Pop Culture Press
Spring, 2001 (#51)
The Soft Boys: License To Rock Renewed
by Kent H. Benjamin
The Soft Boys should've been huge, at least in England. The band existed for a short while: 1977 to the start of 1981. Based out of Cambridge, England, Robyn Hitchcock was a terrific writer from day one. Equal parts Captain Beefheart, Syd Barrett, The Beatles, and The Byrds. With original rhythm section Morris Windsor on drums and Andy Metcalfe on bass (later replaced by Matthew Seligman), the band never achieved more than cult fame. With Kimberley Rew from rival Cambridge group The Waves on lead guitar, and Seligman on bass, the group recorded their masterpiece, Underwater Moonlight in the fall of 1979, for release in 1980, with a clutch of magnificent singles including "I Wanna Destroy You", "He's A Reptile", and "Only The Stones Remain". Arguably, the record is one of the very finest of the whole British Punk era. And yet, it was only really popular among a small cult of fans in the U.S..
The Soft Boys split in early 1981, Robyn Hitchcock going on to a long and successful solo career that's encompassed some 20 albums, with and without his band The Egyptians (Morris Windsor and Andy Metcalfe). Kimberley Rew reformed The Waves with an American singer named Katrina Leskanich, and achieved mega-success with "Walking On Sunshine", "Do You Want Crying", and "Going Down To Liverpool" (which was also a massive hit by The Bangles). Matthew Seligman went on to be an in-demand bassist, playing with The Thompson Twins, Thomas Dolby, Brian Eno, David Bowie, and Sinead O'Connor.
And against all odds, the band has re-formed for a spring tour in 2001, just over 20 years after they originally folded. The release is timed to coincide with a March reissue of Underwater Moonlight on Matador Records, with a bonus 2nd disc of rehearsals from the recording sessions. Since the band are kicking off their reunion tour in Austin at SXSW, we're pleased to present exclusive interviews with all four members of the band. We spent a half-hour separately with each of them in January, 2001, by phone from their homes in England.
I understand you have some new photos for us.
Robyn Hitchcock: Yeah, the last time we were all photographed together, our combined ages were under 100. Now they're over 200! Let alone our combined weights.
The last time we talked, you were expounding upon this philosophy you had, that in order to be in a band over the age of forty and tour, you'd have to get a special license for it. So, this Soft Boys tour raises the question, did you get your license renewed yet?
That's absolutely right! We've applied for one from the Administration, and I'm hoping it will come through. I still stand by what I said, though. I think it's disgusting to see middle-aged guys with guitars. We have auditioned to see if we were any good, and we played at a party to see if people were dancing and stuff. We've had lots of rehearsals. We wanted to make sure it [The Soft Boys] was a living organism instead of something that was held together on a life support system, and would fall apart if it wasn't heavily propped up. I think it sounds good. I think it's a shame we don't look we did 20 years ago, but it can't be helped. At least we don't look as bad as we will in another 10 years.
They make hair coloring, you know.
That doesn't help. Look what happened with Reagan. I think the whole point then is if you have young hair, it gives you an old face. Then we'd look like a bunch of old tomatoes -- and that would be frightening.
Does anybody still have dark hair?
Matthew and Morris still have dark hair. Kim and I have gone grey. If you were to ask me the way forward for The Soft Boys -- like what do you see us becoming -- I would say I see us going grey rather than bald.
I'd gladly settle for grey myself. How did this reunion come about? Was it gradual? Because you and Kim have just worked on several albums together [Hitchcock's Jewels For Sophia and Rew's Tunnel Into Summer].
Partly, I think that was the, sort of, pre-production. That was a very slow process over about three years. Every time I was in Cambridge, he'd come along and play. And every time I was in London, he'd come down and play. And then I'd ask him to sessions. And he was obviously really keen to play, and it was sounding good. To the point to where we did that tour last year -- you were there -- and we played together really well. I couldn't stand up at the Austin show -- I had that ailment. But I was standing by the time we got to Baltimore, I think. But that was good. He became part of The Floating Plastic Robyn Hitchcock Band.
