Peter Doherty, the Millennial Jean Genie/Jean Genet, will embark on his first solo acoustic tour in ten years, with a series of intimate ‘Songbook’ shows in the spring. Peter will be performing a selection of nuggets from his back catalogue, including classics from The Libertines, Babyshamble and not forgetting all of his delicious solo projects/records.
Peter promises to take audiences on an unforgettable ride into his strange and fascinating world where nothing is as it seems and life itself is an intense euphoric dream. Friends and special guests are expected to join him on occasion across these seventeen dates. ‘The Battered Songbook Tour’ culminates in a show at London’s Royal Albert Hall on the 5th May. Tickets for the UK shows will go on sale Friday 24th Februaryat 10:00am and are available from: https://linktr.ee/peterdohertyofficial
APRIL
13th THU Belfast – Limelight
14th FRI Dublin – Opium Rooms
15th SAT Cork – Cyprus Avenue
18th TUE Glasgow – SWG3
19th WED Stockton – KU Bar
21st FRI Newcastle – Riverside
22nd SAT Lancaster – Kanteena
23rd SUN Hull – The Welly Club
24th MON Norwich – The Waterfront
26th WED Manchester – O2 Ritz
27th THU Liverpool (Anfield) – The Church
29th SAT Bristol – O2 Academy
30th SUN Falmouth – Princess Pavilion
MAY
2nd TUE Oxford – O2 Academy
3rd WED Sheffield – O2 Academy
4th THU Birmingham – O2 Institute
5th FRI London – Royal Albert Hall
Peter Doherty has released ten albums – three with The Libertines Up The Bracket (2002), The Libertines(2004) & Anthems For Doomed Youth(2015); three with Babyshambles: Down In Albion (2005), Shotters Nation (2007) & Sequel To The Prequel (2013); two solo albums: Grace/Wastelands (2009) & HamburgDemonstrations (2017); one as Peter Doherty & The Puta Madres (2019) and most recently a collaboration with Frederic Lo The Fantasy Life of Poetry & Crime (2022).
Loudhailer to annoy the others within 100 yards? Check
Lager Drink? Check
Cider Drink? Check
It’s only a movie by Dunstan Bruce about his band Chumbawumba and what he’s doing now. with I Get Knocked Down you have warts n all no bullshit untold story of Leeds-based anarcho-pop band Chumbawamba. Founding band member Dunstan Bruce is now 59, and he is struggling with the fact that the world seems to be going to hell in a handcart. Twenty years after his fall from grace, Bruce is angry and frustrated, but how does a retired middle-aged radical get back up again? In this punk version of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, Dunstan is visited by the antagonistic ghost of his anarchist past – his alter ego, ‘Babyhead’ – who forces him to question his own life, sending him on a search for his long-lost anarchist mojo. Following Bruce’s voyage of rediscovery, redemption, and reawakening, I Get Knocked Down acts as a call to arms to those who think activism is best undertaken by someone else.
Set to hit selected cinemas over the next few weeks it’s a fantastic trip down memory lane and some laugh-out-loud clips from their adventures in the gliterry world of rock and roll and a look behind the curtain of the pop world. A wonderful way to while away 90 minutes. The 80s and 90s (like many our age) flew by with a bazillion things to do – pre-internet – pre-social media and Sounds and NME were still a thing and CDs had taken over the world there were still no downloads or mobile phones. Those were certainly the days and the world needed changing and I guess Bruce thought he was gonna change the world and now all these years later with the power of hindsight he did a little bit – well, a little bit more than many pop stars.
I Get Knocked Down is a warm, engaging, and light-hearted look back on his/their time in the limelight. as far as popumentaries go this is a belter, thoroughly enjoyable. Like em or loath them you couldn’t ignore them and their anarchopop – check out this flick and get a warm feeling all over then get out there and fuck the government they’re even shitter than new Labour ended up. If you’re looking for a soundtrack then this is a good ‘un. Leeds punks still have a great sense of humour and don’t take themselves too seriously and this film proves it. Get on it and fly the flag!
