An interview with Graham Kemp of Urusei Yatsura

URUSEI YATSURA

I was obsessed with Glaswegian indie rock as a teenager - and I loved few bands more than Urusei Yatsura. Weirdly, for someone who wrote fanzines between the ages of 15 and now, I never interviewed them. Never asked them what their favourite Sanrio character was. Never asked them what their favourite flavour of lollypop was. Man, the late nineties fanzine scene was a strange place.

Excellent band. Excellent songs. Forever missed. Here’s a wee chat with guitarist and vocalist Graham Kemp (pictured below with daughter Freya).

(Oh yeah, when you’re done, why not listen to a minute of John Peel saying ‘Urusei Yatsura’ over and over again?)

Shall we start at the beginning? How did four kids from Glasgow come to be so well versed in noisy indie rock?

“I met Fergus [Lawrie, vocals and guitar] through mutual friends at Glasgow University. I worked in Tower Records and we would head out clubbing after my shift finished at midnight. We met Elaine [Graham, bass] on a night out and Fergus dared her to play bass for us. Then Ian [Graham, drums] got dragged into it when one of our revolving cast of drummers didn't turn up to a night out at the 13th Note and he happened to be there. His expertise in classical guitar made him ideal for the position. Anyway, he did great and we then had a sibling rhythm section, which more bands should think about in my opinion. Me and Fergus were both obsessed with Galaxie 500 and formed a band to cover their songs, but they turned out to be too difficult to play and so we had to write some of our own. We all bonded by being at least half of the crowd at Glasgow shows for bands like Archers Of Loaf and Radial Spangle.”

Radial Spangle! I really should try to speak to them for ‘Indie Heaven’. So I never knew that Alex Kapranos - later of Franz Ferdinand - hosted that comp that your very early song 'Guitars Are Boring' appeared on…

“Alex ran the Kazoo Club night in the 13th Note. It was kind of a riot in that any thrown together band could play there without paying for the privilege. The idea was to fill the place up on a Tuesday and pretty much anything could happen, like us playing impromptu sets with someone who had never played drums before but fancied a shot. It was the opposite of cool. Alex put on a festival of his favourite Tuesday night bands one week in 1993 and it got recorded on a mobile unit for a live record [1994’s Kazoo Collection] that he put out on his own label. I handed a copy of that record to John Peel when I went along to be interviewed about our Kitten Frenzy fanzine when he did his show from Glasgow. He slapped it on and played our song there and then, unfortunately at the right speed. It took us ages to sell all our share of the album, but it did start the process of us getting signed. Alex was always very helpful and encouraging to the shambolic bands that hung out at the club. A real gentleman enthusiast.”

One of the things I loved about Urusei as a teenager was how you opened up a world to me - comics, weird toys, Japanese culture, films… Was that conscious, or just a product of you all being really into stuff?

“We just got obsessed with Japanese culture and US indie bands and thought we could mix them up. I think the band name ended up being chosen when we asked ourselves what would be the most stupid thing to call ourselves, and we were goaded by Peter Bagge's comment about bands that were named after comics being losers. Was it silly to name our band after a massive, copyrighted manga? Yes, but consciously silly. Rumiko Takahashi was very cool about it. We just had to call ourselves Yatsura in the USA and Japan and she was okay with it. We couldn't call ourselves just ‘Urusei’ because that can mean ‘Shut the fuck up’ depending on how you write it in Japanese script. It's too complicated to explain but Japanese is a very interesting language.”

Glasgow felt like the epicentre of UK indie rock in the mid-to-late nineties. What do you think contributed to the hit rate of so many good and interesting bands? And what was the scene like to be in it? I imagine less idyllic that it appeared to a sixteen-year-old in Doncaster…

“Basically there were places to play and places to practice so everyone was in a band. It would be crazy not to be. It's always been a big music city and usually well off the beaten track for music journalists, so you can just play for a laugh and develop your sound and abilities without having to give much of a shit about ‘career’. Everyone does their own thing and as long as you don't act the rockstar you end up making friends with everybody else. It's a small enough city so you end up hanging out at the same bars and see everyone at gigs. I found an old flier the other day and we had four or five gigs just that December, so we were playing constantly before we ever went on tour. We used to promote shows around our fanzine and tried to bring different bands together. I have video of us, Spare Snare, The Delgados and Bis playing one night at Nice N Sleazy. A bunch of major label A&R guys were trying to sign Bis so we charged them double to get in.”

It was cool, towards the end of the band, seeing you inch into the national music press more and more. What was your experience of the music press at that time?

“Fanzines were great. We seemed to be constantly doing interviews. So many supportive enthusiastic people in leopard print coats! The music press were actually okay to us, but neither party really took the other seriously. I remember walking away mid-sentence at The Brat Awards because the editor of the NME was creeping me out with his coked up dead eyes.”

You even had a hit! Sort of! 'Hello Tiger'! Straight in at number 40 with a bullet…

“We were on tour and getting reports that it was top twenty midweek. Ché were getting excited and we were talking about gettting some t shirts printed with ‘41’ on the back because we were sure the most annoying let down was on the way. Of course, Ché were forgetting that it was Brits Week so everybody went out and bought everyone who had been nominated at the weekend. 40 was almost more annoying than 41 would have been. At least we forgot to order the t-shirts.”

Urusei Yatsura split up in 2001. Can you walk me through that?

“It was just played out. We would have had to rebuild after [2000’s] Everybody Loves Urusei Yatsura. Ché had a first refusal deal with Seymour Stein. They held up each of our albums for months and fucked our momentum - the major label wanks - but the band weren't working well together and rehearsals weren’t fun. I thought “fuck it” and got a job in a record shop. It would have been nice to continue doing what we always wanted, which was to release interesting records at our own pace on our own label, but the will wasn't there.”

What's the likelihood I could ever get to see Urusei play again?

“It's very unlikely. Any sort of hard feelings are pointless and unimportant after so many years, so I would never rule anything out. It would be nice to record something again but I'm sure it would be different to the stuff we made in our twenties. I wouldn't be so annoying to work with now I've mellowed the fuck out.”

