transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] If you like listening to Rockonteurs, then we would love you to subscribe to us permanently.

Speaker 2:
[00:05] So hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts from. Hello Guy.

Speaker 1:
[00:10] Hello Guy. So we're face to face today.

Speaker 2:
[00:11] We are face to face.

Speaker 1:
[00:12] Yeah, it's very nice to do that rather than Zoom.

Speaker 2:
[00:14] It is.

Speaker 1:
[00:14] We'll be in soon, but until he gets here. I read something in one of the newspapers the other week about Philip Castle, who was passed away. He's an airbrush artist, or he was. And he's going to be interesting for us, because he did the Aladdin Sane cover. So he airbrushed Brian Duffy's artwork.

Speaker 2:
[00:39] Right.

Speaker 1:
[00:39] He did more than that.

Speaker 2:
[00:40] Did he put the droplet?

Speaker 1:
[00:43] The teardrop thing in the little pool.

Speaker 2:
[00:45] The little pool in his clavicle.

Speaker 1:
[00:47] Clavicle is a really funny word, isn't it? It's like, is that a musical instrument as well?

Speaker 2:
[00:51] There's a clavicle. Based on the same design as the clavicle, must perhaps.

Speaker 1:
[00:57] So he did. He airbrushed into the clavicle. But he also, he did that, you know, he kind of helped make his body look a bit silver. And in the middle gatefold, you know, he's kind of standing, you see this full length, the lad insane. And he's kind of painted in, isn't he? Yes. It looks naked. So he did that. But he started off, it's interesting, he was at Royal Academy of Arts. He got some review in like, or he was working for the Daily Express or something. And Stanley Kubrick saw it. And he really liked the look of this kid and invited him to his house. And he showed him, apparently without any sound, the whole of Clockwork Orange. And he was looking for some poster art for Clockwork Orange. And by the end of that meeting, Castle had drawn what we know as the poster. The pyramids. Yeah, that's what it's an A, isn't it? It's an A, because it's A, Clockwork Orange, done in that fantastic bubble writing that we used to do on our books. That's right, yes. Where did that come from? I don't know where that came from. Maybe it came from that. No, it can't do.

Speaker 2:
[01:55] It wasn't quite the bubble writing.

Speaker 1:
[01:57] And then he then took those sketches away. So it's actually Malcolm McDowell, wasn't it?

Speaker 2:
[02:03] Who plays?

Speaker 1:
[02:04] Alex.

Speaker 2:
[02:04] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[02:05] So that's him peering out with a knife and an eyeball. He airbrushed the actual final piece of art, which we all know. But the reason he does airbrush, no one had done it before, because it became really common then after that. Obviously, David Bowie then clues into that. Obviously, Bowie had a very close connection with Clotwick Orange, didn't he? Because he used to come on stage to Waldo Collins' theme, one of the themes from Clotwick Orange, one of the, I think, the Beethoven theme. And so he did Clotwick Orange. And then he got his art, right? This is where he got the airbrush. I thought this was quite fascinating, given it's his 1971. And thinking about how Roxy Music and Brian were all into that pop art culture and the front cover of the first Roxy Music album, Philip Castle gets the idea because he finds an old antique airbrush pen in the basement of the Royal Academy of Arts. And he looks into when airbrushing was done. And it was done famously by a guy called Vargas, who did all the pin-up girls. Oh yes, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the pin-up girls were airbrushed. Ah. So, you think of this through, right? You've got the pin-up girls by Vargas in whenever it is the 1940s. 40s, wasn't it? They paint onto airplanes and they paint onto cars. And then you've got this guy who finds an airbrush and he does the clockwork orange. You've got Bowie, totally influenced by clockwork orange. So, he does a piece of art with the airbrush on it, the same artist. And then, he also did the poster work for It's Only Rock and Roll. And he did a rock and roll...

Speaker 2:
[03:40] That's so funny, because that could have been Rock Dreams. It's so similar to that other artist.

Speaker 1:
[03:43] That's not the front cover, apparently. He did the poster work for it. But it might have been the front cover, you're right, as well. But it is...

Speaker 2:
[03:49] Oh, the poster work, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[03:50] But also, he did...

Speaker 2:
[03:51] In fact, no, I think that was that cover.

Speaker 1:
[03:52] He did Rock and Roll Queen, the Hoople's front cover, which is 3 Pin Up Girls.

Speaker 2:
[03:57] That's right, and absolutely that style, isn't it?

Speaker 1:
[03:59] And you think that was so fashionable, that Fortis thing was so fashionable.

Speaker 2:
[04:03] It was so fashionable, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[04:05] You know, with Brian and with Roxy. And then he ends up doing years and years later, he keeps working, he works for Kubrick, he keeps working, and he did His and Hers by Pulp. That was his front cover for Lip Castle.

Speaker 2:
[04:16] Oh, wow, wow. OK.

Speaker 1:
[04:18] So I think he's quite... He's a name that goes missing.

Speaker 2:
[04:21] Yes. But it's funny you say about airbrushes, because I had an airbrush, that was my thing when I made models, when I was going to beaties in Holborn by my models. And you had, but you blew it, it was a blow airbrush, and then you convinced your mum to get you the actual pressurised spray airbrush.

Speaker 1:
[04:40] Which is how they actually painted airplanes and cars, with an airbrush, with compression. It's an interesting world.

Speaker 2:
[04:47] It's very interesting. Compression, you say, have I told you about my new pedal?

Speaker 1:
[04:52] We should look up who that guy was.

Speaker 2:
[04:55] Guy Pilar.

Speaker 1:
[04:55] Guy Pilar.

Speaker 2:
[04:56] Guy Pilar.

Speaker 1:
[04:57] Because he did the Rock Dreams book.

Speaker 2:
[05:01] And Nick Cohn. That's it.

Speaker 1:
[05:03] So today we've got our final piece of the puzzle, haven't we?

Speaker 2:
[05:06] We have. I'm very much looking forward to this.

Speaker 1:
[05:09] The last of the set.

Speaker 2:
[05:11] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[05:12] Yeah, we've had Simon.

Speaker 2:
[05:13] We haven't had Roger.

Speaker 1:
[05:14] We haven't had Roger. You know Roger is now, he's like when the World Cup coins come out, he's like Billy Bremner, isn't he? You should never, you just couldn't get him.

Speaker 2:
[05:23] That's right.

Speaker 1:
[05:25] You know, there was always that gap with Billy Bremner underneath.

Speaker 2:
[05:27] That's absolutely right.

Speaker 1:
[05:28] Because he'd legged it. Dad, we need more petrol. Yeah, well, we need to get Roger in. Why was I so dismissive about a drummer?

Speaker 2:
[05:39] Of course, imagine. Yeah, but no, we've got Nick and of course, Nick was very much this, yeah, who is... But I know what you mean. He's sort of creatively the last piece of the puzzle, because we've had...

Speaker 1:
[05:51] Well, there's no excuse for me for getting Roger.

Speaker 2:
[05:53] He's not even the only drummer called Roger Taylor.

Speaker 1:
[05:56] No, no, no. We haven't had him either. So I think Nick was the very first Duran.

Speaker 2:
[06:02] I think it was him, I think, with Stephen Duffy.

Speaker 1:
[06:06] With Stephen Duffy. And then they met John, right?

Speaker 2:
[06:09] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[06:09] And then they, so that Stephen, that Tintin Duffy was the was the first singer. And then obviously in the end, you know, Simon comes along. We've had Simon and he's very nice. He's on our intro still.

Speaker 2:
[06:20] He is on our intro. It's fabulous.

Speaker 1:
[06:22] So he's got Arcadia to talk about, he's got Duran to talk about, he's got, you know, Oh my God, taking over America in the 80s.

Speaker 2:
[06:28] All that. But I'm so glad you said that, because that's the thing, do you know what? I listened to Arcadia this morning. It's great. I think it's a bit of an overlooked record. It's such an interruption. Anyway, we'll save this for that, because it's so interesting the direction of that.

Speaker 1:
[06:40] What's the single? Election Day.

Speaker 2:
[06:41] Election Day. Re-election Day.

Speaker 1:
[06:43] Re-election Day. And of course, Duran have a new single coming out as well. They do.

Speaker 2:
[06:48] Which has been mixed. Yeah, and there's all sorts of mixes by DJs I've never heard of.

Speaker 1:
[06:53] No, of course not. And the other thing is, we must talk about the fact that Nick appeared at our first gig in Birmingham when we'd just signed and we went up to Birmingham to play. And he appeared and he found Steve Dagger in the crowd. And he said, could we support you tonight? And Steve Dagger said, you must be joking. We don't have any supports. And I went back to this guy's flat for a drink afterwards. Loads of us all in this flat. It was actually one of the Barrows brothers. And I've told this story before, obviously. And I ended up talking to Nick. And he told me he had a band called Duran Duran. And here we are.

Speaker 2:
[07:29] And here we are.

Speaker 1:
[07:30] For all these years later.

Speaker 2:
[07:31] And the rest is geography. Don't change the subject.

Speaker 1:
[07:34] The rest is Rockonteurs. Let's get them on. Welcome to Rockonteurs.

Speaker 3:
[07:41] Okay, guys, I'm ready. You know this thing about the 10,000 hours of experience?

Speaker 4:
[07:46] When we recorded Arnold Layne, we've done about 50 hours.

Speaker 2:
[07:49] I love the fact he's dancing to it naked, like it's so hedonistic.