And we realized that Underwater Moonlight was out of print, but a lot of people still wanted to buy it. So we started looking for someone to put it out. We thought, "Well, shall we promote it?" Morris and I'd worked together a lot over the years in The Egyptians. So, really, I'd only had about five years away from Morris recently. And we were used to long periods apart anyway. Morris always comes down to play when we have parties. So Morris, Kim, and I were, kind of, together anyway. Andy Metcalfe was also in The Egyptians and also on Kim's record, but he wasn't on Underwater Moonlight. That was Matthew Seligman, and I hadn't seen much of him for a while. He became a lawyer. He's the one who's, sort of, become the least involved in music in the last decade. He seemed to be quite keen to do it. So we got together one afternoon in July, and it was just about still there. We were jamming a lot, which is always a good sign. It means there's life in the organism yet. Maybe having had 20 years to recharge the batteries, there's still juice left in them. We didn't come stamping on the boards too heavily, in case we fell through them. But it built up gradually, until we got a label to release it that we were comfortable with -- that everyone said would be good to release it. So here we are: terrified for our lives!
It's going to be a big thrill for a lot of people. The band broke up immediately after having done its best work, and The Soft Boys have a much greater reputation and higher profile now than they ever did in the old days. There was no sense of completion to The Soft Boys story. It just ended suddenly, at its peak.
Yeah, I think that's the case. We didn't break up because we couldn't stand each other. It was just that there really didn't seem to be anyplace for us to go. I think Kimberley also needed to work on his own songs. He had "Walking On Sunshine" and "Going Down To Liverpool" in him, incubating at the time. And that sustained Katrina And The Waves' career. I know I heard him do "Going Down To Liverpool" in '81. So Kim had his own career, and I had my own career as me, The Robyn Hitchcock Show. But these were both waiting to happen at the end of The Soft Boys. The Soft Boys itself wasn't drained of all of its blood. We weren't, sort of, hanging upside-down the butcher's with our throats cut. There was still some life in it. And it was a really good platform for us. Morris, Andy, and I exploited that in The Egyptians in the '80s. And Matthew did his stuff with Thomas Dolby and David Bowie. I think he'd just, sort of, had enough by the late '80s.
It's interesting to me that there are several of your songs on the rehearsals disc that I would've thought were Kim singing if I hadn't known better; and on Kim's new album, there's several tracks that if played for me as "the new Robyn Hitchcock album", I wouldn't have known the difference. You've been apart for so long, but there's just so much common ground, too. It's interesting to see there's so much more similarity now that you're both older.
Really?! Yeah, we've probably got closer with time rather than farther apart. We're both now rather old-fashioned. Why not, we're in our late 40s. I think he's probably even less in touch with modern music than I am. But we both like a nice Pop tune, is what comes down to. And in a way, that kind of thing was obsolete, even in The Soft Boys' days. Everyone pointed at us, and said, 'Oh god, how retro,' when we made Underwater Moonlight. Since then there's been Oasis and Lenny Kravitz -- which were every bit as retro as us, I think. All it was is a classic genre, and we were one of the first people who -- we were, sort of, returning to it -- we just never stopped playing it. Me and Kimberley grew up to play the kind of music that we listened to in our teens and late childhood. Which is essentially Beatle music, you know.
Underwater Moonlight is absolutely timeless, it all sounds like it could have been made last week. It could be a new indie Pop band from San Francisco.
Thank you. It also helped that there was a lack of a budget, so we couldn't have the sheen and production work on it. We couldn't even afford the "big drum sound" that was the calling-card of the early-'80s. Some of my solo records since then sound more dated, because by then we had state-of-the-art studios and big drums. Something like Fegmania! has the big thwacking drums. It was done in the same cheap studio, but by then they'd gotten the state-of-the-art equipment in. On Underwater Moonlight, the guitars sound really good, though. It's just the essence of what "Pop Rock" is all about, in terms of the sound -- nothing to do with the songs, just the sound. In terms of the songs, mine and Kimberley's are just oceans apart. It's just a certain part the sound and the feel where we coincide. It's just the guitars and the harmonies. Now we've got 40 years (or whatever) doing it between us. It's like, Jazz peaked with Miles Davis in the '60s. There's still Jazz, but...Pop music probably peaked with "Good Vibrations". There's still Pop music, but it's just not the newest thing anymore.
And I still play "Good Vibrations" as much now as I did in 1966.
Well, there you are!
Tell us about the rehearsals disc.
