" The music is free... you can have it. You don't have to like it, but if you're receptive to it
, it's yours. If you're not, then fuck off. " - John Power

PUBLICATION - CAST TELL IT LIKE IT IS

ORIGIN - UK

DATE OF PUBLICATION - FIRST PRINT 1997

PUBLISHED BY - CHAMELEON BOOKS  ISBN 0-233-99161-1

TITLE - Chapter 3 - So, Where Did It All Come From?

TITLE - Chapter 4 - Developing The Power

TITLE - ( Back of Book ) THE LA'S

AUTHOR - William Austin

CONTENT - Dissatisfaction with The La's, leaving to form Cast..

3 - SO, WHERE DID IT ALL COME FROM?

In the hiatus of the Oasis/Blur nonsense, beyond the wilfully fey fancies of Jarvis Cocker, Cast
appeared in 1995 like a whirling dervish of postmodern pop. They were different. They were intense - chords swirling, lyrics that you could understand, songs that you could believe in. A touch of realism going a long way, while the world wondered if Damon and Liam would kiss and make up, would they, wouldn't they top charts, break hearts, all that stuff. Cast were just out there... doing it! Taking it on the chin (touring Europe with Gene and Heavy Stereo, dodging flying objects and aggressive Eurosceptics) and accepting the plaudits (the album goes silver, then gold. The singles went in the charts, they see Top of The Pops from the right side).

It all went on. And it went on really fast. Guitars chimed, people whispered about John Power's past exploits in The La's. Everyone asked who the other three similarly attired Northern oiks were. With Britpop already a commodity, Cast were perfectly positioned to garner maximum response. People's ears were open for business again.

And, with the added bonus of Noel Gallagher claiming Power's ex-band The La's to be a prime
influence on Oasis, and his comparison of seeing Cast live as being like a ' religious experience ',
the scene was set and interest exploded in Britpop and Cast the band. But, a religious experience? Is that a bit far-fetched? Not if you believe in the power of Power. Not if the words he writes touch your life.

While Power took stage centre in the obtuse-quotes and bizarre-comments department, the other
three, Keith O'Neill, Peter Wilkinson and Liam Tyson, made up the music, hell-bent on proving
that bonding makes for better bands and time spent in the alehouse is time well spent (in the
alehouse).

Another take on the Trainspotting poster, ' Melody Maker ' (UK), from the 1996 double
Christmas issue, dated December 21\28, 1996. A maxi cover (front and back), the full line-up being..(from left to right) #1-Keith Flint (Prodigy) #2-Sarah Blackwood (Dubstar) #3-John Power (Cast) #4-Paul Kaye ' Dennis Pennis '(comedian) #5-Tim Burgess (The Charlatans)

Cast offered a more realistic view of the world. Cast aren't about rock anthems, fist waving
chirpiness for a lost cause, or sub-glam posing, Cast are about being in a group. A proper group.
With your mates. Doing it. Cast are about how people live their lives, their mates, the problems
they have and the things they go through. In Cast, they're living it out on a bigger stage.

So where did the name come from? asked Raw's Tim Doyle.
John Power: ' A good name and a shit band doesn't work, but if the music's good, the name will
always ring true. It was just a thing I had in my head. I'd always thought if I had a band going I
would call it Cast. It can be casting something off, or casting something new. Someone picked up
on the fact that it was the last word on the last song on The La's album - that's a strange coincidence, don't you think? '

Their spirit and obvious allegiance to The Beatle's Merseybeat minimalism and The Who's
drivencompositional style make them a unique proposition. Cast were always decidedly different, a formidable unit, for whom the stories and a reputation swiftly developed. People quickly
realised they were something of an anomaly within Britpop.

Cast's live prowess and crowd-endearing qualities spawned rumours that rival bands were just
plain scared to book them as support in fear of them simply blowing them offstage.
' Cast don't compete with anyone, ' Power told Select. ' We're there with the stars and the pyramids, spirit and religion. With all things holy. And great. '
You think he's joking? John Power was fast becoming the Messiah next door, a spokesman for a
generation who weren't blissed out every night, escaping from the world. A spokesperson for
people who were meeting the world head-on.

Their drummer Keith Moon was the archetypal nutter behind the kit, whose rock excesses are
legendary. He's a big hero of Cast's Keith O'Neill, whose fave album is Quadrophenia. Cast
recorded a lot of their material in the Cotswolds, where Who bassist John Entwistle now lives.
Evidently, Entwistle loves Cast.
John Power: ' I'm glad he's still got good taste in music. I know him pretty well now. I know him to get pissed with. I think what he likes about us is the vibe and the strenght of the music. But it's
great. I mean, he was in The Who, man!

