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The Interview
What festival are you most looking forward to playing this summer – and why?
The Bradford upon Avon festival. They seem so enthusiastic in their communications. I love enthusiasts!
Tell us about one/some of the most career defining shows you’ve played so far.
The Citadel in St Helen’s last month, it’s a great little theatre venue up North and the show was packed out. We played it like it was the last show we will ever do (over two hours on stage).
Always turn up! Always give everything!
How did you come into this career?
My generation was the punk generation. It was suddenly ok for working class boys and girls to play instruments and be in bands. I really took to the bass. The only other thing I picked up as quickly and intuitively was clay pigeon shooting.
Any pre-show rituals?
I used to pray.
Like I was about to go through some awful spiritual test. So I used to do a prayer about ‘letting go’ and letting the music carry itself through.
I would sort of relinquish ownership of the process. Maybe that meant if it all went wrong I wasn’t responsible. Often the toilet was the only place to get peace, before a show, in the mad adrenalised dressing room atmosphere.
Nowadays I simply ask my self, just before the show starts ‘are you aware?’. Obviously I am! But that question brings in a wider awareness. That also includes micro awareness of the feeling of the strings in the tips of my fingers, as well as being aware of the back row of the theatre. You are the witness and the witnessed.
What was the first show you remember going to?
One of the first shows I ever saw was Bob Marley at the Lyceum in London in 1975. That show utterly blew me away. Family man Barrett was awesome to behold and the bass seemed to contain the power of the universe within itself. Family man was powerful AND so musical. To this day that show was by far and away the best music show I have ever beheld.
Marley was right at his peak at that exact time. People regarded him like a messiah – he had a light around him.
What was the first show you remember playing?
Belgium in 1978. There was a leather clad bloke right at the front of the stage making that ‘cut throat’ mime. Somebody kicked him in the boat. It turned out he was the head of security! A serious altercation ensued and we ended up barricaded in the dressing room and tear gas was used to clear the mob outside by the OB. It was also my first time out the country and first time on a plane. I didn’t even have a passport. I had to go to Peterborough to get an emergency one issued!
One thing you wish you knew before your first gig?
Don’t trust any c*** in the music business. Even your mates! In fact especially your mates!!
Tell us about someone in your team you couldn’t do without.
My drummer Marc Layton Bennett is the person I owe a lot to. When he joined me 15 years ago he didn’t even have a driving licence, now he handles a lot of the transport/logistic side of things for me.
The two other regular invaders band members, George King and Martin (Chungy) are also incredibly helpful and have been playing with me for many years. George joined just after Marc and Chungy about 12 years ago. They saw how much of a struggle it was to find good dependable crew members and insisted they join the band.
Obviously there’s a lot of tour management stuff I have to take care off, but whatever. That all gets taken care of via apps on an iPhone.
Oh and by the way, Marc, George, and Chungy are the best band, by a country mile, that I have ever had. So I am very fortunate.
How do you find working with Midnight Mango?
I have never had a decent UK Agent right up to my time with MM (that’s a lot of years). Rich Potter is my agent there. To be honest, in my experience, UK agents are the most loathsome of all the various professions in the music business. And that’s saying something!!
‘Bullsh****** big time Charlies’ was my general view of them. They often simply came across as lazy. They didn’t want to graft hard to establish an act.
Going back many years I had a Dutch agent Willem Venema. So through the eighties into the nineties I worked a lot more in Europe than the UK. In fact I had a Dutch crew too.
I had good relationships with UK promoters, so worked directly with them. The most stand out of them was probably Adrian Gibson. Anyway, these last few years, I am happily represented by a young (relatively young anyway!) agent, who works for Midnight Mango, a well run, large, but not impersonal agency.
I talk to Matt the boss from time to time (discussing stuff outside of my live work), and Ian who overseas the financials. Both are always courteous and helpful.
Tell us about something you’d like to promote.
I got tons of stuff going on. Touring again in the autumn, doing both Invaders of the Heart shows and Metal Box rebuilt in dub (with Jon Klein). A new album with reggae legend Ken Boothe (produced with Jon Klein), that’s on the back of our record with Horace Andy last year.
My two sons have a band called Tian Qiyi and they release their second album ‘Songs for Workers‘ this summer. The single ‘Watch the Sun Rise ‘ is getting good radio play at the moment. I play bass on about half of their album and do a few of their shows with them too. They play Music Port Festival this year.
I also have a dub album coming out in vinyl on dimple discs this summer. Plus I have done an album commemorating the North London Line (Mildmay) that’s a follow up to my bus routes of south London album.
Oh and there’s another album with Jon Klein, that’s hard core. Punk come post punk, called Automatic Paradise. That’s on dimple discs too.
Come to think of it, I’d better tell Rich about it! It’s a belter!