We taped all the rehearsals. Kimberley taped them on a 3-track tape recorder. The vocals were on one channel, and we had an ambient mic for the band. Four mics going into one channel. That would've been about two months after Matthew joined the band. We were a group, instead of a band. We just taped everything for about a month -- in September, October 1979. And when it came time for the reissue, I just thought, "Wait a minute, I think there's tapes somewhere." I found boxes of unlabeled Soft Boys cassettes at my mother's house, and sent them to Kimberley to transfer to CD. We took what we thought were the best versions of it. Mostly versions of songs that have already been recorded. It works pretty well for what it is. My favorite bits are the jams -- just everybody, kind of, working together. It shows that it was a good little organism.
"Leave Me Alone" was one of my favorite Lou Reed tracks from that period. It sounds like you were jamming on it just so everyone could sing the "uh huh"/"oh yeah" bits.
That has Matthew singing on it. I think it's his recorded debut as a singer. I think the whole reason we did it probably was the "uh huh"/"oh yeah" parts. Matthew really enjoyed it when he heard it again. He had no memory whatsoever of recording it. We recorded a Roxy Music song around then, too -- just on a beatbox. The CD reissue has "He's A Reptile" added to it, because it's the first thing we recorded with Matthew, and it just, sort of, set the tone the way my songwriting was going. And for some reason -- maybe just because it had been around for longer -- we all lost faith in it and left it off the album. But now, it really belonged on that record, so we stuck it in between "Underwater Moonlight" and "Vegetable Man". So there's a lot of stuff there now. Probably more than anyone will need.
I know it's probably too early to tell right now, but do you think there's another record in The Soft Boys?
I think it's possible. I think we've gotta get the old stuff right first. We haven't decided exactly what we're doing. But the show is based around Underwater Moonlight. It's not going to be a Soft Boys retrospective. We're not playing any of the more gothic stuff -- which I think is great, but it's nothing to do with this lineup of the group. If we did anything new, it would be more descended from Underwater Moonlight than anything else. Your guess is as good as mine as to how it would turn out.
If there's a new Soft Boys' album, would you write all the songs, or would the other three contribute as well?
I assume it would be me writing songs. Kim's the only other person that writes a lot of songs. But I don't think Kim's songs and mine would necessarily fit on the same...
...stage?
Well, they might. But I think that would be a different story again -- it would be Kimberley Rew and Robyn Hitchcock getting out to play their songs together. A bit like me and Grant-Lee Phillips have been doing together recently. I love "Walking On Sunshine" and "Going Down To Liverpool", but they wouldn't have fit in with "I Wanna Destroy You" and "Acid Bird" (or whatever). They would still have been hits, but I think in term of The Soft Boys as an organism, that would always be me as the frontman, if you like. What it is based around is the musical animal that we are as a quartet, which I think is something special. But you know, we've taped some stuff in rehearsals -- there's pretty good stuff bubbling up.
Everyone's really excited about this reunion.
Well thank you. We're certainly not taking it for granted.
There are so few bands who should get back together.
On the whole, I always think if I like a band, they shouldn't get back together. Did you see The Velvet Underground reunion? Was it any good?
The record and video were quite good. But it was Lou Reed and his ego, and treating the other three as his backing band (not a group of equals).
See, that's the trouble. Sometimes it's like everything is frozen over, and all the old troubles come back when it thaws out. It's like Bosnia. Under communism, they all had to shut up and get on with it, but once it went, all the old differences just came out. In some ways, The Soft Boys have got quite a lot out of our systems. We've all changed quite a bit in some ways.
It seems to me that you've all grown up quite a bit (whereas a lot of people in the music business never do).
Well, that's probably because we weren't as successful. We've all made a living at music. But none of us have become mega-stars, either. We've just been working musicians. Morris has been working with his family a lot in the last five years. Matthew's been a lawyer. Kim and I have been working a lot. Kim's very shy, it's hard to get him to go out and do his own songs, as he does with Julian Dawson. He put that record out last year, which was good. But he's reluctant to claim the spotlight and perform under his own name. Whereas I guess I'm not. I'm quite happy to be in the middle of things, even if it's in the middle of quite small things. I'm not someone who ever hankered after the stadiums. So, maybe yeah, since none of us has ever become obscenely successful, we have grown up a bit. I think we're a lot more tolerant to each other. I do hope it's not too horribly polite: "No, after you, after you, old chap," you know? The vibe has definitely changed. The vibe as I remember it was definitely psychotic. It was like solar flares shooting off at all times. You could feel eruptions, like any mental eruptions that any of us would have. They, kind of, really showed. Nobody was nasty, but you could feel if somebody was in, kind of, a state. Freaked. Kimberley, Matthew, and I were always freaked. Morris probably was too, but he just didn't show it. That seems to have changed now. The feeling you get off the music is very different now. It's more like a good-time dance band now.