That’s great, but booooo. Can you tell me a bit about how your new compilation Can You Spell Urusei Yatsura came to be?

“It's based on cassette tapes I used to make of our non-album stuff for friends. I had a few years where I just couldn't listen to anything we recorded, but one night I had a few drinks and started going through our old records and was surprised by a lot of the songs. We just recorded songs when they were ready so A side/B side was pretty arbitrary. Fergus in particular had a lot of great tunes on B sides of singles. Later when I decided to make a Bandcamp archive I decided to answer a question nobody asked. What if all those lost songs were available to make a whole new album from? I think it's a nice collection, a whole lot of random styles and sounds but they seem to make a cohesive whole which really represents what the band was about. Maybe better than the official albums, in truth.”

Okay, I’m gonna ask some real dumb questions now…

“Go for it.”

Were the lyrics to [1995 single] 'Siamese' ever forgotten? I can't imagine those were easy words to learn!

“Fergus and I wrote all those one afternoon when we were recording some stuff to help with someone's sound engineering course at college. We just wanted to celebrate all our favourite bands in Glasgow and it's just packed full of words and namedropping. I think there may have been about four pages of them initially but it got cut down considerably. I think i'll remember them long after i've forgotten how to tie my shoes.”

How many pairs of shades do you own? I don't think I've ever seen your actual eyes!

“I have never spent more than £10 for a pair of sunglasses. I had to wear them because I only ever blink when a shutter clicks. It's a shitty superpower but there we have it.”

I ask this as a nineties fanzine survivor. Was it exhausting being asked, 'what's your favourite colour?' so often?

“You would not believe. It's the sort of question that can make you doubt your sanity.”

Well, this has been nice Graham. Want to plug anything?

“People can hear our stuff on Bandcamp. We have kept most of it as pay what you like, so you know we’re not in it merely for the money, although we do a nice line in obscure nineties indie band t-shirts and apparel. There are some sessions available to listen to, also at no cost. I have a new band called Calacas and Fergus has a new band called Paper Birch. Thankyou!”

An interview with Ashley Reaks (you might know him as Joe Northern) from Younger Younger 28s

YOUNGER YOUNGER 28s

It’s difficult, unless you lived through it - and I not only lived through it, but I was at university for it - to understand quite how boring pop music was at the turn of the millennium. This was an era where my beloved NME desperately peddled a scene they decided would be called ‘Stool Rock’ - men, on stools, playing acoustic guitars and singing about feelings. Check this out from Travis frontman Fran Healy in 1999 on the eve of the release of their bazillion selling second album The Man Who; “I’m fed up of jumping about the stage like an idiot. I want to play my instrument a bit better. This is a mellow album, the first album was one you could go out to. This one is an album you can stay in to. You can do your dishes to it, you can do your homework to it.” Two years later they were headlining Reading Festival. It was the worst of times…

Amidst this banality was a band who burning briefly but bright. I liked them so much I kept a scrapbook of their press cuttings in a Smash Hits!-stylee for a time! Funny, glamorous, touching too; take Dare era The Human League, add a twist of Pulp’s kitchen sink drama, the neo-eighties flava of Bis, a little bit of Steps - put it together and what have you got? Younger Younger 28s!

I caught up with singer Joe Northern - aka, Ashley Reaks. It was fun. It was heavy. I liked him a lot…

So, despite growing up loving Younger Younger 28s, I didn’t know you as Ashley Reaks until a few weeks ago. I knew Joe Northern. Tell me about Ashley Reaks…

“I grew up in Harrogate in Yorkshire and won an academic scholarship to the local archaic, all boys public school. I played football, rugby and cricket for the county as a junior so things could have turned out very differently, really. Abuse at home meant my life took a drastic turn. I flunked all my exams, got kicked out of home at sixteen and was in London with 10p in my pocket at seventeen. I had, however found music and the DIY ethos of punk rock in particular. The Ramones were the biggest influence on me with their misfit status and their sing-a-long anthems celebrating mental illness. I formed my first band No Reality at age twelve and found my own tribe of weirdos to hang around with.”

And when did Ashley Reaks the artist rear his head?

“Well, I made the artwork for the bands I was in, imitating the bleak, collage style of Gee Vaucher from Crass specifically, but also Linder Sterling - who did art for Buzzcocks and Magazine - and the political imagery of The Pop Group. I moved between London and Harrogate over the subsequent ten years, on the dole, getting stoned, making collages and playing in a variety of short-lived bands. Most of my lyrical influences for Younger Younger 28s were from this period.”

And how did that band come together?

“In 1994 my old London next-door neighbour Francis Dunnery called me up out of the blue. He had been the frontman of eighties pop stars It Bites. 'Calling All The Heroes', you know that song? More recently he was the lead guitarist for Robert Plant. He'd signed his own solo deal and asked if I wanted to go on a world tour with him. A few months later I was in New York City for the first time, supporting Radiohead on the first night of a three-month tour that took in America, Canada, Australia - where Frank's single was a hit - and the UK. After the tour I went back to Harrogate and the dole, but Francis' manager Kevin Nixon kept in touch with me and gave me some jobs playing session bass. I’m on Mark Owen's solo album! Kev also managed Scarborough poodle rockers Little Angels, whose keyboard player was Jim Dickinson - aka GI Jimmy D.” 

Speaking of which, I always thought Younger Younger 28s first surfaced in the form I always knew them as, but I believe Jim was writing music for videogames under that name for a time prior…

“Yeah, after Little Angels split Jim was writing music for videogames and used the name Younger Younger 28s. The name was actually taken from the name of a yardie gang from Brixton, which got us into trouble when we were due to play there. The police advised us against it. Me and Jim started to write together around this time and kept the name. He was into The Prodigy at the time and I'd gone back to the post-punk influences of my youth, so our first gigs as Younger Younger 28s were the two of us doing a techno-punk thing. It didn't last long!”