' It's not like we want to be The Who, just like we don't want to be The Beatles, Marley, Beefheart, Mozart or Blind Willie McTell. But when it comes down to it, we're all drawing songs
from the same place. The place all songs come from. The Source. '

The rest of The Who was made up of vocalist Roger Daltrey (later an actor) and versatile
guitarist Pete Townshend, who stylised, slashing rhythms gave the band their distinctive sound.
Their output is patchy. Great singles and oddball albums in the early days, heavier onslaughts in their middle period and slipshod retreads at the close. In between are two concept pieces -  Tommy and Quadrophenia - which have made them well known the world over.

Liam Tyson on The Who: ' We've drawn a lot of our dynamics from them but we draw our
inspirations from all walks of life: today, present, future feelings, all things. You couldn't beat them, so what you do is put that in the melting pot with Bob Marley and all them types of things.
' We have that pattern because we're powerful live and that's where The Who thing has come from, but we also incorporate lots of other feelings and those feelings don't go away. '

Cast fans should certainly investigate A Quick One and The Who Sell Out for songs of similar
style, while there is a selection of singles of high quality that can be found on numerous compilations.

RECOMMENDED LISTENING: The Who Sell Out (1968, Polydor).

4 - DEVELOPING THE POWER

Power's earlier career as bass foil to Lee Maver's eccentricities in The La's should have left him
equipped for nothing. The cruel world of rock discards people who are slightly out of focus, opting to apportion praise to centre stage alone

The La's career was not short-lived, but perfectionists and wantonly awkward pop personages
don't last. The La's couldn't decide on which version of their hit-filled debut album to release -
they redid it completely at least twice. Mavers made John Power's modern-day beliefs and
off-beat pronouncements seem run of the mill with his wild assertions, and their only 45, There She Goes, was just the right single at the wrong time even when reissued at the height of La's
fever.

The La's seemingly couldn't get it together to follow up the promise: the band were pre-slacker
Scallies destined to fade away. They were lost in their own search for perfection, in Lee Maver's
desire to find the perfect pitch that was lodged somewhere in his head.

John Power, as bassist, could have been forgiven for returning to the dole queue. Luckily, he
didn't. When it had become apparent that The La's second album was going to be exceedingly slow to materialise in any cohesive form, Power was on his bike. He told Select's Gina Morris:
' I was just feeling uninspired. I left to do my own stuff ...somewhere along the line you have to
make your own decisions about what you want to do in life. We'd come back from a tour of Japan and America and I just wanted to put some new songs in the set. I'd been playing the same fucking songs for six-and-a-half years and I said to myself, " I'm not playing them again ". I had three new songs that I thought were good and I felt if I didn't try them then no one would ever know. I'd just be fuckin' bitter for the rest of my life. '

John Power decided that reality had some currency and the inner belief that was pushing him on was too strong to ignore. After leaving The La's, he formed Cast in early 1992. ' As soon as I left The La's ', he told Melody Maker's Dave Simpson, ' Cast were formed. I lived in this mad place called Bruckley House. It was a great, lovely, horrible bastard of a house. Yeah, it was squalid. Looking at it, it was a dump. Dilapidated, no lights in the hall, pitch black trying to climb up the stairs on a night. But it was full of character, full of nutters, full of mad theories.

' There were about five lads and two girls living in one flat. A lot of people decided what they were gonna do there. We had a room full of records, literally stacked. You couldn't get in. That's how 3-beat (the dance label) started. I was writing songs. A couple of people had their first trips there. It was open to anything and the people there were taking advantage of the freedom. We were just getting stoned. We were having mad visions, mad things were going on all the time. Dogs. I found my dog there, Ted. The dog had its own room. It just shat in it. It was a great time, because the stars were out. We were full of confidence for the future, but I remember we were also dead scared. But it was a house of inspiration. '

The early demos and rough versions of the line-up-changing Cast were formed at Bruckley House. Mates joined the band. People came, people went. Everyone involved could see that John
Power had a vision, a direction and they wanted to see it happen. ' I had a dream there. A dream
about Sandstorm, the song. I had a dream of playing Sandstorm live in a field of people. When I
met my wife, Belinda, I'd already seen her, this dark-haired girl in a dream. Just as I wrote
Sandstorm, just as other things have happened in dreams. You've just gotta learn to recognise it. '

Cast were always an entity. The band couldn't be described as having normal, auspicious beginnings but it always existed in John Power's mind and with various friends it began to grow
and develop. 'Cast existed from the day I left The La's, but it was just an idea, ' Power told
Melody Maker. ' All I had were songs. I got Peter (Wilkinson) with me. Instead of rehearsing for
a year, like most people, I just thought, " Fuck that! " I just wanted to get out and play. So I got
the first band I could, just people I knew, anyone so that we could actually take these songs out
and play them for people. '
 

Members came and went and interest waxed, waned and did whatever it had to do. But the spirit
was positive and the reaction, when it came, was even better than that. Because of The La's
connection, Cast were always going to be heard. People in the record industry loved The La's and there was a feeling that their great potential had remained unfulfilled . When people saw Cast play live, they were unnerved by their honesty and the quality of John Power's songs.

