You were born in Leeds in the early 1950’s and spent your childhood and early teens there. What were your major musical influences at that time?
At that time, the usual sixties stuff like The Beatles, Small Faces, Stones, Dylan, Hendrix.
When did you move to London and why?
It was after Art College. I went to Art College in Leeds and then when that was over I kind of floundered around for a year and used to pop down to visit friends in London. I came down one particular weekend and never went back.
Is that where you met John?
Yeah I met him at Art College in Leeds.
How did you come to own a recording studio in Maida Vale.
To call it a recording studio is a bit of an exaggeration. Together with a friend I bought one of the first Akai four track reel-to-reel tape recorders. Basically we were living in a basement flat and we converted a coal cellar underneath the road and soundproofed it.
Who used to record demos there?
The Dammed did their first stuff there and when I was working with the London SS thing we did some stuff with Mick Jones. I think the Pistols also did something there. I remember the guitarist from the Hollies lived nearby and he heard about it so he came and did something. It wasn’t at all a commercial venture; it was just for songwriting and rehearsing. You could just about fit in a drum kit and three people in at a squeeze. Because it was underneath the road you could make a racket any time day or night.
So how did London SS come about?
In a way we all kind of met through the Hollywood Brats because we had all heard about them or had seen them. A lot of people said that the Brats were the UK version of the Dolls but in fact they were going at the same time, oblivious to the Dolls. They heard about them later. I suppose London SS came about through a few satellite bands. There was a band called Violent Luck, which Mick Jones had been chucked out of. The singer’s girlfriend was working with a friend of mine so I bumped into those guys through that because Mick was trying to start a new band. But to be honest, Mick would have joined Uriah Heep he was so desperate to be in a band.
That blows Mick’s credibility then.
He’d have to admit it was true because he told me that. He’d have joined Uriah Heep like a shot if they’d have him so long as he could get on stage. He had ambition, big ambition.
What songs did you play?
We did a few of our own songs; Mick was a good songwriter, or at least I thought he was. But a few of his ideas for songs which I thought were good, I later realised he’d ripped off from a song I hadn’t heard at the time. However, he did have good musical ideas. We were doing some Velvet Underground and Flaming Groovies stuff but mainly we were thinking of writing our own songs. That was the main thing.
Did you perform any Boys or Brats songs at that time?
Not really, it was a separate thing. There were a few germs of songs that later became Boys songs.
I think that Casino said in a previous interview that you had some demos from that time. Do you still have them?
I do in a way, but they’re in old dusty boxes. I remember playing through them about ten years ago and not finding anything of any real interest. There were many more tapes, which had the Damned and the London SS with Mick Jones on them. Unfortunately a friend of mine had them in his house and I think somebody stole them. They may turn up on a bootleg somewhere in the future.
Would you ever consider releasing any of the material?
Sure Yes.
How did the Boys become a band?
One night I was laying down a track because at the time I’d got into playing everything myself. Bass, guitars, drums and vocals, doing a Todd Rungren type of thing. The only thing I couldn’t really do was drums and we didn’t have good drum machines in those days so it was Kelvin, the singer from Violent Luck who said he knew a drummer called Geir Waade who lived round the corner. I phoned him up and he came round. He drummed the track and the next day he got in touch with me and said he’d like to get a band together. It turned out he was a friend of Casino from the same town in Norway. He introduced me to Casino and Andrew Matheson, the Brats’ singer. The idea at the time was a six piece with Mick Jones and myself on guitar, Tony James on bass and Geir on drums. Andrew Matheson did one rehearsal with us and along with Cas pulled me aside and said they wanted to put a band together but didn’t want Mick or Tony James. That’s how the Boys started, with Andrew singing.
When was that?
It must have been late 1975 because Andrew went home for Christmas – he was Canadian – and just didn’t come back. So for a while we were looking for a singer. In the meantime we started singing ourselves, by which time the old Hollywood Brats manager, Ken Mewis, had become interested in us. He told us it sounded great and that we should go for it as it was. Before that I never really intended to be a singer.
When did you recruit Duncan and Jack?
Andrew had thrown Geir out of the band while he was still the singer. Honest John had become involved then because we needed a bassist and I said I knew a guitarist who lived round the corner and felt sure he’d help out. So John came along. I think Jack and Duncan came through a friend called Steve, who later played in the London Cowboys. He said he knew a couple of guys who he used to go to school with. He introduced us to Jack and Duncan and they were a great rhythm section. So we were off.