I think you've really developed in the last few years. Kim was always the lead guitarist, but now you're almost as good as he is -- and I think that's going to take the band to a new level.
Well, thank you. The main thing is, he was always better than me. He's still technically better than me. But we listen to each other a lot more than we used to, it's a lot more complementary and generous than it was in the old days. We were like battling on guitar back then. I'm less uptight than I used to be. I smile onstage more than I used to. I'm hoping people just come along and dance -- it'll be a hootenanny. The girls can come along in their polka dots and the boys in their checked shirts. Yee Haw!
How does it feel to you getting back together after 20 years?
Kimberley Rew: It's terrific. It's very much picking up some unfinished business. We didn't tour around that extensively the first time around. After the Underwater Moonlight album, we went to New York. We weren't that far up the musical ladder. We made it as far as New York in 1980, for a week. It's kinda like taking up the battle once again: touring across the U.S..
I was in Memphis at the time, and never heard The Soft Boys until later.
It was a well-kept secret at the time. And very slowly, over the years, people caught on. I think the Ryko reissue was in 1992.
I had singles by The Waves and the single you did with the dBs before I'd ever heard The Soft Boys. To get the hard question right out of the way, did it ever bother you at the time not to be writing songs for The Soft Boys?
It wasn't really an issue at the time for me. That was at the very early days of my writing songs. Really, the habit of writing songs came later with Katrina And The Waves, when I was, in fact, the only writer in the band. In The Soft Boys, one could see that Robyn was an outstanding writer, and that was a good thing to be involved in. I didn't think too much about writing myself at the time. As it happened, the three of us in The Soft Boys did eventually wind up recording a couple of my songs, a thing called "Stomping All Over The World" which came out on a single. The Soft Boys, kind of, covered my writing activities at the time by doing that. I wasn't writing anything like what I did after -- but Robyn of course was. He's always been extremely consistent as a writer. He's always had classy high-quality material popping up all the time.
I understand you're only going to be doing songs from Underwater Moonlight on this tour.
Yes, that's the whole point of the tour. It's the meat and potatoes of the tour. The other albums aren't being reissued -- and we have the exact lineup from that show.
You've continued to work with Robyn and Morris in the intervening 20 years.
We all have worked together, yeah. But not the four of us exactly together. We've all kept in touch.
Robyn told me you were the one who recorded those rehearsal tapes?
What it was, was in those days you had stereo cassette decks. And we put a microphone into one channel, and the other channel was plugged into the little mixing desk (which had the three vocals on it). So when you listen to those rehearsals, you have the music on one side and the vocals on the other (although you can still hear each on the other channel). It kind of gives you a good idea of how we arrived at the original album.
I like "Leave Me Alone" a lot.
Ah yes, Lou Reed. I think it was on his current album at the time, Street Hassle. I remember Robyn buying it when it came out, and being quite into that song at the time and, sort of, launching into it. Learning the words as we went. It's very much in the original spirit of Rock 'n' Roll.
The thing I find so exciting about this project is you're doing it for the right reason -- for fun! And I think with Tunnel Into Summer, Jewels For Sophia, and A Star For Bram, you're coming off some of the strongest records that you've individually made. So unlike most reunions, this isn't a point of desperation in your lives where you think, "Hey let's try The Soft Boys thing again and make some quick cash." You're doing it for the music.
Yeah, exactly. That's a good point. I think artistically it's certainly a good time for me. And I think Jewels For Sophia is certainly one of Robyn's best albums to-date. Admittedly I actually played on it -- which I haven't done for a long time before. But I like the way he's been going with his music.
My best friend and I were talking the other night, and it seems to us that you and Robyn are closer together musically than you were when The Soft Boys were together.
[Stumped by the question, and has to think] Whew! I don't know. It's how you feel at the time, isn't it? The thing is, I was, like, 27 then, so I mean, I feel different anyway. I'm sure he feels different anyway. And also a lot of water has gone under the bridge. At the time, I did it completely blindly. I just played. And there was no way I could step back from it and say I was close or I was not close. I think the main thing is that I love doing it [playing with them]. I loved doing it then, and I love doing it now.
Robyn said the direction the band is going in is grey, not bald.
Well, I think I'd rather go grey than bald, anyway.
How did you come up with the arrangements on Underwater Moonlight?
