How was recording with Lois?

Oh, that was great. I'd seen her play; I didn't realize what a great voice Lois has. Really, she made my toes curl. Of course, it reminded me a hell of a lot of the Marine Girls.

Lois is a big Marine Girls fan.

I know. Except the Marine Girls were much more open to suggestion than Lois. She's a dyed-in-the-wool Luddite, you know. Hates reverb and that sort of thing. Almost to the point where it was detrimental, but I managed to do a few things. I think I'm really happy with the album. I keep listening to it and love it. And I managed to get Beat Happening to do some stuff as well, which was a spur-of-the-moment decision.

How many songs did you record with Beat Happening?

About five, I think, including a dub version of one.

How hands-on were you with Lois' album? Did you pretty much let her do what she wanted?

No, I was there on the desk. (We did it in) a really great studio, with an engineer who's not a musician and doesn't want to be. He just kept out of the way. It really consisted of psychology: saying the right thing to them on the 13th take and feeling uncomfortable, and really getting a great performance out of them. That's all you have to worry about, I think. As long as you can get a great performance and you've got the record button down, that's it. And then it's just a question of...you've got just a drumkit with two mikes and a guitar, just how you can do it. I played bass and even got a keyboard on a couple as well, although 10 points to the first listener who can spot it.

How did you like Olympia?

It reminded me, in a way, of Cardiff. It was self-contained and had its own kind of parochial, provincial separateness. Kind of a happy oasis.

It's a great place, but the first thing I noticed when I got there was how isolated it was.

Cardiff's isolated as well. I mean, you hit Cardiff and there's nothing else around. I mean, Wales.

Did you meet a lot of longtime fans?

Not really. I mean, there were people who kind of knew about the Young Marble Giants. I just hope I get that out of the way, really, before I come back in the fall. Because I know that Alison doesn't want to talk about it, and I shouldn't think Phil does either. (Stuart is referring here to a proposed American tour that was to include Alison Statton, Philip and Andrew Moxham, and Weekend guitarist Spike. It never happened, and there are no plans to pursue such a tour in the future. Shame. –MA)

Do you sort of see the K bands – Beat Happening, Bratmobile, whomever – as a 1990s counterpart to what was happening with Rough Trade in YMG days?

Yes, I think you're right. It's a thing unto itself, really. Even the word "punk rock" over here doesn't mean the same thing over here, though. Punk rock was just a bunch of kids, you know. Really intelligent, educated kids with glasses and stuff, just cutting through the bullshit and playing rock & roll 12 times as faster than before. I didn't like the music, but the attitude was brilliant.

Speaking of "attitude," what happened at your show in Portland? (his show at the X-Ray Cafe apparently ended in Moxham cussing out the audience and stomping offstage)

In a way, it was the best gig of the tour. Well, we got there, and what we saw was this city full of down-and-outs. It was kind of scruffy. We did our laundry in a bar – it was this bar with a laundromat in it – and watched this kind of American soldier who beat this guy playing pool. The guy who was managing that leg of the tour said, "I think you're gonna need a punk edge tonight, Stuart." The whole thing just built up without me noticing it. All these people were so bummed: "I've been educated too much, I've seen and done everything." And it's just like, what's the fucking matter with you? I just had to get a reaction out of them. It was really funny; I loved it. I do a cover of "Brand-New-Life," that's my token YMG song. I don't know, I must have knocked over an amp or something, but it stopped working and I just...what can I do? Instead of dying, I just said, "Thank you, God," and walked off.

And after that you played in Chicago?

Yes. That was our only Midwest show, and 3 1/2 people came. John said that all the people there were all kind of influential. He seemed happy with it; it's just difficult to play to the front row and no one else. The thing was, the club put posters up with the wrong month on it. People (on the east) seem to be a bit more sophisticated and worldly. Close to Europe, I suppose. Someone in Boston last night said that they get really blase because they get so many bands coming through. It's the same syndrome as in London, I suppose. But there was a really good turnout there; it's just that I didn't have enough time to get going. I'm used to an hour. I mean, the thing is that what I'm doing now is nothing like the Young Marble Giants, but it's idiosyncratic and it's quite difficult to listen to, I imagine. It's certainly difficult to do. I've always found that when I come to a place like CBGB's, (it's going to be) rock 'n roll, black leather. And I'm not into that at all. I'm kind of quiet and my songs are about things like pastoral subjects...there I am playing open chords and singing gently.

I wouldn't worry. It'll probably be a non-threatening crowd tonight.

BETWEEN THE GIST AND SIGNAL PATH
Stuart: The test pressing (of Signal Path, called Choice at the time) is something I did myself. Basically, Rough Trade was going to distribute it until they said, "You need to do a CD, and you need to spend 5,000 pounds getting it into the right slot in the market. It's not 1979, Stuart; you can't make 1,000 albums and conquer the world." So that blew it, really; I just didn't have 5,000 pounds. It was all a bit sharkish, professional and slick, and there was nothing I could do. I had already sold my recording equipment in order to get the test pressing done. It's kind of a gamble of a lifetime, really; I had literally sold everything, right to my acoustic guitar; some of my tapes were 7 1/2 IPS, and the cutting room doesn't do them anymore, so I had to spend 60 pounds getting them converted to 15 IPS. Anyway, I did 25 test pressings, gave most of them away to friends, and one got to America.

