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This is a cracking
interview from Fanzine Negative Reaction #3 that came out around the
time of Eric's second album. Find out about Ian Dury drumming, Eric's
links to the infamous London SS and did he really play with an ex member
of Chelsea in his band. Interview was by Jon Romney. |
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STIFF
Records can be fairly summed up by the fact that they're the only record
company I know that have a pub slap in the middle of their offices. Well,
maybe not quite, but since they've moved operations out of their former
office in Alexander Street, using it as a sort of seedy shop, and moved into
new offices further down Alexander Street, they've managed to combine real
record business efficiency with their patented eccentricity.
What more could you ask? An office with a pub in the centre, no less. Stiff
staff drift to and fro past the crumbling Georgian terrace belonging to one
of Mr Truman's hostelries, while erstwhile Stiff pressman and genealogist
Pete Frame await the well-belated arrival of Wreckless Eric.
When Eric finally arrives in a taxi, he's true to form, apologising to Mr
Frame's imprecations with the same voice he uses to sing with, a weird
rasping Hull drawl. He's wearing a ludicrously incongruous pair of mirror
shades, which, hardly match his dusty Oxfam jacket. He's a weird tyke, is
Eric. If I didn't know anything about him, l'd probably take him for a right
pinhead, only I've heard his records, see, so I'd have to think twice.
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The Wreckless Eric album is one of my favourite platters of '78,and it's,
horribly underrated. It might be a bit
unsatisfying, not particularly well programmed, but it shows the grinning
geezer on the sleeve to be one of the
wittiest, nurkiest writer/performers to grace the scene, and without a
doubt, the best of the selected few who've made their recording debut on
Stiff, old Declan McMisery notwithstanding.
Wreckless came to public attention with the classic "Whole Wide World"
track, included on the first Stiffs compilation. After that, he knocked
about for a while, wrote some more songs, and then paid a visit to Stiff,
who suggested he reannounce his presence by releasing "World" as a single.
The B-aide, though, was the track that showed he was a talent to be reckoned
with: "Semaphore Signals", one of the beat tracks cut by anyone in 1977.That
track surprised a lot of people, as it featured Ian Dury not only as
producer, but also playing drums.
HR: How'd you get involved with Ian Dury?
Eric: I met him at this Graham Parker gig and we just got on. I phoned him
up, he told me to come round, so I did. We were talking about song-writing,
that's all he was doing at the time, just writing songs and going around
telling people he was going to do the Eurovision Song Contest. I always
liked the Kilburns, they were incredible... |
NR: Were they e definitive influence on you then?
E: Well, I didn't like it when it was that flashy jazzy band. That was good
about the Kilburns was that they were so seedy. The first band with band
...I saw 'em again with Charlie Sinclair on bass, I tried to get him in my
band at one stage, but he was a bit wary of it. I think he always thinks
that people want 'im because of his size. I didn't realise he was that little
actually!
NR: What's Dury like as a producer?
E: Ian's not a Phil Spector, there's no Phil Spectors knocking about, the
nearest is Dave Edmunds...well, what Ian does
there's got to be no slip ups on a record. I don't think he actually goes to this
extreme, but he nearly does - of getting a metronome out, or a drum machine,
to see if the thing doesn't speed up.
17R:But it's difficult to play with a drum machine because it's always going
to be more precise than you.
E: That's what screwed me up with Ian, I wasn't getting into rock 'n'
roll any more, I was getting into technology. If I play with a drum machine,
over a space of 8 bars, I get out with it, and by the end of
the sequence I'll be back in with it - you make one bar longer and one a fraction
shorter, a tight band is always doing that, it's microscopic,
but
if you play with a drum machine,
you'll see it, because
you never fall in with the beat properly. Playing with a band isn't
mechanical, it's biological.
THE collaboration with Dury carried on through the Stiffs tour last October,
on which Eric was accompanied by ex-Kilburn sax ace Davy Payne (now a paid-up
Blockhead), Denise Roudette on bass, and Ian on drums again.
Eric: He's very
good. He used to know Charlie Watts and he gave him a drum kit. His left hand's a bit
weak, he'd just lift it up and let it
fall on the snare drum; he had the stick taped to his hand.