Who came up with the name "The Boys"?
I think it was Andrew actually. It was after a Bowie song "London Boys" because we were initially The London Boys and then just dropped the London.
When did you come up with the name Dangerfield?
At the time I was still under contract to the previous thing I had been doing. There was a singer/songwriter guy who had a manager with lots of money. He asked me to get a band together and we did some recordings in a top of the range 24-track recording studio. We’d all signed a management contract so I didn’t want him to know I was doing anything new. I got the name from a J P Donleavy novel "The Ginger Man". The hero’s called Sebastian Dangerfield, a complete bastard, so I thought that’ll do.
Where did you start playing?
Our first ever gig was at the Hope and Anchor, Islington.
How quickly was it before the record companies started paying attention?
Pretty quickly actually, we only played about five or six gigs before we were signed up. At the time there was only the pub rock circuit, places like The Kensington and The Brecknock. We were playing all these places and they were saying, "you’ll never darken our doorstep again. Bugger off". Even the DJ at Dingwalls said that after we played. Admittedly we were really kind of sloppy that night. When you played Dingwalls at that time you did your sound check at something ridiculous like 4pm and as a support band you didn’t actually go on stage until about 10pm. We ended up hanging round in a pub having a few drinks, so we were very relaxed by the time we got on stage. We were also chatting away to friends in the audience mid gig and just having a laugh because we honestly couldn’t give a shit by then.
But we got signed by NEMS the night we played Dingwalls. We were supporting Babe Ruth. On their album cover they had this gorgeous girl singer but when they played Dingwalls the stage was about 12 inches high and she had to be helped on the stage she was so fat. NEMS had come to see us through our manager, Ken Mewis. The reason we took the deal was because, although we’d never heard of them as a record company, we knew they were a successful live agency. So we thought well at least they could get us some gigs so let’s go for it. At that time no other punk band had been signed. I think that we were the first punk band to sign a record contract. The Dammed only had a singles deal with Stiff and the Pistols were still humming and harring.
I think it would have been after the Pistols had been sacked by EMI.
Possibly yes. I remember that "Anarchy In The UK" had come out.
How quickly was it before you’d realised you’d made a mistake?
It took a while I suppose. You know about the Elvis dying thing, when RCA, NEMS distributors, definitely turned all their plants over to pressing Elvis records. It would have been a good point for us because there wasn’t that much about at that time. I think that ours was the first punk album to be released. It was selling well and had gone straight into the charts at No 50 and then suddenly you just couldn’t buy it.
How did you feel when NEMS suggested that Pete Gage should produce your first album?
Well we thought why not, we’d give him a go. But we had this idea of being raw and he was definitely polishing it up a bit. He did the entire recording which was fine, it was just when it came to the first mixes. Even though they were just rough mixes we thought we could do better ourselves. We wanted the first album to be a rough production.
Does the original mix still exist?
Not really because it was never finished. There might be a few monitor mixes but it was never mixed properly.
If it could be found would you be in favour of it being released?
I’d be interested to hear it if it did exist. A similar thing happened with "To Hell With The Boys"; there’s an original mix of that. I wanted to remix that album for two reasons. Firstly, the Norwegian producer decided that Duncan’s voice wasn’t good enough but I wanted Duncan to sing some of the songs on the album. Secondly, because he put on lots of fiddly, twiddly, muso bits and tweaks like slimy guitars and slimy girl backing vocals. I always quite liked the Boys doing all their own backing vocals in the same way that the Beatles did. They never had girl-backing vocals, always doing their own falsettos. A lot of that was done after we’d left so I felt it was done behind our backs. Had I been there I would certainly have objected to it.
The B-side of your first single was "Soda Pressing", which is a great song and stands up really well today. Did you consider it to be a strong song at the time or was it just a throwaway B-side?
NThe first song we wrote in the Boys was "I Don’t Care" and the second was "Soda Pressing" and they were probably the only songs we had at the time. We said "I Don’t Care", well that’s a good single. What else have we got? "Soda Pressing", we’ll stick that on the B-side. What else have we got? A new one called "Turning Grey", yeah, let’s stick that on too.
Cas and I struck up an instant writing partnership, which was quite prolific. At the time John wasn’t writing anything and neither was Duncan so we were the only guys who wrote songs.
How did your writing partnership with Casino work?
