Gary Lammin has become a familiar figure on the London punk / rock’n’roll scene, best known for fronting the Bermondsey Joyriders. But his involvement with music goes back to the mid-Seventies when, as a teenager, he was part of the original Cocksparrer line-up, co-writing most of the songs on their first album, including the classic ‘Runnin’ Riot’. It was at this point that his path crossed with Malcolm McLaren, who briefly considered managing Cocksparrer alongside the Sex Pistols. Although nothing came of it, Gary remained friends with Malcolm until his death in 2010. After Cocksparrer disbanded in 1978, Gary went on to form The Little Roosters who also featured a pre-synth pop Alison Moyet and had their one and only album produced by Joe Strummer.
Over the ensuing years, Gary has been involved with many other musical projects and has also pursued acting, but it is with the Bermondsey Joyriders, formed in 2008, that he has returned to his rock’n’roll roots. Mixing punk with Maximum R’n’B and even a hint of psychedelia, they’ve produced three great albums and can also be relied upon to present an exciting live show. Their last two albums have also featured contributions from the legendary John Sinclair, former manager of the MC5 and founder of the White Panther Party.
But early this year, Gary returned to a previous project to complete and release an album that was originally recorded with the renowned producer Dave Goodman between 2000-2003. Although almost completed, the album had been shelved following Goodman’s death in 2005 as Gary had felt unable to complete it without his original collaborator. But, as is the case with these things, you can’t keep a good album down and so the necessary work was eventually completed and the album is finally available.
Over the ensuing years, Gary has been involved with many other musical projects and has also pursued acting, but it is with the Bermondsey Joyriders, formed in 2008, that he has returned to his rock’n’roll roots. Mixing punk with Maximum R’n’B and even a hint of psychedelia, they’ve produced three great albums and can also be relied upon to present an exciting live show. Their last two albums have also featured contributions from the legendary John Sinclair, former manager of the MC5 and founder of the White Panther Party.
But early this year, Gary returned to a previous project to complete and release an album that was originally recorded with the renowned producer Dave Goodman between 2000-2003. Although almost completed, the album had been shelved following Goodman’s death in 2005 as Gary had felt unable to complete it without his original collaborator. But, as is the case with these things, you can’t keep a good album down and so the necessary work was eventually completed and the album is finally available.
Meeting Gary over a couple of beers in Stratford, I
suppose the best place to start discussing the album is by going back to when he first met Dave Goodman. I assume this probably came through Malcolm McLaren ?
‘Yeah, many years ago. The thing was, there used to be a section in the NME called ‘Teasers’, which was a kind of ‘stop-press’ thing, you know, a sort of overspill for any late news that came-in. Anyway, I read a little piece about Malcolm McLaren in there, saying he was supposed to be getting a street-rock band together…they were going to be tougher than The Who or the Stones ever were and they were going to give rock’n’roll back to the people. I already knew a bit about Malcolm because he had been involved with the New York Dolls, who were one of the bands I really loved. It was difficult to find things out about bands like them back in those days, so anything you did find out, you really remembered it. It wasn’t like it is now, where you can go on a computer and press a few buttons to see all the information on there. If you wanted to find out about something, you really had to go and search for it, almost like a labour of love, and it brought you a real sense of satisfaction when you found out about those things. If you had a hunch about something, you’d try to follow it through. Anyway, back to Malcolm… I ended-up going over to his shop and pestering him. I used to take along this battered old acoustic guitar that I had, so I could play him some of my songs, and on one of these occasions he said that I should go along to the Nashville Rooms to meet Dave Goodman. Unfortunately, at that time I was just a 17 year old, emotionally-charged know-nothing. All I knew anything about was rock’n’roll, electric guitars and the bands that I liked. I wasn’t very socially-aware and my manners weren’t the greatest in the world, so I have to say that when I first met Dave Goodman, I was pretty arrogant. If truth be told, I was actually quite rude and I wasn’t interested in getting involved with him. To me, he just seemed to be a typical, Glastonbury-type hippy and I was alarmed by that ! Dave copped my attitude straight away and all he did was reflect it back at me. So I left that meeting and I didn’t see him again until much later on, by which time I’d learned a bit more about the world and about myself. In between, I’d also realised that the thing I had always loved about the Rolling Stones was the slide guitar on things like ‘Little Red Rooster’, so I went out to learn how to do that and started to pick it up. As I was doing this, I started to get offered sessions with bands who wanted some slide guitar on their recordings. Now, I can’t remember who it actually was, but someone called me one day and said that they wanted me to play slide guitar on something they were doing. Well, I did the usual thing, you know, telling them that I’d have to check my diary to see if I could fit it in, even though I knew I didn’t have anything else going on ! When I said I could do it, they told me the studio was down in Gipsy Hill and told me when to be there. It was only then that they told me the producer was Dave Goodman, so when I put the phone down I thought to myself, Christ, this could be a bit awkward. I’d acted like a right idiot when I’d met him at the Nashville and he’d picked that up right away. I mean, it was probably a bad time to actually meet him as he was trying to set-up his PA while I was talking to him, but I had all these ideas that I thought were urgent and started going on about them. While I was doing this, he picked up some kind of Tibetan flute and started playing it as I was speaking. To me, it was as if he was trying to ridicule me, so I started getting wound-up and ended-up leaving in a strop. But here’s the thing… fast forward to me playing this session at his place. I go down to Gypsy Hill, knock on his door and he opens it up, playing that exact same flute ! All I could do was burst out laughing, because he’d obviously remembered who I was and what had happened when we met before. I was standing there laughing and he just said, ‘Ahh, you’ve finally decided to come down. Please come in…’ He wasn’t being funny, he just wanted to size-up how I had changed over the years and by doing that, he put everything behind us and we were able to become really good friends. If we ever talked about that time at the Nashville, he would just laugh so hard about it. He’d say, ‘I’ve worked with some pretty famous musicians over the years and they all think they’re special in one way or another, but back then, you were so full of yourself ! It was as if Bowie, Jagger and Johnny Rotten had all been rolled-up into one person !’
suppose the best place to start discussing the album is by going back to when he first met Dave Goodman. I assume this probably came through Malcolm McLaren ?