Well obviously, it was Robyn's band, and he was very much behind the whole thing. What would tend to happen is he would write a song, and we'd all, kind of, set up in the rehearsal room. Robyn would simply launch into his latest song that he'd written. And he'd be strumming along on his guitar, never stuck for lyrics, making up lyrics on the spot (or whatever). And then -- since obviously Robyn was already playing a guitar -- I'd be looking around for things to play. And that could be anything from not playing at all, to playing the same as Robyn, or playing some kind of huge, great thing that completely takes over.
Do you mean like in "Kingdom of Love"?
Actually not. That's an example of where we're both playing the same thing, so you get a doubling effect. I do, sort of, take over at the end, and you get a guitar thing. It just depends on the song, really. What was appropriate for the music. What was there first was Robyn and his song -- and that's the starting point.
Do you have any plans for touring The States with your own material?
Not right now. I'm going to do The Soft Boys tour and see what happens. The Soft Boys are much better -- they're going to bring my record to a lot more people than I could do on my own anyway. As it happens, I have played in The States. Julian Dawson and I did some shows together. I've known him quite a long time, and he's in quite a similar position to me. So we did a small tour of the East Coast last year as a duo playing our own songs. We were like hanging on to the bottom of the ladder. We just squeezed ourselves into a couple of clubs. But obviously I'd love to do that at some point. But The Soft Boys is the most enormous thing that's going on in my life. And it's helping me anyway with my solo career. And Matthew is going to have a solo record out. And Morris has got a record out with his band The Gliders. So everybody has got a solo record out. So that, if they like the Soft Boys, they can buy each of those. Well, in Robyn's case they can buy loads. But with the rest of us they can at least buy three CDs.
Did Katrina And The Waves ever officially break up, or did you just quietly stop doing things?
It never actually broke up, no. Katrina has actually gone off to pursue, sort of, a more mainstream career in musicals. That sort of thing. She is making a solo album. We have tried to keep the band going with a new singer over here in Europe. It's really gone down to occasional gigs here and there. Like a TV show in Belgium (and something like that). Basically, everybody likes "Walking On Sunshine". So there's the occasional person here or there who likes "Walking on Sunshine" and wants to book us. Or they might book Katrina herself. Obviously there's an element of it having spread over two camps now.
A "UB40" is a British unemployment form. Do you find most American's misinterpret the lyrics to "Going Down To Liverpool" and think the lyric references walking down the street with a UB40 record in your hand?
Yeah, one or two people have said that. But I think it's kind of nice when it happens that way. And I think it's kind of nice when people find out what it is -- that it's this form that you have to fill in.
I've always thought it was a wonderful marriage of a slightly suicidal lyric with music that cheered you up every time you hear it.
I think it's nice to have to explain things to people sometimes. As a rule, it tends to happen the other way around. American Rock 'n' Roll comes over here, and they have to explain it to us. We tend to not know what a "swing shift" was supposed to be. Or a "popsicle", you know? Here, it was just happening in reverse (which was kind of nice).
You've played with Robyn Hitchcock longer than anyone, and, along with Robyn, are one of the founders of The Soft Boys. How did the reunion come about?
Morris Windsor: Robyn called me up and asked if I wanted to do something for the 20th anniversary of Underwater Moonlight. We should have done it a year earlier, of course. And we got together and it was good immediately. So we've been hard at it since then.
How was the decision to get Matthew Seligman in the band as opposed to original bassist/Egyptian Andy Metcalfe?
Matthew played on Underwater Moonlight. That's the album that everyone likes. And it was, kind of, cut off in its prime a little bit. We're doing now what we would have done in 1981 if we'd kept going. We played in New York in August 1980. Did 16 gigs, and then went home again. We, kind of, staggered on into the new year of 1981, and then Robyn had had enough. That was it.
Does it feel like picking up just where you left off?
Not exactly, because Robyn and I had been together in The Egyptians. So I had years and years of doing it. "Kingdom Of Love" and "Queen Of Eyes" were in the repertoire always. So it's not that strange now, really.
How did you feel when The Egyptians finally broke up?
It was a bit of an anticlimax, really. It had a bit of inevitability about it -- same as when The Soft Boys split up. We were at a fairly low ebb energy-wise. I can't remember it very well. When The Egyptians split up, we hadn't been doing anything for several months anyway. We'd finished with A&M, and done some demos for Geffen Records, which didn't really set the world on fire (or set Geffen Records on fire). And that was it, really. We did The Soft Boys revival then, and everyone was involved in that -- including Matthew and Andy Metcalfe.