This new video and single is the light at the end of a very dark tunnel for Mike Peters so lets celebrate this Monday with the brand new video and song off the new album – Take it away MP…
NEXT is the brand new single from The Alarm and is available to listen to now at all DSP’s and online music services. Are you ready for what’s next? 28 February 2023 Subscribe – http://smarturl.it/SubscribeToTheAlarm
“Words cannot express the joy of leaving hospital after a long stay on the wards, especially when it means you have regained your health,” he says, referring to the last year of hospital visits, chemo treatments, and life-threatening pneumonia brought on with the relapse of his leukaemia, which was originally diagnosed in 2005.
While the single may signal that he’s newly energised from a healthy prognosis and ready to return to what he loves best – recording and performing – the fact is that Peters never stopped doing either of those things. Writing new music and performing it live to hospital staff while undergoing medical procedures to keep his cancer in check, Peters wrote “Next” with his trusty acoustic guitar and an IV stuck in his arm.
“The lyrics of the song were conceived while I was being treated for a leukaemia relapse and a lung that had filled with blood,” Peters explains. “The outcome was uncertain, but the medical and nursing staff did all they could to keep me going and, in fact, were probably the first people to hear what I was working up musically while they did their life saving work. It wasn’t planned, but once the realization hit me that I was going to be in hospital for a long time, I knew I needed my guitar to break the monotony of the isolation. Being able to play music to myself kept me going and I’m convinced that it helped me make the transition back to life.”
As a reminder of what he went through and what he leaves behind, Peters filmed the new video in hospital corridors, a familiar sight in the last year especially. “I wanted to film something that captured the elation of knowing you are going home, moving on, going forwards ready for what lies ahead, for what’s next,” he says. “At night and in between IV sessions, I would walk the very same empty hospital corridors of the North Wales Cancer Centre trying to preserve whatever human strength I could hang on to.”
Another Banger from Ms Moon lifted from her debut solo album, ‘Any Other Way’ is all killer and no filler. We’ve been longtime fans of her work and this is another cut from the excellent album ‘Dumb & In Luv’. Buy Here
For those who miss the fun, brash and ballsy, unapologetic rock ‘n’ roll of the early ’70s, fear not, as Gyasi is here to deliver the goods. Following his 2022 album for Alive, Pronounced Jah-See, the Nashville singer/guitarist/songwriter is releasing his new single Baby Blue today, with a full EP out later this month. With heavy riffs, stinging leads and a cocksure swagger, the four tracks manage to tap into the true essence of rock ’n’ roll, while also channelling the flamboyant likes of Bolan and Bowie in equal measure.
Carol Hodge is a seven-fingered, piano-pounding, Yorkshire-dwelling Singer-Songwriter. Think Regina Spektor meets Billy Bragg, but with fewer digits and a continuous existential crisis. Crass’ Steve Ignorant just about summed up this Northern Lass quite well.
This is her fourth album it’s a dreamy lovingly cool album. Whilst she might have her roots and ethics and moral fibre bourne out of underground punk rock it doesn’t sound much like ‘Feeding OF The Five Thousand’ to be fair. What it is is wholesome piano driven pop (generally) with earthy lyrics that sit comfortably on the sincere and the tongue in cheek. It opens with something of a My Chemical Romance big ballad in its melody with a relaxed vocal that builds for the chorus and a sparce construction as the lyrics unfold.
It’s not a style I generally tend to listen to but it’s not hard to appreciate how well these songs are constructed and how passionately they are delivered. I saw Carol support Ginger sometime last year and her passion and craft shon through as did her wonderfully possitive disposition. It was refreshing and different. Funnily enough her song ‘The Price’ features Ginger and is a really good pop song. At times Carol Hodge reminds me of Eddi Reader and songs like ‘Grayson’ are attention grabbing in its simplicity and delivery. The vocals and piano are intertwined and the lush strings are sufficiently low in the mix to let the story breath.
‘Never Run Out Of Things To Worry About’ has a bit of Depeche Mode meets New Order about its pulsing synths. Clean the Slate’ also features fellow Yorkshire dweller Chris Catalyst as the song “Whigs out” to it’s conclusion. This album is pretty much as far as you can get from, say Crass but thats cool that as an artist she can turn her hand to very different styles and that versatility is a possitive. She should head out on tour with Marc Almond they both do this Torch song style really well and I find it intriguing and alluring and find myseld focussing on the lyrics and the song rather than the style its delivered in often touching and always delivered with quality.