‘Yeah, many years ago. The thing was, there used to be a section in the NME called ‘Teasers’, which was a kind of ‘stop-press’ thing, you know, a sort of overspill for any late news that came-in. Anyway, I read a little piece about Malcolm McLaren in there, saying he was supposed to be getting a street-rock band together…they were going to be tougher than The Who or the Stones ever were and they were going to give rock’n’roll back to the people. I already knew a bit about Malcolm because he had been involved with the New York Dolls, who were one of the bands I really loved. It was difficult to find things out about bands like them back in those days, so anything you did find out, you really remembered it. It wasn’t like it is now, where you can go on a computer and press a few buttons to see all the information on there. If you wanted to find out about something, you really had to go and search for it, almost like a labour of love, and it brought you a real sense of satisfaction when you found out about those things. If you had a hunch about something, you’d try to follow it through. Anyway, back to Malcolm… I ended-up going over to his shop and pestering him. I used to take along this battered old acoustic guitar that I had, so I could play him some of my songs, and on one of these occasions he said that I should go along to the Nashville Rooms to meet Dave Goodman. Unfortunately, at that time I was just a 17 year old, emotionally-charged know-nothing. All I knew anything about was rock’n’roll, electric guitars and the bands that I liked. I wasn’t very socially-aware and my manners weren’t the greatest in the world, so I have to say that when I first met Dave Goodman, I was pretty arrogant. If truth be told, I was actually quite rude and I wasn’t interested in getting involved with him. To me, he just seemed to be a typical, Glastonbury-type hippy and I was alarmed by that ! Dave copped my attitude straight away and all he did was reflect it back at me. So I left that meeting and I didn’t see him again until much later on, by which time I’d learned a bit more about the world and about myself. In between, I’d also realised that the thing I had always loved about the Rolling Stones was the slide guitar on things like ‘Little Red Rooster’, so I went out to learn how to do that and started to pick it up. As I was doing this, I started to get offered sessions with bands who wanted some slide guitar on their recordings. Now, I can’t remember who it actually was, but someone called me one day and said that they wanted me to play slide guitar on something they were doing. Well, I did the usual thing, you know, telling them that I’d have to check my diary to see if I could fit it in, even though I knew I didn’t have anything else going on ! When I said I could do it, they told me the studio was down in Gipsy Hill and told me when to be there. It was only then that they told me the producer was Dave Goodman, so when I put the phone down I thought to myself, Christ, this could be a bit awkward. I’d acted like a right idiot when I’d met him at the Nashville and he’d picked that up right away. I mean, it was probably a bad time to actually meet him as he was trying to set-up his PA while I was talking to him, but I had all these ideas that I thought were urgent and started going on about them. While I was doing this, he picked up some kind of Tibetan flute and started playing it as I was speaking. To me, it was as if he was trying to ridicule me, so I started getting wound-up and ended-up leaving in a strop. But here’s the thing… fast forward to me playing this session at his place. I go down to Gypsy Hill, knock on his door and he opens it up, playing that exact same flute ! All I could do was burst out laughing, because he’d obviously remembered who I was and what had happened when we met before. I was standing there laughing and he just said, ‘Ahh, you’ve finally decided to come down. Please come in…’ He wasn’t being funny, he just wanted to size-up how I had changed over the years and by doing that, he put everything behind us and we were able to become really good friends. If we ever talked about that time at the Nashville, he would just laugh so hard about it. He’d say, ‘I’ve worked with some pretty famous musicians over the years and they all think they’re special in one way or another, but back then, you were so full of yourself ! It was as if Bowie, Jagger and Johnny Rotten had all been rolled-up into one person !’