I didn't realize you'd gotten together before.
Yeah, yeah. And there were some unofficial/official tapes that we'd made available from that. The management put them together. So the whole thing [The Soft Boys] has been on the back burner since we did that. It's been six years ago. The '90s went so fast -- disappeared in a flash.
You backed Alex Chilton on the quasi-official Live In London album in May 1980, didn't you?
Yeah, that was me, Matthew, and Knox of the Vibrators. We were kind of nervous about it, but he was a real gentleman. I can't say that I'm particularly proud of that album, though. The drummer in Velvet Crush who played with Matthew Sweet [Ric Menck] toured with us, and told me that was one of his favorite records. I warmed a bit towards it, then.
What was it like opening for R.E.M. on the Green World Tour?
It was great, actually. It wasn't as terrifying as one might assume. In a way it's easier to play in a huge great place where you can't see than it is in a small place where everyone's right up against you. A lot of the time for us, people were just walking in, so we didn't get a lot of reaction, basically. On the other hand, I remember a gig in Kansas City on a Saturday night, and they had people sitting on platforms instead of seats, and people were standing on the platforms and dancing. So I really remember that one. It was very exciting. But it was supposed to put us on the map and it didn't, really. It was the Queen Elvis era. We weren't quite sure what we were doing, I think. But career-wise, it was a high-spot.
You were in most of those legendary R.E.M. spinoff bands that would play unbilled club gigs under assumed names when R.E.M. were in town, weren't you? [Along with Robyn, Peter Buck, and Peter Holsapple, and variously Andy Metcalfe and Mike Mills.]
Yeah. We did that Cubby Bear thing. That was a real high-spot.
The Bingo Hand job shows with R.E.M., The Egyptians, and Billy Bragg at the Borderline in London were actually recorded.
In fact, I appear uncredited as the drummer on B-side of "Near Wild Heaven" in that Bingo Hand Job version of "Tom's Diner" [R.E.M. did the Suzanne Vega remix hit version] with Billy Bragg and Robyn on it. Bill Berry was supplying mouth percussion. So I am actually on an R.E.M. record.
What have you been doing musically since The Egyptians split up?
Well, throughout I've been in this band called The Gliders. It's a guy called Sean Lyons who played with us on The Soft Boys tour -- and also on the last Egyptians tour -- as an extra guitarist. I originally met him through Andy Metcalfe through a Channel Four TV comedy show. He's a session man, but he's also a great individual guitarist. He writes songs with this guy called Andy Taylor -- who's the singer. And I got roped into that while The Egyptians were still going. Andy Metcalfe was in that as well. We put an album last year finally on our own label -- The Gliders, Clear Blue Sky on Shaker Records -- after years of working and doing sporadic gigs. It's very good actually. It got good reviews in Mojo and Q. It's very Blues-y, but very contemporary sounding. Not traditional Blues at all. B.J. Cole plays on a couple of tracks. He was on the last Verve tour and did loads on Richard Ashcroft's new album.
How does it feel being in The Soft Boys again?
It's great, actually. It's not all that different, really. It sounds more cohesive than it was. Kimberley has mellowed a lot. And Robyn has tightened up a lot. You must have seen them last year?
I saw a couple of shows, and they were just terrific. That's what I was telling Robyn: that you guys have all just grown up and gotten better (unlike some people in Rock 'n' Roll who never do).
Yeah, I don't know what it's actually going to be like onstage though. It will probably be just as messy as it always was, you know? It feels good. It feels a lot funkier than it did. Not like James Brown. But it meshes and it throbs, and it's good. The last few rehearsals, we've just been doing new stuff. We haven't been rehearsing the old stuff at all (although we have to get back to that). Not like we could ever forget it.
So you're actually already working on new songs?
Yeah, yeah. Proper new songs. I don't know what's going to happen to them. We may actually play some of them. Robyn's kind of hedging his bets, you know? Like a classic politician. But I can't rule out the possibility that there will be a new album.
I think it would be kinda stupid to go out and tell the press, "Yes, we're going to do a new album," when the reality is that after the tour, you may not want to do anything more.
But then, it would be horrible to do a Little Feat and ruin their reputation by making loads of horrible albums after getting back together. But barring some catastrophe, it should be great.