How much of the album Soap was autobiographical? Your music spoke to me as a working class, northern kid. I didn't want to wear a kagool and sign on. I wanted to be a pop star. You were a rare example of a northern, working class band that got the aspirational element...

“Most of Soap was autobiographical and based round my small town life, and the colourful characters I'd met on the fringes of society. The songs were about our mutual desire to make something out of our often-desperate lives. The desire to escape reality, or at least create an alternate one, has always been a driving force for me. Like Kim from ‘The Next Big Thing’. She was loosely based on a friend of mine, who was the pin-up girl in my group of friends, and had dreams of becoming a model. Sadly, she suffered from mental health problems, drug addiction and domestic violence and died a couple of years ago. In an alternate reality she'd have found rehab, married a Championship footballer and launched her own album and perfume combo.”

That’s very sad. How was the experience of signing to V2? I always felt bad for you that you missed out on the noughties’ big eighties revival by about two years…

“I've always been completely out of sync with everything, so it came as absolutely no surprise that we existed in the 'wrong' time. But I did enjoy being an anomaly in a sea of deeply-serious pop stars! At one point we were going to go down the whole eighties route - both Trevor Horn and Heaven 17 wanted to produce our album and in hindsight it may have been a good idea. V2? Bad move. We had so many labels offering to sign us, but we ultimately went to V2 as our manager was hired by them to sort out the label as part of the deal. Unfortunately he fell out with someone at the label and his acts - us and Kirsty MacColl - were side-lined, so we didn't get the support we needed. Like, the album was meant to end with 'No More Yesterdays' but the record company wanted us to record a cover - for what I can't remember - so next thing you know they'd tagged our cover of The Cure’s ‘In Between Days’ onto the end of the album without us knowing.”

It’s a familiar story! What was your relationship with the music press at the time?

“Early on they loved us. Melody Maker and NME were very supportive, but that soon changed once we signed to V2 and decided upon 'We're Going Out' as the first single. Then we seemed to be disliked by most of the press! I remember one of them printing an article having a go at me, in my 'privileged position of pop star' for writing 'Valerie' and supposedly laughing at sad guys who were so emotionally impoverished that they could only form relationships with fantasy figures from cheap girlie mags. It never seemed to have crossed their mind that it might have been me! A critical saving grace came right at the end of the band, though, when the Independent ran a very complimentary article on us.”

I'd love to know more about the supermarket tour. James McMahon from Doncaster was very disappointed that you didn't come to Sunderland where he was at university...

“Another of my great ideas! As Kim worked in a supermarket, the video for 'The Next Big Thing' was filmed in Wembley Asda. Oh, the glamour! Obviously we decided to do a tour of supermarkets. I think the staff were a bit put out as they thought were taking the piss. I wish we'd gone to Sunderland too, by the way - my dad was from there and enrolled me as a season ticket holder for the football team aged two. I still go up there regularly…”

Can I ask about the abuse in childhood you talked about? I wouldn’t pry, but you do mention it in your twitter bio. Obviously tell me to fuck off if you want…

“I suffered many years of physical, mental, emotional and psychological abuse from my dad from the ages of eight until he finally kicked me out of the house. The abuse was methodical, prolonged and designed to humiliate me as much as possible and could happen at any time. The unpredictability led to life-long struggles with depression and high anxiety at best and panic attacks at worst. He'd been a mainly good parent to me up until then, so the sudden switch from my protector to my tormentor was hard to comprehend and undoubtedly changed me and my developing mind profoundly. I understand how abuse gets passed down the generations and I'm pretty sure he'll have received similar abuse at a similar age. It's no excuse for his behaviour but helps me understand.”

I’m sorry that happened to you Ashley. That’s very gracious of you to try to understand his behaviour when really you should be under no obligation to.

“It is why my life unravelled though. Like in a lot of cases, the abuse was never mentioned or acknowledged in the family - my mum saw it, but just pretended it hadn't happened - and I so I was scapegoated, left to carry the burden and to try to make some sense of it myself. After I got kicked out of the family home I spent six months sleeping on the floor with a kindred broken spirit who was also a childhood abuse victim and already a heroin addict at six. There then followed many DSS bedsits with other waifs and strays, a move to London away from the scene of the crime aged 16 and another 77 addresses since. I started therapy and recovery from the abuse and subsequent mental health and addiction problems in the late nineties so have come a long way since, compulsively making art and music still being my main coping mechanism of choice. After a few misdiagnoses from mental health professionals - Bipolar Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder - I'm now diagnosed with C-PTSD. Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. This results from a cluster of traumatic incidents, usually in childhood. I was also diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis at 40 which is an auto immune illness where the body attacks itself and has a strong link to childhood trauma.” 

Can we talk a bit about the art you’ve made since Younger Younger 28s?

“Well, in relation to my art and music, this early trauma and it’s after-effects unconsciously inform pretty much everything I make. When seen through the lens of abuse the art especially makes more sense, though I don't make it directly as 'survivor art'. I write a lot about other wounded souls I've met along the way - our shared chaotic lives and the desire to get away from the chaos. These other 'walking wounded ' were the people that helped me navigate a way out of my own private hell and accepted me when love was in very short supply. After the band I committed to making art and music in the large quantities I now make it. I've 15 genre-hopping albums - post-punk, dub, art rock, punk, prog, spoken work - available via Bandcamp and my website. My art has been exhibited all over the world - NYC, Chicago, Valencia, Detroit - and last year I had a piece in Sotheby's in London as part of an Outsider Art show. I'm presently working on a book about a two month odyssey to India I undertook in 1993 and have plans to write up my Younger Younger 28s story in the future.”

Well, I wish you all the luck in the world with it. Incidentally, what are the other members of Younger Younger 28s up to these days?

“I'm in touch with Liz, who's recently become a mum. still sings and looks no older than she did in 1999. Last I heard, Jim was a music teacher at Bath University as well as doing the occasional Little Angels reunion gigs. I don't know what Andie's up to these days.”

