Interview: Lord Rochester (Scotland) Debut Tour of Aotearoa New Zealand

Clean Dirt caught up with Russell Wilkin and Saskia Holling of Scotland's Greatest Rock And Roll Band Lord Rochester, ahead of their debut tour of Aotearoa New Zealand this October. Don't miss them at the following dates...

UnderTheRadar proudly presents...

Lord Rochester - Scotland's Greatest Rock And Roll Band
Opening the shows in the North Island will be the one man band explosion simply known as Dirtbag!
Local supports to be announced in the South Island

Wednesday 8th October - Dunedin at Pearl Diver, Dunedin
Thursday 9th October - Threes & Sevens, Invercargill
Friday 10th October - The South Sea Hotel, Stewart Island
Saturday 11th October - The Penguin Club, Ōamaru
Sunday 12th October - Space Academy, Christchurch
Monday 13th October - Donegal House, Kaikōura
Tuesday 14th October - The Mussel Inn, Tākaka
Wednesday 15th October - 5Tapped, Blenheim
Thursday 16th October - Abandoned Taproom, Petone
Friday 17th October - Rosemarys, Taupō
Saturday 18th October - 605 Morningside, Auckland
Sunday 19th October - The Original Kaipara Tavern, Helensville

Tickets on sale HERE via UTR

Scottish rockers and exponents of the BIG BEAT tour New Zealand soon — not just Scotland's best looking beat group, but seasoned rockers. Bass player Saskia also tells us about her rock and roll research which has seen her publish two books in the last few years. The interview turns into a little rock and roll journey.

Clean Dirt: While Scotland has been well represented here with many Scottish bands touring here in the last 50 plus years, did you ever see the Sensational Alex Harvey Band? Are you a fan? For younger readers: the SAHB band as they became to be known were a hard to describe Scottish rock band from the seventies who can cite big fans such Sex Pistols Steve Jones, The Cure's Robert Smith, Bobby Gillespie from Primal Scream, and indeed Nick Cave (whose first teenage band was a SAHB covers band). Never have you seen such a dirty dirty (and yes I meant to repeat dirty) frontman as you can here , not to mention the gnashers.

Russell Wilkin: Yes I saw them 3 times. Once with John Martin on piano as Hugh McKenna was not well. I saw them at the Chatham Central Hall on the 'Next' tour. Met them and got their autographs AND I saw them at New Victoria Theatre, London. I could talk for a long time about them.

Before your time, but The Poets? One of our many favourite Christchurch groups The Chants R&B covered The Poets in 1966,'That's The Way It's Got To Be' (I know you guys know Poets fan No. 1, Lenny Helsing).

Russ: I knew of The Poets before I met Lenny, as I’d heard 'Now We’re Thru' on the Hard-Up Heroes LP (a forerunner of Nuggets, etc).

Russ, you were in Thee Milkshakes with Billy Childish and Bruce Brand. Two famous names in the art world, maybe in different disciplines. Do you still see them? [Russ has actually been in a multitude of great RnR bands including The Wildebeests, who can name local rocker Monsieur Tolley as a BIG fan.]

Russ: Yes I see them and Mickey Hampshire regularly. We are often in touch and our various bands play together sometimes (Lord Rochester are playing with Childish as CTMF in November).

Milkshakes records were readily available in NZ in the eighties. I got my first Milkshakes record (They Came They Saw They Conquered) from Marbecks which is now sadly closing [still operating online]. I initially bought the record because: 1. you looked so cool,  AND 2. the art direction was FAB — then 15 years later I got to meet you all!!! Via the wonderful Mr Bruce Brand... Pop Rivets, Milkshakes, Headcoats, and also did the layout for the White Stripes Elephant album.

Russ: Ahh Bruce… the sleeve designer responsible for making us all look cool.

NZ is a land of milkshakes. What's your fave?

Russ: In things ice cream I am a traditionalist so I would first go for vanilla. BUT! I do like the sound of coconut and jackfruit.