Discussing the art of singing, the Sultan of Scruff explained the somewhat
chaotic state he found himself in at the time of
that tour, a period in his life which led him to be the scourge of Stiff's
offices for a while.
Eric: Eventually, due to living on 30 bob a week and eating fuck all, I got
into quite a poor state of health, and that came to a head on the Stiff tour ...I had flu and laryngitis and God knows what else.
It took quite a long time to get my voice back, but it's on top form at the
moment, and that's through doing breathing
exercises, running, all the things that drummers do.
It's really boring...most people don't bother about it...
NR: You're not training to sing like Etta
James or someone like that, are you?
E: She's a sophisticated soul singer, really, they have to use throat
sprays, all hind of things. Larry Wallis used to use a throat spray in the
Fairies. Now, you're supposed to use it once a day, it's
got a small amount of opium in it, and every number he'd turn round to the amp and PSSHHT: down his throat, and he used to come
off every night and ruin himself.
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Larry Wallis also produced the Eric debut album, and a fine piece of work it
is, too, perfectly capturing the manic roughness of the songs. I'd always thought
of Wallis in the past as just another heavy
metal scrap merchant, so I was surprised to hear him turn out such a consummate piece of
...well, you can only call it anti-production.
How did he come to work with Eric?
E: Hell, I did some things with Ian and it didn't really work out. Well,
that's what he did with the Kilburns, it started off a bit
grubby and then he cleaned it up. That's what he was doing with my stuff, and I was getting a bit worried about
it, so I got to
know Larry on the Stiff tour, drinking and that, and then his producing the album was a foregone conclusion.
NR: You've got a very weird guitar sound on there, very scratchy...
E: Yeah, I did that on a Rickenbacker with everything on full treble, no bass
on it. I also used a fender Twin which I had turned right down, and a Fender Champ which I had turned full
up, all with
treble on. But I'm not playing much guitar now, just concentrating on singing. |
NR: So when you get back on stage, you'll be just hanging around the
microphone?
E: No, what I'm thinking of doing is taking my guitar with me and taking all
the strings off, having it plugged into a really
flashy amp and just pretending to play. People'll say, I saw Eric, what sort
of strings does he use? I'll say, I use ultra-light
strings, psychic gauge strings. I had to mime on a TV show that we did in
Amsterdam. I had a short curly lead that went in the
guitar - out the guitar and into the bass. Nobody
noticed. I was playing the
guitar left-handed, it looked like I didn't have a clue.
To coincide with the album, Eric took a band on tour. Davy Lutton and Barry
Payne who'd played drums and bass respectively
on
the album, stuck around, as did John Glyn, who'd played sax on 'Telephoning Home'
(the track that didn't make the 10-inch version). Together with former Chelsea member Henry
Badowski (now in
Cpt. Sensible's King), the band were christened the New Rockets, but all was not stable...
E: It was a very unbalanced sort of band. I mean, the drummer had been with
T.Rex for four years, been in Eire Apparent, loads of bands, Steve Ellis, he worked with Wings...
he was about 35 and getting
pin3ed off with riding up and down the M1...it gets
to be not people's idea of fun after a while;
he was a good drummer, just not
the right sort of drummer for me. He's OK, lived round at his house for a bit.
NR: John Glyn played in X-Ray Spex for a while,
didn't he?
E: Yeah... I think he did it for the experience, I think he went tack to art
school afterwards.
It wasn't a vocation with
him-The bass player was only 17, it was his first professional gig, he's very
strange, he's Davy Payne's brother; Davey's stranqe, but his brother's
stranger, he'd go all day and never talk to anyone. Charlie Fiart (another ex-Kilburn>
played on the album, and he played keyboards for a week, then we got another
guy (Padowski)...he was 19 and a fucking lunatic,
he used to have fits in the back of the van. It was the most
disastrous outing, in a way.
NR: One important feature of the tour and the album was your suit. (The one
he wears on the sleeve, a hideously good concoction laced with birds on a satinish
back-ground). Where did you get it?
E: I made
it, It's dead easy to make
clothes, you can almost
do it by lying down on the floor and getting someone to draw around you.