Take a left turn and let some melancholy into your life and give this seven-fingered, piano-pounding talent a go, you might just discover something you never thought you’d like. Punk as fuck see.
A post punk album for a post pandemic generation – hailing from Cardiff South Wales Can Kicker certainly kick up a fair fuckin’ din. its riotous at times and high tension other times. It’s not for the feint hearted, it’s not polished punk by numbers – it has rough edges and the needle veers into the red at times whilst vocalist Luke Penny has a fine knack of conveying they desperate, fractured nature of hardcore post punk really well. Its attention grabbing and makes you want to concertrate on what hes howling at on the frantic ‘My History Is Not For Me’ whilst the lead guitar scraped out its melody over a rhythm section busting a gut to get to the finish line in one piece.
‘Looking For My Love’ is trying to find its way in the world as it staggers around in your speakers like the Fall on speed. ‘Aimlessly, Continually, Boring’ does exactly what it says on the tin. The vocals sound disinterested not unlike what Lydon has perfected in recent PIL albums. The format is often the same as Can Kicker rage through various stages of post-punk from rapid (‘Sterilised Experience’) to the slower metronome-paced throb of ‘Waking Dream’ again housing Perrys’ drone like vocal. The one thing that stitches the songs of this album together is how fuckin’ loud it all sounds. I imagine (and hope) this was all recorded as loudly as possible. Nowhere better is it exampled that the final offerings of ‘Stupid Game’ part 1 and The final track ‘Stupid Game’ part 2. The first sounds like prime Subhumans whilst part two have acoustic guitars next to a feedback-delayed lead guitar sounding like a post apocalypse soundscape that disappears into a void you daren’t even look into. Noisy as fuck but a whole lot of fun if fun is grey, dark, challenging and loud!
It’s loud, rapid, lo-fi punk rock oh and its on Drunken Sailor Records so it must be quality right? Right! Gaffer hail from Perth Australia and play punk rock. Thats it in a nut shell. Its inspired from way back when UK punk 82 hit the streets and bands like Chron Gen, Blitz and Partisans were learning to play punk rock. It’s pretty much twelve songs about life hacked out by a bunch of punks living the dream but with grit and determination and a love for what gets them through and enables them to play and record this. ‘Handcuff’ is punchy, mid tempo pogo pogo punk rock. The lyrics are spat out and the guitars are sharp as they hack and slash through your speakers. Old school from the new school paying respect but doing it their way.
‘Factory’ is slower but no less punchy as they champion Factory life. It is what it is with the one string solo hanging on by a thread its punk rock baby – authentic and enchanting. It draws you in and retains your attention exactly as it should be.
The album lists back and fore from fast punk rock with guts and aggression (‘Wonga’) through the more focussed catchy (‘Hang’) to the swaggering (‘Deadbeat’). You have to love the smash and grab of ‘Generation Gap’ as the cymbals crash and that riff cuts deep. It’s true what they say about the louder you play it the better it sounds. It certainly grabs your attention and whilst its nothing new it is a fresh take on a style long forgotten – whilst many of the originators went forward with a more metallic sound Gaffer stay true to their roots and dish up a fine platter of punk for a new generation. The more you dig into this album the better songs jup out on you from ‘Skin Of Your Teeth’, the excellent ‘Stop’ and the early Buzzcocks of ‘Clean Shirt’ my suggestion is if you’re looking for some fresh blood on an old genre of UK 82 then Gaffer is your one stop shop – Go get some and invite your friends.
Back in the mists of time, sometime around 1994, I was gifted a second-hand t shirt (sleeves cut off, obviously). On the front was a cartoon dog and a cat with a baseball bat, in neon pink writing the band logo of some obscure, local glam band who had long since split up. That band were called Sister Morphine and on the back of that very same t shirt was the immortal phrase ‘SUCK MY JUBE!’. To this day I still have no idea what that means, and until recently what Sister Morphine actually sounded like, but I loved that t shirt and wore it to death. Turns out the singer of that very same band would be my boss/editor/sender of cool music during my time as a reviewer for the legendary Uber Rock website.