But a new album could be so good, because everyone's operating at the peak of their abilities, you know?
And The Gliders' record is terrific, as well [laughing]. We've got this idea that we'll have this separate area of the table for each person's latest records. You know Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels? Well, there was a Channel Four TV spinoff of the series, and one of the Gliders tracks was on the long pilot episode -- and on the soundtrack album to that.
Morris and I were just talking about Live In London, which was recorded when I lived in Memphis and Alex Chilton was one of my drinking buddies. I'd completely forgotten you guys were on that...
Matthew Seligman: [laughing] It was strange about how that came about. It was just a cassette running on the board. We only had a couple of rehearsals. I'm a bit embarrassed about it, because it's the worst sounding recording I've ever played on.
I love "Stranded On A Dateless Night" because it's the only place you can get that on record with Chilton performing it -- and that's my favorite song he was doing during that time.
He's a great guy. Very friendly, very sweet. I remember he wouldn't let Morris play with any cymbals.
His Memphis band at that time had a drummer who played standing with only two drums. But telling a drummer to play without cymbals is like telling a bassplayer he'll only need one string.
Yeah, in a way it's exactly the same. But in the right circumstances...I mean, I think I learned something that day when he said that. Because they're very splashy sounding.
I understand from Robyn that you're a lawyer now?
Yeah, a barrister.
That's the type of lawyer that does trials?
Yeah, and wears the wigs.
Good lord!
Yeah, that's what the barristers said when I said I wanted to be one.
"...and you used to be in a band called the WHAT?!"
But they loved that! When I sent out my CV [resume] to try and get a job, I just listed the records I'd played on, instead of all these exams I'd passed. And most people really loved it. They loved having a Rock 'n' Roll-er come in.
Well, you certainly played with a lot of impressive people: Bowie at Live Aid, Thomas Dolby on his hits, the Thompson Twins.
Yeah. I loved it. When I first felt I was starting to get a bit empty in the core, I thought I'd better stop rather than just fade out. I'm really glad I did, because I still feel energy now. I never, sort of, bashed my head in. I never had an end to my career. I'm glad I stopped when I did, but I really, really want to start again.
What I've been feeling about this reunion, is that I never want to see some bands I dearly loved from that era get back together again, like The Clash and The Jam. But with you guys, you stopped at such an odd point in your career.
Well we never played in front of fans. In England at the time, we didn't really have fans. It would be stragglers turning up at gigs -- a few friends in Cambridge, and stuff -- but not any real body of support. So we've never played to Soft Boys fans! Most of them arrived after we'd split up. So this will really be the first time The Soft Boys have played to its audience.
I know. I told Kimberley that I'd actually had Waves singles years before I had Soft Boys records.
I know what you mean. We did have one reunion gig in 1995 at the Astoria in London. That was amazing. It was the first time I'd ever seen Soft Boys fans. It was the first and only time I've ever played to Soft Boys fans.
How long have you been out of the music business?
Well I've never quite been out of it. I live in West London just north of Ladbrooke Grove. In about '92 I went off to college, and I started living next to a bass player whose husband played with Sinead O'Connor. And I'd often be around there playing with them on sessions. So I still managed to make a record or two. I played on Grace Jones' song on The Avengers soundtrack. I've done a couple of things with Sinead, including a song on her last album that Brian Eno produced. Sinead did a song on You've Got Mail that I did. Anyone who's around at this friend's studio probably gets a drunken bass part from me on it. Mind you, I must point out he hasn't paid me for any of this [laughing]. It was all done for fun. Recently I've been working with John Kind, the last guitarist of Siouxsie And The Banshees. We've been writing songs together.
How did it feel going from a band as eccentric -- at least lyrically -- as The Soft Boys, to a band as mainstream as The Thompson Twins?
It was very difficult, actually, in retrospect. I never really settled after that. Bowie was the only guy after that [The Soft Boys] -- it was an almost mystical thing -- some people's talent is so intuitive that sometimes you almost think they can hear you thinking. Robyn really does have a very similar kind of muse as Bowie, although it comes out differently. It's very intuitive. Almost spooky at times.
Look at the enormous number of songs Robyn has written, and then look at what a large number of them are really good.
He's very prolific. And you can't be that prolific when you're trying. It's got to come from a deeper place. And, really, I don't know, I felt really a bit disconnected, 'cause I never really played in a guitar band after -- they were all synth-based at that time. And a basic problem with most of the bands around was that they weren't really guitar bands. So I never really settled with anything, I had a, kind of, nomadic career. I always kinda regretted leaving The Soft Boys -- it was like that girlfriend you should never have left. I always missed them.