Speaker 3:
[07:53] What you're doing, in my opinion, is basically an oral history of rock and roll.

Speaker 5:
[07:57] I'm in a band now.

Speaker 6:
[07:58] It's called Roxy Music.

Speaker 2:
[07:59] He started playing that as his main guitar.

Speaker 5:
[08:01] So it was his main guitar. So I just said you can have it.

Speaker 6:
[08:03] Thank you guys for still being around, still making music, still being into it and doing this podcast. It's fabulous.

Speaker 5:
[08:11] Everyone in the band was completely disengaged from their partners while we made rumors.

Speaker 3:
[08:18] It's a big tune for sure. I actually wrote that originally for Tina Turner.

Speaker 7:
[08:22] The Rockonteurs podcast with Gary Kemp and Guy Pratt. Keep on rocking!

Speaker 1:
[08:28] Welcome, Nick. Well, thank you, Gary. While you were coming in, Guy happened to mention that he bought his first bass from a hairdresser in Chelsea. Am I wrong? Did I hear that wrong?

Speaker 2:
[08:38] You interpreted it wrong. It was the Great Gear Market, because we were talking about Chelsea. No, I bought the bass from an advert in the back of Melody Maker, but it was a hairdresser who worked in the Great Gear Market. So I had to go down there to pick up the bass. He then gave me a sort of Bruce Foxton proto mullet.

Speaker 1:
[08:56] Right, right, right.

Speaker 2:
[08:57] And I went back to him. He had just come out of prison as well, just if you want to keep the story interesting.

Speaker 1:
[09:00] I think what happened is you got your Stanley Clarks mixed up with your Nicky Clarks. Before you came, we were having our little intro run, and we were talking about this guy called Philip Castle, who's died recently. Do you know him? He was the artist. He was an airbrush artist. He did the Cluck O'Carringe poster, and he did the Aladdin Sane, you know, teardrop in the clavicle.

Speaker 4:
[09:24] But did he do the airbrush painting on the Brian Duffy photo, or just the teardrop thing?

Speaker 2:
[09:32] You mean the inside?

Speaker 1:
[09:33] Yeah, on the photo. So if you look openly inside, his body is kind of greyed out, isn't it, Bo?

Speaker 4:
[09:40] Yeah, but that was done for... It was Alan Jones, wasn't it? The artist Alan Jones and Brian Duffy, who did the Pirelli calendar in 1971, I'm guessing? 71 or 72, and that's where Bowie must have seen what they'd done together, and Bowie was working with Brian Duffy. So that's how that came about. But Alan Jones was not involved with Aladdin's...

Speaker 1:
[10:10] No, but the Pirelli calendar, because I'm talking about this guy called Philip Castle, who started off by doing the Clockwork Orange cover, the poster, famously. But he also did Cars, right? And Pirelli, you know, it might be something in there. But it was basically a lead-in, really, because we were thinking about that artist who you used for Rio, famously.

Speaker 4:
[10:30] Oh, Patrick Nagel, yeah. He was amazing. We never met him, very sadly. There's only one video interview that exists that any of us have ever seen. Our manager, Paul, who was an avid reader of Playboy magazine, I don't think he ever looked at the video.

Speaker 1:
[10:52] There was a time when it was...

Speaker 2:
[10:53] Oh, no, you wanted a Gorda Dahl interview? That's where you went.

Speaker 4:
[10:57] There you go. There you go. Good defense for him. But he brought the magazine to us and said, look, do you like these illustrations? Because Nagel used to do all the early illustrations around then, the early 80s, late 70s, early 80s, for Playboy. And they were very cool and of the time. So we contacted the artist who was based in LA and said, would you be up for doing our album cover? We'd only got the first album out, obviously. We weren't that known in America at the time. But he said, yeah, I'm up for it. And he sent us two images, the one that we used and another one with a girl with her legs up a little and to the side, which ended up getting used by mistake for a Japanese single, which I was thrilled about, but I don't know what the Japanese company were when they had to pay the bill. But yeah, he did that. And I don't think he ever did another album cover, but he died very, very young.

Speaker 1:
[11:55] Because in a way, it did set a bit of a tone, didn't it, for a look, which we all now just call 80s.

Speaker 4:
[12:00] Yeah, it was of the time. We chose well, but for sure, he had already started creating that look.

Speaker 2:
[12:09] Which is the sort of Grand Theft Auto graphic look, isn't it?

Speaker 1:
[12:12] Yeah, but I mean, I think it's also about the pin-up, isn't it? Because we were saying how Castle took his ideas from Vargas, who did the first pin-ups. And in a way, what you were doing was the same thing. It was like a supermodel version of a pin-up, wasn't it?

Speaker 4:
[12:26] I'm always looking for that. But that period, though, the way that graphics were merging, there was also a great magazine called Mode Avant-Garde, which I'm sure you remember, Gary. And all their covers were airbrushed. It was a Japanese artist that used to do a lot of that for them. And they were the most beautiful things. I was looking at some of them the other day and thought, wow, it still looks so modern. It's almost space age. It was just in that time, wasn't it? In that sort of late 70s.

Speaker 1:
[13:01] Because the thing is, you and I were a bit, and lots of people that began happening in the 80s, had very artistic enthusiasms. How did you square that with not being in an indie band, but being in a band that was super commercial?

Speaker 4:
[13:20] Well, when it started, though, I don't think, when you made your first album, we made it as, I don't think that any of us thought, we might have hoped, but I don't know whether we thought, yep, we've done it now, as soon as we'd finished the record, that it was going to be the success that we were lucky enough to achieve. It was more about doing the best you could. And our first album had some songs, Planet Earth was a decent first hit. Second song we put out was a song called Careless Memories, which we thought our career was over, because it only got to about number 38 or something. We thought, that's it now. And then Girls on Film came out third, and that did much better. But it could have gone anyway at that time.

Speaker 2:
[14:11] Yeah, that is interesting, because you could have a hit. I mean, in the late 90s, if you'd had a hit, then a 38, you probably would have been dropped.

Speaker 4:
[14:19] Oh yeah, for sure. Well, they have no patience now, do they? Record labels, to me, are actually, they're no different than people who make biscuits. I don't see any purpose for them whatsoever anymore. They're good for artists who have 200 million views on whatever it is, but they're not good for artists who are real artists who want to start out from nothing. EMI had Pink Floyd for a couple of years and a couple of albums and didn't achieve much success and they were burning through money, but they knew, they were smart enough, the ANR was right and they let them develop and then they released Dark Side of the Moon.

Speaker 1:
[15:08] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4:
[15:09] That wouldn't happen now because no one would have the foresight to actually allow an artist to develop.

Speaker 1:
[15:17] But you were the kind of artist probably, as we were, that knew exactly what you wanted. You didn't have dominant ANR men, did you?

Speaker 4:
[15:25] No.

Speaker 2:
[15:25] But also, to get back to your original point, I think what you were saying about having artistic pretensions or whatever, I would say that after you guys are coming on the back of a generation of art school bands, it's like, oh, you're a Roxy, but everything has been informed by visual art.

Speaker 4:
[15:40] Yeah, so much. It was a badge of honour.

Speaker 2:
[15:42] But it seems to you, it was almost, it was such an important part of the package with you. I'd say quite rightly, because a lot of us were buying into, that's what we were buying into.

Speaker 4:
[15:51] I've never bought an album to this date where I haven't liked something about the album cover. Can't do it. I just think, well, if you've got that so badly wrong, then I don't care. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1:
[16:03] But even when you did your first album, there must have been pressure from the record company to get your picture on. But your picture was extraordinary in itself, right?

Speaker 4:
[16:10] Well, it was on it, but we had control over things, which I'm, to this day, is the one thing I'm grateful for. We had terrible deals like most people did at that time. They were robbing us blind, but we did have creative control. So we had final cut on everything, on the album artwork, who we wanted to work with, who was doing the videos. They were sometimes very helpful. If we said, oh, this guy Colin Thurston, we like to produce our album, we knew we weren't going to get a really big producer. The other guy we wanted was Giorgio Moroder. But that wasn't really so easy to achieve. But Colin had engineered Lust for Life and The Idiot, and he'd also produced the first Human League albums. We thought, right, he understands synthesizers, and he understands vibe. And hey, he's been in the same room as David Bowie and Iggy Pop for a while, so what can go wrong? And they bought into it. They were fine with it.

Speaker 1:
[17:07] But who you just described, those records you just mentioned, that was the playlist down in the Blitz Club. And that was also the playlist at the Rumbrunner, right?

Speaker 4:
[17:14] Of course. There wasn't anything better, was there?

Speaker 1:
[17:16] We're going to have to approach this.

Speaker 2:
[17:18] No, of course we are, and I can't wait.

Speaker 1:
[17:20] No, I mean... We'll go back even further later, but I mean, talking about those two clubs, they were...

Speaker 2:
[17:28] It was the day trip. I love those.

Speaker 1:
[17:29] We had a day trip, obviously, where we all went up to the botanical gardens.

Speaker 4:
[17:33] I know, we came to see you.

Speaker 1:
[17:35] You came. And all I remember is, we'd got up there earlier to a sound check, but then this coach load of kids from the Blitz all sort of came up, and by the time they arrived in Birmingham, they were completely wrecked. And they stepped off the coach, and then the Birmingham crowd stepped over to look at them, and it was like this sort of, you know, high noon kind of moment between...