South Wales based Sister Morphine were regulars on the club circuit back in the late 80’s/early 90’s, supporting the likes of Last Of The Teenage Idols and Gunfire Dance. But sadly, the stars didn’t align and the band went their separate ways. Who would’ve guessed that Gaz Tidey, guitarists Jamesy & Jonesy, bassist Mike DeSouza and drummer Denley Slade would get the band back together during lockdown and record the debut album that they threatened to make back in those halcyon days of hairspray, fags and thunderbird wine.
So, while you and I were baking banana bread, drinking beer at 10am and watching Tiger King on Netflix, Sister Morphine were scouring their lofts for lost rehearsal tapes, to find the best versions of their beloved songs from a lifetime ago, to see if they really could resurrect Sister Morphine from the graveyard of empty bottles and claim their rightful place as the kings of Glunk Rock 2023!
But why should you care about lost songs recorded by a bunch of 50-somethings, written a lifetime ago? Well, it turns out Sister Morphine can knock out a few tunes, and bloody good ones at that! I must say I was pleasantly surprised when I heard the first single and title track ‘Ghosts Of Heartbreak City’. Who knew Mr. Tidey had such a sleazy vocal delivery that would stand up after all these years. With a voice that sits somewhere between Ricky Warwick and Zodiac Mindwarp, he takes the catchy melody by the scruff of the neck, over a tune that could be an AI generated mash up of The Dogs D’amour and The Quireboys. It’s a 70’s glam rock boogie of a tune and the perfect introduction to the party going on down at Heartbreak City!
Recorded at RedRock studios in Blackwood and produced by Lyndon Price of Welsh metal legends Wild Pussy, ‘Ghosts Of Heartbreak City’ is a 15-song blast of high-octane rock n’ roll that features regulars from their live sets, lost tracks from the archives and four brand new songs for you to devour.
Opener ‘Holy City Zoo’ has already been likened to Motorhead by those in the know, and references Bowie, Duran and Roxy Music. It’s a 2 minute & 22 second statement of intent, job done.
You want punky, low slung rock n’ roll with more attitude than Rocky on steroids? Then look no further than second track ‘Do You Wanna Get Wasted?’. Now that’s a song title any angst-filled youth of today can get on board with, right? Good job it sounds like Zodiac Mindwarp jamming with Backyard Babies and Johnny Thunders then, innit!
The Scandinavian punk rock vibes continue on the likes of second single ‘Nothing Dirty In The Truth’ where the rousing verses and killer chorus showcase a band who really mean it. Elsewhere, ‘Black Hearts & Bruised Egos’ channels Circus Of Power and early Alice Cooper garage rock vibes to great effect.
What’s not to like here? I’m loving this album. Maybe it’s the nostalgia, or maybe I’m biased, but I’ll tell you one thing for certain, Sister Morphine have some killer tunes going on.
Lifting a page out of Tyla’s songbook, ‘Cry The Rain’ is a big tune about love gone bad, set to a Faces-lite rock n’ roll boogie, with some rousing backing vocals. Sava a place in your heart for this one. The hook-laden ‘8 Tracks & Zodiacs’ is another of the new songs, and a potential single for sure. A song about a girl, it has catchy 90’s brit rock vibes that sit well and is a serious earworm.
The strengths of this album lie in the songwriting, the diversity and the production. It’s all pretty high-octane stuff, but they do throw in a curve ball towards the end with the countrified blues of ‘Living With Snakes’. Acoustics, slide guitar and harmonica go a long way to show Sister Morphine ain’t one trick ponies.
While ‘Ghosts Of Heartbreak City’ has one foot planted firmly in the past, it brings a classic sound smack up to date for 2023 with a great production. Full of rock n’ roll nostalgia and clever tongue-in-cheek lyricism, we get sleazy punk rock, 70’s boogie rock and countrified goodness all wrapped up in one cool little package.
If Sister Morphine’s only ambition was to realize their dream of releasing a debut album that could stand tall with the artists of their era, then they have easily succeeded. But I feel they have surpassed those ambitions by taking the music to places their teenage selves could never imagine. ‘Ghosts Of Heartbreak City’ is a pretty unique album, in that it has been recorded by a bunch of 50 somethings, yet it has the energy and sonics of a band half their age. And you know what? I’ll be happy to file that shiny new CD in the rack, somewhere between Shotgun Messiah and Skid Row, where it should have sat for the last 30 years.