Cas, because he wasn’t capable of writing English lyrics at the time, would come with ideas to me either as a finished tune on which I’d stick some and throw in the odd middle eight or chord change or something. At the same time I was also writing songs which he was helping on so we came to an early agreement that everything would be split 50/50 like Lennon and McCartney. You know you can tell a lot of the Beatles’ songs are definitely just purely Lennon or purely McCartney, but they agreed to share the credit. We worked well together so that’s what we decided to do. I could write a whole song on my own but it always benefited from an input from Cas, as he was an experienced songwriter by then. He’d already got one album under his belt.
In the early days Duncan and yourself were singing about half the songs each. Who decided who would sing which song?
We’d try it out in rehearsal. Actually Duncan developed as a singer because at first he had a fairly limited range so we’d be giving him what he could handle. I always wanted him to sing at least half the stuff, especially live because it made it a lot easier. Its kind of hard singing and playing and to be honest it’s even harder singing and playing bass. You had to work hard and having two singers does give you a break to get your breath back, especially live. Most of the stuff we were doing was very demanding. We could manage it in the recording studio but when we played it live, with the adrenaline flowing, it would even be a notch faster. It made it easier having two singers.
"Alternative Chartbusters" is credited as being produced by the Boys. Was it Casino and yourself or were all the band involved?
To be honest it was probably me more than anyone. I’d had my own recording studio experience so I suppose I was the one who took the biggest interest although we were quite a democratic band. For instance, when choosing the songs we would record we would always go through a rehearsal process and then a voting system. Because there were five in the band it was easy to make decisions.
Later on John started writing more songs. First Time was more or less the first song he’d ever written. We did chop it down because there was a verse about "and then we got married and lived happy ever after" which we thought was a bit too unpunk. We also really chugged it up on the guitars. John’s a really good accoustic guitarist and has a tendency to write gentle, jogging sorts of songs. We probably just punked it up a little.
"Alternative Chartbusters" is certainly my favourite Boys album and "Brickfield Nights" must be the almost perfect pop song. How did you feel when they both failed commercially?
You’re just disappointed I suppose but you think well what the hell. It’s been nice that some of the songs were picked up on it later, something we never expected. You think when something dies that’s it, it’s the end of it but that’s not always the case. Like when Die Toten Hosen covered "Brickfield Nights" and this Japanese band covered "Soda Pressing" out of the blue. It’s nice when you realise that somebody noticed. But at the time it’s a bit soul destroying.
Who came up with the title "Alternative Chartbusters"?
I think that was me. At the time we were always in the alternative charts but never made the normal charts. I was making fun of that really, because we really were alternative chartbusters.
Were NEMS happy to let you produce it yourselves?
They were happy, we didn’t have any trouble persuading them. It was cheaper!
You made two videos from the album "Brickfield Nights", which was shown on television, and "Sway". Has "Sway" ever been shown on British TV?
I don’t think so, no. That was the really early days of video. We went into an ITN studio in Soho and did both of them in an hour. It was more or less like live TV. They had a couple of cameras, you played a song two or three times and that’s it, see you later. We finished "Brickfield Nights" very quickly and so we said let’s do another one and we did "Sway".
Why "Sway"? Was it planned as a follow up single?
No just as something a bit silly. The whole point was just to get "Brickfield Nights" done and we’d finished it in 20 minutes so we thought let’s do another one.
What happened after that with NEMS?
We started working on the third album which was provisionally titled "Junk" and we got as far as the mixing stage. All the backing tracks were down and we just had to add on some vocals and other bits and bobs. We left it there in the studio, at Rockfield, thinking we’d be back in a few weeks. Basically NEMS didn’t pay for the recording sessions so we never went back and the recording studio obviously wouldn’t let us have the tapes. After that we thought what’s the point, and sort of went on strike.
On "Odds and Sods" you stated that they had wiped the tapes but most of the album appeared on the "Punk Rock Rarities" album.
Yes, but that was all from the monitor mixes with guide vocals that I had, so they weren’t proper mixes. They were just from a cassette I had taken away to listen to.
So what did you do for the next 18 months?
I can’t actually remember. I probably didn’t do much, just enjoyed life. I think I worked on a few things but nothing particularly memorable. Cas had gone back to Norway to stay with his mum for a while. I think his father had died. He did a deal with a recording studio there and suggested we record an album and try to sell it on the premise that eventually NEMS would have to let us go. A lot of the songs that turned up on "To Hell With The Boys" were originally on "Junk".
