before we released it. That was the song that made people say, “This is great”. I was really proud when we finished it. It’s different but it still sounds like us.

I’m envisaging that happening when we play it live. It hasn’t happened yet cause we’re still working up (to bigger venues). I’m imagining Glastonbury 2011, Latitude or whatever, playing it as the sun goes down. Imagine that? It kicks off and people are just going to go crazy. I can see it; it is such an epic track. I just hope the album spreads to that many people. I hope people talk about it, it gets to that level and we have big crowds. Even recording ‘Stone’ was so exciting.

We’ve only played it twice! I think people are a little bit shocked because it’s not instant; it’s quite sparse with the vocals. Not many of our songs are like that, and then it kicks in towards the end. It’s quite atmospheric. Last night was the best time we did it, when it kicked in there was this “Yeah!” You saw people really move.
I think when we get to the festivals and we get some good lighting. A bit further down the line it will really show it off. We’re just testing the water at the moment. We haven’t brought a lot of stage props for all our shows this tour. We’re still a bit tentative. We’ve got some mirrors and stuff but you can’t really use them in a venue this size. It’s really frustrating at the moment. In our heads we’re at the Academy, but in reality we’re at the Academy 3. But you know, it’s good to think big.

Obviously it’s connected with the album track ‘Optimist’, so called for it’s own reasons. The reason we like that title for the album; we’re optimistic about this album even though it’s a bit of a change. There’s a feeling of nervousness when you change your sound and try something different. It was quite hard to write a lot of this music. When some of these songs came out, particularly Optimist, Stone, some of the more challenging and deeper tracks there was a feeling of relief that we’d got them out and that they worked. There was a genuine feeling of optimism about that.

Yeah of course. I think all bands should have that goal. That’s really important for every band to have to try and push things forward, obviously with references to the past. I’ve always been excited by new forms of music. Punk, dance, drum and bass, dub step.
It gets boring for the artists; some artists can actually do that, keep doing the same thing. Great, good for them. At the same time we’re not trying to change for the sake of change. Just natural progression

That’s a classic example of someone moving on or the sake of it. They’ve looked at reports, DJ feedback, and focus groups. “Indies not in anymore, we need to look at electronic music”. You know they haven’t got any history in that but they’re trying to do this electronic sound and it just falls flat. When you look at a band like Radiohead they had true passion for that music, when they did it, they did it so well because they truly liked that music. You can tell who’s faking it and who’s not.

We’re seen as this party band branded with this ‘New Rave’ shit business. “Oh Sarah, is it not possible to do an interview without it being mentioned?” (I’d just like to point out at no point during the interview and gig did I see the slightest hint of neon). We play dance songs but we can calm down and it’s still ok. We don’t need an audience going crazy. This record is so different and we’re enjoying exploring that softer more subtle side to some of these songs. Watching the crowd react to that in a different way. It means more to me than just watching a crowd jumping up and down and going crazy. Who’s hardest, who’s fastest. A lot of the time we would play after DJ’s had been really banging out the tunes. We had definitely been put into that ‘dance’ bracket. We played dance stages a lot in 2007. Now we’re all focused on what we’re doing and we’re just going to do it.

NYPC are definitely a band forging their path along the musical highway without any real care what others are doing. Going about things their way because it suits them to. I couldn’t help but admire the honesty in what they we spoke about either.

The remainder of the interview focused deeper on festivals they’d like to play. Their thoughts on Wolfmother and Jet. And finally touching on but sadly not literally Sarah’s ticklish spots.

Lee Hathaway