After releasing two albums in two years, 2023 promises to be another busy year for David Ryder Prangley. “The man who put the glam in Mid-Glamorgan” (as said Simon Price) will be releasing his third solo album this spring, alongside a reissue of Rachel Stamp’s debut ‘Hymns For Strange Children’. Just after this interview took place, Rachel Stamp announced a date to coincide with the album release on 14th April at Islington Academy. For all the details and more, read on…
‘Vampire Deluxe’ was my favourite album of 2021. There seems to be a strong lyrical link between it and ‘Black Magic And True Love’; were they written at the same time, or did you already have the idea to release two albums in quick succession?
Thank you Martin! I had most of the songs written for both albums before I recorded ‘Black Magic & True Love’ and I always had in my mind to release two albums in very quick succession, that sounded like companion albums. Kind of like The Police’s first two LPs where they sound the same and have a running lyrical theme. It was just a case of picking which songs went together and making two albums out of that. I did write ‘Sweet Heartbreaker’ and ‘Hey Stargazer’ after the first album was recorded. I actually had the guitar riff to ‘Sweet Heartbreaker’ kicking around for a few years and finally put lyrics to it. In general, over the two albums, and in fact on my next album too, I wanted the lyrics to all have a similar stylistic tone and I was conscious to not veer too far from the central themes of magic and space and other stuff that I’m too polite to talk about, but if you’ve heard the albums then you’ll know what I’m saying… The songs can be interpreted differently by different people and I did that on purpose. There’s no one meaning behind any of the songs and that’s why I didn’t print the lyrics on the albums. I want people to hear whatever they hear, even if it’s not what I actually sang.
pic by Rowan Spray
Tell us about your songwriting process. Do you demo songs at home once you have a solid idea, in order to choose which ones to put on an album? Does the finished song differ much from the demo? I noticed that old Ants demos were practically identical to the finished song, which I thought showed how strong Adam’s vision was for his songs. You seem to be similar, in having an image that is as important as the music.
I don’t have one process for writing, though I often make the songs up in my head and then have to work them out on guitar or piano. The songs on ‘Black Magic & True Love’ and ‘Vampire Deluxe’ are very simple in terms of structure, and I arrange all the basic parts for the different instruments but leave room for the players to bring their own personalities to the songs. The solos are left up to whoever plays them. It’s really important for me to work with people whose playing I like and it’s important that the band have a connection to the music. I’ve been really lucky to have great musicians with me on these albums – Rob Emms and Belle Star on drums, Laurie Black and Grog Lisee on piano, Anna-Christina on bass guitar, Liza Bec on recorder and saxophone and Drew Richards on guitar, who also co-produced ‘Vampire Deluxe’ with me. Adie Hardy co-produced ‘Black Magic & True Love’ with Marc Olivier co-producing the song ‘They Came From The Stars To Capture Our Hearts’. I started producing other bands whilst I was still in my band Rachel Stamp and I really enjoy it. A lot of what makes a good producer is being organised – which sounds a bit dull, but it’s vital to have a plan and rehearse stuff before you get to the studio so you know what you’re doing when you get there and don’t get freaked out when the red light turns on!
In terms of the connection between the image and the music – that’s vital for me. I want people to look at the cover of the record and when they play it, the songs fit perfectly with the cover image. It’s funny that you mention Adam Ant because I played bass with him for a short while. He’s a brilliant musician and a great arranger, especially with vocals. He’s certainly a musical and visual inspiration for me.
Pic by Ben Ga
What can you tell us about your upcoming solo album and the Rachel Stamp reissue? Any gigs lined up? My next album is on the way! I have the title and cover image already and I’ve demo’d three songs and have about four more written and I have some songs leftover from the first two albums. This album will continue the themes of the first two but have a few twists. I’ve been singing in a lower register lately so I’m going to explore that side of my voice as well as what people know me for already. I’m hoping to release the first track from the next album in April, around the time of the Rachel Stamp re-issue. That came about when we were approached by the label Easy Action to contribute the Rachel Stamp cover of T Rex’s ‘Calling All Destroyers’ to a compilation LP they’re putting out. We got on well with the label and they suggested re-issuing ‘Hymns For Strange Children’ so here we are, and the release is set for Friday 14th April and we’re playing a show at the O2 Academy Islington in London to celebrate the release on the same day.
