How did you all meet up?

Phil, Me and Alan were all at the same school and in the same classes, same age. We all used to skip school and go to Phil’s house, eat egg sandwiches and listen to the Beetles. At about 14 or 15 we were listening to stuff rather than writing anything.

What were your influences?

Old rock and roll, like the Beetles, the Stooges and MC5, Hendrix, mostly guitar based stuff. Bowie was also a big influence on us. We tried to do silly covers because no one else would do that kind of thing. No other fucker would do Dizzy Miss Lizzy.

Why the Goth tag?

I think you summed it up really well in your Biography. We weren’t particularly into Goth, but we were from Leeds at a time the Sisters were getting really big. The March Violets and the Lorries as well, plus we used a drum machine, it was the scene….It was like if you came out a year ago you were part of Brit pop, no matter what you did.

I suppose to get gigs you had to support these types of band?

There was no calculated master plan like there is with some bands, we were just young and naive and we were really into what we were writing. Especially the first 3 of us. The Early stuff we thought could be mega big. The biggest influence for me personally was Alan (the first bass player) we used to have a really cool rapport. We didn’t just get things and slap them together, we tried to, I don’t know, make a spiritual thing out of it. I feel the best thing we ever did and the only thing I really like was LA Rain.

Oh right, so it all went down hill from there?

Yeah, totally! (laughing) No there was some nice bits, but that was the best thing we ever did.

That's interesting, because I think the style changed

Oh it totally changed.

You’d got the original line up, was it the fact you were going to start playing live that you got the second guitarist in?

No, what happened was when we were in the studio recording LA Rain at Parkways I think, and we got Lawrence the bass player from the March Violets to mix LA Rain. He helped us record it, and we were big fans of these people, they were all a little older then us, we were about 18 or 19 and they about 25. It was like "Oh wow", we really admired these characters. He came to the studio and produced it, and he make a real fucking mess of it ( laughs), he really fucked it up. I think it was his 25th Birthday or something. We thought it was really cool, but….we knew nothing but we thought this sounds totally wrong. So he went and we re-mixed it! We saw him in the pub and he said "Did you change it?", and we’re all going no, no (laughs) Yeah that was brilliant, that was the best. It was all drug orientated, taking speed and stuff in them times. Yeah that was the most interesting song we ever did.

I met Glenn at that studio, he was working there taking the money and stuff. He helped us because he was a really good guitar player, and we were only young lads and we didn’t really care about the fancy stuff. We wrote all the songs before Glenn joined, they we all simple but ones we considered really brilliant, but they never had that professionalism. We thought oh wow he can do all this twiddly stuff, yeah get on it.

I regret that now to be honest. [Next Part]

PJB Interview: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4