Saskia Holling: It's got to have some peanut butter in there.

Is Lord Rochester an homage, or tribute to Bo Diddley?

Russ: It started as an homage but over the last 15 years, yes 15 years! It has evolved into our own sound and our own show.

How is it touring without a drummer and finding local ones?

Russ: Always exciting — every drummer brings something new to the mix. We've had the Cha Cha Cha-ing of Lluis Fuzzhound in Spain to the dark beats of Screamin' Arlo Spektor in Mexico City and many more great drummers and personalities in between. We're looking forward to playing with Martin Horspool of Dirty Murder in the South Island — he builds retro robots and we're hoping these will feature in the show somehow! In the North we're playing with the one man blues explosion Dirtbag (who will also be a support act). We met and played with him in Sydney last year and he's a true maraca breaker ;)

What can you share about the mysterious Dirtbag????

Russ: You have to see him for yourself to believe it. He has to wear the bag on his head as he’s far too good looking without it.

Now we turn to Saskia Holling, who when not playing in Lord Rochester is researching and writing and researching books about women in rock and roll.

Saskia... Please tell me when you first saw Poison Ivy of the Cramps perform and what effect it had on you? I saw her in Auckland in 1986 and all I can say is 'ATTITUDE' and a killer guitarist.

Saskia: My first Cramps gig was in 1990 at Glasgow Barrowlands. In my memory, Lux was in full black plastic attire and Candy del Mar was on thundering bass. But Ivy was queen of that stage with her twangin' Gretsch, gold sequins and 'this is who I am, love it or lump it' attitude — wow! I'd never seen anything like her before, I'd barely ever see a woman on stage with a guitar, never mind one with this much attitude, so yes, she definitely left her mark and it didn’t escape my notice that she is a red head too!

How do you find being a woman involved in researching 'raw rock and roll' history which in itself is usually the bastion of blokes.

Saskia: Passion is quite infectious , but mostly when reported by guys, or shared the narrative is different, more about facts. Whereas when you hear educated fans / turned researchers like Miriam Linna, Poison Ivy, and my recent find the former Mrs Elvis Costello Mary Burgoyne they bring out the fun. In fact a different way of hearing experiencing something in the way a guy would... then characters like Lety and Sarah from The Schizophonics, Sachiko and Ronnie from the 5.6.7.8.s, Anja Stax from Ugly Things, and last year I got to meet Pink's bass player Eva Gardner. Her dad was in The Byrds and The Creation and she knows all about her dad's legacy and loves his and her stuff!!!

It's fairly nerve wracking at times. I do have to make sure I know my stuff and check and re-check my facts, so that I won't get pulled up on any mistakes by people who think I shouldn't be writing about music because I don't literally have the balls! But once I get into the stories and the music I can let myself go a little and attempt to convey any fun and passion these players have had (although there always seems to be a downside for everyone too).

Can you tell us about your last two books and what they were about?

Saskia: Two very different books! The first, Girlsville: The Story of The Delmonas & Thee Headcoatees is about the UK's Medway music scene in the 1980s and '90s from the perspective of the women involved in that scene at the time. The Medway story has been told many times but always from the male point of view, and predominantly revolves around Billy Childish. I wanted to hear about the women involved in the scene, as it's actually their music that I found more exciting. So I interviewed all of the women in The Delmonas and Thee Headcoatees and told their side of the story.

My latest book is You & Me Against the World: 2 Women, 5 Bands, '80s Edinburgh and this is about the indie music scene in Edinburgh in the late '80s. Again, the C86 scene was very male dominated and the story told, predominantly by men, focuses on the men involved! So I decided to focus in on Alex(andra) Taylor and Margarita Vazquez-Ponte, who between them played in Rote Kapelle, Shop Assistants, Jesse Garon and The Desperadoes, The Fizzbombs and Motorcycle Boy. It's the story of bands playing in a small scene and what happens to the bands and the people in them when the music business gets involved.

