VIC GODARD INTERVIEW PART 2

What sort of role did Bernie Rhodes have with the group? Was he a Malcolm McLaren-type figure?

Well, Malcolm was like, quite a powerful bloke and often, when he told someone to do something he did it. With Bernie, everyone just ignored him. He never encouraged me to do the jazz stuff, he hated it.

So, ‘What’s the Matter Boy?’ was the first Subway Sect LP to be released. How does that fit into things?

A lot of the songs were from the earlier era with me singing, the Black Arabs were on it Terry Chimes and his brother were involved. When that came out we were doing the Northern Soul set. It took so long to come out and that’s happened so many times, I suppose it’s confusing for everyone.

 Do you think that’s why your career has been so stop/start?

Well I’ve never really had a career ! I never had a plan to make a career in music.

So, how did the jazz stuff come about?

I just got fed up with punk. There were so many rubbish punk bands, I just went off that sound altogether. I was trying to write classic stuff. We supported people like the Banshees and Birthday Party and all their fans wore that uniform of black leather and dyed black hair and we looked like people from Mars in tuxedos and they just thought it was a joke to start off with but they got into it. I remember we did one gig in front of 500 skinheads in Aylesbury and to start off with they looked really menacing but they ended up doing a giant conga all round the place.
It was really enjoyable because I think, like us, all the audiences back then were getting tired of all the doom and gloom and we could do anything we wanted. Sean (McLuskey) used to go on and do a 45 minute drum solo before we even went on. We did a swing version of White Riot ! It was like punk for us, like the early days playing with the Clash. I think there was only one place where we got bottled off and that was Liverpool.

And did a lot of thought go into the clothes, the image on stage?

Well when I did the jazz stuff I wore a tuxedo because that’s what jazzy people do (laughs). The Harris tweed stuff? Well that was our anti-goth uniform really because it was the furthest you could get from all that leather stuff.

And then there was Club Left that was a pre-cursor to all those bands in London who got into jazz in the 80’s?

Well that was once a week, every Thursday. That was a residency for six months. We did all the Songs for Sale set and some standards. There was one band for all the different singers. It was really refreshing at the time. It was like going back to square one, it was like a punk way of doing jazz. It was the ‘in’ place to be for a bit but we wouldn’t have done it if we weren’t really into the music. At all the other clubs you knew what you were going to get, Ultravox and all that. At our place you didn’t hear anything after 1955. We had great DJ’s with all these records from the 40’s and 50’s.

 Then there was the next LP ‘Songs for Sale’….

Songs for Sale was another mess, too confusing to go into really, but Island paid for it and then lost interest and so Decca bought the tapes to put it out but it all took ages. I never got involved in all the business side. If I did, I wouldn’t have time to do new stuff. Even now I don’t have enough time to do music and I certainly don’t want to waste it on business.

 Then what happened?

Well, Bernie had been paying me £50 a week to write songs for other people. He thought he would manage other people and I would be the sort of  ‘in-house’ songwriter. After Club Left I had a row with Bernie and I started doing stuff with Geoff Travis. Trying to do an album, the tracks that ended up on the ‘Trouble’ album.

 Ok. So there’s a lot of controversy about what happened with that. It ended up being really expensive didn’t it?

Yeah, well we had the cream of British jazz players at Olympic Studios in Barnes, which was the dearest place in London at the time. We had a cast of about twenty, the backing vocalists from Shakatak, top session people, Simon Booth from Working Week was on it. It was Mike Alway, (who ran El Records) really, who got the money for it. Geoff Travis wasn’t into jazz.
I think they got £250,000 out of Warner Brothers to start Blanco y Negro but that was meant to be for a few albums, there was a load of money wasted. Only one of the six things they got the money for made any money back. The mixing on ‘Trouble’ was done really quickly because they wouldn’t spend any more money on it and then Travis and Alway had their big barney and he wouldn’t put it out.
It was all very political and when it became clear that it wasn’t going to come out I lost touch with Alway and Geoff Travis. I didn’t think it would ever come out.

So after ‘Trouble’, was that the time you finally split with Bernie?

Yes, exactly at that time. I got married as well, I almost forgot that album existed. I couldn’t live on £50 a week. I was always doing other jobs, I washed up in a burger bar, worked in a bookies, later I worked for the post office so I’ve never felt like I was ‘in’ the music business. The only time I was really involved full time was during the punk era. That’s the only time I put on my passport that I was a singer (laughs).
For a while after that I didn’t do anything. I didn’t write words or any music. I didn’t have a car or any musical instruments. I still listened to stuff but didn’t do it myself. It was all jazz stuff though. I didn’t know anything about new music as far as the rest of the 80’s were concerned.

