Ruts DC Part 2 – Segs Jennings February 2025
Virgin shows their caring side (not)! The band in turmoil makes a reluctant decision
I’d written this thing. “Witness Ye, the coming of the Bohemians” or something, and luckily we didn’t call ourselves The Bohemians! (laughs). But our manager at the time said to Virgin, “What if we add something to it?” So we stayed up all night going through dictionaries and the best we could come up with was Ruts DC, which is da capo, meaning going back to the beginning. Not bad, but I hated it; we all hated it. We didn’t want to do it but we did it and now I’m glad we did it.
So we went out as Ruts DC and it was really fucking painful as was the album Animal Now as we’ve said. But we went out on the road and it was obviously going down. At around that time you had bands like Joy Division who were quite dark and depressing and it was the soundtrack to a dark period of Ruts DC. We didn’t last very long. We did a tour and it wasn’t very good and we split Ruts DC up.
And they stayed split up through the years, and despite the reformation of the Sex Pistols that seemed to kick off punk bands reforming and playing again, The Ruts stood steadfast. That is, until tragedy struck again.
We didn’t see each other for years before 2007 because when we did get together, it was just too much for us. Me, Ruffy and Foxy, loved each other so much it was really difficult to be together because it was so intense and fun that we didn’t even dare go there with the music. You know, it’s hard to explain.
Then once I did go over when it was his birthday and we had some things out together and he said, “You know, you never told me I was a great guitarist.” What? I looked up to him ’cause. He was older than me and I just thought he knew. I must have come to the point because I said. “You never told me I was a great bass player. “He went, “Well, you’re the best player I’ve ever played with,” and I said, Well, what happened?
You know it was all tied into that kind of working class bullshit, that like we’ll never be any good either of us and it’s ridiculous. But I think because of that not recognising yourself, that’s why it was so great and we were a unit and sometimes with everything in gear it was just steaming.
Then we reformed for a one off with Foxy in 2007 to raise some funds for him because he was dying. Various people were involved in that, asking us to do it including Henry Rollins who is a massive Ruts fan, who said, “I’ll do it. But are you guys for real? I don’t want to come all the way over there if you’re not. Foxy was like “Who the fuck is Henry Rollins?” and I’m like, “Paul, we’re just trying to get some money so we can bury you!” because he didn’t have any money.
Anyway, Rollins turned up in shorts and Ruffy said, ”Look, Henry when we play the gig you can’t wear shorts” and he didn’t. But it was kind of weird. We were just about to kick off with the first chord in rehearsal, and he goes “Hang On!” and goes down and does thirty press ups on his bloody knuckles.
There’s some funny stories about that period as well, because we used to laugh a lot and he used to say “Stop making me laugh Segs! I’ve got lung cancer and you’re killing me!” But I couldn’t stop because we always had that laughing thing. It was our way of dealing with nerves like people do.
But actually Rollins was really nice and did a good job. It turned out to be Foxy’s last gig, and I think he was very happy with that so that’s good. So there we go. Goodbye, Foxy.
What do we do next? Ruffy & Segs make a choice
Then me and Ruffy go and play with all these different people. Ruffy was playing with Sinead O’Connor, The Waterboys and Aztec Camera. I did a few things and basically what happened was we found it a bit difficult to play together publicly because we were The Ruts rhythm section because people would want people want Babylon’s Burning and we didn’t really want to do it because we didn’t have Malcolm.
But what we could do was make a reggae album because we loved our reggae. I was working with this guy, Steve Dub, who worked with The Chemical Brothers. I’d worked with them a bit and did, among other things, a big dirty bass on one of their records, Leave Home; bringing the punk to the dance scene!,
This guy, Nicolai, in Germany asked us to do a remix of one of The Rut songs Accusation. So we did it that and then we were talking to Steve and we said, we’d love to meet the Mad Professor. So he rang him up and he said “Yeah, come down.” So we went down and saw Mad Professor and he said “Let’s do some recording next Tuesday!”
So we went “Oh, all right. Well, let’s do it.” We didn’t have anything, bar a few riffs and we just went in there and we did 3 tracks a day of jamming reggae and by the end of it all he’d done like 12 mixes of stuff and we listened to it the car on the way home going “Wow! None of this existed three days ago”. So we added some vocals on it, did the album and thought “OK, what we’re gonna do now? Better do some gigs. So we thought we can do some festivals, and we can just do reggae and we’ll be The Ruts rhythm section because we have that connection with reggae right.
I was in Alabama 3, at that point and the tour manager, John Walsh says to me, “We’re asking the guy from the Pop Group to support us but why don’t you do it which we did and was mostly reggae based. I’d do the two shows, the Ruts DC and then change my suit and do the Alabama 3 one.