Was interviewing Kim Fowley on a bed scary? How was he? While a prolific producer, history indicates he was not a person you associate with having healthy attitudes to women.

Saskia: Ha ha! That was for a fanzine I wrote in the mid '90s called Heavy Flow. The interview took place in a bedroom at an after show party in Glasgow (he'd just played a show at the 13th Note). It was terrifying, but fascinating too. I wanted to talk about The Runaways and he wanted to talk about sex and try out his powers of seduction on a young woman. We spoke for about an hour and it all got very personal, but we did not speak about The Runaways and having seen the documentary 'Look Away' which includes a harrowing interview with Micki Steele (former bass player with the band), I feel I had a lucky escape.

Did you see the Slits doco? What did you think? I think every young band should see that movie. Ari... what a force!!!

Saskia: I did, but not for a while — will have to re-watch. Russ and I were lucky to catch Ari Up play in a small venue in Carlisle about 20 years ago. She played some Slits songs amongst her solo stuff and she was still a musical force and person to be reckoned with – sadly too much for this world.

And I just heard you saw Babes In Toyland, another band I saw in Auckland. My friend Andrew Tolley was telling me that Kat was also in a band with Russell Simins called Crunt, which he described as the JSBX without the "Ladies and gentlemen — the Blues Explosion" repeated over and over. How were they to see live? At the time were they in the shadow of L7, or was I imagining that?

Saskia: Babes In Toyland were one of the biggest influences in my own early '90s naive but noisy music making. I saw them many times in many cities across the UK. I once got to travel with them in the tour bus from Edinburgh to Newcastle and it was then I knew I really really wanted to be in an all female band. Their shows were SO powerful - all three of them, Kat, Lori and Maureen (this was the line-up I saw), total powerhouses. I don't think they were in L7's shadow. They were so different musically, but the Babes chimed with me so perhaps I'm biased! I'd have loved to see Crunt but I'm not sure that they ever toured.

Glasgow has a tough reputation down here, is it even tougher being a woman in a band in Glasgow?

Saskia: Ha ha! Glasgow is so mean... no, not really. Actually, although my first band (Fudd, Glaswegian slang for a certain part of the female anatomy) was formed here, I later moved to Edinburgh and that's where Sally Skull formed. I'd say being in an all female band anywhere in the early to mid '90s had its challenges. I was always lucky to be part of supportive scenes, but as soon as you stepped out of those you were reminded that you were a woman playing a guitar or bass and not just a music player.

 

The Headcoatees interpretation of The Tamrons' 'Wild Man' blew my mind. Some of these mid 60s raw garage nuggets wouldn't fly these days lyrically but Thee Headcoatees slam it on many levels. Not sure if you know 'Be A Caveman' by the Avengers BUT I'd love to see the Headcoatees take on that.

Saskia: The Headcoatees' 'Wild Man' does blow socks off the original and I think that's down to Kyra, what a magical performer she is. Been very lucky to see her performing occasionally in recent years and she's still got it. Mesmerising.

You never know 'Be A Caveman' may be on the new Headcoatees album, coming out in November on Damaged Goods.

Do you know any NZ groups from the last 60+ years???

Saskia: Apart from the obvious Crowded House, Split Enz and The Datsuns, I know The Clean and The Chills and there was a bit of a Flying Nun aficionado scene in Scotland back in the '80s and '90s. It felt like they were trying to do the same thing as some of our small labels — document a scene without changing it.

Russ: I saw Split Enz a few times in the late '70s. They were stunning. Never captured it on record for me, though Dizrythmia is good. There’s a great BBC Sight and Sound Concert on YouTube. That is what captures them best.

Okay that's it for now. How do you guys sign off where you are right now, any cool local jargon???

Slàinte (Scottish Gaelic for 'health' or how we say 'cheers').

Onya Lord Rochester!!!