An interview with 3/4 of Cable

CABLE

‘Indie Heaven’ is littered with the corpses of valiant heroes, struck down in their prime. I mean, it’s kind of the point of all this. But at the same time, I can’t think of any band who deserved better than Derby noizinks, Cable. Beloved by all who knew them, struck down in their prime by contemptuous greed - even by the standards of the music industry - the band ended their all too brief existence in 1999. Rarely has a week gone by in the 21 years since where I haven’t blasted out at least one of their records, and I still yearn to see them play live again. That said, this being 2020 at the time of writing, I yearn to see anyone play live again.

I managed to track down Darius Hinks (guitar), Pete Darrington (bass) and Richie Mills (drums) for a natter. And the band were kind enough to give me some photos from their blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reformation in 2012 to pepper throughout this piece. They’re by Brian Whar, by the way.

Right. Shall we start at the beginning? How did Cable come to be?

Darius: “Matt [Bagguley, vocals and guitar] and I met at a sixth form college in the rock capital of the universe, Nuneaton. We started jamming in a school hall trying to cover Mudhoney songs and managing to make them even messier than the originals. We ended up going to the same university, in Derby, and spent all of our time trying to get a band off the ground instead of studying. We were at the lovely old art college on Green Lane and got pally with another local band, Bivouac, who were doing well, getting press and gigs, so we started writing our own songs and it progressed from there. Our original rhythm section quit on the eve of a gig, so Pete stepped in to help and then we wouldn’t let him leave. Richie joined just after we recorded our first album, replacing Neil Cooper, who went on to drum with Therapy?”

Pete: “I had been working at a local rehearsal studio that had an 8-track recording setup - I was in charge of recording the ‘live’ demos there. Cable came in and recorded every song they had over a weekend. It was long hours and all done live and they recorded something like 15 songs over the Saturday and Sunday. There was no pro-tools or anything like that in those days, it was all to tape and if you made a mistake you did it again. Anyway, a couple of days after I recorded all their songs, Darius phoned me and asked if I could stand in for a bunch of gigs as their bass player and drummer had quit right after the demo. I said ‘yes’ and said I knew a good drummer who could also ‘stand in’ - which was Neil. If I hadn’t had listened to all their songs about 50 times over the weekend, I probably would have failed the audition. I took Neil to meet Matt and Darius at the pub and we said we’d give it a go. We had one rehearsal the afternoon of the gig, which was at the Princess Charlotte in Leicester, and then we just went out and smashed it. I remember Matt fell over backwards into the drum kit during the last song and it all collapsed in a punk rock sort of way. We were still trying to pick ourselves out of the tangled mess on stage when Gaz Roberts who ran Krunch! Records got up on the stage and offered us our first deal. We ended up doing two 7” records with him.”

That’s fitting. I've never met a single person, ever, with a negative opinion of Cable. They might not know of Cable, but anyone who does is a fan. Why do you reckon this is?

Darius: “Hard to say. Apart from Richie, and Neil before him, none of us really knew how to play, so maybe that forced us down avenues more proficient musicians would avoid? Also, Matt always had an ear for a killer tune. I think it’s a real shame he never wrote any songs after Cable went belly up.”

Pete: “I had been trying for a couple of years to learn to play ‘properly’ from a book that taught you scales and progressions and all that stuff, so when I started playing in Cable it was a total breath of fresh air. These two guys had no idea about the ‘rules’ but they were coming up with these amazing riffs and chords, all through experimentation. In the early days I would ask, ‘what chords are you playing?’, or ‘what time signature is that?’ and they didn’t know. They’d just say ‘I don’t know, I’m doing this’ and play something mental. It was clearly something very raw and creative in that sense, so I think that’s why what we did stands out as something that broke the mould - but really we didn’t know what shape the mould was in the first place. Being off the wall is great, but at the core, you need some great solid drumming to keep it all nailed down and something for the bass player to lock into. I felt very fortunate to have had that. Neil and Richie are without fail the two greatest drummers I’ve ever played with - and I’ve been in quite a few bands before and since Cable. They have that rare talent which is not just being great drummers, but serving the song.”

Richie: “I came from a thrash metal background, so had never heard of Cable, nor any of the bands that Cable had listed as influences in their ‘Drummer Wanted’ ad. However, as a complete outsider, I was instantly drawn to the band’s sound. I think that says something about everyone else who either stumbled across the band, or grew up with them.”

So your debut album, Down-Lift the Up-Trodden, comes out in 1996. You go on tour with AC Acoustics, then your tour bus is hit by a drunk-driver at high-speed, flipping the car onto the roof. Just how bad was it?

Darius: “I can’t remember anything until I woke up in hospital, but the others tell me it was pretty bad…”

Pete: “I thought it was the end of the group for a few days. Darius didn’t even seem to know he was in a band for about 48 hours. How none of us were seriously injured is a miracle. We were parked up, counting the money out from that night’s show and paying our crew, when a car hit us from behind at 70mph on a 30mph street. The van was flipped upside down and we had to smash the windscreen to get out. I had nightmares about it for months. The sound of the crash and all the stuff flying about in slow motion. The disorientation. I remember I was covered in random stuff like merch and our kit and I stood up and couldn’t figure out why the seats were above my head. Matt was shouting that Darius wouldn’t wake up. It was like something from the first few minutes of a Casualty episode.”

Richie: “I wasn’t in the band at this point, but i do remember it happened close to me joining the band, and Darius telling me he couldn’t remember his own name for a minute…”

Christ. Down-Lift the Up-Trodden was produced by the legend that is John Robb. What do you remember about working with him? Did he wear his gold suit while recording you?

Darius: “He always wears his gold suit under his normal clothes. He’s basically a musical superhero. He was the first proper producer we’d worked with, so I remember being a bit in awe of him. I remember being impressed that he liked reading James Joyce. He seemed to really know his stuff and I love the sound he got on the record. He recorded us pretty much live with maybe a few overdubs, so we got the raw, [Steve] Albini kind of sound we were after.”

