The Burning Up Times - Strangled.co.uk

Burning Up Times Issue 3
Well of course, at the time, we never
thought in those terms at all. First of all,
we were far too busy. We were certainly
aware of all the bands like the Feelgoods,
and we kind of admired them, we’d all
been to see them and thought; yeas, these
are quite interesting, and they were doing
things nobody else was doing – but it
didn’t really go much deeper than that. I
mean, our main preoccupation was writing
songs and playing them at gigs. And we
were never a band sitting around playing
records. We were out there doing it. And
so in that sense, we were very self-centred
and concentrated on the creation of our
own career.
The Nashville Rooms – you played there
a lot in the early days? What did you like
specifi cally about the place?
Well, it was unique in that it was one
of the few pubs in London that actually
had a proper stage, and quite a big one
at that, for a pub. I’m not sure what the
capacity was – it must have been between
800-1000 on a busy night, and that was
like crammed in like sardines – but it was
always packed with people who really
wanted to see us, so that’s why we liked
it I suppose. All foregoing gigs at that
period had been much smaller than that,
and here, all of a sudden, were we not only
allowed into a much bigger, and in many
respects, a more plush venue, but it was
heaving with people. In fact, every night
there were queues round the block and
it was immensely exciting for us, and the
audience.
Your debut LP was mooted to be a live
Nashville recording – what was wrong
with the recording to get rejected?
I’m not sure now, but I remember doing
recordings at the Nashville and hated
the way it was all coming together. I
think what we’d been asked to do was
not within our gift to deliver. We were
essentially a live outfi t that thrived on
being live and here we were being asked
to do studio recording techniques and
stuff and it didn’t seem to gel with what
we were delivering and what the public
wanted. So we didn’t want to record what
didn’t fi t into that category. That’s all I can
think of about that.
Tell us all the nerdy anorak stuff about
your drum kit you were using in 1977.
What about now – and what’s the main
differences?
The main differences. Erm… well it’s a
subject that really I never talk much about
simply because, to me, when people say
‘what drums do you play?’ I say black
ones! And the reason for that is – it’s only
partly a joke, because to me it’s not very
important what drums you play because
these days most of the sound the punter
hears is controlled by the sound desk and
electronics through which all the sounds
go. And to me, if I had a drum kit made
out of cardboard boxes, I would probably
sound not much worse that I do with
a proper drum kit. So I know a lot of
drummers who spend a large part of their
life talking about their drum equipment,
and I never do because it’s a matter of
total inconsequence to me. It’s what I do
with them and what I do in relationship to
the song, to me that is interesting, not the
tubs that I thump.
How did you manage to get all the band
– plus equipment in an ice cream van?
With a great deal of diffi culty! You must
realise that in those days, we didn’t have
much equipment and we did literally use
up every square inch of the thing – we
perfected the art of packing it in, and the
guys used to lie on top of it, inches away
from the inside of the roof of the vehicle.
So we didn’t have a lot of gear, but what
we had just about fi tted. Of course, we
couldn’t do that today, but mercifully, we
don’t have to.
Why did you sell it?
Well I kept it until about fi ve or six years
ago and I fi nally got rid of it because it
had been sitting around in my yard just
deteriorating. I hadn’t actually used it for
a decade, and I took a close look at it one
day and thought; this is ridiculous. It’s
gonna end up a pile of scrap on the fl oor if
I don’t get rid of it. So I sold it off to some
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