Speaker 4:
[17:57] West Side Story.

Speaker 1:
[17:58] West Side Story. Faye West Side Story.

Speaker 4:
[18:01] With handbags.

Speaker 1:
[18:02] Yeah, we're happy. And were you one of those?

Speaker 4:
[18:05] No, we didn't travel in packs so much at that point. We loved everybody at the club. We knew them all first name terms, most of them anyway. Because it was a very small community, but at the same time, we were already by then sort of, that would have been about 1980, 81, wouldn't it? Yeah, so by then, we were really quite deep into rehearsals. Everything we did every day was about the band, and we didn't sort of go to everything that everybody came to. But we did come to the show.

Speaker 1:
[18:38] I won't ask your opinion.

Speaker 2:
[18:41] Tell them how overt the influence was.

Speaker 4:
[18:45] Because actually, we walked out of there thinking, thank god they're a bit different to us. Because there was only so much airspace at that time. And once we'd all got labelled, I think it was Futurists first, and then you, Romanticists. But I hated labels even then, and I thought this isn't good, because once we're labelled, we're going to go out of fashion really quickly. And I thought, Spandau beat us to it. Their single came out first. We were on top of the Pops first. Oh god, this is going to be the same thing we're doing, isn't it? And when we came, we were probably slightly more rock than you were at that.

Speaker 1:
[19:21] Well, I think Andy sort of stuck out in that.

Speaker 4:
[19:23] For sure, for sure. And we were merging some slightly different things. We were using sequences, which you weren't really using as much. You were more dance stuff, a bit more funk in yours than in some of our elements. And so we walked out relieved, but we enjoyed it. It was, as you say, it was an event. You picked an interesting place to play. People now, again, I always look to go and see younger artists when they're coming here, but I guess there are only so many venues. But we used to go out of the way. You played on that ship as well, didn't you?

Speaker 1:
[19:53] But I think I met you that night, Nick, because I think we went back to Paul's house, Burroughs. Burroughs, sorry, Burroughs. And I'm sure I met, and I have a strong memory of talking to someone who told me they had a band.

Speaker 4:
[20:08] Well, there you go.

Speaker 1:
[20:08] And it would have been, and I think...

Speaker 4:
[20:10] We were probably in stealth mode.

Speaker 1:
[20:14] But you don't remember going to that drinks afterwards. I don't know, but it's entirely possible. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2:
[20:19] Should we go right back then?

Speaker 1:
[20:20] Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4:
[20:22] Can you go back further?

Speaker 1:
[20:23] Well, I want to... Yeah, because really it's about you as a kid and knowing what you, you know, what turned you on and how you ended up, you know, finding a keyboard.

Speaker 2:
[20:33] Well, it was, well, I don't want to tell it for you, but it was, because there was a connection with a certain someone in Manchester, wasn't it? With the New York Dolls.

Speaker 4:
[20:43] Morrissey? We didn't really have any connection.

Speaker 2:
[20:47] You had a personal connection with him.

Speaker 4:
[20:49] He, no, he ran the New York Dolls fan club and John and I were big New York Dolls fans and you couldn't find anything on the New York Dolls. So I think John probably wrote to get something from him. But no, we didn't really know. It's interesting to me, you know, looking back at the period when we were coming up, how different everybody was. Yeah, there's a few years gap in it, but if you think your band, my band, ahead of us, Susie and the Banshees, The Cure, The Clash still around. Obviously, the Pistols were pretty much gone by then. And then you look at the other artists that came out, The Smiths, Madonna, Prince, Inexcess, and how radically different everybody sounded.

Speaker 2:
[21:42] And in the middle of that, you've missed 2-tone as well.

Speaker 4:
[21:44] Yeah, there's lots of other types of music going on too.

Speaker 1:
[21:47] But I think the reason for that is because we were, we were, as kids, I don't know about you, but certainly for me, I was into so many different kinds of music. I was equally as into Sheik as I was into punk and Bowie. And somehow Bowie did align them, you know, because he went, you know, he made young Americans. And we went, oh right, now soul's cool, right?

Speaker 4:
[22:10] Exactly.

Speaker 1:
[22:12] So, I think you could go down, you could do dance as well as…

Speaker 4:
[22:15] Well, we were very lucky, weren't we, to grow up in a period that everything had exploded and splattered all over everywhere. Everywhere you looked, you'd see something completely different.

Speaker 1:
[22:29] I was talking to someone the other day who said, who mentioned the New York Dolls playing Bieber. And it was like, was that the beginning?

Speaker 4:
[22:38] Well, an Iggy Pop playing La Scala, was it, that he played. That was mid 70s, wasn't it? Iggy was probably 73, 72, 73, and the New York Dolls, I'm guessing, was probably 74. 74.

Speaker 1:
[22:55] So, you still go back to Iggy, right? In the end?

Speaker 4:
[22:59] Yeah. Well, top of the pops. It was Starman on top of the pops, wasn't it? It was the moment, really, when Dylan Jones even wrote the book about it. It was certainly about that one incident of us all sitting there in our living rooms watching that. And it's funny looking at it now because, of course, it's still great. But David feels very authentic and the rest of them feel slightly uncomfortable in their...

Speaker 1:
[23:25] Oh, yeah.

Speaker 4:
[23:27] In their outfits, or their platform shoes. And it only got more extreme when it spread down to the people trying to cling on to the glam rock and the tails with the sweet and mud and...

Speaker 1:
[23:39] Yeah, of course. And the unmentionable guy.

Speaker 4:
[23:41] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[23:42] Can I just drop one little thing in here? Sorry, one little bit of credit, because with everything going back to the New York Dolls, that the first professional gig I ever had, AJC, was I played for Sylvain Sylvain. Did you? I was in his band. Yeah, he took me to Paris. And you survived it. I survived. He was with his wife, his Puerto Rican wife, who played drums with timbales for Tom Toms. It was amazing. And we did all these New York Doll songs and Rick James songs. And stuff as well.

Speaker 4:
[24:07] But a lot of interesting things came out of it. Johnny Thunders. I love Johnny Thunders Heartbreakers.

Speaker 1:
[24:13] Yeah, of course.

Speaker 4:
[24:13] And I saw Johnny Thunders quite a few times at Birmingham Barbarellas and Rebecca's, which are tiny places. Rebecca's really tiny, not much bigger than this room.

Speaker 1:
[24:23] What a great band that was. I mean, I saw them a few times here.

Speaker 4:
[24:26] But the one I really remember was seeing him in London when he played with Peter Perrett. Which, I said somewhere, I don't know, it was like the Lyceum or some ballroom or something.

Speaker 1:
[24:40] But who was Peter Perrett?

Speaker 2:
[24:42] The only one.

Speaker 4:
[24:43] The only one.

Speaker 2:
[24:44] The only one.

Speaker 4:
[24:44] I also used to love him.

Speaker 2:
[24:46] He was brilliant.

Speaker 4:
[24:47] I think their first couple of albums were quite underrated.

Speaker 2:
[24:50] He's still around, isn't he? He's still doing stuff, isn't he? I know. I met someone who was working with him a while ago.

Speaker 4:
[24:55] He is a great lyricist and obviously they were plagued by certain problems. But, clue in another girl on another planet, I guess, if you listen to the lyrics carefully. But boy, they were good and he played with Johnny Thunders at that show. It was when the So Alone album was out, I think.

Speaker 1:
[25:15] So what you got, you got a bit of glad... By the way, I just wanted to say that it's funny, we've had about 300 people on this podcast and there are only really three events, aren't there? There's Elvis on Ed Sullivan, there's Beatles on Ed Sullivan and there's Starman on Top of the Pops. We all seem to go back to those moments. It's interesting, isn't it, that the bits that we're latching on to here is when Thunders takes glam into punk.

Speaker 4:
[25:42] Well, they were. The New York Dolls and Iggy and I guess MC5 as well were really the start of proper punk and then it moved on to the Ramones and Paddy Smith and that sort of CBGB's generation, which really did sort of predate, slightly predate what was going on in the UK.

Speaker 2:
[26:05] I think because Johnny Thunders was, I think he was in London doing all his stuff in London at that time, he was signed to track records.

Speaker 4:
[26:11] Yes, correct, but he came here because it was more happening here than it...

Speaker 2:
[26:17] So that was a kind of New York thing floating around the London punk scene, because they were very, very difficult.

Speaker 4:
[26:23] Lest we not forget that Malcolm McLaren used to manage them.

Speaker 2:
[26:26] Yes, exactly. Red patent leather mouse suits.

Speaker 4:
[26:29] Exactly, and then went on to create the Pistols.

Speaker 1:
[26:32] Was McLaren the guy who put them into women's clothes or was that...?

Speaker 2:
[26:35] No, no, they've been that. This is, they gave up, his thing was he dressed them. He went for this whole Chinese, it was patent leather mouse suits.

Speaker 1:
[26:43] So when were they on O'Gurray and Sotess? That was a famous one, wasn't it?

Speaker 2:
[26:46] That was before.

Speaker 4:
[26:47] That was earlier.

Speaker 2:
[26:48] Malcolm was, he went out to New York and it was a sort of last gasp attempt, really, to sort of kick some life into them.

Speaker 1:
[26:55] That connection with glam, which I'm interested in, and it goes back, you mentioned Warhol, Bowie going after the man who sold the world, going to New York to meet the factory people. No one had really heard of Phil, the underground in this country. No one really got into Iggy. It was, again, it took Bowie to sort of fish that out for us, for us to look.