I remember reading an interview around that time where you mentioned that "Schoolgirls" had been planned as your next single.
It’s possible. The reason we did "Schoolgirls" was because some TV station was interested in showing how a band worked in the studio for a children’s programme, so we wrote "Schoolgirls" especially. Looking back I can understand why they didn’t go ahead because basically the song was about under age sex. So that never happened but it turned out to be quite a good song. Funnily enough, the engineer who recorded that was Eddy Grant before his comeback. He remarked that it reminded him of a band he used to be in and I asked him who that was. He said, "oh you won’t know them, it was back in the 60’s." But I was a bit of a sixties expert. I was always buying anything from the sixties I found, even if I’d never heard of it I’d just buy it. And I knew the Equals so he was really chuffed, he thought that everybody had forgotten them.
Around that time I remember a lot of adverts in the music press where NEMS were slagging off the Boys and you were slagging off NEMS. I believe Ken Mewis was behind the Boys adverts.
NEMS used to give us a small budget to put adverts in the likes of NME or whatever and we used to use their advertising money to slag them off. There was one I remember which stated "Sort out the NEMS from the Boys". They didn’t even notice it. They’d such little interest in us that they didn’t realise that we were having a go at them. We were even playing gigs where we were saying "For sale – next to nothing".
I remember one which said, "The Boys are back from Hell" where the word Hell was in the style of the NEMS logo.
Yeah that’s right.
How did the Safari deal come about?
Well they’d been interested in signing us way back when we were with NEMS but we weren’t in a position to do anything about it then. So when we finished "To Hell With The Boys" they were our first port of call and they said yes you’ve got a deal.
"Jap Junk" had been recorded for "Junk" with you singing and it was recorded as "Kamikaze" for "To Hell With The Boys". Who decided that John would have his first vocal outing?
Do you know who sang it on the Norwegian mix version?
It was John.
It was probably decided there in the studio. It was a louty kind of song and John’s got a louty kind of voice. For that reason John would sing a lot of the Yobs songs, as would Jack, our drummer.
Having made such a good job of producing "Alternative Chartbusters" why did you bring in someone else to produce "To Hell With The Boys"?
He came in a package with the studio deal so we thought why not. It’s a lot of hard work producing. I’ve produced other bands and it’s really really hard work. It’s hard being one of the band and producing, even if the band doesn’t realise you are. It’s nice to have someone with an overview.
At the time were you happy with the mix?
I was happy with the recording, he was getting great sounds and the mix was good, it was just too polished. It’s still a more polished album than say "Alternative Chartbusters". He was into a lot of things like layering up the guitars. Looking back it was a bit Boston-ish and West Coast. I think we did strip off some of those bits, but some of it sounded so good we left it.
I remember at the time it received good reviews in the music press, as did your first two albums.
Yes that’s right.
How did you feel when you were invited to join the Ramones tour?
We were way up for it because we’d liked the Ramones ever since their first album. The first album I heard came out in 1976 or something like that. I think it was Tony James who played it to me. He said there’s this band, all their songs are less than three minutes long and they all start with 1-2-3-4. Sounded a bit weird so I listened and I loved it.
Did you enjoy the tour itself?
Yeah it was great because the Ramones were big fans of ours, which was nice. We got on great but they were kind of all almost in rehab. They would come off stage and more or less go straight to bed whereas we were kind of up all night ravers. The only one who did hang out with us socially on occasion was Marky, their drummer, and he had to sneak out. No one in the band was allowed alcohol at all. On stage they had these cyclist-type tubes full of mineral water or whatever. Marky used to pay our roadie to fill his with vodka and tonic. He couldn’t trust the Ramones roadies not to tell on him.
Just before you toured with the Ramones you appeared on the Whistle Test which I think was arranged at the last minute.
Yeah somebody cancelled and we were asked could we do it and we said yeah sure.
What did you think of your performance?
It was our first live TV performance so I think we just took it in our stride, but of course we were live so we couldn’t think about jumping all over the place. We had to make sure that we were singing properly so we decided to calm it a bit compared to how we normally performed.
Duncan still bounced around.
Yeah, I’m sure he did. What songs did we do?
You performed "Terminal Love" and "See You Later".
What was your thinking behind "You Better Move On" being released as a single?
John had been working with the Lurkers and they’d done a version so we thought we’d try it out, let’s go for it. I suppose we were always looking for that hit single and we always thought that if we got airplay that would be it. That record proved to us that it wasn’t necessarily the case because we got amazing airplay, compared to all our other singles, and it sold nothing. So airplay doesn’t mean you get a hit. It was a learning experience.
