"…I thought we were rock gods that night but we were probably crap!"

What was the first record you bought? When, where and why? Where was it the last time you saw it?
The first LP I bought was Led Zeppelin 2. A year after buying it the whole punk thing happened and that LP seemed so uncool. Nowadays I don’t care… I love everything about Led Zeppelin. I bought it in a shop called ‘The Card and Pop In’ in Kilmarnock in 1975. Must admit I’ve not really seen it for a while… if I indulge my Led Zeppelin fetish these days I probably play them on Spotify rather than look out my vinyl.

What was the first gig you remember going to?
Aaaargh, more embarrassment! Rick Wakeman and the English Rock Ensemble at Glasgow Apollo. I wasn’t a fan of Rick Wakeman: my dad liked him! My friends at school liked Yes and Genesis but I was into Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. My big sister had been to a few gigs at the Apollo and I was desperate to go there myself. My school friends had all bought the Rick Wakeman tickets and hired a mini bus, I had no intention of going but someone pulled out and I bought his ticket just to see the Apollo. The concert was pretty boring but at one point during the endless solos, the acoustic guitarist turned his amp up full and played “Whole Lotta Love” for about 10 seconds… I loved it and the crowd went mental. After that I went to Hawkwind, Wishbone Ash and Blue Oyster Cult who were all more to my liking, then all the punk bands.

What was the first band/solo artist you obsessed about?
It was my sisters taste in music that really got me obsessing! As a kid she got me into glam rock. I didn’t care too much about the music but when I saw pictures of the Alice Cooper band in one of her glossy pop magazines I was hooked! The cheesy horror film look struck a chord with me! She was obsessed with Marc Bolan which I also bought into and still do to this day. But the first real band I discovered on my own was the Ramones. Before I even heard them I read Nick Kent’s review in the NME and saw their picture and I was in love. Listening to John Peel on the same night he also was talking about the review and was disappointed that he didn’t have the LP. A couple of days later he played “I don’t wanna walk around with you” and I could not believe how good it sounded… fast, loud music with no frills, I loved it. I had been learning to play the guitar (unsuccessfully) but once I heard The Ramones I was away! My party piece over the next couple of years was playing the intro to every Ramones track from the first three albums.

What was the first gig you played? what was the name of the band and what kind of stuff did you play?
First gig I played was in a dirty old bikers bar in Kilmarnock. I had just joined a band called The Topplers as bass player. We were all very nervous and stood in a huddle in front of the drum kit looking nervously at the floor. A few weeks later we played the same pub and got really drunk before playing. Suddenly we were full of confidence; I thought we were rock gods that night but we were probably crap! This was in 1980 and we were doing post punk type stuff. Our singer was obsessed with The Fall (even the name Topplers was a reference to the Fall) he transformed himself from a shy retiring singer into a raging Mark E Smith that night!


What was the name of the first song you wrote/recorded/released? “Walking Back From Kennys” - Before I joined the Topplers me, my sister and her boyfriend Kenny had a band called The Blazing Corks. I’d just left school and was on the dole. My sister and Kenny had just bought a flat in a nearby town so I spent all my time there. Every Tuesday I used to walk 7 miles into Kilmarnock to sign on. One day me and Kenny walked in together and it started raining with a vengeance and we got soaked to the skin, but when we got into town the sun was out. I stood in the queue at the DHSS dripping with water while everyone else was bone dry. I wrote a song about the experience called “Walking Back From Kenny’s” which we recorded on Kenny’s reel to reel tape recorder. Some of our friends at the time were still at school and we played them the song. Next time I went to visit Kenny he was all excited that our young friends remembered the song and had started singing it on the school bus! This was round about the same time that I started playing with The Topplers. They had recorded a demo before I joined which I was amazed at. I had no idea that there was a ‘real’ recording studio in Kilmarnock or that there were other local bands who were even remotely into punk. Their first studio demo absolutely blew me away.They were also quite ambitious and took a cassette of their demo to Bob Last’s FAST Records in Edinburgh (at that time FAST Records were the coolest label in the UK, they had just released the Dead Kennedy’s, Gang of Four and The Human League). The Topplers only had three tracks on their demo so, to fill up some space, they put on a couple of our Blazing Corks tracks including “Walking Back From Kenny’s”. Bob Last hated all the Topplers tracks but loved “Walking Back From Kenny’s” and wanted to release it as a 7” on his new Pop Aural label. We all got invited up to Edinburgh to meet him at his office and I was convinced that pop stardom beckoned. Sadly for us The Human League suddenly exploded in popularity and all the FAST Record resources went with them and we were forgotten about!