Speaker 4:
[27:17] Well, he was, he's good at spotting stuff.

Speaker 1:
[27:20] You then, later on, made your connection with Andy, didn't you?

Speaker 4:
[27:24] It was the first time I went to New York, the A&R lady, a lady called Doreen Dagostina, who quickly became known as Doreen Doreen. She was great. I loved her. I mean, she was slightly out of spinal tap, but with a big heart. And she said, what do you guys want to do when you're in New York? So me being a cocky kid from Birmingham said, well, I'd like to go up the Empire State Building and meet Andy Warhol, please. I didn't even think for one second that she'd take me seriously. She just laughed and went, oh, OK, then. And the next day she called me up in my room, said, right, I need you down at noon. I said, what do you mean? It's my day off. I want to go and have a wander around. She said, you told me you want to go up the Empire State Building and meet Andy Warhol. So we're going up the Empire State Building and then we're going to the factory for lunch. And I thought she was joking. And she wasn't. And we went and it was great.

Speaker 1:
[28:28] Describe it, describe it.

Speaker 4:
[28:29] Well, it was surreal because we walked in and Andy came over and said hi. And we were young kids, obviously, all dressed up, made up, coming out of a different look than he'd seen before. So he was quite excited about that and wanted to know about everything we were doing. And we were just looking around thinking, oh, yeah, there's Ingrid. Oh, this is those are the things he's working on. Now he's working on the dollar signs. So they're all over the floor. And then I met Fred, Fred Hughes, who was Andy's business partner. And it was surreal. It was like being on a movie set. And we had lunch, panel room with some kind of moose on the wall or something.

Speaker 1:
[29:16] Was Andy very cockettish with you?

Speaker 4:
[29:18] I can imagine. He was incredibly sweet, actually, and helpful. Lots of people have said things about Andy. I obviously didn't know him until 1981, until he passed away. But he was really helpful to me, told me all kinds of things about business. We talked about art a lot, because every time I went to New York, my phone book was sort of Uncle George, Auntie Linda, Andy Warhol. But I didn't know anyone in New York then. So I just called him up and he said, right, we're going out.

Speaker 2:
[29:54] I've got a great memory of something. It was something I was reading. It's either an article, it wasn't an interview, and you're out somewhere, or you've turned up and Andy Warhol is there. And it's Andy saying to you, oh, Nick, you've got to wear pearls.

Speaker 4:
[30:10] I don't know, but it's like something he would have said. He used to come out with strange things. One day he said to me, put your hand inside my jacket in this pocket. I said, I'm not doing that, Andy. He said, no, I just want you to know what's in this pocket. And I said, what on earth are you talking about? All right, so I stick my hand in his inside pocket in his jacket. Little stones or something. I said, what is that? He said, oh, take one out. Pull one out. The diamonds. He's walking around with his huge pocket filled with diamonds. And they weren't tiny little chips. These were big diamonds.

Speaker 1:
[30:48] Was the studio silver at that point or was that the older one?

Speaker 2:
[30:50] No, that was the 60s.

Speaker 1:
[30:52] Did you meet any other of those sort of artists that he was hanging out with at that time? Basquiat.

Speaker 4:
[30:58] Well, Jean-Michel and I knew very well and Keith, even better, Keith Haring. All of that crew because I was in New York most of that time. So Julian Schnabel, Francesco Clemente.

Speaker 1:
[31:11] What's amazing about that is that where obviously there was a new generation of kids like ourselves that were coming forward to make this new wave of English acts going into American British acts. That's what New York were doing at the time, wasn't it? That's kind of what they were doing. Art. Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[31:31] Oh, definitely. It's, I think one of the reasons I never got into Brit art so much in the in the 90s was because I'd lived through the 80s in New York and it was so absolutely extraordinary to me. And I was at that age where everything was extraordinary, just meeting different people and... Going to a chenille ball.

Speaker 1:
[31:58] I mean, big personalities.

Speaker 4:
[31:59] Yeah, he's an extraordinary person. I keep using the word extraordinary, which is extraordinary to me.

Speaker 2:
[32:05] And becoming ordinary by music.

Speaker 4:
[32:10] Right, exactly. Losing its extra. But things were very different then. And coming back to England, it seemed more provincial. Even London, which is my favorite city in the world still, it seemed sort of a little smaller, more village-like compared to the explosion of the big...

Speaker 2:
[32:31] And New York was insane. It was just everything you had. But what was more, the area, all that. But it's also the fact that, I mean, you're a massive pop star, but even for a kid like me, the fact that you could get in everywhere, just by being English, you were everywhere. And it was utterly overwhelming.

Speaker 4:
[32:48] It was a helpful badge to have.

Speaker 2:
[32:50] But it didn't hurt.

Speaker 4:
[32:52] Yeah, if something went wrong at the hotel and you put on your...

Speaker 2:
[32:56] That was always the thing, Terry Thomas.

Speaker 7:
[32:58] It is an absolute shower. I cannot believe it.

Speaker 4:
[33:01] Possibly. Consider.

Speaker 1:
[33:05] I remember going to Aerea and it was quite an incredible place when I first walked in, because they used to have those glass boxes at the side with sort of people inside. Well, Andy did that one.

Speaker 2:
[33:15] I saw someone strapped to a chair with a shark swimming around them. I swear to God. I was quite early in the evening, so it might have actually happened.

Speaker 4:
[33:24] It wasn't Damien Hirst as a teenager.

Speaker 1:
[33:27] Andy did one of those.

Speaker 4:
[33:28] Yes, he was in the box. I can't remember what he was doing there. There was someone ironing in one of them. I think he was sitting there with these Brillo boxes and things, which were all over the dance floor. It was great.

Speaker 2:
[33:37] It was fantastic. I love that.

Speaker 4:
[33:39] A lot of them, Palladium was fantastic too, which was the one that had all the paintings behind the bar, which must have been, I don't know, 30 meters. I don't know, maybe I'm exaggerating, 20 meters long. There was one gigantic Jean-Michel Basquiat painting, and over the dance floor was a massive Keith Haring.

Speaker 1:
[34:03] And these aren't worth millions at that point, are they?

Speaker 4:
[34:08] No, but they were worth something.

Speaker 1:
[34:10] But they were contemporary. They were happening.

Speaker 4:
[34:13] Francesco Clemente had done some frescoes over one of the archways on the way, and it was just so beautifully conceived.

Speaker 1:
[34:20] And then you go to Dance Terrier and you've got like five floors of Africa, Bambaataa playing music that is not that far away from the Rum Runner and the Blitz, right? Where he's merging funk and craft work. And there's a sense at that point that actually British bands could really do well here.

Speaker 4:
[34:41] Yeah, I also think the radio stations were key to it. WLIR, which was in Long Island, and KROQ being in LA., they really did champion British acts. There was a bunch of us there, obviously. Billy Idol, don't forget, was there.

Speaker 1:
[35:01] First time I went to New York, I think I bumped into Billy Idol in the line, right?

Speaker 4:
[35:05] Yeah, yeah. And Billy was one of the ones that broke through and did really, really well in America. And it was U2. The Cure was still breaking at that point in America. So it was a strange land.

Speaker 1:
[35:21] The door was already open.

Speaker 4:
[35:23] Yeah, I think they were ready. They've been listening to all those bands named after states and cities, which I'm not going to mention them. Boston, Chicago, Black Oak, Arkansas.

Speaker 1:
[35:40] Birmingham, why was there never that?

Speaker 2:
[35:43] And all signs record labels named after states and cities.

Speaker 4:
[35:47] So something had to give because it was really the same old thing. And every time you turn on the radio, it was almost impossible not to hear Born to Run or Stairway to Heaven. And so I felt there was room for something.

Speaker 1:
[36:01] There was no music for younger people, really.

Speaker 4:
[36:04] Not really, unless they like that.

Speaker 1:
[36:06] And then along comes MTV as well. But we were already making videos before MTV happened. Was videos the way you could express yourself as an artist?

Speaker 4:
[36:16] Well, it was just coincidental, wasn't it?

Speaker 1:
[36:19] I mean, you must have got involved.

Speaker 2:
[36:20] Because you were really schlepping as well. You did all the toilets around America, didn't you?

Speaker 4:
[36:25] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[36:26] I mean, you were banked. It was a pre-MTV kind of ladder you were on.

Speaker 4:
[36:30] The first time we went there, there was an MTV on the first album. And we played places, we played the Roxy in LA. We played four shows that's tiny. It's probably three, 400 people or something. But as we always say, the shows, the first show was always slower than the second show for some reason. I think it was probably Andy's doing. They were great to do because it was exciting and new for us. We had a foot in the door, but it really was more like a toe than a foot. And what album was this? On the first album? On the first album, yeah. But we went back and forth all over America. Then we went back and forth over America again with the Rio album. And it started to grow a little. We could play to an extra few hundred people in places. And we left there thinking, missed it again. And as we got back to London, they said Hungry Like the Wolves entered the chart in America. We were speechless because we didn't think. We started to crack the chart yet there. I think that was MTV's help also because we could see it's spiking.

Speaker 1:
[37:38] And in certain states, because I remember New York not having MTV.

Speaker 4:
[37:42] No, California did. It was New Jersey, I think, and maybe somewhere in Florida, and maybe somewhere in California or Texas. They were strange sort of cities they were trying it out in, but actually was based in Manhattan.