To be honest, it was quite odd going back and working on ‘Hymns For Strange Children’ again. I never listen to that album, but it was a surprisingly enjoyable experience. I had to go back and tweak some of the songs for the vinyl version so ended up spending several hours with headphones on immersed in Stampworld! I think when we originally made that album I wasn’t thrilled with the sonics but in retrospect I love it. It’s a really unusual album that doesn’t sound at all dated and doesn’t sound like anything else. I always described Rachel Stamp as ‘Prince meets Black Sabbath’ with the heavy riffs, tri-tones and then the synths on top of it all. We never used programming or sequencers – it was all played live and has a very different feel to, say, the industrial bands or indie guitar bands of the time. Everyone in Rachel Stamp has very eclectic tastes and generally were into more off the wall bands like Devo, The Nymphs, Big Star, Parliament, Sabbath, Bodycount… bands that were doing their own thing. It was important for us to do our own thing too and people had a weird reaction to us because they couldn’t easily catagorise us. The press tried to dismiss us some kind of glam revival which we never were. I mean, we loved Marc Bolan and David Bowie and Sweet, and me and Robin were certainly into some of the 80s LA glam metal bands like Ratt and Poison but we weren’t trying to revive anything, we were all about the moment. I would say that visually we were more influenced by English punk and by bands like We’ve Got A Fuzzbox and We’re Gonna Use It and Prince and by movies like Blade Runner, Near Dark and The Abominable Dr Phibes.
The fans totally got it, but other bands were kind of scared of us. They couldn’t understand how we could walk around the streets looking like we did and then get on stage and play super loud high energy heavy music. So many musicians jump on trends and it blows their minds to see someone just using their imagination. It’s actually not that hard.
Are there any more plans for Sister Witch? I was so pleased to see them play once! I love the Sister Witch album and I love writing and working with Lux Lyall. We still write together and we co-wrote a lot of her first solo album and I played guitar on it too. In fact, we just wrote a song for my next album called ‘Let’s Fall Apart Together Tonight’.
I don’t think there will be another Sister Witch album as such but there will definitely be more DRP/Lux Lyall music out there.
As an amateur musician, currently swapping between guitar and bass, I’ve been learning a lot of your bass lines. Nerdy question; what’s your favourite guitar and bass, live and in the studio?
My favourite bass guitar is my BC Rich Eagle and Anna-Christina actually played that bass on the ‘Black Magic & True Love’ and ‘Vampire Deluxe’ albums and at my live shows. It has a really great mid-range and doesn’t just take over the low frequencies like a Fender Precision might do. I bought that guitar way back when Rachel Stamp got signed to WEA and I used it on the ‘Bring Me The Head Of Rachel Stamp’ EP but it got stolen a couple of years later. Fast forward about 17 years and I was looking on ebay and someone had it for sale! I recognised it because there was big chunk out of the headstock where I’d thrown it across the stage at a gig, so I knew it was mine. The seller was a young guitar dealer in Bristol who had no idea of its history – he’d just innocently bought it from a company that had found it in a skip! I told him the story and sent him some photos of me playing it and I luckily still had a copy of the police report from when it was originally stolen, and he was really cool about it all and we made an arrangement for me to get it back. I was so grateful. Since then, I’ve had the headstock repaired and I wrote ‘Suzi Q’ on the back in gold in tribute to Suzi Quatro who was the first musician I ever wanted to be when I was a kid. She played BC Rich basses in the late 70s.