It was certainly very commercial wasn’t it?
Yes.
Around that time "Jimmy Brown" was considered for release as a single but was rejected.
Yeah.
It sounds really great today. Why didn’t it come out?
It’s just one of those things. At the time we were all involved in choosing, we’d always voted on everything.
Was it a straight choice between "Jimmy Brown" and "You Better Move On"?
To be honest I don’t remember "Jimmy Brown" being considered as a single.
Shortly afterwards Casino left. What impact did that have on the Boys?
On me a big one because like I said before we were five so it was easy to make decisions but when we were four it was much more difficult. Duncan would always vote sensibly and so would I, but Jack and John started fighting their corners a lot harder. Jack had started writing songs and John was writing more songs so there was definitely a bit of block voting going on on their own behalf. It became more unbalanced, that was the biggest difference within the band. With Cas in the band it was always a lot easier. Cas, Duncan and myself would always generally be sensible about things. With one of those votes missing it was a bit more difficult.
Around that time you recorded the Yobs album. Whose idea was that?
I think it was Safari’s. We went in and did it in a couple of days and that was it.
How did you decide what to record?
I think we just booked the studio and more or less made it up on the spot, changing lyrics to well known songs. We also had a few songs which we re-recorded.
Did you regard it as a throwaway?
It was sort of throwaway but we certainly took it seriously. We thought it was a good idea and thought it would do okay. We wanted to keep costs down and sell it at a really cheap price, which we did.
Did you consider releasing any singles from it?
Because we were releasing an album we didn’t see any point in releasing a single as each previous year we’d released a single. Wasn’t "Rub A Dum Dum" a single?
Yes it was released the previous year.
We probably thinking about doing that year’s Yobs single and Safari said why don’t you do an album instead.
Around the same time you recorded "Boys Only" from which the "Weekend" single came out and was a Peter Powell Radio 1 record of the week.
Yes another good example that airplay doesn’t mean big sales.
Were you surprised "Weekend" wasn’t a hit?
By then no, to be honest. It’s like you get resigned to it.
I remember the video being shown on Noel Edmonds Multi-Coloured Swapshop.
Crap video as I remember. It was made by Stephen Waldorf, the guy who was shot by the police. It was his first ever video and it came about through Safari. They said there was this young director who would basically do it for free. I think his father was a BBC cameraman. It was such an over-ambitious and amateurish video.
So "Weekend", "Brickfield Nights" and "Sway" were the only videos you made?
Yes.
Any reason why videos weren’t made for "Terminal Love", "First Time" and the others.
To be honest, I don’t know why. With videos in those days you would do one if you were asked for one. If a TV station said could we have a video you’d quickly make one but it wasn’t like it is today where you’d naturally do one.
Would you consider releasing them?
If we could get the originals we would. That’s the only problem and that would be hard.
I know that Mark Brennan was considering releasing "Brickfield Nights" last year on a punk video compilation. Do you think he may have the original video?
He might have but I can’t think where he would have got it from. If all you’ve got is a VHS copy the quality’s a bit ropey because it was ropey in the first place.
When "Boys Only" was released it didn’t receive the same critical acclaim as the other three albums. Looking back now most reviews consider it to be your weak album. What do you think of it?
Yeah I would tend to agree. It’s certainly my least favourite Boys album.
What would you consider to be its stand out tracks?
I liked "Let It Rain" then and I still like it now. Again, we were using a producer – we needed a producer because with four in a band making decisions was very difficult. Everyone was wanting more say. In the beginning Cas and I did kind of dictate, that’s just the way it worked out because we seemed to know what we were doing and the rest of the band just tagged along. However, as with quite a lot of bands, the others wanted to get more involved in the songwriting and have a say in the production. Yeah it’s not a great album.
There’s a lot of speculation over why Duncan sung only two songs on the album yet John had four
Well traditionally Duncan sang John’s songs but I think John, after "Kamikaze", had got a taste for singing. Generally I would sing the songs that I’d written and give a few to Duncan, and he would generally sing John’s songs, so the decision was John’s I’d say. Duncan didn’t write many songs himself, or if he did, they didn’t get through the voting process.
What impact did Duncan’s departure have on the Boys?