Speaker 1:
[37:55] You know, I actually think that we had more association, funnily enough, even though New York, we've been talking about for the last 20 minutes. But I think our kind of style suited the West Coast because the Beach Boys, there was an aspiration for clothes and dressing up, and we were making music for teenagers in many ways.

Speaker 4:
[38:20] I've always personally connected with New York much more still.

Speaker 1:
[38:24] The KROP was massive coming out of LA.

Speaker 4:
[38:26] I always have such a great time in LA. I've got so many friends there, but my heart stays in New York. New York is the Velvet Underground, it's Warhol, it's the Empire State Building, it's the Chrysler Building.

Speaker 1:
[38:42] What about the videos though? Because I mean, it was important for you. And I remember when Girls on Film comes out and, you know, we're starting, then you meet Russell Mulcahy and we're starting to crank it up.

Speaker 4:
[38:52] Russell did the first one, Russell did Planet Earth.

Speaker 1:
[38:55] Did he?

Speaker 4:
[38:55] We did it on video. We filmed it at St. John's Wood on video. And I think that was really at the heart of why video was possible. Because if you look back and we go, what were really the first videos? I guess it was The Beatles, maybe Strawberry Fields, things like that.

Speaker 1:
[39:11] That's right, Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[39:13] And We Love You, The Stones.

Speaker 4:
[39:15] Yes. Five trivia points for that one actually. That's a good one.

Speaker 1:
[39:21] In a way, all you need is love. That live satellite TV moment made We Love You happen. You can go...

Speaker 2:
[39:28] Yeah, no, no, but that's still a performance. Yeah, they actually did a video for it. We Love You is not a performance. It's actually a video.

Speaker 4:
[39:34] And then obviously Bohemian Rhapsody. But it was expensive making videos, making films. I mean, Beatles probably, hopefully had that budget.

Speaker 1:
[39:45] I don't remember. Did the record companies ask us to make videos or were we going in saying we want to make videos?

Speaker 4:
[39:50] Well, at the first point when we did Planet Earth, they'd asked us, the way it came about was for some reason, we'd taken off in Australia with Planet Earth. It was all over the radio there and they said, well, can you come and tour there? We said, well, no, we can't because we've got all these other dates in America or wherever it was. We said, well, then we have to make a video because they want to see what you look like and they need something now. So we were sort of rushed off as who's going to do it? This guy called Russell who had done some cool things. I don't know, had he done Vienna? Was that Russell?

Speaker 2:
[40:22] He did do Vienna.

Speaker 4:
[40:24] Yeah. And so, which in itself was a great video at that time.

Speaker 1:
[40:27] Yeah. I mean, strongly also done by, you know, Mitch had a big influence.

Speaker 4:
[40:30] I'm sure. I'm sure. But so we said, yeah, okay, let's do this. We didn't really even know what it was. And we just turned up with our outfits and a few of our friends from the RomRunner and said, right. And Russell really knew how to make something. And he was filming through this glass plate which had the hand painted ice platform, whatever it is on there. And I was looking at it and oh, okay, it's clever how you're doing that. And we didn't know what it was going to look like really. So when it all turned out, we thought, okay, this is something we can do something with. And the label were happy to pay from that one cost nothing because it was all filmed on video. But we went straight to film of course. So it didn't matter that we had video and we could have all made them a lot cheaper. The next one, Careless Memories, we did with the guys from ID. Was it Perry Haynes?

Speaker 2:
[41:28] Perry Haynes, yes.

Speaker 1:
[41:29] He was involved with it. He was a Blitz kid, yeah. Big, big Blitz kid, one of our guys.

Speaker 4:
[41:33] He came over to our side.

Speaker 1:
[41:34] He did. He came over to our side. You know, he managed King. He managed to keep his life. And he started off...

Speaker 2:
[41:40] And he had that club, Darl Nine for Dolphin.

Speaker 4:
[41:42] That's right.

Speaker 1:
[41:43] And it started off, he had a magazine. He started a magazine called Camouflage, and he took me and my brother down to somewhere on the South Coast to wear strange clothes and pose like we were, you know, sort of very expressionist type vibe. And then he moved from camouflage into ID, yeah?

Speaker 4:
[42:05] Yeah, yeah. Well, ID, though, was very influential, too. That period when people were starting things, was that post-punk thing when everything was handmade. That's what I loved. When we made records, we made them by block at a time by hand. We didn't have computers and things, did we? We played stuff and pieced it together and rehearsed the song and did a good take of the song to get it and then played on top of it and did some overdubs.

Speaker 1:
[42:32] I mean, those early ID magazines are all sort of stapled together and they're all like fanzines, really, aren't they?

Speaker 4:
[42:36] Yeah, exactly. It was post-Sniffing Glue, wasn't it? The first ones, I've got some copies of them, I think the first three of them or something, and I kept them always because they're significant from that period. Definitely, yeah. People were doing different things that, again, we have the 70s to thank. Ritz Magazine.

Speaker 1:
[42:55] Of course, David Bailey's.

Speaker 4:
[42:56] David Bailey and John Swinell used to shoot for it and Duffy used to shoot for it.

Speaker 1:
[43:03] Remind me of that, yes. What was it? There was something really exotic about Ritz Magazine. What was it?

Speaker 2:
[43:09] Because it was a format, wasn't it? It was kind of like Interview, wasn't it?

Speaker 1:
[43:13] Yeah, exactly. They ripped off Interview.

Speaker 4:
[43:15] I think their advertising was Andy Warhol reading a copy. Have you ever seen the video or the film that Bailey made of Warhol? It was on ATV in the 70s.

Speaker 1:
[43:29] Because he did another one with English photographer Cecil Beaton.

Speaker 4:
[43:36] He was in that one quite a bit, but that's really worth watching.

Speaker 1:
[43:39] I think what was great about the Ritz magazine was there was this, we could buy it, but there was a sense of this sort of rather decadent other world that was hidden.

Speaker 4:
[43:48] It was glam, wasn't it?

Speaker 1:
[43:49] It was the Them's and it was the Zanzibar and it was, that's what it was, that era. And Bailey, of course, had all that resonance of 60s.

Speaker 4:
[43:58] The guy, the editor or the owner, David Litchfield, I thought was very ahead of his time. He had done another magazine before it. I can't remember exactly what it was called. It was called The Image or something, a little square one that was just...

Speaker 2:
[44:14] Do you collect these?

Speaker 4:
[44:15] Yes, before. Of course, I collect almost everything, Gary. It's terrifying.

Speaker 2:
[44:18] What about Nova?

Speaker 4:
[44:20] I love Nova.

Speaker 2:
[44:22] Michael Heseltime was behind that.

Speaker 1:
[44:25] Nova is very significant, actually, in Bowie.

Speaker 4:
[44:28] Well, this is the one with the mandolier on the cover, isn't it?

Speaker 1:
[44:32] No, the one I know is Mary Helvin was wearing a Kabuki wig on the front cover of a Nova magazine. And at that moment, Bowie said, I want my hair to look like that. And of course, the Kabuki wig is really a mullet. You know, it's long at the back and spiky at the top.

Speaker 4:
[44:51] And the Kabuki mullet, there's a look.

Speaker 1:
[44:54] And it came from that picture.

Speaker 2:
[44:56] Kabuki mullet, that is such a John Peel band, isn't it? Kabuki mullet, first of all.

Speaker 1:
[45:02] And then we had Kevin Godley on, we've had Lowell Long. They did Girls on Film, didn't they?

Speaker 4:
[45:09] And View to a Kill.

Speaker 1:
[45:11] Which was, you know, shocking in its day.

Speaker 4:
[45:13] Yeah, it was. Bits of it still shocked me, how I let them get away with that pimple on the guy's skin when, golly. Pre-photoshop. They were great to work with. I love them. I was like 10cc. I saw them a couple of times when I was a kid. And then Godley and Krem made some good records too. And it was interesting that they had the foresight to switch to making videos. Because it was really all about ideas. And they had good ideas.

Speaker 2:
[45:47] And the fact that because they became these great video makers, that they then switched things around, didn't they? Their music was made as something to facilitate the video. Yeah, it was almost like the video came first. Cry.

Speaker 1:
[46:00] Trevor Horn.

Speaker 4:
[46:01] Oh, did he? Yeah, well, that was good. Yeah, really good. I remember that.

Speaker 1:
[46:05] Yeah, and they were quite hard school as well, because their Consequences was like this weird prog album they made, wasn't it? Anyway, I want to hear about Tintin Duffy and that part of your life and how you met Charlie.

Speaker 4:
[46:19] Well, Stephen, so when we started, so I was 16, I was at school and I was doing my last year of O-Levels and I was doing okay, so my parents said, oh, you know, you got to stay on, do your A-Levels and go to university. And I'm sure they had dreams of me being a lawyer or a doctor or something. I said, no, don't need any of that. And John was two years older than me.

Speaker 1:
[46:42] And they had a toy shop, your?

Speaker 4:
[46:43] My mom, at that point, yeah, they got a toy shop, unfortunately, at the age when I was very Avengers, isn't it? I wish it had been when I was a kid.

Speaker 2:
[46:51] Your first song was to do with that, wasn't it? I'm sorry, getting ahead.