Your first time in a studio?
I think it was 1980 with The Topplers and the Blazing Corks.. same musicians in each band but different singers. We attempted three songs which shouldn’t have been hard. Our drummer didn’t have much stamina… he stopped playing in the middle each song, took a short break then crashed back in! We were too naive to realise we could do it again and the old hippy guy who was recording us just assumed it was part of the song arrangement!

Describe your dream band that you'd be part of.
I was involved in the bands above from the age of about 17 to 21 then stopped playing for a while. The aforementioned Kenny still had his reel to reel recorder and we used to get together in the eighties and record spontaneous songs with his minimal technology. It was regarded as an unproductive session if we didn’t get a full 40 minute album in any one session! That work ethic stuck with me and any other band I ever played with always disappointed me if they spent months working on one track or took a year to do an album. The NoMen are probably the ideal band for me! We started off just doing cover versions and only meeting up one day a week with no intention of gigging or releasing our recordings to a wider audience. It was purely for our own enjoyment but every session we did produced at least an EPs worth of material which we would post online! The power of the internet made it possible to get in touch with the artists who’s songs we were covering and before long we were collaborating with our heroes! Without ever leaving my living room (which is now Topplers Recording Studio) we built up an incredible amount of recordings with a hard core of regular musicians and an open door policy on collaborators who came and went as the mood took them. The first NoMen recording was in 2003 with just myself and George NoMan and we still meet up once a week, every week and record. I have lost count of how much stuff has been recorded and released by various labels and on different formats.

If you were stranded on a desert island with a record-deck, which three albums would you want with you?
The album I regard as my favourite is the first solo album by Suicide’s singer Alan Vega. I don’t think many people regard it as highly as I do but I absolutely love its minimal rockabilly/electronic hybrid sound… nothing else has ever sounded like it, not even any other Alan Vega albums.
I’d also go for Pere Ubu’s third album “New Picnic Time”. When this album came out everyone thought the band had lost their way after their classic first album and the worthy second album. It struck me that this was the album they should have released first. It is raw, it sounds unrehearsed and spontaneous, it’s shambolic… but brilliant. I think that, because you have to put some effort into listening to it, that it is their most satisfying album.
I might also take Patti Smith “Horses”. This was one of my sisters last purchases before she left home and I remember the feeling when we both sat and listened to it together… it was unlike anything we’d ever heard! To this day, every time I hear it I hear something new.

What is your favourite era/genre of music?
I’m a sucker for sixties and seventies stuff. The eighties was when I really started delving into all kinds of music and I never really stopped, but I’d say the early seventies glam rock and late seventies punk are the most immediately emotional favourites for me. But once I delved into sixties psychedelia and Nuggets/Pebbles garage rock I was never the same… also 50’s rockabilly is music which I never tire of hearing. Reggae from the seventies blows my mind… it is probably more psychedelic than the psychedelic bands could ever imagine. I loved the visceral excitement and noise of The Birthday Party when they started and have stuck with Nick Cave throughout the years… and I’m obsessed with Lee Hazelwood, I love John Fahey, Hank Williams reduces me to tears, as do sixties girl groups… and I’m afraid I’m also a real sucker for cheesy Hammond organ albums!

...and your favourite band/artist/album of the last five years?
Forest Swords - dubby, bass heavy swirling psychedelica, though they seem to be classified as dance music! Also just got into the retro rocking sounds of JD McPherson who’s bass player Jimmy Sutton is phenomenal!

Best gig/worst gig you've ever been to?
Best gigs have often been the ones I wasn’t expecting much from which turned out to be great… The Specials, Madness and Selector at Ayr Pavilion in 1979. I only went to this because it was nearby but it was a real “feel good” gig! Gong, just after they released 2032. I wasn’t sure about going to see a band as old as this but they were amazing! David Allen may have been on his last legs but the energy and music was amazing. Nick Cave has always been a brilliant performer. Last year he was doing his ‘controversial’ gigs in Tel Aviv and my wife has always wanted to visit Israel so I booked a holiday around the Nick Cave show and it was beyond belief! Worst gigs… I don’t know, maybe getting dragged out the Glasgow Apollo by their notoriously violent bouncers first time the Clash played in 1977!

Who do you regret never seeing live?
The Birthday Party

Have you ever met one of your musical heroes? did they live up to expectations?
Through the Topplers Records connection I met my teenage heroes from the DIY punk band Swell Maps and they were lovely. We had a special relationship with Steve Treatment who released his albums and singles through Topplers. He was hard work to deal with on the telephone but when I met him face to face he was a gem.
I’ve loved Pere Ubu since the late seventies and have met singer David Thomas at some of his recent gigs - he has been a grumpy old git but full of character!