Pete: “John is a character. He’s woven into the tapestry of the punk rock underground of this country. I don’t think you could call him a producer in the modern sense of the word. He never touched the desk - he would just use the intercom to tell us we needed to play it again, but this time it needed to be faster or more intense. But he did coax the record out of us that we wanted to make, which was no mean feat because we were very inexperienced at making records. A guy called John Grey engineered the recording though and I hope he went on to do brilliant things because he was very good.”

John Peel played Down-Lift the Up-Trodden in full on his show. Then he called you mid-show to offer you a session. What was your relationship with John like?

Darius: “We met him a few times but I was always too shy around him to say much. He was my hero growing up. When he first played ‘Sale of the Century’ on his show I was at my parent’s house near Birmingham, in my old bedroom, and it was such an incredible moment. It’s 25 years ago now, but I can still remember it so vividly. It was mind blowing hearing him say that he loved our record. We grabbed him at a festival one time, when we were all pretty drunk, and I managed to speak almost a whole sentence. I doubt we’d have had any kind of career if it wasn’t for him playing our records and giving us sessions. I still feel sad he’s not around.”

Pete: “I was the only person who had a phone, so he called me. My phone number was on the back of the record. It was 1994 and we’d just finished uni and were on the dole, so having an actual land line was quite rare. We only had a phone because my partner actually had landed a proper job and we needed to be contactable. At the time you never knew what [John] was going to play, but I always listened to the programme. Suddenly he said, ‘Our William always asks if there’s something good in the post this week, and for once I could say a definite yes’, and then ‘Sale of the Century’ came on. I shat myself. While the song was playing, the phone rang and naturally I thought it was a mate calling to tell me we were on John Peel. I picked the phone up and it was Peely himself. I thought it couldn’t get any more bizarre that night. He offered us a session right there and then and told me Alison [Howe], his producer, would give us a ring to sort the date out. Then he said he had to go as he needed to put the next record on! Matt only lived at the top of my road at the time and I ran round to his flat and banged on the door to tell him. It was something I’d dreamed of happening since I’d been about 13. ‘Teenage dreams, so hard to beat’, as it says on his headstone…”

Richie: “The initial interaction between Peel and the band was before my time, and I guess being so ‘metal’ I didn't really appreciate his status as the god-like musical pillar like I do now. I do remember sitting in the field at Phoenix Festival in 1996 one night with some mates after Cable had played, and he slumped down next to us in the grass and said , “hello Richie”. My friends were just open-mouthed. I just didn’t appreciate the gravity of it all until it was too late. I still think about him quite a bit.”

As someone who was in a band that John played on his show, I can relate. Now then, the spacesuit in the 'Arthur Walker' video. Where on earth - no pun intended - does one get a spacesuit from?

Pete: “I honestly don’t know. The fellas [Nick Abrahams and Mikey Tomkins from production company Trash 2000] that made that video were so resourceful it was ridiculous. They made all the sets for about a quid and the spaceship out of a strimmer. They also made the Cable light up ‘letters’ that we took on tour with us for years after that. I think the spacesuit hire was about 90% of the budget. They had that Blake’s 7 mentality that turned pipe cleaners into space ship control rooms. They did a video for Bis after that, which had them being menaced by a giant cat. I’d like to think they do the effects on Star Wars now.”

Remarkably, for the time anyway, Sprite used your song ‘Freeze The Atlantic’ on a TV advert. How did that come about? And do you even like it because I think it's fucking horrible…

Darius: “Obey your thirst. Sprite is the amber nectar. Drink Sprite.” 

Pete: “We played a show at The Garage in London and our A&R at our publisher at Chrysalis, a lovely lady called Cheryl [Robson] introduced us to someone from Coca Cola marketing that wanted to use our song. We were quite dismissive to them and thought, ‘yeah, whatever’. I think we thought it was a joke or would never happen. Then the advert came on the telly. Our royalties were great for about 6 weeks! I remember they offered to ‘sponsor’ a big tour, but said we’d have to have these Sprite banners behind us. We told them to fuck off’. We never heard from them again.”

The record that song is taken from is When Animals Attack. It was produced by Kramer, from the Butthole Surfers and the Shimmy-Disc label. What are your memories?

Darius: “His whole studio had the most amazing shagpile carpet. The recording sessions were a bit fraught and we were out in the arse end of New Jersey, but I have amazing memories of hanging out in New York with him in the evenings, meeting Shimmy-Disc legends like Dogbowl and When People were Shorter and Lived Near the Water. Kramer is an incredible character so it was brilliant meeting him and his weirdo music pals.”

Pete: “I had no idea Richie had found the experience so difficult until recently. I thought he was joking. I was quite dismissive when he said this before and I owe him an apology. I think in hindsight, we were probably too in awe of him because we’d grown up listening to Galaxie 500 and the like. For that reason, Richie was able to be more objective about how the record was actually going at the time. That record could have been better. Kramer was letting us ‘be ourselves’ at a time when we probably needed some real guidance to make the record we wanted to make. Is he a bad producer? No, he just probably wasn’t the sort of guru we needed at the time. I know When Animals Attack is a fan favourite, but for me, Sub-Lingual is the best Cable record. It’s the reason I’ve continued to work with Paul Tipler since then.”

Richie: “I'll tread carefully around this one, as we’ve fallen out over this before. I personally didn’t really enjoy the process - mainly down to the fact I'd only been in the band for five minutes and was really still trying to find myself within it. I didn’t click with Kramer’s work ethic. Too much weed and not enough attention. We had often recorded all day with his engineer, and then he’d show up later on in the day and either dug what we’d done or not. That’s 100% my opinion, and not at all the other guys’. Being in America for the first time was fun though. I’d never actually left the UK before that other than a day trip to France!”

What do you remember about the Brixton Prison show, which you recorded for an EP in 1997? What are the logistics of arranging a show in a prison?