Anyway, I was still doing session-work for other bands, so Dave would sometimes give me a call if he was working with someone and they needed some slide guitar. He’d always try to get me to do different things, like, I’d usually play in Open D or Open G, but he’d ask me to try different tunings. He’d throw things at me like that, which was really good. After a while, I mentioned to him that I had some songs and I was wondering if, instead of getting paid for some of the sessions I was doing, perhaps we could offset them with some time and production in his studio ? But he just looked at me, with a frown of bewilderment, and said, ‘Well, I can’t really see the point in yet another punk rock record… I’ve got punk rock coming out of my ears and so has the rest of the world.’ So I thought, okay, if that’s how he feels, and I left it at that. But I was actually a bit upset and hurt because I felt that we’d built-up a bit of a relationship and I didn’t really understand what he had meant. It wasn’t until later on, when I’d been invited to his house with a few other people for one of the great vegetarian meals that his wife, Kathy, used to cook, that we talked about it again. We were sitting down after the meal and he said, ‘If you’re still interested in making an album with me, perhaps we could do it, but I’d like to approach it from a different perspective to what you probably have in your mind…’ Now, by this point, I was able to realize that this was Dave trying to size-up if I’d be able to work with him and take musical-direction, rather than just sticking with what I had planned to do and throwing my toys out of the pram if anything went differently. So I said, yeah, I can do that. He already knew that I was a Stones fan, so he suggested, what if we try to write something that comes from the musical direction of ‘Their Satanic Majesty’s Request’, but with the lyrical themes hinging and pivoting on the ideas in the film ‘Performance’ ? The idea was that it was all going to be about identity… not who we think we are but who we actually are. I thought it sounded great, so I started to work on a few things and the first song we actually recorded was ‘Last Night I Dreamt I Met My Enemy’. I only really started with the title for the song, but once that came up, it just stayed on the tip of my tongue. The first version we recorded was more acoustic but very dark, with violin and slide guitar, almost along the same lines as ‘Sister Morphine’. The version that’s on the album was recorded later on, and that ended-up being more filmic. But while we were recording the first version, we went in to make an attempt on the vocals and I had a pen and paper with me, ready to work on the lyrics. Dave just took them away and told me, ‘You’ve got the title, it’s great, so just go in there and work with it !’ We were both quite prone to the occasional mood-enhancing situation, so he said I should just go in and be in that moment. ‘I want you to hold that title in your heart and mind, and find the story around it.’ He didn’t want me to devalue the title by perceiving lyrics in advance, so that’s how we worked on it. When we eventually recorded the version that’s on the album, I used the ideas that came from the spontaneous feed that we had on the acoustic version. But it was strange working on the lyrics like that and I was actually quite scared of some of the stuff that I came up with. It took me quite a long time to get to grips with some of the things that I was talking about as it was all coming from my own personal feelings. I wasn’t embarrassed with that or anything, but I found that I had to come to terms with some of the lyrics because the words and the themes were probably the most powerful things that I had ever written. Dave also decided to cut and paste the vocals and they ended-up coming in on the song much later than I had originally envisaged. That was one of the things that I had to get used to, as it wasn’t the way I would’ve put it together, but now when I listen to it, I can hear that it makes the whole song so much more powerful by leaving the vocals almost until the very end. It allows the whole atmosphere to build up so much more effectively, almost in the way a good soundtrack will work in one of those classic spaghetti westerns. It keeps on building up until you’re wondering where it’s going to go, and just as you think it’s going to take off, it’ll come down again, before it suddenly ignites. I really have to say, having worked with him on this record, Dave must be one of the most under-rated producers I’ve ever come across, let alone worked with.’
One of the things I started thinking after listening to the album a few times was that Dave really seemed to be having fun with it. It’s as if he was taking the songs and placing them in entirely different scenarios, to see how they could be developed…
‘I’d already had experience of working with him during those guitar sessions and he was always like that. He’d be there, either with a joint or a roll-up in his hand, and he’d be getting in to it. But when we worked on this album, he was taking things even further, getting really into it and being in the moment with it. He was tripping on it and there were several times when I found myself watching him and I could see just how involved he had become. It was actually a little bit alarming for me, because I had to appreciate that here I was, making an album with one of the great, underground rock’n’roll producers, and he was really digging it. When I realised that, I really had to start thinking about where it was going and what was going to happen with it.’
The tracks were actually recorded over quite a long period, rather than all at the same time. Do you think that helped, in the way that it gave both of you the time to be able to stand back and appreciate the way the album was coming together ?
‘Definitely ! In fact, that was one of the things that Dave particularly wanted to do, so that we could go away and digest what we had actually done before we came back to it. This way, we could really feel comfortable with what we had recorded and be really familiar with what we were doing. He wanted every new song to be able to reflect and be a part of what had already been recorded, rather than just using the studio like a supermarket and saying, I wanted a bit of this, some of those and some of that.’
It is one of the things that a lot of bands suffer from, often due to financial restrictions. While some records undoubtedly sound great because they’re recorded quickly and capture the urgency and energy of the music, others really need more time so that the bands can appreciate how everything fits together...
‘Exactly. I’ve recently been going through some live recordings of the Bermondsey Joyriders, as we’ve been thinking of releasing a live album. I’ve been going through various recordings and it’s usually quite instant when you hear something that’s worth working on. But the thing is, it’s almost like watching your hair grow… you don’t notice it at the time, but then you’ll bump into someone else and the first thing they’ll say is, wow, your hair’s got really long ! And it’s the same thing with a band. You often don’t appreciate what you’re doing at the time and it’s not until a lot later on that you can listen to it again and realise just how good it was, or else how you maybe should have done things differently to make it sound better. I think that’s why I’ve always liked working with a producer when I’ve been recording. When we were recording with Cocksparrer, we worked with Nick Tauber who had also worked on all the early Thin Lizzy stuff, like Whiskey in the Jar’ and ‘The Rocker’. Watching how he worked made me realise just how important a producer could be. Since then, the only time we haven’t used a producer was when we did the first Bermondsey Joyriders album, as it was before anyone even knew who we were. We just wanted to get something out to give us some kind of profile, so we didn’t even try to get a producer for it. But when we made ‘Noise & Revolution’, we got Dave M.Allen, who is a renowned producer in his own right, and then on ‘Flamboyant Thugs’, we brought in Tony Barber, who had been the bass player with the Buzzcocks for many years and at that time was living out at Dial House with some of the people from Crass.’
‘I’d already had experience of working with him during those guitar sessions and he was always like that. He’d be there, either with a joint or a roll-up in his hand, and he’d be getting in to it. But when we worked on this album, he was taking things even further, getting really into it and being in the moment with it. He was tripping on it and there were several times when I found myself watching him and I could see just how involved he had become. It was actually a little bit alarming for me, because I had to appreciate that here I was, making an album with one of the great, underground rock’n’roll producers, and he was really digging it. When I realised that, I really had to start thinking about where it was going and what was going to happen with it.’
The tracks were actually recorded over quite a long period, rather than all at the same time. Do you think that helped, in the way that it gave both of you the time to be able to stand back and appreciate the way the album was coming together ?