 What sparked your interest again?

I got a guitar again in 1990 and I started writing songs again almost immediately. I had written some songs with a mate at the post office and he said “these are good, why don’t you send them to a record company?” so I sent them to Geoff Travis at Rough Trade. He paid for us to do some work on them but this was the time when Rough Trade were facing liquidation so that all came to an end too.

 Is this the stuff that became the record ‘End of the Surrey People’?

Yeah. Then what happened was Geoff Travis had given Edwyn Collins some 8-track recording equipment as a present and he had always liked my stuff. It was all down to Edwyn that those songs even came out. He literally went round to all the record companies and had meetings to see if anybody would put it out. He tried Creation, but the only ones who really liked it was Heavenly, they loved it. After a couple of weeks of them saying they loved it and they wanted to do it, they got taken over by Sony. So then Edwyn said, whatever you do don’t put it out on Postcard, don’t sink that low (laughs).

What was the problem with doing something with Postcard? Alan Horne had started to release stuff again in the early 90’s hadn’t he?

There was loads of times when I said “Why don’t we put it out on Postcard ?” and Edwyn say no, no there’s a few others to try yet and then, it was a couple of years later and it was the last resort and so it went out on Postcard (laughs) He’s never got on with Horney, well he got on with him but he didn’t want to get involved with him financially, I think that’s what it was.  He thought it could be a nightmare. It was never handled properly, it was never sent out to be reviewed or anything and that’s exactly what Edwyn said would happen.

 Edwyn’s been really good to you then?

I’ve done two albums with Edwyn and without him I wouldn’t have been able to afford to do them. The second one (Long Term Side Effect) he said we could have a couple of weeks and it turned into about nine (laughs). Considering ‘Surrey People’ was recorded on his eight-track in his bedroom while his kid was growing up, he did a great job as a producer under really difficult conditions. He lived in a tiny flat at the time and we were recording in the main room so it was a bit of a nightmare for his family while it was going on.

 So, tell me about ‘Long Term Side Effect”.

It’s sounds sort of post-war era. It’s the only album I’ve done where to me, it sounds like me. It was really natural. All the others, I’ve had a technician trying to make me sound like they think I should. A lot of it was done in different studios and so it sounds very varied. I’ve never been able to find a record company who could sell what I do. I know how they feel.  It’s very influenced by American R and B but at the same time it’s fairly obvious that the bloke doing it is from London.
I’m a big Jimmy Reed fan, I like R n B from any era but there’s no way I’m going to do that. I’m from Kew (laughs). When I do a song, it doesn’t matter to me if I’m the main vocalist. If it’s out of my range I’d rather get someone else in to do it.

What ideally would you like to be ? Someone who lots of people cite as an influence or aren’t you really bothered?

I can’t really answer that. I don’t think I ever will be massively successful. All I can say is the reason I write a lot of high quality stuff is that I have so little time to do music that when I do have a spare hour it all comes pouring out. When I was on the dole and had all the time in the world I never wrote songs. I didn’t write stuff on a daily basis like I do now. My life’s this treadmill with endless tasks to be done and the only time I really enjoy myself is during that couple of hours when I’m making music.
Say Sony signed me up and I had a big hit, well, you’ve got to be really careful because they’ll pay you, but then you’re under their control and they want another one and another one. Someone I know, their cousin is in Menswear and they nearly had a breakdown because of the schedule they were on. When you’re in the music business, in your own time, the last thing you want to do is music. What are you going to write about if you’re in a group like Menswear just touring everywhere?
This works for me. I mean, don’t get me wrong I’m knackered all the time, When I go to bed at night I’m asleep within a minute of my head hitting the pillow. I must be getting a bit old for it (laughs) I tell you what, the ideal thing for me would be to just release loads of stuff, bootleg my own songs and then go down Shepherds Bush market and sell ‘em (laughs).

PS I found this at Kevin Pearce’s fantastic site ‘Your Heart Out’. It includes a link to a recording of the legendary 1980 ‘northern soul’ incarnation of Subway Sect mentioned in this interview, part one.

Tagged as: edwyn collins, interview, postcard, subway sect, vic godard