Pete: “It was a surreal and very humbling experience. The thing I’ll never forget is the gratitude from the prisoners that a rock band had wanted to come and play for them. The security was very intense. We had to leave all our personal belongings at the gate and all our kit was thoroughly searched on the way in and out. We were chaperoned by guards the whole time. The gig took place in the chapel. We knew they wouldn’t know any of our songs, so we dropped a couple of Johnny Cash numbers into the set, hoping they would resonate. The audience were so appreciative, not at all hostile. More bands should play in prisons. I know the people there are serving sentences for serious crimes, but we shouldn’t ever forget that they’re people.”

Richie: “It was as surreal as it sounds. Proper prison full of proper convicts... of all types. Folk in for petty crimes to murder. I think we tried Broadmoor as option number one. Glad we didn’t do that.”

I have to ask about the legal dispute that led to the end of the band. Could you walk through that for anyone who might not be aware of it? How did you eventually get out of that mess?

Darius: “We fired a manager which put us in breach of a stupid contract we’d stupidly signed. He claimed we were about to be the next U2 and sued us for an appropriate sum. We pratted around in court, thinking we couldn’t lose. Then we lost. As part of the settlement, we were unable to perform together again. Our publishers, Chrysalis, stepped in to pay a lot of the money off, but we still went away with debts and a bad taste in our mouths. I think Sub-Lingual - which was just about to be released - could have brought us to a wider audience, but who can say.”

Pete: “Like Darius says, we put the nail in the coffin of the band on day one and we were in and out of court for pretty much the whole of our career because of it. We signed a five year contract with the bloke that managed the Wedding Present - because, well, The Wedding Present were doing pretty well in our eyes. Only when we toured with the Weddoes, it became obvious that they managed themselves and this guy was pretty much an accountant for them. Not what we needed. We told him we needed someone who was more hands on and we’d like to leave the company. We’d found someone who suited our needs better. He was fine at first, we offered him a favourable chunk of record company money as severance. Then he spoke to a solicitor who told him to take us to the cleaners and we found a writ waiting for us when we got back off a tour. In the end he got a big settlement that allowed us out of the contract, but there was a clause in the settlement that said he could still take 20% of our earnings until something like 2005 if we continued as Cable. We were now skint and didn’t want to give him another penny. The only way to stop him getting more money was to end the group.”

Are you still angry about it? You unquestionably split way before your time…

Darius: “I sulked for about a year, but I can be a bit more philosophical about the whole thing now. We got to arse around in a band for nearly ten years, travelling the world, meeting our heroes and getting paid for it. Not many people get to do that. It’s a shame it ended the way it did but I mainly have happy memories of Cable.”

Pete: “Sadly, that’s show business. There’s always someone waiting to sue you when you’ve got financial backing. I was broken for about a year as well. I didn’t even think about being involved in music for several years. Now I look back and think we had a brilliant time, made some records that are special to some people’s ears and got away with doing what people in a band dream of for the best part of 10 years. If there’s one thing I do regret, it’s not staying as close to the other members of the band as I could have. We had our differences and our ups and downs as people, but we went through a lot together and then drifted apart.”

Richie: “I think we were all angry, and shell-shocked at the same time. It shouldn’t have happened that way.”

Well, here’s an idea. Why not reform now! C’mon! 

Darius: “We live quite far apart. Matt’s in Oslo working as a translator, but we still keep in touch. We even reformed in 2013 for a few shows, which was amazing and probably even more fun than the gigs we did in the ‘90s, but I can’t see it happening again. We’re all very old and it could be dangerous.” 

Pete: “We were a great band and the creative chemistry was something special and there’s still a lot of love for the band. I got a proper job in the broadcast industry as an engineer and raised a family, while playing in bands and putting records out for fun - but I would do it again, sure, especially as the pressure is long gone.”

Richie: “Like Darius said... we are a lot older than we were at our prime. The idea of playing drums like that again makes me wince! I’m paying the price now as a man pushing 50 for playing like a thug in my 20’s & 30’s…”

You can’t blame me for trying. Okay, regrets are pointless - but tell me some anyway…

Darius: “I wish we’d written more songs. That was always my favourite bit of being in Cable. We’d spend endless hours practicing songs we’d already recorded when I think we should probably have just kept making up new stuff.”

Pete: “I think we had another record in us at least. We should have had some time off while we dodged paying that guy any more money and then made another record completely under our own steam in secret. Cable was such a creative force that defiantly ploughed its own furrow. I think a record under our own steam where we were completely in charge would have been brilliant.”

Richie: “Yeah, like Darius, I really enjoyed our song-writing process. Darius’ bendy time signatures were as slinky as his on-stage body-shapes. I regret that we never figured out how to continue.”

As do I Richie, as do I. Want to plug anything?

Darius: “I write novels about wizards and spaceships. You can buy them on Amazon.”

Pete: “I now run Reckless Yes Records with former Louder Than War editor Sarah Lay, who I met through continuing to work with John Robb. We release records on vinyl and CD as well as digital. We have fantastic bands like Llines, Fightmilk, Chorusgirl and Bugeye on our roster and it’s growing all the time.”

Richie: “I am a licenced Ham-Radio operator - and still have a stupid beard.”

An interview with Nick Cope of The Candyskins

THE CANDYSKINS 

It’s hard not to think of Creme Brûlée - The League Of Gentlemen’s dogged rock act - when thinking of The Candyskins. Songwriters of some excellence, few bands endured a ride as bumpy or as laced with disappointment as they. Shit business? Turns out it’s still rather fun, actually. And their story is certainly one with an ending happier than it could have been. I loved The Candyskins growing up, and as such, their victories felt as much mine as theirs. This addition to ‘Indie Heaven’ was a joy to assemble. Read on for a conversation with vocalist Nick Cope…

Hey Nick! It occurred to me that, while I followed The Candyskins pretty much from start to end, I don’t know loads about how the band came to be. I know a bunch of you were at school together, and grew up in Islip, Oxfordshire…

“So, my brother Mark [Cope, guitarist], the other Nick [Burton, guitarist] and myself did everything together growing up in the village. We were metalers, skateboarders, punk rockers… probably in that order too. Mark wasn’t bothered about playing an instrument at the start, but he always bought all the records and listened to John Peel and stuff, so he was a big influence on what I listened to. Nick and I formed a punk band and Mark then bought some drums and joined another punk band. We had known John [Halliday, drummer] from the village school and he was a proper musician with proper drums and stuff but he didn’t join us until a few years later once we had left the village. Move on a few years and a few reincarnations of the band later - which involved a brief excursion into trying to be Kid Creole & The Coconuts - Mark learnt guitar, John came on board… and The Candyskins were born!”   