Making clothes is common sense,
really...
NR: But it must take dedication to year a suit like that.
E: What's wrong with it?
NR: Well, it's horrible, or
beautiful, depending
on your sense of irony. It
looks like there are still pins stuck in it. Did you
make the shirt yourself, too?
E: No, Brighton, Brighton's the place for shirts. There's a shop in the
backstreets of Brighton where you can get these horrible shirts for
£1-99,and they've got helicopters end insects and birds all over
them ... they're all too small and they come from
Hong Kong. The cuts on the sleeves come up to your elbows.
NR: The Hong Kong shirt industry's putting British shirts out of business.
E: I'm not surprised,
they're bloody good shirts,
I love 'em. Clothes are all riqht, there are some 'orrible ones. Yeah,
interesting subject, shirts ...I like that Plummet Airlines song,
"Silver Shirt"...
The mention of Plummet Airlines brings us on to the subject of a bloke who
used to work with that now defunct band, namely Malcolm
Morley, better known for his work with Help Yourself,
and briefly with
Man in their "Rhinos Winos"
period. Malcolm, it
seems is, currently working with Wreckless in the capacity of musical
advisor, but won't actually be in Eric's new band, who
are currently coming together
with a view to a tour in October.
Eric; Malcolm's sort of helping me out a bit. I'm going to have a permanent
band together. I've been working with a drummer and
a base player, they're really nice blokes, a very good tight rhythm section,
they've been working together for three years
...They used to be in a band called the Tools...did you ever hear of them?
NR: Yeah, with Kelvin Colney.
E: That's right, he's in the White Cats now. he drummer's Norwegian, he's
called Geir Wade (pronounced Geer Vahder), the bass
player's just called John Brown. He used to call himself Johnny Belsen and
wear leather trousers apparently. They used to be
in a band with a guy called Andrew Matheson... |
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NR: Oh, I know, Zigzaq's always cracking him
up to be semi-legendary. He's
tied up with all that Norwegian scene, Casino Steel and so on...
E: Yeah, we're on to a great topic here. There's a possibility
I might do some
work with Casino Steel. I hope my band'll be called
the Firm, anyway...
NR: Better still, you should call it the Corporation. On the publicity
photos, instead of having a picture of the band, you could have a fat man,
with an arrow pointing to his stomach, marked "the
Corporation"...
E: A fat man that looks like he works for the council
yeah!!
NR: What new songs have you got for the next album, then?
E: Oh, do you want a complete rundown? Yeah, why not. Well, there's "Roll Over
Rockola" -that's my rock 'n'
roll song, and it mentions
a Viva Tonester, that's my favourite record player; "I Wish It would
Rain"...
NR: The old Temptations song?
E: No..."The Final Taxi", "Walking On The Surface of the Moon",
a version of "Dizzy", a
song called "Veronica".
NR: Ahh, that's a nice name.
E: Really? I thought it was the silliest name I could think of.
NR: No, it's a great name...like Veronica Lake.
E: What, is that somewhere in America?
NR: No, she was n film star, She had this famous pee-a-boo hairstyle over one
eye-maybe she only had one eye ...
E: Oh, I see...They're all my songs except "Dizzy". The new album's gonna have
a lot of bollocks, no saxophones kicking about, just
clangy guitars and sicky tunes on the Voz Continental.
NR: Really? That's a pity, I thought Davey Payne really stole the first album
...with him playing with you, was there a
conscious attempt to sound like the Kilburns? When I heard "Rags and
Tatters", I thought it was an old track of theirs or
something. especially that Benny
Hill sax bit at the end.
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E: Yeah, I probably did a little 'bit. You move through things.
Probably my
next album after this will be a country album or
something.. If you want to, you can do anything, and I'll have a permanent
band, so..
NR: I was wondering whether you were influenced by John Cale at all. "Waxworks" sounds a lot like "Helen of Troy",
the mood's
quite similar...
E: Well, actually, it came out wrong. It was a difficult number to do. It
should have come out much more in the Captain Beefheart
vein. When people ask me about my influence, I always tell 'em about
Beefheart.