Power wouldn't sign to any label who weren't head-over-chequebook in love with them, so the
process of their evolution took longer than expected. This time it was even more real. Power set
out to have some effect. He got depressed because music in the early 90's was shite, as he told
Select. ' I get easily touched. I almost cried while watching the Chart Show, it was so depressing.
We may never change the world, but we just might. '

THE LA'S

Formed in 1986 in Liverpool. Line-up featured Lee Mavers (guitar and vocals), John Power(bass) ,Paul Hemmings (guitar) and John Timson (drums), replaced by The Icicle Works' Chris Sharrock before the recording of There She Goes.

Signed to Go! Discs in 1987, The small-scale success of their 60's-styled debut single Way Out (it
reached number 59 in the UK charts) resulted in them spending a year on perfecting There She
Goes, which initially flopped. However, the track developed cult status as the group spent a
further two years recording their debut album. A new version was released and went top 20 in
October 1990, after Timeless Melody again failed to really make the impact the group deserved.
In the meantime, Lee Maver's brother Neil replaced Timson on drums and Cammy (ex of The
Marshmallow Overcoats) was added on guitar.

On the back of There She Goes, the long-awaited debut, The La's, was released but Mavers's
reluctance to do interviews and his public row with Go! Discs as to the quality of the actual
recording (it was redone several times, first with Steve Lillywhite producing, then because Mavers demanded an authentic, pared-down sound with an original 60's mixing desk, then again with Mavers's mate in control) held up proceedings. Go! Discs, perplexed at Mavers and the cost of constant re-recording, released the album anyway, and the relationship deteriorated from there.

The press, however, loved it, and amid an insurgent Manchester scene courtesy of The Stone
Roses, the album was declared the start of a new Scouse happening. Even before the album's
release, the group had shied away from the press, and their long periods of ' recording ' were seen
as an extended sabbatical in many quarters. A year previously, one magazine taken to Liverpool
by the band's label for a ' work in progress ' interview was requested just to take pictures of the
band's favourite places in their hometown. Transported around the city in the group's van, with
a selection of Beatle's songs for background, Mavers would only have his picture taken playing
live in their rehearsal room. John Power stepped in, opting to be shot in front of The Wedding
House Pub. He opined: ' Aye, This is the pub where we drink, like. It's me life outside the band. '

With the relatively poor response to The La's in terms of sales, and Mavers's continued
eccentricities, John Power left the band on December 31, 1991, allegedly because the rest of the
group wouldn't play his songs. He decided to switch from bass to guitar and proceed on what he termed to be his ' holy quest '. He was replaced in The La's by James Joyce.

Mavers and the rest of the group disappeared for a further four years, the man reappearing
briefly to do an accoustic slot supporting Paul Weller. However the set dissolved into disaster
and the plug was pulled. Mavers was last heard of in 1995 talking to the NME about a second
La's album. Meanwhile, tales of madness and drugs continued to circulate.

' It was an adventure, ' John Power told Melody Maker. ' In the early days, me and Lee were
close. The La's were full of great dreams. Of course it was exciting, because no one else knew us.
From day one, mate, we knew that we were the f****** best band kickin' around. You've gotta
remember that I was 19. Young. I didn't realise it then, but when I talk to me mates now, they say, " You were just a f****** nutter, John ". A nutter who was mad, skinning up constantly, shouting and enthusing and going off me head. When I think back it was a razor-edge feeling that we all had. We knew we had it and we wanted it. And that hasn't changed, mate! '

Do you see Lee Mavers these days?

John Power (in Raw): ' No. It's funny, innit? I left because I couldn't be arsed spending eight years in the studio and then scrapping it. It's in our own hands - we choose either to accept the
sun's rays or deny them. But I've heard the songs he's got and they're great, so it's up to him. '

And are Cast that different?

' Yeah. Cast is completely different. This is much more of a group. And even though people like
you and other writers keep going on about The La's, I don't think most of the people who listen to us are actually that aware of them having any sort of influence. I mean, that was the past and they were only important to a little group of Scallies. Cast mean a lot more. '

Recommended Listening

THE LA'S (Go! Discs)
(as printed in article..)
Son of a Gun, I Can't Stop, Timeless Melody, Liberty Ship, There She Goes, Doledrum, Feelin'
Way Out, IOU, Freedom Song, Failure, Looking Glass

(According to Lee Mavers, half of The La's is simply demo cuts with guide vocals.)