You signed to Geffen pretty much off the bat. A big deal to be on the same label as Nirvana and Guns ‘N Roses in the early ‘90’s…

“To quote Charles Dickens - and his great grandson is a friend on Facebook! - ‘it was the best of times, it was the worst of times!’ Signing was the best thing. We went from doing a few gigs in Oxford to flying to LA to meet the company and doing in-stores at Tower Records and touring round the US for three months. We really were living the dream. We sold a few records [of 1991’s Space I’m In] and the company seemed to like us. They committed to the second and third albums in the deal, but as the wheels left the tarmac at LAX, I couldn’t help thinking that it was going to be a lot harder second time around…”

And was it?

“Well we had obviously neglected performing at home in the UK because we didn’t have a record deal there, so we got on with the job of the ‘difficult second album’, happily revisiting the jangly baggy sound of the previous one .But what’s that coming over the hill ? Is it Nirvana! So we tried to fit in with that, and were listening to Dinosaur Jr., Teenage Fanclub and the rest, but the album [1993’s Fun?] didn’t do well, and so we moved on to the third album. It became like a game. We do demos, they listen to them, they ask for more. We do more, we wait, they say do more. And then they sent someone over to the UK to drop us. If I’m correct in thinking, they came to the show we did with Radiohead and Supergrass in Oxford - or it could have been Ride. We then started doing what we should have been doing all along - building a fanbase at home. We changed management and set off on the quest again…”

How did you come out of that deal financially, if you don’t mind me prying?

“It was shit. We all had to find jobs washing up, working in restaurants, cleaning floors and the like, but the desire to be a band was still there so we soldiered on doggedly. The rise of Radiohead was timely. We’re up to our waist wading through the quagmire of major label record company nonsense, and Thom and the fellas jog past us majestically with the wind in their hair.”

Did you ever get tired of reading the words ‘Radiohead’ and ‘Supergrass’ in reviews, when the only thing you really had in common was you shared a postcode?

“Well, we were all really supportive of each other, to be honest. Oxford has such a great tradition of bands and crew. Everyone knows each other so it was a massive boost to everyone in the city that they were doing so well. Plus they were all brilliant bands.”

You existed in an era where the music press still held great sway. What were your experiences with NME, Melody Maker and the like?

“At the beginning, we weren’t as cool, young and hip as Ride. And then we weren’t as cool, young and hip as Radiohead or Supergrass. We had a great relationship with the wonderful John Harris. He came to New York to do a piece for the Melody Maker, but we never cracked the NME and I remember a really bad album review that Blur guest reviewed which I’ve never read!! My brother Mark was an avid NME reader from an early age, so I think it bothered him a lot more than it did me. We had a few decent live reviews but we were just one of many bands doing their stuff.”

The opener of Fun?, ‘Wembley’, was a song I was obsessed with growing up. I think the line, “a love as big as Wembley” is just really, really lovely…

“That’s very kind! It’s one of my favourites too! ! At the time, we were very much influenced by Teenage Fanclub and Dinosaur Jr., so I was trying to write something like that. I do remember after working it out with the other Nick he said ‘I’m going to make up a great solo for this’ - and that evening he did! This feels a bit like I’m in a music biopic…”

Well, sticking with that theme, tell me about the decision to record 'For What It's Worth', by Buffalo Springfield, which was a single in 1991. You were a band rarely short of a tune. It seems surprising to release a cover as a single…

“We needed a hit! The record company wanted us to do it, basically. The Soup Dragons had done ‘I’m Free’ by The Rolling Stones and the idea was to do a cover version with a shuffly beat. Actually, we did get into trouble with the Stones for the sample [of the tribal chants from ‘Sympathy For The Devil’) which we had to redo. The other Nick did a very good Mick Jagger impression on that one but it did take a few takes!” 

Music video of Mrs Hoover by The Candyskins 1996

I was also hugely into your song ‘Mrs. Hoover’, which was a single in 1996. Almost twenty-five years on, what do you think Mrs. Hoover is doing?

“Good question! It was very loosely based on a neighbour. Not sure where they are now, but the Mrs. Hoover in the song has hopefully won the lottery and spends the day tending her garden with an army of pugs sniffing around her fluffy slippers.”

The same year - and a single from the same parent album, Sunday Morning Fever - you had a hit with Monday Morning! In like a bullet at number 34 in the charts. It was super exciting. I think Candyskins fans, aware of the bumps in the road prior, were really rooting for you at that moment…

“We were on TFI Friday! It was a very exciting experience. It was terrifying, but it was the accumulation of a lot of gigging and promotion and it felt amazing. Like we were a proper band at last! Little did we know…”

It wasn’t long before you split…

“Well, we carried on coming back from the dead for a few more years after - we even got to return to the States after signing to Velvel Records - but after that didn’t quite go to plan we retuned home, had a few artistic differences and that, I’m afraid, was the end of that!” 

There’s been a few reunion shows since. In 2007 you played the last night of the famous Zodiac venue in Oxford. That was filmed for the 2010 documentary Anyone Can Play Guitar, which chronicled the history of the Oxford music scene. Then there was Truck Festival in 2009…

“Once again, they were the best of times, they were… The first one was really stressful. It seemed like we had something to prove and I really didn’t enjoy it as I was working as a waiter in town and it all felt wrong .When we did Truck a few years later it was great fun because I really didn’t care what was going on. I think because I was performing regularly in my new incarnation by that point…”

Speaking of which…

“So post Candyskins, my brother Mark became an excellent guitar teacher. He goes into Oxford primary schools and teaches children the love of music and song and he still writes and performs great songs under the name Nine Stone Cowboy. Nick Burton is a most excellent wine connoisseur in Bristol. John Halliday is a most excellent drum teacher and runs a recording studio in Oxford. And I present a series on Cbeebies called Nick Cope’s Popcast with my grandson and my whippet Norman!”