‘Definitely ! In fact, that was one of the things that Dave particularly wanted to do, so that we could go away and digest what we had actually done before we came back to it. This way, we could really feel comfortable with what we had recorded and be really familiar with what we were doing. He wanted every new song to be able to reflect and be a part of what had already been recorded, rather than just using the studio like a supermarket and saying, I wanted a bit of this, some of those and some of that.’
It is one of the things that a lot of bands suffer from, often due to financial restrictions. While some records undoubtedly sound great because they’re recorded quickly and capture the urgency and energy of the music, others really need more time so that the bands can appreciate how everything fits together...
‘Exactly. I’ve recently been going through some live recordings of the Bermondsey Joyriders, as we’ve been thinking of releasing a live album. I’ve been going through various recordings and it’s usually quite instant when you hear something that’s worth working on. But the thing is, it’s almost like watching your hair grow… you don’t notice it at the time, but then you’ll bump into someone else and the first thing they’ll say is, wow, your hair’s got really long ! And it’s the same thing with a band. You often don’t appreciate what you’re doing at the time and it’s not until a lot later on that you can listen to it again and realise just how good it was, or else how you maybe should have done things differently to make it sound better. I think that’s why I’ve always liked working with a producer when I’ve been recording. When we were recording with Cocksparrer, we worked with Nick Tauber who had also worked on all the early Thin Lizzy stuff, like Whiskey in the Jar’ and ‘The Rocker’. Watching how he worked made me realise just how important a producer could be. Since then, the only time we haven’t used a producer was when we did the first Bermondsey Joyriders album, as it was before anyone even knew who we were. We just wanted to get something out to give us some kind of profile, so we didn’t even try to get a producer for it. But when we made ‘Noise & Revolution’, we got Dave M.Allen, who is a renowned producer in his own right, and then on ‘Flamboyant Thugs’, we brought in Tony Barber, who had been the bass player with the Buzzcocks for many years and at that time was living out at Dial House with some of the people from Crass.’
You continued working with Dave over a period of several years. Did it ever get to a point where you considered it to be pretty-much completed ?
‘No. There were two songs that needed vocals to be completed on them, but by then Dave had moved out to Malta and opened his new studio over there. I had been in touch with him and we were starting to make arrangements for me to go over there to get it finished. But it was just when I was starting to organise things to go over there that I got a phone call from one of our friends. Dave had suffered a massive heart attack and he was gone. I didn’t know what to say apart from asking how Kathy was coping. He said that he didn’t know yet, but he’d keep me informed. I came off the phone, sat down and just said to myself, What a fucking shame, because he really was such a lovely geezer. He was a lot of fun, very knowledgeable and also a very passionate bloke. But he was always able to temper his passion with the approach that, well, everybody thinks that they’re right and that’s why people end up in silly arguments. The trick is to be able to negotiate and see the bigger picture. So for me, after this had happened, I really couldn’t think about completing the album in any other way and it was shelved. That’s the way it stayed for a long time as I felt it would’ve been disrespectful to try and complete it without him, purely because he had been so much more than just the producer. He really had nurtured it and held my hand through the whole process. There were times when he’d talk me into doing a different kind of vocal or working on the lyrics in a different way. He was always trying to get something more out of me. In some ways, he was like some of the theatre directors that I ended up working with later on. These were people who had worked at the Royal Court Theatre and places like that, and I found that they’d be into the same kind of things that Dave was in to. They wanted to get you in to the moment, so you could let a real, almost involuntary statement come out. It didn’t matter how bizarre or embarrassing it might be, they just wanted it to come out. There were times that I would do that in the studio and Dave would go, ‘Yes ! That’s it !’ So after doing all of that work together, I just couldn’t see the point of trying to finish the album without him. I did listen to the recordings occasionally, but I could only ever think about how we’d made them and what a scene it was. Once in a while, I’d play them for other people and they’d always say I should complete them and release the album, but I had just come to the conclusion that maybe it was only ever meant for me to play it to people every so often. But at the same time, I realised that working on this album had helped me develop both as a musician and on a personal level, especially when I remembered some of the great conversations that I used to have with Dave.’
‘No. There were two songs that needed vocals to be completed on them, but by then Dave had moved out to Malta and opened his new studio over there. I had been in touch with him and we were starting to make arrangements for me to go over there to get it finished. But it was just when I was starting to organise things to go over there that I got a phone call from one of our friends. Dave had suffered a massive heart attack and he was gone. I didn’t know what to say apart from asking how Kathy was coping. He said that he didn’t know yet, but he’d keep me informed. I came off the phone, sat down and just said to myself, What a fucking shame, because he really was such a lovely geezer. He was a lot of fun, very knowledgeable and also a very passionate bloke. But he was always able to temper his passion with the approach that, well, everybody thinks that they’re right and that’s why people end up in silly arguments. The trick is to be able to negotiate and see the bigger picture. So for me, after this had happened, I really couldn’t think about completing the album in any other way and it was shelved. That’s the way it stayed for a long time as I felt it would’ve been disrespectful to try and complete it without him, purely because he had been so much more than just the producer. He really had nurtured it and held my hand through the whole process. There were times when he’d talk me into doing a different kind of vocal or working on the lyrics in a different way. He was always trying to get something more out of me. In some ways, he was like some of the theatre directors that I ended up working with later on. These were people who had worked at the Royal Court Theatre and places like that, and I found that they’d be into the same kind of things that Dave was in to. They wanted to get you in to the moment, so you could let a real, almost involuntary statement come out. It didn’t matter how bizarre or embarrassing it might be, they just wanted it to come out. There were times that I would do that in the studio and Dave would go, ‘Yes ! That’s it !’ So after doing all of that work together, I just couldn’t see the point of trying to finish the album without him. I did listen to the recordings occasionally, but I could only ever think about how we’d made them and what a scene it was. Once in a while, I’d play them for other people and they’d always say I should complete them and release the album, but I had just come to the conclusion that maybe it was only ever meant for me to play it to people every so often. But at the same time, I realised that working on this album had helped me develop both as a musician and on a personal level, especially when I remembered some of the great conversations that I used to have with Dave.’
