Terrorvision @ Glasgow QMU 16/10/98
Mark: Er… we had Stray Cats on last night, didn’t we?
Jo: And Bowie… (whispers) Savage Garden
Tony: That was Jo saying she listens to Savage Garden, she’s the temporary keyboard player we have at the moment…
Jo: No, there’s a couple of songs that I like…
Mark: Erm… probably a bit of an old rocker me actually. Motorhead and that sorta thing
What was the music scene like when you were growing up?
Tony: Better than it is now
Mark: We had a group in the 80’s, which was atrocious really, wasn’t it?
Tony: It was, yeah
Mark: It was when synthesisers came out and that new romantic scene and stuff like that…it was a horrible era for music but there was also Adam And The Ants and stuff like that.
Tony: And Orange Juice. I think even so, it were a bit better then than it is now. It’s not really to do with music, is it now…?
Mark: It’s all about cash
Jo: I wished I’d have been born 10 years earlier cos I think it’s shite now
Tony: I mean, I went to the shop today like, to do that thing, the in-store signing at Missing Records, and I thought I’d get a couple of CD’s and there weren’t owt that I really though “oh I’ll have that” but like, I took ‘em cos it were free
(laughter)
Tony: But you know, I wouldn’t of paid for anything that were up there, I mean, I have a couple of records that are in the charts and they’re alright but it’s all down to money that’s what I’d say, people marketing. You come out and say you’re the best band in the world without ever releasing a record and get shoved into the front cover of erm…what? Smash Hits?
Jo: Just Seventeen
Mark: It seems now, to have a better band that gets in the charts you have to have 5 singers and no-one plays an instrument. You dance, they don’t play owt, they dance, if they dance they’re not musicians, you know what I mean?
Tony: They don’t even write their own songs, someone else writes the songs. They just dance around and look like prats. And have bigger houses than we have…
Shutty: It is a point though, cos I watched Top Of The Pops the other week and there was like a boy band, and a video of Celine Dion or something like that and then a couple of girl bands and finished off with a boy band who were at number one, and that were it and you didn’t see one fucking instrument the whole of Top Of The Pops. Which is a bit sad innit?
Mark: I watched one not so long ago and the first three songs were all cover versions
Shutty: Yes I saw that one as well.
Mark: They’re all cover versions, Write your own fucking songs know what I mean?
Tony: They can’t can they, they haven’t got it in them
No talent…
Tony: No, and they’ve got no lives. See, if you have a life, you’ve got something to write songs about and if you haven’t got a life, you’ve got nowt to say or nowt to sing about and that’s why all of them do cover versions. Sackless, is the word I’m looking for…
Jo: Sackless?
Tony: Sackless. They have no sack
Jo: What’s that?
Tony: I don’t know (smiles)
(laughter)
Who was the first band you saw live?
Mark: Adam and the Ants, Queens Hall in Leeds. It’s a car park now
Shutty: Motorhead, 14th birthday
Tony: Jane MacDonald from Cruise, no actually it were Gary Moore, which is even worse than Jane MacDonald from Cruise. It put me off going to gigs for a good few years after seeing Gary Moore, so I wouldn’t advise you to go and see him. It’s not a good first time. First time never is, is it?
How did you first get discovered?
Tony: It were a pub called the Royal Standard in Bradford that burnt down accidentally (raises eyebrows)…Yeah… right. And we were supporting a band called The Beyond, they were alright but they were signed to EMI and their A&R bloke saw us and sorta said “ Oh I really like that band” followed our progress and signed us up.
What made you start music?
Mark: We didn’t
Tony: Beethoven started it…
No, I meant your music. What made you get up one day and think lets start a band?
Tony: Cos Shutty went 1, 2, 3, 4! And we all just started playing a tune
(laughter)
Shutty: I picked up the rearest instrument
Mark: The rearest? The rearest instrument?
Shutty: The what?
Mark: The rearest instrument?
Shutty: Yeah the rearest, the nearest… which was a drum stool at the time…
Jo: A very sweaty one…
(laughther)
Tony: Erm… because there were nowt worth listening to and you had a choice of this crap rock band or that crap rock band so we thought, well, we don’t like either of ‘em so lets form our own crap rock band…
Mark: Yeah this crap rock band
How do you think your sound has progressed since you started?
Jo: (laughs) It got worse…
Tony: That’s something you should tell us really, you should say, “your sound progressed this way…”
Shutty: Cos we’re the same band and the same line up and doing everything, we never feel we have. We think we’ve progressed as songwriters but that’s about it. We couldn’t say how we’ve progressed.
Mark: We’ve never tried to change, or change what we do it’s just like you grow older don’t you?
What have you been doing with your amount of time off in the past year?