Bloody hell. That’s amazing. I’m so pleased for you, Nick!

“Thanks! I have six albums of totally original inspirational family songs available on my website. There are animations on YouTube. And check out the Nick Cope’s Popcast every Saturday morning on Cbeebies at 9.20am or catch the whole series on BBC iPlayer!” 

An interview with Rachel Ratajski of Hopper

HOPPER

Don’t be alarmed if you’ve never heard of Hopper. Too few did in the short time they existed between 1992 and 1998. I came to them on their second single, ‘Baby Oil Applicator’ which I heard Steve Lamacq play on the radio one night when he was distracting me from doing my homework. It was good, but then the album, English and French came in 1996. It featured a song called ‘Ridiculous Day’ – and amazing, strange, unsettling artwork. ‘Ridiculous Day’ was the dizziest, dreamiest thing I’d ever heard at that point. Like John Barry doing Throwing Muses. Singer Rachel had the strangest delivery too; every bit of intonation you expected her to do, she did the opposite. And then… nothing.

It’s tough to find much of Hopper’s music on the internet, though there is a decent John Peel session here. May I recommend you purchase a copy of the album, here.

And read this chat with Rachel Ratajski…

Hey Rachel. I loved Hopper, specifically the song ‘Ridiculous Day’, which was a single in 1996. I thought it was the most euphoric thing I’d ever heard…

“I liked that one! It was Bernard [Butler]’s idea to put strings on the song. We had a string section come along to the studio, RAK, to record. Unfortunately, I was ill on that day, so I didn’t get to see them. My memory of writing that song is very dim after so many years, but the music is uplifting and yet the lyrical content is the opposite. It’s supposed to be read as quite claustrophobic and contained…”

You were signed to Factory Too, the label Tony Wilson set up in 1994 after Factory went down in 1992. What do you remember about Tony?

“My memories of Tony are fond ones. He was a generous man and he believed in us, sometimes more than we did ourselves. It was a bit of a strange situation to be in [signed to Factory Too] as I guess typically the Manchester music scene was more male dominated and he picked this southern, bespectacled and geeky looking girl to sign. I remember one time he marched us into the Haçienda, smiled to the security guards and said, “step aside these people are going to be huge” I said, “which people Tony?” quite bemused.”

It’s stories like that which are the precise reason I started ‘Indie Heaven’… 

“Tony made sweeping gestures of kindness which I sometimes was a little bit shy to fully accept. I do remember that one time we played a gig and he sent me a bouquet of ten red roses. The band Northern Uproar were onlookers and couldn’t fathom it. “She looks like a teacher” one of them said.”

Bernard Butler produced your debut album English and French. Nigel Godrich, fresh from working on Radiohead’s The Bends, engineered it. Do you have any memories of those guys?

“I was happy to work with Bernard as he immediately accepted working with us after hearing some demos of the band. I think he understood where I was coming from and the music resonated with him. He made us work very hard in the studio, but it was a fun experience. Bernard and Nigel were easy going and good to be around creatively.”

Before Factory Too you put out a couple of records on Damaged Goods. I loved, and indeed, love that label…

“Ian from Damaged Goods was aware of my previous band [Andalula's Locket] before Hopper. When I arrived in London at eighteen, I spent years writing songs and played what was then known as the toilet scene - venues like the Bull & Gate in Kentish Town...”

I’m interjecting to say RIP the Bull & Gate… 

“There was a big independent scene going on at that time, very thriving and I was glad to meet Ian and release some music for him. It was exciting as I knew he was the man who put out the first Manic Street Preachers records.”

You got a lot of comparisons to other female fronted bands of the era. Obviously this is silly and being ‘female fronted’ isn't a genre. But I also thought you were a lot artier and strange sounding than a lot of the bands that were cited as comparison…

“I agree with you. Those lazy comparisons totally pissed me off! Some people in the industry were going around saying we were a Sleeper rip off. To make this comment means they didn’t listen properly. The lyrics, my stage presence, my punk mentality and my whole approach to the business of making and releasing records was totally opposite.”

Okay, here’s the big question. Hopper: what went wrong?

“Yeah, it ended too soon and I do feel we could’ve stuck together more. It was disappointing. London Records pulled funding from Factory Too. Tony hawked our demos around but no one took him up on it. Bernard got our bassist Chris [Bowers] some work touring the States with Edwyn Collins, which was cool, but Bernard also wanted Chris to join his band, which he fronted. We had a meeting and I was told that Bernards’s band had to be the main priority not Hopper. This was a tough thing to hear and was one of the reasons why the band collapsed because I didn’t want him to view Hopper as a secondary option.”

Well, it was a mighty shame. But you’re still making music!

“Yeah, whilst I enjoyed being a vocalist I didn’t want to stagnate. I wanted to learn new things, so I began to teach myself guitar and took drum lessons for two years. The songs that I wrote whilst teaching myself guitar became my solo project, Rachel Kyriaki - some of which are available now on the usual streaming platforms.”

Oh, don’t worry, I’ll link to them. Okay, to wrap this up, is there any chance I will ever get to see Hopper live. I missed out last time. Purleeeeeeeeeease…

“I think there’s no chance that we’ll ever get back together. Unfortunately the interest is just not there. I met Paul [Shepperd], the guitarist, last year at a gig he was playing. He’s now the guitarist in a Cardiff based band called John MOuse. It was great to see him but I know he’s busy and happy with that band now. The drummer Matt [Alexander] moved to Australia. I asked Chris if he’d like to work on some songs together but he declined. He doesn’t play bass anymore but is a visual effects animator.”