I don’t remember Duncan leaving to be honest. I don’t think it was like that because the band had split up anyway and we would sort of reform to do the odd tour. It was generally understood the band was finished. I was working on the Mirrors thing when we got back together for a tour of Spain, with two weeks off in the middle in Ibiza. To me the Boys were already dead; it was just these odd tours which were like summer holidays.
There’s a lot of speculation that one of the reasons Duncan left was because he was not singing many songs towards the end and there was some ill feeling between Duncan and yourself or the other members of the band.
Not as far as I’m aware. As I said, after "Boys Only" we’d split up anyway. As far as I remember nobody left, we just quietly drifted our own ways. Duncan was working with the Hollywood Killers, I was doing the Mirrors thing, John was doing the Lurkers, Jack was inventing board games and Cas had left anyway. To be honest I don’t remember anybody leaving apart from Cas.
You played some UK, Italian and I think USA dates with Howard Wall and Chris Brashford. How did they go?
The Italian dates were with Howard Wall. They were alright. Again it was like the band were finished but we got offered a tour of Italy and we thought, that sounds interesting so we did it. Duncan couldn’t make it. I’m sure he would have come if he could but the Hollywood Killers used to do all those summer deb’s balls so that was probably a bad time for him. And for the dates in America, Duncan did come with us but Jack couldn’t make it that time so Brashford filled in on drums.
As far as you are concerned when exactly did the Boys actually finish?
After "Boys Only".
The Yobs released "Yobs on 45" in 1981. I notice that on the disc it says "No Kid In". Were all five Boys involved or was this a reference to Duncan not being there?
I can’t remember to be honest.
I suppose it could mean "no kidding".
Yeah I think it’s more likely to mean "no kidding". I know we used to scratch stuff on those singles but I can’t remember that one.
You produced Toyah’s first single as well as the Dark’s version of the Hawaii Five O theme. Did you consider moving into production after the Boys finished?
Well I did a few more things, I did Gary Holton’s "Ruby". I produced that one as well.
The one he did with Cas?
Yes. And then I did a few more bands but I decided it was too much like hard work. Then there was the time when I had my own recording studio and I did a few productions there.
What did you do after the Boys had finished?
I formed The Mirrors. There was a single, "Dance Dance Dance", and then an album which I still think is a pretty good album. After that there was another band, which was the same line up but called the Management. That was a less successful album from my point of view. There were a few good songs on it but it was kind of over produced and naff. We had a recording studio to spend as much time as we liked in, because it was mine, and so we overindulged ourselves.
Any possibility of those albums being released on CD in the future?
I’m sure there is. There’s somebody somewhere interested in everything so I’m sure they’ll be released one day.
The Yobs came together again in 1991 to record "Xmas 2". Were you all involved in the project ?
No, there was just John and I at the start. Somebody said how about a second Yobs album and we thought yeah why not. So John and I basically spent a couple of hours in the pub and came out with all the songs and lyrics we needed for the second album, more or less. And then Duncan and a few other friends came along and did a few. We knocked that out in two or three days.
Was Jack involved?
No.
Who played drums?
A guy called Robbie. He used to be in the Crybabys with John. I’ve forgotten his surname.
Rushton.
It’s Rushton, that’s right. And he sang one of the songs.
Around this time Campino was becoming well known with Die Toten Hosen, as was his love for the Boys. How did you feel about that?
Well it was very flattering, yeah it was nice. It was wonderful to get my first Gold Record fifteen years after "Brickfield Nights" was written. Suddenly I’d got a Gold Record which I could stick on my wall.
And you played on a couple of their albums.
Yeah, well on one – "Learning English" which was all the punk covers.
Did you enjoy that?
Yeah. We’ve remained good friends with Campi and the other guys.
Have you ever appeared on stage with them?
Yes, in Germany.
And around that time I think Campino was the inspiration behind "Odds and Sods".
Yeah. He was asking if we had any bits and bobs that had never been released and I played him a few tracks and he said, oh yeah, I wanna release these.
I notice on the sleeve there’s a warning about the quality. I think it’s very good. What do you think?
Well it’s, there’s a few tape slips. They did a good job getting rid of the hiss and everything. It’s not the best quality but I’ve heard worse.
On that album your brother Albert is credited with a song, "You Can Give It".
That’s right yes.
Has he had any involvement with the music business?
No, but he’s a great songwriter and he was the reason I started playing the guitar in the first place. He was about a year-and-a-half older than I was and I only learnt guitar when I had jaundice. I was about fifteen and confined to bed. His guitar was lying around, so I picked it up with a chord book and out of boredom just started playing guitar. By the time I was on my feet again I was a guitarist of sorts.