So what made you change your mind to consider completing it and making it available ?
‘I received a Christmas card from Kathy a few years ago and she wrote a note with it, telling me what she was up to and how she was trying to put things back together. I wrote back and we started to rebuild our relationship. It was the first time I had heard from her for a while, so it was great that she had got in touch. Around the same time, I had been at Alan Clayton’s studio working on some demos for the Bermondsey Joyriders, and while I was there, I mentioned that I had these unfinished songs and I was interested in adding the vocals to them just to see how they would turn out. We ended up doing that but again, I just left them on the shelf. It wasn’t until about a year ago that I was talking to Mat Sargent, who runs the Dave Goodman tribute page. I asked him if he’d be interested in hearing the album and he said that he would, so I put the tracks in some sort of running order for him to listen to them. One of the tracks was a sort of tribute to John Sinclair so when he came over to record his vocals for ‘Flamboyant Thugs’, I’d asked him if he’d like to replace the vocals that I’d originally written about him, with something of his own. I think I was trying to channel something more of him into the song, rather than it just being something written about him by someone else. Once I explained it, he said he’d be happy to do it, so we put it all together and finally played it to Mat. I was sitting there cringing as Mat was listening to it. He was just staring in to space as it played, so I really didn’t know what he was thinking. But when it finished, he turned to me and said, What do you think needs to be done for this album to be completed and made available ? Technically, it needed to be mastered, but I also wanted to get an endorsement from both him and Kathy, to say they were happy for it to be released. Straight away, he said he was happy to do that because he thought it was one of the best things that Dave had ever done, and then he arranged to send a copy over to Kathy, to make sure she was comfortable with it. Soon afterwards, she sent me a letter saying she had really enjoyed hearing the recordings again and wished me all the best luck with it. So that’s how it eventually came together.’
I had assumed that the track with John Sinclair must have been completed at a later time than the rest of the material, but it certainly fits nicely with the rest of the album because it ties-in with the background that both John and Dave had come from, and more recently it ties-in with John’s involvement with the Bermondsey Joyriders…
‘The backing track had been done at the same time as the rest of the album, but the vocals were obviously done later on. The thing was, Dave Goodman was a bit of an esoteric thinker and he used to say that if you believed in something enough, and gave it good vibes, then it would happen. When we used to have these big discussions, one of the things he really believed was that music could save the world, as long as you believed in it. So I can’t help but think, after we had started to record that song as a tribute to John Sinclair, if I had been able to tell Dave that I had the opportunity to have John actually do the vocals on it, he would have just said, ‘What are you waiting for, you pratt !’
‘I received a Christmas card from Kathy a few years ago and she wrote a note with it, telling me what she was up to and how she was trying to put things back together. I wrote back and we started to rebuild our relationship. It was the first time I had heard from her for a while, so it was great that she had got in touch. Around the same time, I had been at Alan Clayton’s studio working on some demos for the Bermondsey Joyriders, and while I was there, I mentioned that I had these unfinished songs and I was interested in adding the vocals to them just to see how they would turn out. We ended up doing that but again, I just left them on the shelf. It wasn’t until about a year ago that I was talking to Mat Sargent, who runs the Dave Goodman tribute page. I asked him if he’d be interested in hearing the album and he said that he would, so I put the tracks in some sort of running order for him to listen to them. One of the tracks was a sort of tribute to John Sinclair so when he came over to record his vocals for ‘Flamboyant Thugs’, I’d asked him if he’d like to replace the vocals that I’d originally written about him, with something of his own. I think I was trying to channel something more of him into the song, rather than it just being something written about him by someone else. Once I explained it, he said he’d be happy to do it, so we put it all together and finally played it to Mat. I was sitting there cringing as Mat was listening to it. He was just staring in to space as it played, so I really didn’t know what he was thinking. But when it finished, he turned to me and said, What do you think needs to be done for this album to be completed and made available ? Technically, it needed to be mastered, but I also wanted to get an endorsement from both him and Kathy, to say they were happy for it to be released. Straight away, he said he was happy to do that because he thought it was one of the best things that Dave had ever done, and then he arranged to send a copy over to Kathy, to make sure she was comfortable with it. Soon afterwards, she sent me a letter saying she had really enjoyed hearing the recordings again and wished me all the best luck with it. So that’s how it eventually came together.’
I had assumed that the track with John Sinclair must have been completed at a later time than the rest of the material, but it certainly fits nicely with the rest of the album because it ties-in with the background that both John and Dave had come from, and more recently it ties-in with John’s involvement with the Bermondsey Joyriders…
‘The backing track had been done at the same time as the rest of the album, but the vocals were obviously done later on. The thing was, Dave Goodman was a bit of an esoteric thinker and he used to say that if you believed in something enough, and gave it good vibes, then it would happen. When we used to have these big discussions, one of the things he really believed was that music could save the world, as long as you believed in it. So I can’t help but think, after we had started to record that song as a tribute to John Sinclair, if I had been able to tell Dave that I had the opportunity to have John actually do the vocals on it, he would have just said, ‘What are you waiting for, you pratt !’