Speaker 4:
[46:55] Don't know about that. But the, no, they owned a toy shop. My mom had one when I was probably about nine or something like that, nine or ten, when I'd just sort of grown out of toys and didn't want anything to do with them. And before I got back into them, by the time I was about 17 or 18, I thought, wow, look at that, look at that Jerry Anderson car, isn't that great? But it was very useful. We used to rehearse above the toy shop. There was a little room.

Speaker 2:
[47:22] The only reason was there was a doll. Wasn't that Ben Meshapen? Didn't that song come from that?

Speaker 4:
[47:29] How on earth do you know that? That's Stephen Duffey.

Speaker 1:
[47:32] He has been your memory.

Speaker 4:
[47:33] That's Stephen Duffey, yes. He took some of the lyric from the song off the back of a packet of a doll that we were looking at upstairs. I knew I had something.

Speaker 6:
[47:45] That's very good.

Speaker 1:
[47:47] How 80s that is? Yes.

Speaker 4:
[47:50] Yeah, yeah. This was actually 1978. Stephen was in the band because John met him at art school at Birmingham Polytechnic.

Speaker 1:
[47:59] How did you meet John, though?

Speaker 4:
[48:01] John I knew since I think I was 10. He was 12. We met over the usual things that our gang would have done. David Bowie, Sparx, Cockney Rebel, Roxy Music, music. I got introduced by a mutual friend and he lived around the corner from me. So that was it. We used to hang out together. I've been to a couple of concerts already, but he came to Mick Ronson with me. We went together.

Speaker 1:
[48:32] Was also on 10th Avenue.

Speaker 4:
[48:33] He's first. Yeah, he's first concert.

Speaker 2:
[48:35] How old? Me?

Speaker 4:
[48:36] Well, I was 10 then, 10 and 11, and John was...

Speaker 2:
[48:39] That's not Bowie, that's Mick Ronson solo. That is incredibly sophisticated. Really? I don't know.

Speaker 4:
[48:44] Everybody loved that album then.

Speaker 1:
[48:46] Yeah, that was a great album.

Speaker 2:
[48:47] Yes, everybody loved that album. Not 10 years old so much.

Speaker 4:
[48:51] 74 was...

Speaker 2:
[48:51] 74, yeah.

Speaker 4:
[48:53] Yeah. But yeah, so John and I became music obsessive pals and hung out together and did everything together. We used to go to shows and go backstage or not backstage, behind the building and look at the trucks. There's three trucks so we counted how many lights there were and how big the PA was and what was...

Speaker 2:
[49:19] That's really true. That's almost like you were planning.

Speaker 4:
[49:22] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[49:22] Already, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4:
[49:23] We had a manifesto.

Speaker 1:
[49:24] I find that really emotional, you know, that these guys are still together now touring, what they did and what they achieved. And I'm trying to imagine you, but you just, unfortunately, you both look like John and Nick, but just smaller. I mean, you've got the hair and the clothes.

Speaker 2:
[49:39] Well, because the first thing I thought when you thought, and don't say it's right, is that as the idea of John two years ago and probably sort of if he was really tall already and just how cool he would have seemed.

Speaker 4:
[49:50] Yeah, he was. John, I guess, he wouldn't mind me saying at all, was slightly more geeky then.

Speaker 1:
[49:56] That's a big age difference, isn't it?

Speaker 4:
[49:58] A couple of years.

Speaker 2:
[49:58] Then huge, that's huge.

Speaker 4:
[50:00] Sort of, but we all like the same thing. So it was good. But we started with Stephen Duffy when I was 16, because I didn't want to... John had been in a couple of punk bands already. And I didn't want... It was one called Shop Treatment, who I actually went to see. And another one called 262, I think. And then he was in a band called Dada.

Speaker 2:
[50:22] Ooh, very sophisticated.

Speaker 4:
[50:23] Yeah, well, and they had a...

Speaker 2:
[50:25] Not the first.

Speaker 4:
[50:26] Their keyboard player had a... No, correct. Was it Robert Palmer?

Speaker 2:
[50:29] It was Robert Palmer, wasn't it, Dada, yeah.

Speaker 4:
[50:32] Yeah, their keyboard player, I remember, had his keyboard on top of an ironing board, which I thought was actually rather good.

Speaker 1:
[50:38] I remember seeing the subway section, they had a sofa and a lampshade on... And a standard lamp on stage, and I thought that was quite cool.

Speaker 2:
[50:45] That's bordering on prog, though, isn't it? Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[50:50] But, yeah, so Stephen was our singer then in 78 until 80, but by that point in 78, I didn't want to miss the opportunity to form a band with John, because his punk bands had broken up. And so we formed Duran Duran.

Speaker 1:
[51:03] But why not with Stephen? What happened?

Speaker 4:
[51:05] Well, it was with Stephen then, because Stephen was at his art college, and Stephen was actually pretty damn good. He got all these...

Speaker 1:
[51:12] Charismatic?

Speaker 4:
[51:13] Yeah, and he got these books filled with lyrics, and they were all in order, and I hadn't realized quite how much he'd borrowed from Scott Fitzgerald. We used the word borrowed very lightly. Okay. But...

Speaker 1:
[51:27] I mean, the great Gatsby, I can see that, you know? That's very 80s, isn't it?

Speaker 4:
[51:30] And he was very Stephen too. Brian Ferry, really? He, yeah. Well, I remember being on stage with him at Barbarella's, and I was just about to start my little K-rhythm unit on this sort of, sort of thing. And beforehand, Stephen said, well, this is a song in his most fae voice. This is a song inspired by a writer called F. Scott Fitzgerald, and it's called So Cold in El Dorado. And I thought, okay, the bottles are going to start flying. Give me a second, let the rhythm box start. But actually, I have a great fondness for Stephen. We were heartbroken when he left. He wanted to do something more rock. And so he left and formed a band. I think they were called the Hawks, or the Subterranean Hawks. I don't know which way around it was. And we were on our own again. But that's when we sort of started to switch a little bit more towards dance music and disco. Because the early stuff, with Stephen, was much more art school.

Speaker 1:
[52:38] Well, you know, you see, you're waiting for the bottles to fly. I mean, it's like Robert Elm was getting up and reading that poem before we played at the Scala. You know, there were kids out there who wanted a certain amount of pretension. They wanted another world.

Speaker 4:
[52:51] We were supporting, so I think we were supporting fashion, actually. Coolish audience. But yeah, it wasn't our gig and we were the support.

Speaker 1:
[53:00] So how did Simon come along?

Speaker 4:
[53:02] Simon came along. We met him through a waitress in a cocktail bar. It was actually, she was working at the Rum Runner, and she used to see us rehearsing every day. And we knew her, Fiona. And she said, you know, I've got a friend, he's just like you guys. And don't you need a singer? I think she was just fed up of hearing all this music, no vocals. And we said, sure, send him down. And Simon arrived. These sort of pink leopard skin, trousers on, and he had a lyric book. That was what I was really interested in. He said his name was Simon and Bon. And yeah, it's too good.

Speaker 1:
[53:48] I always thought he made it up.

Speaker 2:
[53:49] It's literally, it's literally too good, yes, yes. They're good.

Speaker 4:
[53:56] Yeah, anyway, he hadn't, and he came sat with us and we wrote a song that day with him called Sound of Thunder. It was our first one. And we knew that was it. Because when we could hear how we could sing, we thought, oh, okay, even better. You've got lyrics, you look good, and you can sing. Done. That was it.

Speaker 1:
[54:16] And he had the same likes and dislikes, obviously.

Speaker 4:
[54:18] Pretty much. He liked a lot of things that maybe we didn't like as much. He loved David Bowie, of course, but he also liked Joni Mitchell, which I thought was interesting. I didn't get into Joni Mitchell until March later. And he liked The Doors very much. I think Jim Morrison was definitely a big influence lyrically on Simon.

Speaker 2:
[54:47] Okay. I want to jump around here. So now along we've got. Because seeing as one thing we're really getting here is how you and Jon are so much, you're so close, you're so the start of this. That when you do your separate projects, I mean, the fact that, because I want to talk about Arcadia. Yeah. So I think it's a criminally overlooked album, by the way. And how was it that you two split for that period? How did that feel?

Speaker 4:
[55:11] Well, very odd. But then the world was very odd by then, because we've been on this sort of crazy ride for five years nonstop from 1980 to 1985. And that culminated with Wild Boys then View to a Kill. And after we've done that, we were so burned. We were taking any days off. We weren't thinking about anything. And we were just all running at full speed all the time. Because another opportunity always came up. And we were ambitious kids. We wanted to be bigger than anyone else. And we wanted to play the biggest place. And we wanted to have number one after number one.

Speaker 1:
[55:56] We never ever felt pushed around by management.

Speaker 4:
[55:58] Well, until 1985, then at a certain point, I think we'd reached the top of the mountain. And we looked down and went, oh my god. That's a long, long way to get back to any kind of realities. And internally, the band, Andy, wanted to do something more rock. And of course, I wanted to do something more synth, more artistic. He wanted to get back to small roots.

Speaker 1:
[56:28] So was the camp split slightly like that within, just as friends on tour?