It was John Robb, though that got Segs singing again when he made a hash of singing Babylon’s Burning with the band.
Ruffy said “You could do a better job of that.” So suddenly I’m singing Babylon’s Burning again and it fucking goes down well and that was the beginning of introducing it all again. Then we started doing songs that we liked. You know, we were doing Rude Boys anyway and it got built up into this huge thing.
We can do 1 1/2 hours or longer and we’ve made two albums since then, plus the reggae stuff. Along with The Ruts stuff some of the others I really love as well from Ruts DC that fit in well like Kill The Pain because it’s so sort of pop. I also like Psychic Attack which came out really well but not easy to play. It’s the ones that transcribe well to the stage when you’ve got a short set. There are probably a few others, but they’re for staying at home and listening to. So even when we did 40 years of The Crack we could add those songs in.
We’re 40 years older and we have to crank ourselves to start with Babylon’s Burning. But we’re still doing 1 and one-and-a-half-hour hour set because, as Henry Rollins will point out to you, The Crack is 32 minutes long so even with a bit of chat, you’ve only got, 40 minutes at best. So then we did in the second-half of the show and did songs like, Love In Vain and Music Must Destroy.
So now the band’s kind of forming into this thing, which I’m pleased to report, doesn’t sound like a tribute band. We do the hits, but we do new songs as well. So without that awful thing of like “This one’s a new one” and everyone goes, “Oh no! (laughs) , So now we’ve got a lot of songs that we can do that people love, and we’ve got our own fanbase. Some people fell by the wayside. Some fans said, well, it’s not the same without Malcolm and I said, well, no, but, you know he’s been dead for 40 years, so he ain’t coming back. What do you want me to do? Do you want me to just never play music again with Ruffy? Because that’s the problem.
I haven’t mentioned Lee Hegarty. Without Lee, it wouldn’t have happened because he came along very good at learning the parts. He was a big fan. And then we’ve developed into a different band.
I’m 69 this year and Ruffy’s 72, but we do it for the love of it, and now we’re the sort of keepers of the legacy. It’s certainly no great money spinner and it’s a lot of hard work. mean, we’re lucky if we get like 300 people, which is great but we’re never going to command the money or audiences that say The Damned do. We don’t have that, because we don’t have the original singer. The people may respect me and that’s good. I respect myself a bit more now. But I’m not Malcolm, you know what I mean.
The Ruts were only together three years and Ruts DC have been together at least four times that. Those hits Babylon’s Burning and Rude Boys were all magnificent milestones in the history of punk rock, even though we weren’t really punk rock in certain ways. I think what makes it different to rock is the subject matter and a lot of songs that I write lyrics for like “Breakdown the walls in the government halls” is depressingly the same subjects The Ruts were writing about some 45/50 years ago. It’s still shit; just different shades of shit.
Yeah. I mean The thing is like you’re reading through the newspapers and to ask you, it feels a bit depressing that nothing in a way is much has changed. The. That it’s still, it’s still ****. It’s just different shades of ****.
So has anything changed? No, in fact, people have got a bit more stupid. Unfortunately, there isn’t much rebellion, and revolution is a word I don’t want to want to use again because it never really happened. As long as people can get their pint of Guinness or you can get you go and get your McDonald’s and they’ll be happy. It’s now 7 and a half quid a pint but they’re still happy.
Segs remarkable ease of playing bass and singing
I watched myself on YouTube and I thought, Christ, you know. It looks a bit effortless but I’m making a helluva lot of effort and it’s not that easy. When I watch Ruffy play he hardly looks like he moves, but he’s really thumping them and he’s a brilliant player. John Robb says “I don’t know how you sing and play bass like that” and I said, “Well, I’ve got Ruffy behind me so I don’t really have to think about the bass. I’m thinking about the singing and the lyrics; the bass just happens. As soon as I start thinking, I fuck it up and it happens but that’s just a human side of things.
I still don’t consider myself to be a very good bass player. The only way I can really play is like myself, and if they want me to play anything different not only can I not do it, but I actually don’t want to do it.
Endgame
I think about Foxy and Malcolm all the time and I know it’s a little bit romantic but I always say they’re on my shoulder and they kind of are. This has become something different now.
Someone said it’s not a tribute band, but it is a tribute to Malcolm and Foxy. I think that’s the best. Because those songs are great and I’d like to think they would have liked the new songs too.
Thank you Segs for a fantastic and at times emotional interview.
TalkPunk
Post comments, images & videos - Posts are checked and offensive or irrelevant ones will be removed