As a bit of a sidetrack, you also had the opportunity to take John up to Dial House to meet Penny Rimbaud and Gee Voucher. That must have been interesting as, although musically they were very different, there are also a lot of parallels between what Crass were doing and the work John did with the MC5… For a start, while Crass came under surveillance by MI5 in this country, the MC5 had also been under investigation by the FBI…
‘Yeah, and if you get to see the ‘True Testament’ film, you can see the proof of it. Back in the day, the members of the MC5 began to get worried that the FBI were watching them, but later on, they started to think that they had just been paranoid because they’d been smoking too much. But then, when the film was being made, they came across all this footage that had been released from the FBI archives, and they really had been spying on them ! The ironic thing is that the footage that the FBI filmed is actually some of the best material in the film. Anyway, as we’d been working with Tony Barber, I was able to arrange to take John up to Dial House to meet Penny and some of the other people from Crass. Initially it was just going to be a short visit, maybe a cup of tea and a sandwich, and perhaps a smoke. But as it turned out, four or five hours later, I was having to remind John that he had an interview organized for that evening ! The thing was, Penny and John were like two long-lost jazz-brothers. They really were on the same wave-length when it came to their musical tastes. The stuff John loves is the more experimental types of jazz, things like Sun Ra and people like that, which is also what Penny is in to. For all intent and purposes, it’s free-form expression and it’s also quite intellectual, which I think both Penny and John really appreciate. Anyway, I don’t know if they kept in touch after that meeting, but I think it would be quite a shame if they didn’t keep up some kind of correspondence. It was great to be able to take John up there and afterwards, when I was driving him back to London, he said that he’d never had such an enjoyable talk about the kind of music that he likes. The thing was, when I first told John about Crass and who Penny and Gee were, I don’t think he was particularly looking forward to going to meet them. He had his own ideas about what a ‘commune’ would be, so he was a bit wary when I told him that Dial House that was being run by real anarchists and not just people wearing the t-shirt. But he told me, on the way home, that he had been totally surprised. He had been thinking it was going to be some kind of dingy warehouse, with water leaking and rats running around, like some of the squats he’s seen in Europe. But when you go to Dial House, it’s an absolutely beautiful place and they grow all their own food, it’s all organic and vegetarian, and the chickens are running free… It’s interesting, because I’d always been intrigued by vegetarianism but it wasn’t until I got to know Dave Goodman and Kathy that I found out that you could have great vegetarian food without it just tasting like a piece of cardboard. That was when I first started getting in to it, although I was still on and off. But the thing was that Dave and Kathy still had to go out and buy the ingredients for their meals from their local Health Food shop, which was fair enough, but when I met Penny and Gee up at Dial House, I could actually see how the food was grown, how it was used, and I could see them going out and picking the tomatoes or whatever for the next meal. To me, that was just fantastic. And the food really does taste so much better than some pre-packed thing that you’d buy in your local supermarket.’
That’s a good example of the way Crass always worked. Instead of telling you what you should do, or saying this is wrong and we’re right, they would just put things out there that would hopefully challenge you on a personal level and allow you to draw your own conclusions.
‘Yeah, it was the same thing with there music. Some of it was virtually unlistenable, but I think it was meant to be like that. They tried to challenge everything, including Punk itself, and get people to think about things for themselves. Musically, they were almost using spontaneous sounds sometimes and I think that was very deliberate. I remember reading an article somewhere that said that, no matter how much chaos it is faced with, the human brain will try to make out some kind of sense of it. And I think… don’t call me an authority on this, because it’s just my opinion… but I think with some of their music, that’s the kind of reaction that they were trying to challenge. It’s a bit like Lou Reeds’ album. ‘Metal Machine Music’. If you listen to it enough times, you start to think that you’re actually hearing patterns of music in it. And I think it was something like that which was behind some of the ideas Crass had about their more extreme music.’
‘Yeah, and if you get to see the ‘True Testament’ film, you can see the proof of it. Back in the day, the members of the MC5 began to get worried that the FBI were watching them, but later on, they started to think that they had just been paranoid because they’d been smoking too much. But then, when the film was being made, they came across all this footage that had been released from the FBI archives, and they really had been spying on them ! The ironic thing is that the footage that the FBI filmed is actually some of the best material in the film. Anyway, as we’d been working with Tony Barber, I was able to arrange to take John up to Dial House to meet Penny and some of the other people from Crass. Initially it was just going to be a short visit, maybe a cup of tea and a sandwich, and perhaps a smoke. But as it turned out, four or five hours later, I was having to remind John that he had an interview organized for that evening ! The thing was, Penny and John were like two long-lost jazz-brothers. They really were on the same wave-length when it came to their musical tastes. The stuff John loves is the more experimental types of jazz, things like Sun Ra and people like that, which is also what Penny is in to. For all intent and purposes, it’s free-form expression and it’s also quite intellectual, which I think both Penny and John really appreciate. Anyway, I don’t know if they kept in touch after that meeting, but I think it would be quite a shame if they didn’t keep up some kind of correspondence. It was great to be able to take John up there and afterwards, when I was driving him back to London, he said that he’d never had such an enjoyable talk about the kind of music that he likes. The thing was, when I first told John about Crass and who Penny and Gee were, I don’t think he was particularly looking forward to going to meet them. He had his own ideas about what a ‘commune’ would be, so he was a bit wary when I told him that Dial House that was being run by real anarchists and not just people wearing the t-shirt. But he told me, on the way home, that he had been totally surprised. He had been thinking it was going to be some kind of dingy warehouse, with water leaking and rats running around, like some of the squats he’s seen in Europe. But when you go to Dial House, it’s an absolutely beautiful place and they grow all their own food, it’s all organic and vegetarian, and the chickens are running free… It’s interesting, because I’d always been intrigued by vegetarianism but it wasn’t until I got to know Dave Goodman and Kathy that I found out that you could have great vegetarian food without it just tasting like a piece of cardboard. That was when I first started getting in to it, although I was still on and off. But the thing was that Dave and Kathy still had to go out and buy the ingredients for their meals from their local Health Food shop, which was fair enough, but when I met Penny and Gee up at Dial House, I could actually see how the food was grown, how it was used, and I could see them going out and picking the tomatoes or whatever for the next meal. To me, that was just fantastic. And the food really does taste so much better than some pre-packed thing that you’d buy in your local supermarket.’