Tony: It hasn’t been time off really, we’ve been working hard, we’ve been writing songs. The album’s been ready for a while actually it’s just we’ve had a bit of a shake up with the record industry where we didn’t have a managing director for a while and we had to wait till we got one to come and record with us and then we got round to releasing a record. It would’ve been out a long time ago…
Mark: We haven’t had any time off it’s while we’ve been doing this album and it’s taken a lot longer than we’ve wanted it to really.
Tony: Cos we did the album and while we were waiting for him to sort all that side of stuff out he said “ey, lets go and do a tour” and we did a small tour of Scotland.
Tony, What’s the big attraction with Never Mind The Buzzcocks? Are you wanting a career in television or something?
Tony: Yeah, I’m gonna actually be in Never Mind The Buzzcocks and Mark Lamarr’s gonna sing for Terrorvision…
Oh right…
Tony: We’re having that honeymoon period at the moment where we’re crossing over slowly rather than having one minute of Mark Lamarr singing and me introducing the programme…
What made you all cut your hair?
Tony: Scissors…
Mark: Everyone’s asking that innit?
Tony: Have you had your hair cut?
Yeah I have actually…
Tony: Why did you have it cut?
Erm… I don’t know actually
Tony: (smiles) Well, there you go
Mark: Well, come on… if you want to answer it, you’ve got to answer it
Tony: It’s like girls… girls asks us why we’ve had our hair cut and yet girls go to hairdresser all the time…
Mark: I know
Tony: And they pay like 30 quid for a haircut… Why pay 30 quid for a hair cut, you know what I mean?
Jo: Cos otherwise it looks like yours...
(The girls in the room laugh, the lads look at Jo)
Mark: He wasn’t talking to you
Awww…
Tony: ex Jo formely known as keyboard player
Jo: (laughs) formely known as…
Tony: Erm… I fancied a change…
It looks better I’ve gotta say…
Tony: (smiles) Thanks very much. It’s hurts your head more when you head bang…
It gets cold doesn’t it?
Tony: yeah, and when you head bang you’ve got no hair to do it with and when you’ve got short hair you can put more in and it really jars your neck…
This is for Tony again, are you going to be mature and sensible now you are a dad or is that a bit of a stupid question?
Tony: (smiles) Am I going to be mature and sensible…are you saying I wasn’t before?? Nah, I’m the same person as I was but I just happen to have a small child…
Mark: except you’ve got a metal elbow as well…
Tony: yeah, like I’ve got a metal tooth and a metal arm
(Tony proudly shows off his arm)
Mark: through being mature and sensible…
(laughter)
Tony: and I smell of baby sick as well…
Was Josephine based on a real person?
Tony: the world’s full of Josephine’s, you know what I mean?
Mark: it’s just a story we made up, just a story to entertain punters really
Did you expect Josephine to be bigger due to the success of your last singles?
Tony: We’ve had a long time off haven’t we? It’s like we played the [Glasgow] Barrowlands the last time we were here and we’ve had like 2 years without doing stuff, it’s good to come back and be anywhere really,… not a lot of people knew our single was out, you see posters in the street and I saw every single band when our single was out except for ours and considering we didn’t get radioplay cos of the radio polices and considering there weren’t posters or adverts for it, I think it did very, very well. It will be like one of those things that people will be searching for cos they didn’t know it was out the first time.
What’s your favourite thing about being in a band?
Tony: touring
Shutty: yeah, the only reason you’re in a band is to get on the stage and play, do you know what I mean? All the other bits are good but that’s the best bit.
Mark: it’s all brilliant… all of it. Free beer every night…
What do your families think of what you are doing?
Mark: they love it, they don’t tell you but behind your back they rave on about it.
Jo: my mum keeps ringing me up and asking me if I’m alright with all these men
(laughter)
Tony: my mum keeps ringing me and asking me if Josephine’s alright… but she’s working her way through slowly…
(laughter)
Jo: shhhh! That’s private!
Tony: (laughs) I haven’t even been drinking and I’m saying all this… maybe I should stop!
What’s the most rock and roll though you have ever done?
Mark: Ohhhh… where do you start…
Tony: I once jumped off a motorway bridge onto a tree…you know them bridges on dual carriageways, they go up on a ramp don’t they? And everyone walks underneath them and walks up the ramp? Well, I couldn’t be bothered walking miles to get on the ramp so I jumped off into a tree
Shutty: I’ve had a couple of fights with hotel rooms…just with the room, you know what I mean? Ended up with big bills and stuff…
Tony: and the old bill as well
Shutty: yeah and the old bill as well…we’ve been taken off by the police and had everyone barred from the hotel
Tony: it’s like trying to get the window through the telly, not the telly thorough the window
If you could play a gig anywhere, where would you want to play it?
Mark: Woodstock in the 60’s
Well, if you were to choose somewhere to play a gig, who would you want as support?