On the same album there are three radio ads for "Alternative Chartbusters". What’s the story behind them?
I think NEMS said we could have some radio advertising. I’m not sure they were ever actually used. I never heard them on the radio, maybe they were. But we just went in and I think we did them in about an hour. We just went in and did some silly pranks.
Very Monty Pythonish.
Yes, exactly.
Were all the band involved?
There was definitely Jack, John, Duncan and myself. I can’t remember if Cas was involved.
In 1996 you came together with Campino to record an album of new material and it turned into "Powercut". Why didn’t it happen?
Actually it wasn’t quite like that. Basically we’d decided to do a Yobs unplugged, so it was myself, John and a drummer called Mark Harrison. It was going to be the Yobs’ greatest hits. We did it in France with a friend of ours who used promote the Boys there and who now has a recording studio. It was originally gonna be called "Yobs Untuned", I forget what we called it in the end.
"Leads 3 Amps United 0".
That was a cock up as well. It was Cas’ fault, it should have been "Leads 3 Amps 0" and for some reason, Cas added the United bit. Oh yeah, that’s right, Cas wanted the record. We made it for release on his record label, Revolution Records. That’s why he had control over the sleeve. Anyway, we went over to France for a week and three days later we’d finished the Yobs album so we thought let’s try out some Boys songs acoustically. So we recorded the Boys unplugged album the same week as the Yobs. It sounded quite good mixing it back in London when we mixed the Yobs in two days and spent two or three days mixing the Boys. We got Duncan in to add the bass and Campi to sing.
What was the reason for Campino singing instead of Duncan and yourself?
Because he asked if he could. He was quite happy for us to say no but we thought that at least we’d get it released in Germany and it would sell a few. What the hell.
Who else was involved in the Leads 3 album apart from John and yourself?
Mark Harrison, the drummer who used to be in Bernie Torme, the Dirty Strangers and the Rowdies.
Following Michelle Gun Elephant covering Boys songs there was a lot of Boys activity in 1999 culminating in the two dates in Japan. How did you feel about that?
Did I enjoy it? I loved it. We’ve had lots of offers over the years to do festivals and things and I personally have always turned then down. The price kept going up the more we turned them down. However, Japan was just a bit too tempting. I’d never been there and I don’t think any of the others had either.
Were the dates recorded or filmed?
I’ve no idea. Knowing the Japanese they probably were but we didn’t sign anything away.
Is there any Boys live footage from the 1976/81 period in existence?
I used to get royalty payments from Italian film and I remember there was an Italian film crew when we played the Music Machine once, so yes there is some live film in existence. I also believe Don Letts has got some live footage of us at the Roxy.
A film of the Boys playing live at the Roxy?
Yes.
You made several appearances on European TV.
Yeah there was like a French Top Of The Pops where we did "Brickfield Nights".
I think "You Better Move On" was performed on German TV.
Yeah there was that one too. I remember there were some dolly birds dancing behind us.
Any Others?
No I think that was about it.
Would you be prepared to see those released if the demand was there?
Yeah sure.
What prompted you to set up the Boys website?
I think it was realising that a Website is a good way of reaching people all over the world. We used to get occasional fan letters, which would somehow get to us through Mark Brennan or whoever. I didn’t really respond to those so I thought a web site would at least deal with those kinds of queries. It’s perfect for bands like us who weren’t internationally famous but have little pockets of fans all over the place. Fans could talk to each other and find out where to buy the records or whatever.
There appears to be a growing interest in the music of the Boys, particularly from young bands who weren’t there first time around. How do you feel about it?
It’s nice; it’s very flattering.
Have you any plans for a new Boys album?
Not particularly. I’m not writing it off but I’m quite happy with what we’ve got.
There’s certainly a lot of fans out there who would like one and with Duncan and yourself singing rather than Campino.
Yeah sure. We’re all good friends still. For me, better friends than when we were penned up together. There’s no reason why not. But it was nice in Japan. We hadn’t played together for 20 years and we only did two rehearsals in London – which were not particularly good – but when we got up on stage it all clicked again.
You have agreed to play Spain in September. What possibility is there for any further dates?
I’m not ruling it out but it’s got to be tempting. We’ve played this country so many times it doesn’t appeal to me personally anymore. We didn’t go to Japan for the money; it just sounded like fun. We’ll do things if it’s fun, it’s got nothing to do with money.