I'm so glad to hear you say that, because looking at this from the outside, we'd have thought if anyone wasn't going to want to do The Soft Boys long, it would be you, because you had a new career outside music now.
Oh really?! No, no way. The legal career is...I don't know. A lot of things, kind of, collide when you're forty. And I really, genuinely, wanted to stop doing music if I wasn't doing it with the right kind of passion. So the act of stopping was the last act of me trying to be a dedicated musician. It's better to stop than carry on with this weird, sort of, ghost of a session career. But that wasn't an act of rejection, it was an act of love, although that sounds a little bit pompous [laughs]. The legal career is a good career that you can enter later on. I love it. I've met a really good crew. Barristers are quite eccentric people. But they all know really well in my office where my first love is. There's no two ways about it, really. But I also think it would be wrong for us all to pin our hopes on The Soft Boys working out. It would collapse under the weight of expectation. I think that this is much more now part of Robyn's career, and the next thing that he's doing. I think Robyn's come a long way since the early-'80s. It's great when you leave a band and go solo. But going back to a band after you've gone solo in some ways is a backwards step. So I don't know if Robyn's going to want to do it. But as long as he wants to do it, I'd do it. But you know, I'm dreaming! I'm so happy right now!
How do you see your role as bassist with two great guitarists like Kimberley and Robyn?
That's easy. It's great. The answer is that it's easy. You just have to do this nice little underpinning. You can just do eights on the root note and just drone away. The guitars are like this curtain, and you can just, sort of, dance around in front of it. There's this great, sort of, ringing in the room when they're all singing harmonies -- there's so many layers and curtains hanging around that the job of playing bass is made much easier, because you're not so visible. Although you can be if you want to be. You just come and go as you want, really. It's lovely. Easy. I don't want to sound complacent, but it's really, really fun. The stress is so much less that other kinds of music I've played which is more dependant on the bass.
I can't wait to hear it.
Come to a rehearsal in Austin. We're quite quiet and non-deafening now. We've definitely turned down. I think I'm playing louder, but I think Robyn and Kimberley are quieter. It sounds lovely!
Robyn has said that at the end of The Soft Boys, it was like guitar duels. And it had gotten to where it was, "Who can play the loudest?"
It was hurting, it really was hurting. We caught ourselves wondering whether it would be all right if the amps were turned down. But you've got to do what comes naturally. I don't think we should be a Soft Boys tribute band (which we could be). If we'd tried to turn our amps up and recreate what had gone before, we'd be a Soft Boys tribute band. What we've actually got is the same bunch of people 20 years on, trying to think and act in the same way. But that leads to different results 20 years later.
The Soft Boys were such a terrific band that few people heard and saw at the time, that I think it would be a great shame for you all to get old and die without having given it a shot again.
I'd love to give it a shot. But I think equally if we talked it up too much, it's a very frail and collapsible thing. And in a way, I'm frightened to say anything that shows I'm putting too much hope in it. But I so miss music. We're as curious as anyone else about what it'll sound like. I know we're all really excited about it. It's been sounding great in rehearsal, and it's just a dream come true for me. Partly because I'm excited about playing music again after ten years, and partly because these are just my favorite guys that I've ever played music with. It's brilliant! We're doing some recordings at the end of January. Robyn's got several projects of his that he's still working on. The bits and pieces I've heard sound fuckin' great!
As long as I get to hear "I Wanna Destroy You" played live onstage one time in my life!
We think it's better a bit slower. It sounds better than way. We're sounding a lot purer now, because we know what we are now. London in the '80s was a very confusing period of synthesizers, drum machines, and what have you. And everyone in London was, kind of, fixated on 1984 -- and on the future. It was a very bad time to be a band whose main fix was on the past. Everyone was really staring at 1984 as it came down the road. Underwater Moonlight sounds very focused, but that was like a snapshot. It was a very unsettled time. When we're rehearsing and playing now, we feel a lot more certain of ourselves, and a lot purer, even if we've turned down slightly and slowed down a bit. I've got a feeling it's going to sound a lot bigger and more authentic, really. It's probably all part of the master plan, that we had to wait 20 years to play our songs properly. And wait for our audience to be born. Now that's all happened, we can go do some gigs!
COPYRIGHT NOTICE