Tony: not support… it would be best to do like a dual bill rather than to get a support band in. No-one from nowadays.
How big do you want to get?
Tony: as big as it takes…
Mark: I quite like it the way it is, this sort of level myself. I wouldn’t be bothered if we didn’t get any bigger than what we are, do you know what I mean?
Tony: It’s good to sorta be at this level and then just like be at this level in more countries really. It would be good to be the same size in the likes of Paris and Germany…
Mark: nah maybe not Germany…
(laughter)
Tony: Spain, Italy…we do alright in Spain and Italy erm… Austrailia, America.
Shutty: it would be nice to get the opportunity to do this in America cos we haven’t sorta had that yet.
Have you any plans for touring abroad?
Tony: yeah, we’re going to Spain in November I think
Shutty: We've got our first gig in Greece in November
All: Have we?
Mark: that’s news to me is that…
Tony: (to Jo) something to do with you, is that? Is it near Turkey or somewhere?
Jo: no
Tony: Turkish is Jo
Mark: She’s got feathers all down her back
(laughter)
Shutty: I’m sure there will be quite a bit of Europe before the years out, a bit of touring here and there
Tony: Lapland for Christmas…
(laughter)
How would you describe your music to someone who hasn’t heard it?
Tony: Give them a pair of headphones and a walkman…
Mark: what do they call them posters at Reading? Something Hellraising...
Shutty: Hellraising Rock Gods
Mark: Hell raising Rock Gods, that’s us not the music innit? Hell raising rock music…
Tony: Original, not like all them bands in the charts…laughter as Tony looks puzzled) That doesn’t sound like a good thing really does it? (puts on a voice) “Oh we don’t like them bands that get in charts”…
Jo: Party music, happy music, dancing pogoing music
Mark: We can be moody, we can be happy, we can be angry
Tony: it’s got conscience our music…it’s got words and feelings
Jo: Animals
Mark: Cross-dressing
Tony: It’s got a little bit of everything for everyone
Well, that’s it…I’ve got no more questions for you. Is there anything you want to add in?
Tony: What would we like to say? Oh I don’t know…
Jo: Buy the album
Tony: If you haven’t heard it yet, you should hear it soon cos it’s a sad shame if you miss it…
It is a bit strange for a band like Terrorvision to come to the wilderness of Dumfries so I was a bit intrigued by their motives. I met up with lead singer Tony Wright, bassist Leigh Marklew, guitarist Mark Yates, drummer Shutty (who was told to leave by the rest of the band after giving bizarre answers) and tour keyboardist Josephine Ellul before their gig at The Venue in Dumfries to clear a few things up.
Firstly, what brings you to rainy Dumfries?
Tony: We’re trying to get to all the small venues on this tour so instead of doing a few big venues we’re doing lots of small ones and trying to get to our fans that don’t get to see us much ‘cause they don’t live in any big cities.
Leigh: We went down well the last time we played here so we thought it would be worth coming back. And ‘cause I heard that Dumfries was the best place in Scotland to live.
Maybe, but Dumfries hasn’t exactly got much of a music scene…
Mark: Well that’s why we’re here!
How is your new album different to the others?
Tony: It’s much different because we didn’t want to release two albums that sounded the same, like we did with Regular Urban Survivors and Shaving Peaches. This one will sound a lot like our new single, D’Ya Wanna Go Faster (Out on the 15th of January). I think it’s a lot more heavier than anything we’ve done before.
Your support on the tour is co_dot. Why did you pick them?
Tony: They really get the crowd going so they’re the perfect support band. They really wanted to play Dumfries too and they were promised that they could advertise themselves by sticking their band stickers all over the ladies toilets.
Oh very nice. Did being dropped by EMI come as a surprise to you, especially after how well Tequila did?
Tony: We knew we were being dropped before Tequila was released and it was only because of Zoe Ball that it got released. EMI weren’t too happy that Tequila got to Number 2 after dropping us but it was the perfect slap in the face from us to them. We were pleased to be dropped - we have a much better label now!
How much of an input does Jo have in writing and recording the songs?
Tony: Well, she doesn't have any input at all basically...She sang on D'Ya Wanna Go Faster but that was the first time she's had any input on a single. She's just the person who plays the keyboard on tour.
Tell me something that would surprise your fans.
Mark: Shutty is actually a woman and is a hairdresser in his spare time. His name is Barbara.
Tony: We’re on the same record label as Cliff Richard.
What do you all want for Christmas?
Leigh: Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? for the Playstation.
Mark: I’d just like a million pounds.
Tony: I’ll have my two front teeth.
Where do you see yourselves in 2010?
Tony: In an old people’s home! If we’re not in one of those then we’ll be playing on space station supporting ZZ Top.
By Melissa Gunn 1/12/2000
With thanks to The Venue, Steve Waite and Terrorvision.