I’m sure if you played a one-off date in London you would get fans travelling from all over the UK at least.
Maybe. We’d have to think about that.
I know that Vom will be playing Spain but is unlikely to play any other dates because of his commitments with Die Toten Hosen. Is there any chance of Jack playing drums again?
I don’t think so. I’ve spoken to Jack about this and there’s no doubt he’s the Boys drummer. He was an excellent drummer but he hasn’t touched the drums since the last time the Boys played live. It’s like asking someone who once ran the mile in four minutes to do it again 20 years later. It’s a bit different for a guitarist or a singer but drumming is very physical and you have to be fit, especially with the early Boys stuff, which is up-tempo and quite demanding. Jack understands that.
Ken Mewis thought of you as the second Rolling Stones and you have been called "The Beatles of Punk" many times. What do you think of the Boys?
Cas, John and I all had a similar sixties upbringing so we grew up with all that Beatles/Stones 60s stuff so the influences are there. We had a love for melody a bit more than your average punk band. We certainly went for melody in our songs.
In your opinion why didn’t the Boys make it big?
I think the number one reason was probably NEMS because we were saddled with a crap record company who weren’t capable of handling us. There was a time when we could have made an impact straight away and that was in the early days. We were amongst the first wave of punk bands. By the time we’d gone onto the second album etc. there were thousands of punk bands. We were just with the wrong company. To be honest, I think they tried, but the RCA thing just buggered them up and they had no more control over that than we had. For the second album they’d switched their distribution to Pye who were already going downhill rapidly. Overall it was simply bad luck, being in the wrong place at the right time.
With the benefit of hindsight if you could go back to 1976/77 what decisions would you change? Obviously one would be signing to NEMS.
Yes if we’d have just hung on a few weeks. When we’d signed to NEMS it didn’t look like any punk band was going to get signed. There was generally record company resistance at first, but punk was a groundswell from the fans more than anything. It grew from something really small. The first time I saw the Sex Pistols there were about 12 people in the audience. That was at the Marquee and I knew almost everyone there. There was Malcolm McClaren, Jordan, Kelvin, Mick Jones, Tony James, Geir, Cas, John and myself. That was it. Oh and a couple of the Bromley contingent who we didn’t know because they were south of the river.
Sid Vicious?
Probably. But apart from that we knew everybody. It just exploded from there.
Shortly after you signed to NEMS, Polydor offered to buy out the contract.
I’m not sure about the truth of that, but when we played the Roxy once somebody from Polydor Records told us they’d just signed the Jam and wished they’d seen us first. That’s as I remember it anyway. By then every record company was desperate to sign a punk band. Polydor had got theirs with the Jam.
In the late 1970’s I remember Paul Weller saying the Boys were his favourite band and he used to have a Boys sticker on his guitar. Were you close to the Jam?
Yeah well we did a few sort of mini tours with them. Actually the first time we met it was fisticuffs because we arrived to do a gig in Guildford and found we’d been double booked with the Jam. We agreed to both do the gig and split the fee. We said we’d go on first because we always preferred it and they agreed because they thought they were headlining. It’s best going on first because you can go to the bar after and get pissed. After you’ve headlined the whole place empties and everybody buggers off. So we went on first and we used their PA, which I think Paul’s dad had just bought them. Cas was doing his thing and broke one of their microphones. We’d gone off stage and were backstage when the next thing we knew Paul Weller came running in. There was an empty bottle of Jack Daniels on the table and he picked it up and he was trying to smash it and shouting, "you’ve broke the fucking mike". He was hitting the bottle against the table and it just wouldn’t break. It was almost like he was having an epileptic fit. When he eventually managed to break the bottle all he had left was a tiny bit of the neck. It all calmed down but Paul started having a go at Cas again after the gig. Ken Mewis, our manager, was trying to calm Cas down because Cas had this habit of getting lippy when he was drunk. The problem was over but Cas was stirring it up again so Ken was saying, "calm down Cas". There was a Norwegian friend of Cas’s over and he thought Ken was attacking Cas so he knocked our manager out and that was the first time we met the Jam.
There’s been talk of putting the Boys lyrics on the site for some time. When are you going to get round to that?
Within a few months, probably weeks even. The latest thing on the site is a poll/competition where visitors can vote for their favourite Boys songs. Have you voted yet?
Yes I have, "Brickfield Nights" was my number one.