That’s a good example of the way Crass always worked. Instead of telling you what you should do, or saying this is wrong and we’re right, they would just put things out there that would hopefully challenge you on a personal level and allow you to draw your own conclusions.
‘Yeah, it was the same thing with there music. Some of it was virtually unlistenable, but I think it was meant to be like that. They tried to challenge everything, including Punk itself, and get people to think about things for themselves. Musically, they were almost using spontaneous sounds sometimes and I think that was very deliberate. I remember reading an article somewhere that said that, no matter how much chaos it is faced with, the human brain will try to make out some kind of sense of it. And I think… don’t call me an authority on this, because it’s just my opinion… but I think with some of their music, that’s the kind of reaction that they were trying to challenge. It’s a bit like Lou Reeds’ album. ‘Metal Machine Music’. If you listen to it enough times, you start to think that you’re actually hearing patterns of music in it. And I think it was something like that which was behind some of the ideas Crass had about their more extreme music.’
The song ‘Memo to Anita’ has an almost dub-style to it. The first thing it made me recall was Jah Wobbles’ bass-playing, and this was before I found out that you had actually played with him in the past…
‘Yeah, I did play with him at one point but it’s actually Dave Goodman playing bass on that track. I think there was a general consciousness among the people involved with the Pistols and subsequently those originally involved with PiL, where they would take their influences from different places and not necessarily the places that people would generally assume. For instance, John Lydon and Dave Goodman were both very much into the German band, Can. And the thing is, although pure reggae fans probably wouldn’t admit it, there were very big parallels between the things that bands like Can were doing and Dub reggae. The same thing could also be said about certain reggae and psychedelic music… The thing is that, people like Lydon, Wobble and Dave Goodman all really know their music and they could see and hear things that other people wouldn’t get unless it was pointed out to them. I think it’s sad that, apart from Glen Matlock, the rest of the Sex Pistols have never really given much credit to Dave for his involvement with them. Glen has always been a bit more understanding and appreciative, but really, who else but Dave would have come up with the idea for Steve Jones to completely flood his guitar with an MXR Phaser ? It’s just not the obvious thing to do, but when you hear it, it sounds marvellous ! That’s just the kind of idea that Dave would’ve come up with.’
The lyrics on ‘Memo to Anita’ are also very distinctive…
‘Lyrically, it came from something that I’d done with Dave some time earlier. In fact, some of them have also been used in other places… I’d originally been using all those filmic references, like Clockwork Orange, Harvey Keitel and Al Pacino, which came from Sigue Sigue Sputnik in a way, because I was interested in their ideas about taking Fifties rock’n’roll but putting it in an electronic situation. It was the same thing with Marc Bolan and T Rex in a lot of ways. If you were into them, it wasn’t going to take you long to realise that basically, what he was doing was Fifties rock’n’roll, but putting it into a Seventies Glam context.’
When you first told me about this album, you mentioned the significance of the chessboard in the artwork. What was the idea behind that ?
‘I suppose it was a little bit of egotism from me, in that I was trying to say that life is down to the choices you make, and the ones I made when I first met Dave weren’t the right choices. I could have probably got to where I am now much earlier, but then again, as in a game of chess, if you play your best move too early, it can also give your opponent the time and space to deal with it. In the case of this album, we had originally discussed calling it, ‘The Gipsy Hill Psychic Request’. That was why we used that photograph on the cover, as it was meant to be in the style of a Victorian Music Hall psychic, you know, looking knowingly into the audience. But as we took so much time to record the album and then it was delayed even further when Dave passed away, in the meantime another band started using the name ‘Gypsy Hill’ and it became awkward to use that title, even though it would have been perfect for the album. That’s why it’s finally been released just under my name.’
‘Yeah, I did play with him at one point but it’s actually Dave Goodman playing bass on that track. I think there was a general consciousness among the people involved with the Pistols and subsequently those originally involved with PiL, where they would take their influences from different places and not necessarily the places that people would generally assume. For instance, John Lydon and Dave Goodman were both very much into the German band, Can. And the thing is, although pure reggae fans probably wouldn’t admit it, there were very big parallels between the things that bands like Can were doing and Dub reggae. The same thing could also be said about certain reggae and psychedelic music… The thing is that, people like Lydon, Wobble and Dave Goodman all really know their music and they could see and hear things that other people wouldn’t get unless it was pointed out to them. I think it’s sad that, apart from Glen Matlock, the rest of the Sex Pistols have never really given much credit to Dave for his involvement with them. Glen has always been a bit more understanding and appreciative, but really, who else but Dave would have come up with the idea for Steve Jones to completely flood his guitar with an MXR Phaser ? It’s just not the obvious thing to do, but when you hear it, it sounds marvellous ! That’s just the kind of idea that Dave would’ve come up with.’
The lyrics on ‘Memo to Anita’ are also very distinctive…
‘Lyrically, it came from something that I’d done with Dave some time earlier. In fact, some of them have also been used in other places… I’d originally been using all those filmic references, like Clockwork Orange, Harvey Keitel and Al Pacino, which came from Sigue Sigue Sputnik in a way, because I was interested in their ideas about taking Fifties rock’n’roll but putting it in an electronic situation. It was the same thing with Marc Bolan and T Rex in a lot of ways. If you were into them, it wasn’t going to take you long to realise that basically, what he was doing was Fifties rock’n’roll, but putting it into a Seventies Glam context.’