NR: Everyone uses a Beefheart influence this days, but they seem to get it
wrong. It's always just chopped up like "Lick My
Decals Off", but they never get the character of it; what does Beefheart
mean to you?
E: Well, there's lots of influences
in it, lots of Robert Johnson and Sun Ra,
that Delta Blues thing, it might
sound like old
hippy music sometimes,
but there's always that blues thing in it. Like in the
song 'Clear Spot" - "swamps all stinkin' and
rotten ...ughh.." and all that.
NR: "Sleepin' on the bayou in an old rotten cot..." That's really sticky-...
E: Sounds like John Lee Hooker, he's very spiritual.
It all sounds very earthy, and a lot of people don't get the connection, but
it's some-thing higher than that. Jimi Hendrix...it was apparent with him,
he
was a black blues chap, really. But I dunno, I used
to think about the Delta and all that a lot, but I've moved off that now. |
NR: What have you moved on to listening to now, then?
E: MY demos!' If you tune into long wave radio,
foreign stations,
they play all
these jumpy tunes, really horrible jolly tunes. They 're amazing, I've been working on them.
NR: Yeah, you can still get Teutonic drinking songs songs sometimes.
E: Yeah: I've been using a Vox Continental to do some of my writing on, and
you set all these silly tunes that
they insist on
... I'm an appalling organ player. I've got the Vox Continental , it's that
very 60s poppish sound...I don't want to get into any powerpop numbers or anything... "
Despite the witty and
somewhat acutely observant nature of some of Eric's songs (for fear of making
him sound like Patrik Fitzgerald) he still maintains a very firm conviction in the basic stupidity
of rock n' roll.
E: I was talking to Larry, and he said, "Well, I've been writing these
songs, but I don't know if they're any good'. So
I said, 'Well, pop's a load of shit
anyway,
you
don't have to worry about that'. When the Flamin' Groovies are doing "Yeah
My Baby", I mean,
'Yeah my baby yeah my baby you're drivin' me crazy', ...but
it works it's marvelous. All them people who've
got religion, look at Pete Townshend, he's acting like a wimp ...Look what
happened to Cliff Richard. Have you heard Tony
Hancock's 'The Blood Donor'? He's talking to this fat woman who's going in
to give blood, and he says,
"Just think - Cliff Richard might get yours, that'll slow him down a bit".
Jerry Lee Lewis is the chap,
actually, he says,
"Rock 'n' Roll is the
Devil's music, but I'm not a good Christian".' He's
still playing with the same amount of bollocks...he's much more into
country music which is ok, I love it, he's still into
wine and women. lt's no good being Christian
about rock n' roll 'coz rock 'n'
roll is fucking awful music. I still cling on
to the whole thing that rock n' roll is what your mum and dad don't like.
Gels is another thing. They seem to like rock 'n'
roll, but actually they don't, most gels are very straight. It goes against
all those
things like getting married and having kids...a nice
young man. What mother
wants her daughter to come home with a geezer
that stands on a stage and screams into a mike for a living?
Well, if you put it
that way ... I dunno really. These
last couple of years were supposed to have been an age of enlightenment,
every new band pushing down the barriers musical
intolerance,
and clearing the way for a Golden Age in which the Residents and Abba alike will reign
supreme at the top of
the charts ...And then you get someone like Wreckless Eric or the Groovies
come along and put forward some blatantly
reactionary opinions
about the whole thinq, and make them sound totally
convincing. Rock r.' roll is rubbish? Try telling that to Pere Ubu. Girls don't like it? Try telling that to the Slits.
Wreckless isn't revolutionising anything, except the fact that you can look
and sound like you've been through a hedge backwards and still be a pop star
(I remember when Eno's first solo
album came out - how could you sing
like
that
and get away with it that. Well it's the same sort of feeling with Eric's
records; he
breaks all the rules. A record should never sound
like that, but it does. Songs can't be that off-centre, but they are, and it
works completely.
Wreckless Wrock is fun, because it's possessed with all the sense of
innocent irresponsibility of true teenage music, but coupled with a sense of misery and
sordidness that puts the edge on the humour. Look at it this way: Is that anyway for a grown man to behave? I should hope so.
Jon Romney.
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