Which artists/labels have you collected over the years, if any?
Pere Ubu, Alan Vega, Lee Hazelwood, John Fahey (probably spent more on eBay for one album of his than I’ve spent on other bands complete collections!), still trying to complete my LP collection of Girls in The Garage on Romulan Records… and many others…

Beatles or The Stones or Dylan or Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin? (or none of the above?) why?
Beatles = over rated.
Stones = Love the late sixties early seventies stuff.
Dylan = As I get older I listen to him more and more. Read Greil Marcus’ “Invisible Republic” and got obsessed with all the Basement Tapes bootlegs.
Pink Floyd = Never liked them, never will. (I suppose I do like some old Barrett era psychedelic stuff.)
Led Zeppelin = Love them

What is the most embarrassing record in your collection? why is it still there?
I’m not really embarrassed about it but I love Shampoo! “Trouble” is a pop classic and maybe I should have left it there but I bought all their albums and singles and, although nothing is as good as Trouble, there are some gems in their back catalogue!!!

Is there anyone whose music is seriously 'out there' who you're into?
I always think of them as a pop band but I suppose Pere Ubu is pretty ‘out there’.

Which do you prefer - on-stage or in the studio? and why?
At my time of life studio is best. If someone asked me to do a gig that I even have to carry a plectrum to, I’d give it a miss. Lugging big black amps about, driving for miles, doing a soundcheck then playing for half an hour and going home doesn’t seem worth the effort. Having a home studio, friends arrive with ideas (and beers!) plug in, play, listen back… sounds OK, add some overdubs, leave it a few days go back and listen… that’s more fun.

Tell us one of your 'life on the road' stories...
The Topplers third gig was at the Belgian equivalent of Glastonberry in 1980. Our singer met a Belgian chap called Joe at a Fall concert in Edinburgh. He was the manager of Belgian’s top alternative band De Kreuners and he also was a booking agent for UK band touring the continent. He took a copy of our demo and released it on cassette in Belgian then arranged a tour for us. We were first on the bill at the smallest stage of this massive festival. We turned up hours late and completely missed our slot but Joe demanded we play saying we had travelled all the way from Scotland just to do this gig and if we couldn’t play De Kreuners wouldn’t play either. We were given a 15 minute slot as the first band on the main stage immediately before De Kreuners and then the headliners Golden Earring who were still huge in the Netherlands. We slipped onto the stage as the crowd surged forward and hit the first chord of our best song. It was a shambles! We’d only ever played in the pub without a PA and here we were surrounded by proper monitors and massive speakers. It was the first time we’d actually heard ourselves and it threw us. By the next song we got it together and by the end of our short set we thought we’d won the crowd over. Later on we went out the front and were shocked to see the huge video monitors at the side of the stage picking up the band’s every move! We must have looked like proper idiots!

Describe your current/typical recording set-up (where and what)
All in my back room! Record onto an iMac using Logic X Pro through an 8 channel Lexicon mixer and KRK Rockit speakers. I’ve burnt out a few mixers/speakers because we try to record live and need loud volume levels while playing but still trying to keep the recordings at a non clipping volume. The Lexicon mixer is the loudest I have had and the KRK monitors seem to thrive at high volume

If you could go back and re-record something, what would it be and why?
Joe Meek’s “I Hear A New World” because we have!

Is there anything in the 'archives' that hasn't seen the light of day, but might one day?
The NoMen archive out strips the NoMen releases. We often talk about the “Box Set” which might have to be packaged in a ten ton truck!

What track, or album, that you've recorded are you most proud of?
The band I played with the longest was a Scottish folk-punk band called Nyah Fearties. In the early nineties we used to rehearse and write songs at my flat and I’d just bought REM’s Orange Crush single which the other two in the band hated. They said it was a stupid name for a song and we might as well write a song about Red Kola which is Scotland’s most famous sugary soft drink after Irn Bru. Within a few minutes we had a song written which started as an amusing tribute to the soft drink but ended up being a political rant about the state of Scotland in the nineties when we still had American military bases just a few miles up the road from us and huge parts of our local countryside were being dug up and planted with Sitka Spruce forests. We recorded it and were going to put it out as a 7” single but couldn’t afford it so released it on cassette. It went mental and became the bands anthem! Radio Scotland championed it and said it should be the national anthem, it eventually got a CD release through a French label who also filmed a video for it. Every so often it still gets a play on radio and it is the one song I get requests for to this day… don’t know why we don’t just re-release it!

What are your recording/release/gig plans for the next six months?
I never make plans… we’ll see what happens!