When you first told me about this album, you mentioned the significance of the chessboard in the artwork. What was the idea behind that ?
‘I suppose it was a little bit of egotism from me, in that I was trying to say that life is down to the choices you make, and the ones I made when I first met Dave weren’t the right choices. I could have probably got to where I am now much earlier, but then again, as in a game of chess, if you play your best move too early, it can also give your opponent the time and space to deal with it. In the case of this album, we had originally discussed calling it, ‘The Gipsy Hill Psychic Request’. That was why we used that photograph on the cover, as it was meant to be in the style of a Victorian Music Hall psychic, you know, looking knowingly into the audience. But as we took so much time to record the album and then it was delayed even further when Dave passed away, in the meantime another band started using the name ‘Gypsy Hill’ and it became awkward to use that title, even though it would have been perfect for the album. That’s why it’s finally been released just under my name.’
The funny thing is, although you’ve used the name ‘Gary Guitar Lammin’, it’s not actually a guitar-based album in the usual sense. There’s plenty of guitar on it, but not in the traditional way…
‘I know what you mean… it’s not overwhelmingly guitar-based, but at the same time, I think it’s got some of the best guitar playing on it that I’ve ever done. Going back to ‘Last Night I Dreamt I Met My Enemy’, Dave was really trying to get me in the moment, even with my guitar-playing. He was trying to get me to work in a non-self conscious way, so that I could really free myself up. I said in the press release that I’m always disappointed when someone releases a solo album but it just sounds like their regular band with different musicians. I think that’s such a cop-out as it sounds as if they’re just taking the idea of their band and trying to reinstate it with different people. It’s almost dishonest… we know what they do in their band, so let’s hear what you can do on a solo album. What I do with the Bermondsey Joyriders, to a great extent, is make a total racket and jump around enjoying myself. But there are times when there might be something else that I want to say or put across, and that’s what a solo album should be used for. Charles Shaar Murray made a comment that while the Bermondsey Joyriders is my outer view of society’s decay, this album is my more reflective inner-self. I’m not entirely sure if that’s true, but it’s a good way of putting it.’
Has any of this material been played live, or is it something that you’re intending to do ?
‘I have played some of it live in little clubs, before the album was released. I just introduced myself as ‘Terry the Van Driver’, as I just wanted to try the songs out in an unannounced, camouflaged situation. I wanted to see how they would stand-up with just a voice and an acoustic guitar. And they went down really well so I know that they do work live and I think they may work even better if they’re enhanced by a full band. So it’s something I’ve been thinking about doing, but at the end of the day, I’m also torn between it. I think it could work, but I’d be working with an album that really should have been finished with Dave and I still need to come to terms with that. I need to be mindful of certain things before I try to take it any further.’
Would you consider making another solo album, if the right circumstances came along ?
‘Well, I could never write another album like this one. I would consider writing and recording another solo album which would be very different to something I would do with the Bermondsey Joyriders, but I don’t think I could ever do another album of the same depth as this. Just because the lyrical content of this one is of such substance. I think, as time goes on, what Dave used to say still holds true. ‘When the time is right, the appropriate people will appear’. He knew that everything has its’ own time and place. We just have to find it.’
The album ‘Gary Guitar Lammin’ is now available, released on Requestone Records.
‘I know what you mean… it’s not overwhelmingly guitar-based, but at the same time, I think it’s got some of the best guitar playing on it that I’ve ever done. Going back to ‘Last Night I Dreamt I Met My Enemy’, Dave was really trying to get me in the moment, even with my guitar-playing. He was trying to get me to work in a non-self conscious way, so that I could really free myself up. I said in the press release that I’m always disappointed when someone releases a solo album but it just sounds like their regular band with different musicians. I think that’s such a cop-out as it sounds as if they’re just taking the idea of their band and trying to reinstate it with different people. It’s almost dishonest… we know what they do in their band, so let’s hear what you can do on a solo album. What I do with the Bermondsey Joyriders, to a great extent, is make a total racket and jump around enjoying myself. But there are times when there might be something else that I want to say or put across, and that’s what a solo album should be used for. Charles Shaar Murray made a comment that while the Bermondsey Joyriders is my outer view of society’s decay, this album is my more reflective inner-self. I’m not entirely sure if that’s true, but it’s a good way of putting it.’
Has any of this material been played live, or is it something that you’re intending to do ?
‘I have played some of it live in little clubs, before the album was released. I just introduced myself as ‘Terry the Van Driver’, as I just wanted to try the songs out in an unannounced, camouflaged situation. I wanted to see how they would stand-up with just a voice and an acoustic guitar. And they went down really well so I know that they do work live and I think they may work even better if they’re enhanced by a full band. So it’s something I’ve been thinking about doing, but at the end of the day, I’m also torn between it. I think it could work, but I’d be working with an album that really should have been finished with Dave and I still need to come to terms with that. I need to be mindful of certain things before I try to take it any further.’
Would you consider making another solo album, if the right circumstances came along ?
‘Well, I could never write another album like this one. I would consider writing and recording another solo album which would be very different to something I would do with the Bermondsey Joyriders, but I don’t think I could ever do another album of the same depth as this. Just because the lyrical content of this one is of such substance. I think, as time goes on, what Dave used to say still holds true. ‘When the time is right, the appropriate people will appear’. He knew that everything has its’ own time and place. We just have to find it.’
The album ‘Gary Guitar Lammin’ is now available, released on Requestone Records.