pic by Rowan Spray
As far as six string guitar goes, my favourite for recording is my old 1972 Gibson SG Special with mini humbuckers that I bought about ten years ago. It has a very unique sound, kind of halfway between a Gibson and a Fender tone. The previous owner had refinished it in Cardinal Red, a non-regulation colour for that guitar so I got it for not much money at all because it wasn’t ‘vintage correct’. I don’t really care about ‘vintage’ or ‘all-original’, I just play something and if I like how it sounds and feels then I’m happy to use it. That guitar was all I used on ‘Black Magic & True Love’, plugged into a Marshall JCM 900 through a 4×12 speaker cabinet. I had the amp quite overdriven and I’d turn the volume knob of the guitar up or down depending on how much overdrive I wanted. On ‘Forever In Starlight’ I might have plugged it into a Roland Jazz Chorus or a Fender combo, I can’t remember exactly, but something with a cleaner sound than the Marshall. I did the solo on that song through a Mesa Boogie Mark 3 to get a kind of Santana sound. If you listen to that album my guitar is panned to the left and the guitar panned to the right is Drew Richards playing a Washburn Idol Goldtop. We did the same for 95% of ‘Vampire Deluxe’, except I also used a couple of different guitars to overdub some solos on that album, and there’s the acoustic guitars too which were my old Encore plastic back Ovation copy and Drew’s Washburn acoustic. Those two albums were, for the most part, recorded live in the studio with the band playing all at once. We then overdubbed percussion, vocals and a few solos. It’s a very simple approach but it’s amazing how effective and fast it is. I wish I had recorded all the Rachel Stamp albums this way. I plan to do the same for my next album.
When I play gigs, I use a different set up which is my Fender Stratocaster through a Marshall combo and I use a Suhr Riot distortion pedal that I leave on all the time. With that set up I can go from clean to fully distorted just using the volume control on the Stratocaster. Some people find that an odd set up but it’s pretty old school actually. It’s kind of how Brian may does it, except he uses a wall of Vox AC30s all on full volume!
How was it to play again with Adam Ant recently? You and Will obviously played with him some years ago. I’m guessing you fitted in pretty easily. Was he an influence on Rachel Stamp?
That recent chance to play with Adam again came out of the blue when Joe Holweger, Adam’s bass player, got covid and Adam was due to headline a big festival. I got a call from Will asking if I could step in and I was more than happy to. I knew most of the songs to play because, as you mention, I had played with him previously. I had to learn a few more songs and we did one rehearsal and then it was the gig in front of 10,000 people so no pressure, right?! A funny thing happened at that show – people probably don’t realise but when bands do those festival shows with so many other bands on the bill, you don’t get a soundcheck, you just go on and during the first song the band is usually frantically signalling the monitor engineer to turn things up or down so they can get their sound balance on the stage. The audience is hearing something else entirely that’s mixed by another engineer who is in the sound booth in the middle of the field. Well, at that show we walked on and kicked into ‘Dog Eat Dog’ which has a very prominent bass line and I just couldn’t hear my bass at all. I turned around and went to the bass amp and turned it up and still couldn’t hear it and then realised the amp wasn’t working! Luckily the bass guitar is fed directly to the front of house PA system as well as the amp so the audience could hear my bass fine, but I couldn’t hear it on stage. I had to rely on just knowing I was putting my fingers in the right place, but it was pretty nerve wracking. We got it all fixed after that though… Then during ‘Kings Of The Wild Frontier’ the entire stage power cut out and all the amps and guitars and everything just went silent! The audience started singing the song and it became this quite magical moment of us standing on the stage waiting for the power to come back on whilst the crowd serenaded us.
Adam was definitely a huge influence on Rachel Stamp. I even stole some of the lyrics from ‘Vive le Rock’ in our song ‘Ladies & Gents’ and we named a song ‘Pink Skab’ because when Will came up with that riff I thought he was playing an Ants b-side! We used to cover ‘It Doesn’t Matter’ and ‘Fall In’ too. Will had been a huge fan as a kid but I got into Adam a bit later, when a friend at school played me the b-sides to the singles. That’s what really got me, songs like ‘Christian Dior’ and ‘Physical’. When we first played with Adam, I think he was impressed that we knew all the ‘obscure’ songs and we could play most of them already. There’s a great video of us playing at the Scala and we open with ‘Plastic Surgery’ and go straight into ‘Lady’ and then segue into ‘The Day I Met God’ and the audience goes fucking nuts. They never expected in a million years to hear those songs and all that was basically Will’s idea. Adam would just say ‘what do you want to play?’ and we would play it and he would sing it. It was a pretty incredible thing to be a part of.
Would you consider playing in Europe, or post-B****t is it just too complicated/ expensive? It’s a selfish question, as I’m based in France now.
I would love to play in Europe! I’m doing more shows now with just an acoustic guitar and I really enjoy playing that way. My solo music lends itself to being performed in a stripped-down way. I’m not sure if that answers your question? I guess what I’m saying is that I’m very open to offers if someone wants to book me!
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