Speaker 4:
[56:34] Towards that period, I think Wild Boys and View to a Kill were the pinnacle of what we were doing together for pumping up the sound. And I remember sitting with the engineer, Jason Casaro, when we were doing the View to a Kill mix and saying to him, Jason, look, those meters are completely in the red. And he said, great. Because he just wanted to break every rule of making sound that special. And we felt like we tried to do that with everything. Whether we've been successful, that's for somebody else to judge. But we had pushed video, we pushed our songwriting to as far as we could, we pushed whatever we could do with sound. And we'd made a movie, this thing called Arena, that was done in 1984. And we'd done the live album. And we were just burnt. And so we wanted to step back for a minute. And in that stepping back, of course, that's when the split occurred. Because John wanted to spend more time in New York with Andy, and they wanted to be at the power station and work with Bernard on that. Robert Palmer, who was a friend of ours, saw an opportunity to, and I think it was a great choice. Robert was an amazing singer. And so he got involved, and Tony Thompson being one of the greatest drummers in the world. So that all worked for them. Simon and I just sort of de-camped to Paris, because I wanted to spend some time out of the madness of London, and wanted to work with other people. We'd never worked with anyone apart from the people in the band.

Speaker 2:
[58:22] That's the thing I love, because looking at it, I listened to it again this morning, because what's interesting is everything we've talked about today, your whole journey, all the names of everything, all the names, this fantastic, incredibly posh, eclectic mix of musicians, none of these are those people coming up. You know, it's David Gilmore, it's Sting, it's Mark Egan, it's extraordinary music, Herbie Hancock.

Speaker 4:
[58:46] Yeah, well, he was just in Paris and I was hanging out, I've never seen anyone's hands move faster over a keyboard. He terrified me. I thought, okay, okay, I'm never going to pretend in any way to be a pianist ever. I play synthesizers. He was very generous and so sweet though.

Speaker 1:
[59:03] I didn't know Gilmore played on the album.

Speaker 4:
[59:05] He's all over it.

Speaker 1:
[59:06] Is he?

Speaker 4:
[59:07] My God.

Speaker 2:
[59:07] Yeah, when I first met him, he loved it. He loved it. I mean, he was really chuffed.

Speaker 1:
[59:10] When did you record him?

Speaker 4:
[59:11] It was great. It was recorded mostly at Studio de la Grande d'Armée.

Speaker 1:
[59:16] And was he there or did you think, let's get him over?

Speaker 4:
[59:19] We got him over. Yeah, we got everybody over. The budget was absolutely looted.

Speaker 2:
[59:22] Well, there was something that was down. Yeah, Floyd was doing nothing when they split up.

Speaker 4:
[59:26] It wasn't such a bad thing. We've been doing okay till then. So when you got a call saying, a couple of guys from Duran Duran want to invite you over to Paris for four or five days to come and play on a few tracks on the album.

Speaker 2:
[59:39] David Zariz immediately going through the list of restaurants.

Speaker 4:
[59:42] Exactly. They have nice wine as well. He was great.

Speaker 2:
[59:48] It's so fun when I listen to it. There's one song and it's so fun. It literally starts off. It's like, there he is.

Speaker 4:
[59:54] Oh, right. Yeah, the promise.

Speaker 2:
[59:56] Delayed. Delayed guitar. There is some later on, but no, it's just the bend.

Speaker 4:
[60:01] Well, I've always wanted to redo the album, reimagine it, remix it, have someone else, Bob Cleomatin or someone to remix it completely because there was so much on it. The difficulty in mixing it was that we'd been recording for about 16 months or something. And so I got reels and reels filled with Dave Gilmore, reels filled with Andy McCarr.

Speaker 2:
[60:25] Right, right, right. Of course, Andy as well, yes.

Speaker 4:
[60:27] Outtakes from Grace Jones, Sting's trying different harmonies on things.

Speaker 1:
[60:33] It sounds like a box set, really.

Speaker 4:
[60:35] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[60:35] But, and also you, you're doing great kind of Ryuichi type stuff as well.

Speaker 4:
[60:41] Well, so we had Masami Tuchiya with us, who's a Japanese guitarist who played with Japan before, but he was quite an interesting artist.

Speaker 1:
[60:49] I don't know, did you know? You thought he was his sushi chef, didn't you?

Speaker 4:
[60:54] He was great, Masami. And what he had was his Prophet 5 was very different than mine. He had these sounds that this program for Yellow Magic Orchestra. Ah, there it is.

Speaker 1:
[61:06] Did he play with them?

Speaker 4:
[61:07] Well, he said, do you mind if I load them into your Prophet 5? Well, I was thinking, I don't want to lose my sounds, but actually they're pretty cool. And so he put this cassette on, because he used to load programs from a cassette. His cassette on, he was listening to them loading on his headphones. He was going, glitches and things. What's he listening to? This is crazy. And he was going, hmm, hmm, hmm. You know, it's loading. And when it all loaded, he said, listen. And he started playing these things, and they've all got fourths in them, and these things that don't really fit with the chords. But I've never taken the sounds out of my Prophet, because I can make the original hands that were in there. I can never make these things. They're crazy sounding things. So, a lot of that is in my Prophet.

Speaker 2:
[61:52] Actually, while we're on that, I went up to Roland in Tim Panani, Oh yeah, Denmark Street, and went up to see Matt Knight, and he was showing me all of these very special projects. And one thing that was so cool was something that was made for you. It's either a Jupiter or a Juno-A, but it's black and gold. It's like the old JPS Lotus colors. It's all black with gold sliders and knobs.

Speaker 4:
[62:19] Yeah, I've got a black one. They made a completely black one. All the keys are black, but which is kind of fun until it gets a little darker.

Speaker 2:
[62:27] Yeah, the moody intro, when the light's down.

Speaker 1:
[62:32] There's so much to talk about, Nick, and we haven't really got a lot more time, but I'm interested in how you... Well, that 2001 Get Together again, when all five of you were in the room, and I remember being at Wembley Arena, I think it was, to watch you come together, and I think you did this amazing thing, where you all walked on stage and stood at the front. Did that all feel genuine, genuinely friends getting back together? How did it feel?

Speaker 4:
[62:57] Well, it took a long time, didn't it? We split up in 85, then John, Simon and I got back together in 86, late 86, so about a year and a half later than when we'd split up, and Andy and Roger didn't make it. Roger because he had a lot of personal issues he wanted to deal with, and Andy because he was on some slightly megalomaniac, LA, rule the world thing and his solo album and everything. We thought, what are we going to do? Because there's now only three of us. Do we carry on like this? Do we get other band members? Do we wait and see if they're coming back? Because we thought that they probably were coming back. Anyway, then it all unfolded. We got Nile to play on the album. We got Steve Ferroni, who's an amazing drummer too. And we made Notorious and that went pretty well and carried on thinking, what are we doing? And then a couple of years later, you realize, well, it's already the end of the 80s and no, we're not getting back together right now.

Speaker 1:
[64:02] And of course, there's a whole other scene happening now, isn't there? There's rave is happening.

Speaker 4:
[64:06] And then the beginnings of grunge.

Speaker 1:
[64:08] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[64:08] And so there wasn't really much space for people like us on TV, on the radio, in the charts, whatever it was. It was hard then around 1990. It was the first time we realized about four or five years later that, oh, no, we didn't go back together, did we? And we've got Warren on board by then as guitarist. So it didn't occur for a while. But then people asked every year, I think, throughout the 90s, when are you going to put the original band back together? And we always said, well, no, because we didn't know whether anyone wanted to do that.

Speaker 2:
[64:42] Are you all talking through this period?

Speaker 4:
[64:44] No, we did speak to Andy for that whole period. Roger, we saw occasionally, Roger came and played on the Thank You album in 1995, played on a couple of tracks with us, did a video with us. And it was great to see him. And then I don't really know why we didn't connect more and take Roger back on board then. Maybe he wasn't ready, maybe we weren't. I don't know. But by the time it got to about 2000 and John had left, John had gone to LA and was doing his own thing there.

Speaker 1:
[65:13] It's very hard to keep a band together, isn't it? Very hard. The band is more together, I think, in an audience's mind than in the actual members of the band. Because they yearn for it more. Because to them, it's a return to that moment where their lives changed.

Speaker 4:
[65:29] Yeah, and it represents a period, doesn't it?

Speaker 1:
[65:31] To when you saw Stardust.

Speaker 4:
[65:32] Well, yeah. Look at what it did for us. Look at those albums. Look at Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin, Sane, Transformer. I think it is an important part of culture, but when it falls apart, I don't suppose we would have wanted The Beatles with three different members, would we? And Paul McCartney wouldn't have felt the same. And so we'd reached that point where we knew that it was a really thin piece of string at the end of the 90s, and that we either had two options. One was to stop doing it, do something else, or to put it back together and see what happened. And Simon was very keen to do that. He made the call to Andy, I think, and we all met in London, in St. John's Wood in a little office and looked at each other and thought, okay, can we do this? And we started doing some demos. Then we put some money in ourselves, went to the south of France, which is the sort of thing Duran Duran would have done, if it could still do. And we rented a house for 10 days, 12 days.

Speaker 1:
[66:47] That's a big commitment, that's living with each other.

Speaker 4:
[66:49] Yeah, it was. And there were moments when we thought somebody wasn't going to make it out of the house, depended who had the best ammunition, I guess, at the time. But we fought through that and then realized we were going to make it work.

Speaker 1:
[67:04] Because you have to have a certain set of rules, don't you? That you all need to play by. You can't have one person getting up, waiting to work at 9 o'clock, and someone else not getting up till 3 o'clock in the afternoon.

Speaker 4:
[67:14] Well, yeah. I mean, the Rolling Stones always used to work very, very different hours. And they didn't suit all of them. But we made it work anyway. And the answer, was it easy at first? No, definitely not. It was bumpy.

Speaker 2:
[67:30] Did you have an overshoot? Did you have a producer or anything? Was it just...?

Speaker 4:
[67:33] Not at the beginning. We just went in and wrote, because that's what we'd always done. But then we did get some different people in. We worked with Nile again.

Speaker 1:
[67:43] You guys managed to survive, even though Andy went then, and that didn't hold itself together.

Speaker 4:
[67:48] Well, that's the one thing I would say. Andy's a killer guitarist.

Speaker 1:
[67:53] He's a big voice in the records, isn't he?

Speaker 4:
[67:55] Yeah. The early ones, very much so. When Andy and I were absolutely on the same page about how to make something work, I think those moments, the clit really worked. But not having Andy in the band is much easier on many, many, many, many levels, because he's quite a divisive sort of character. And it's not a criticism of Andy at all. It's just the way he is and the way the rest of us are is pretty different. The rest of us kind of fit together more. The rest of us all love David Bowie more than ACDC.

Speaker 1:
[68:37] Right, right.

Speaker 4:
[68:38] And I think Andy had a very different upbringing. He's a bit more Northern, Newcastle. When he arrived, I didn't understand a word he was saying for about three months. But yeah, did get him in green glitter eyeshadow very quickly.

Speaker 1:
[68:54] I mean, the fact that you guys keep doing it now is just, to me, I'm jealous. Because I think, you know, you're still obviously enjoying it.

Speaker 4:
[69:04] Yeah, very much.

Speaker 1:
[69:06] And you're making new material.

Speaker 4:
[69:08] Yeah, I think the thing is we realize we're lucky together and that that works. There are always going to be moments when someone's pulling in one direction, somebody else is pulling in another. And you have to be able to compromise. Because if you don't want to compromise, you know that full well from all the things you've done, both of you. That's what it is, playing in a band together, being in a band together. And we've learned quite well how to do that and to understand each other. You know when someone's in a bad mood, we all kind of know how to manage it. And who's going to talk to who and who's going to keep out of the way. And it's also what we talk about. It just is one of those things that by now, we know each other so well. It's a crazy amount of time.

Speaker 2:
[69:58] But also I think it's like you're always still looking for new boxes to tick, aren't you?

Speaker 4:
[70:03] That's the thing. Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 2:
[70:04] That's what's fun for me.

Speaker 4:
[70:06] See, I've always loved technology. So we have a lot of technology firsts. When everyone else was screaming about how awful AI is, I thought, no, I want to make an AI video. So we made the first ever one. And it was the weirdest thing to do because you couldn't control the AI then. This is...

Speaker 2:
[70:25] Did you all have seven fingers?

Speaker 4:
[70:27] Yeah, but it was weirder than that. One day, it just started making dogs. When's it going to stop making dogs? They said, don't know. It's just picked up. We realized it was some algorithm from stuff it had picked up online.

Speaker 1:
[70:42] It's hungry like the wolf, I think.

Speaker 4:
[70:43] Because it's so very well. There wasn't even a wolf in there. It's more like Dr. Zeus. There was dogs with sort of giraffe necks and dots all over them and things. But...

Speaker 1:
[70:52] You have to talk about the new single. When's it coming out? Oh, Free to Love.

Speaker 4:
[70:57] Free to Love, yeah. In a minute. I think the end of April. It's a song we did when we were working with Nile Rodgers here in London. We were doing a song for our Halloween project called Black Moonlight. And we had a jam alongside that one that never made it to the Halloween album because it was far too sort of summery and groovy for Halloween. And a few months later, I was in the studio and I got it out. And I said, let's have a listen to this thing and started piecing it together and sent it out to everyone saying, I think we should work on this. And that's what became Free to Love. It's only one song we haven't put together. We haven't put together a load of things to go with it because you have to find an increasing amount of time to make whole albums now. And I think people do just drop songs.

Speaker 2:
[71:46] Yeah, exactly. You're not buying an album anymore.

Speaker 1:
[71:51] And also it means it's another way of people realizing you're going back out on the road and you have something new and you're still, you know, creative in force. You are playing as well this summer, aren't you?

Speaker 4:
[72:00] We are, yeah. We're doing some shows. When's this going out?

Speaker 1:
[72:05] This Sunday. So keep an eye on your website and your, not website, we're not talking about my, socials. I'm living in my space world.

Speaker 4:
[72:13] Yeah, I think in a minute there's an announcement coming out for sure because we've definitely OK'd it all now for a big London show that we're super excited about.

Speaker 1:
[72:20] Fantastic. And you're in Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Congratulations.

Speaker 4:
[72:23] Yes. Yeah, yeah. I'm not sure what they all do and everything, but it was fun. They were very nice to us.

Speaker 1:
[72:29] Who did, Andy didn't come?

Speaker 4:
[72:30] The what? I voted for you.

Speaker 1:
[72:32] Did you?

Speaker 4:
[72:32] Oh, thank you. That's probably what got us in. To tip the boat.

Speaker 1:
[72:38] You're in the Academy. Why are you in the Academy?

Speaker 4:
[72:40] I don't know.

Speaker 1:
[72:41] I have interest. Why aren't I in the Academy?

Speaker 4:
[72:42] I don't think any of us know. We'll vote for you. I don't think any of us know the rhyme and reason of Rock and Roll all of that.

Speaker 1:
[72:49] Did Andy come back up on stage for that?

Speaker 4:
[72:51] No, Andy was invited. We invited him to play with us. We thought it was the right thing to do. And actually we were all looking forward to it. But very sadly he got sick.

Speaker 1:
[73:01] Oh, that's right.

Speaker 4:
[73:02] He has prostate cancer.

Speaker 2:
[73:03] No, but that's what saved him. With Simon reading that letter and Chris Evans, the doctor heard it, was watching the ceremony. And that's why he got treated. And that's why I actually then went and did a charity gig with Andy to raise money for Chris Evans' platform. Where I also got to play Stairway to Heaven with Robert Plonk.

Speaker 4:
[73:22] Yeah, we raised some money for Andy's treatments as well, because obviously we want the best we possibly can have for him. But yeah, he's doing okay, I think.

Speaker 1:
[73:32] Thanks for coming on.

Speaker 4:
[73:33] It's fun to just have a chat instead of...

Speaker 1:
[73:36] But we don't do interviews right now, but also we have a lot in common.

Speaker 4:
[73:38] But yeah, you know what I was going to go on to when we were talking, then I thought, oh no, we better not go down this rabbit hole any much.

Speaker 1:
[73:44] Well, we can edit it in if you want.

Speaker 4:
[73:45] Well, no, no, no, no, because it's up to you.

Speaker 1:
[73:48] It's not that relevant.

Speaker 4:
[73:49] But when we were talking about Clockwork Orange, so a dear friend of mine, I'm sure you must have met him too, Dougie Fields. Yeah, of course. Well, he, as we know, sadly passed away a few years ago now, but he was telling me about Stanley Kubrick had seen his artwork at that period and had asked him, he started doing this film called A Clockwork Orange. Would you be interested in doing the poster and doing the design for the film for me? And Dougie went to see the film and didn't really love it and said, I'm sorry, it's not really for me.

Speaker 1:
[74:26] Wow, that makes total sense because I can imagine now, because I said on the introduction that Kubrick got Philip Castle over to his house, showed him the film, apparently had no sound on it, and then said, look, he must have shown him something to do with Dougie. Because it is quite like a Dougie film, isn't it?

Speaker 4:
[74:47] Yeah, for sure. But Dougie, he made one painting, one small painting at the time, and he doesn't know what happened to that painting, but I think that was really the direction of it. He must have shown him.

Speaker 1:
[75:02] Well, that brings it all in full circle.

Speaker 2:
[75:04] It does. I've got a little bit of a Dougie trivia, is that there's a great picture, there's a bass that Roger Waters used to play, around 1960, it was a Fender Precision, and it was this sort of like a camouflage pattern, really amazing thing that Dougie had painted there. And I asked Dave, and I was once playing a bass around at David's house, this sort of plain wood Precision. I said, whatever happened to that? Amazing bass that Dougie painted for Roger, and David very seriously went, is that? I stripped it, I didn't know.

Speaker 4:
[75:33] Well, and also Dougie used to live with Sid Parrott, and so the floor, the striped floor on the front of the Madcap Laughs, the album, that was Dougie's living room. And it's remained like that the whole time.

Speaker 1:
[75:48] They just sold off the floorboards.

Speaker 4:
[75:50] And then later, they sold off the floorboards. And I sent a note to Dave Gilmore to say, look, I don't know, if somebody else having it, it would probably be better with him if he wanted it.

Speaker 1:
[76:04] Who had it in the end? Who's got the floorboards?

Speaker 2:
[76:06] What is he going to do with it? Is he going to buy a house to put it?

Speaker 1:
[76:10] Yeah. Thank you so much, Nick.

Speaker 2:
[76:13] That was so great, that was wonderful.

Speaker 1:
[76:14] We can wrap up now, can't we?

Speaker 4:
[76:16] We can.

Speaker 1:
[76:16] And thank you to Gimme Sugar for producing the show, these guys here at Warner's today. And it's good night from me.

Speaker 2:
[76:24] And it's good night from them.

Speaker 7:
[76:26] Rockonteurs is produced by Gimmie Sugar Productions for Warner Music Group UK.