Will Signal Path basically be that test pressing?

No, some tracks have been pulled and others have been added, partly because some edits in the master tape. There's another album planned as well, which is kind of a compilation of projects I've been involved in, plus some more solo stuff, from right now back to when I worked with Phil and Alison in like 1985.

What are the earliest tracks on Signal Path?

I did "No One Road" in 1984...that's a pretty hard question to answer...

But basically it's from after the Gist, onward?

No, quite a few of the tracks were Gist songs, that I did with the Gist in Cardiff in like 1984 and 1985, as a trio: myself, my brother Andrew and Anthony Silvestros. What happened was that I moved to London, decided to stop hiding behind a name that sounded like a group and start just using my own name, and I've been working solo since then.

So you didn't just give up music after Embrace The Herd.

I couldn't just give up music. It would kill me. It's the major source of delight for me to be able to write a song.

I guess some people are under the impression that the three of you just went back to Cardiff after The Gist and Weekend and worked day jobs.

In a way that would be perfect, but it wouldn't be true. Certainly Alison seems to have done quite well; she's now a chiropractor and a Tai Chi instructor. Phil had a little boy who's about four years old now. I think he's still playing music on a very, very local scale in Cardiff. He got sick of the major-label circus and stepped off. I remember I went to see him play in Cardiff once with Everything But the Girl, and went backstage, which was a 20-yard corridor from the stage. And someone had put up a sign that said "Stage" with an arrow next to it. And that summed up the whole thing, really.

Had you been playing live during that period as well?

Yeah. Towards the end of it, really. In the last year or so, I've gone out and paid to play in folk clubs where you get 5 minutes onstage. But I've been working full-time for about 5 years now, which is a novelty for me, one of the great unemployed artists. I learned to play solo, and the rewards are fantastic if you can do it. It's much more difficult to actually grab and keep the attention of an audience just being one person.

Tell me about the others on Signal Path. I know Alison duets on "Knives Always Fall;" how did that come about?

The song is about a friend of mine, a man, and I didn't want to sing those lyrics. I think they sound better sung by a woman. So I asked Alison to do it, and she was happy to do it. This was about 1987 or 1988...Andrew Mox and Anthony Silvestros are both on it, and a guy named Chris Ridgeway, who's a brilliant blues harp player and guitarist.

John Henderson (who's now joined us): Out of 14 songs on the album, 11 are just Stuart, and then there's the one where Alison sings; "Over The Sea," which Chris Ridgeway plays harmonica on; and "No One Road."

Are they home recordings for the most part?

All of them. Mostly 8-track, some 4-track. What happened was I'd been working on Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (as an illustrator) in 1988, and I had a motorbike accident and was laid up for about seven weeks, so I went out and hired an 8-track and did most of the recording that's subsequently on this record.

Since you approached it as a solo project, was your way of working any different than the Gist?

Basically, the Gist was about me hiding and getting as many people around me as I could. I was still wobbling from the demise of what was supposed to be my kind of ultimate group, and not really knowing too well how to proceed, as evident in Embrace The Herd. I was still finding my feet. When I moved to London, I decided I was going to get the whole thing down to just the bare essentials, which is guitar and voice Basically, January 1984 I decided to record on my 4-track definitive versions of my set at the time, and I've just carried on doing that.

How prolific of a songwriter are you?

It comes in spurts. I can probably 2 or 3 songs in an hour if I've got time. At the moment, except for the album we're bringing out, I must have 80 songs I'd be happy to release.

Why a solo album now? Why not one in 1987 or 1988?

Well, just because no one wanted to put one out. I didn't know where to go. Once Rough Trade was giving me the big dick, what do you do? I don't trust the majors because they're an unknown quantity. You always think you're going to get fucked over anyway. All I ever wanted was just to make a living, and to know that in 10 years' time I'd be able to progress into production, into publishing...kind of feather the nest. But it's almost impossible to do that in music. Very difficult.

Will this be released in Europe as well?

John: We're putting this out through Cargo, and they have an office in London, and we're also going through Semaphore, so it'll be available there for pretty much standard cost.

Stuart: There'll be about 10 copies, eh John?

John: It remains to be seen. When I was in England last year I asked about bands like YMG, and there was so little interest in anything that wasn't dance music. I think there's a bigger market for something like a Stuart Moxham record here.

Stuart: I think, though, that if we make something good that it makes its own progress. I've always believed that. Really, there is no interest in Britain in what I'm doing, because I'm seen as someone who happened 12 years ago, and I'd be put down as a has-been, someone struggling to get out again. Whereas, in fact, I've been writing songs for 17 years. Some of the stuff I'm doing tonight I wrote that long ago. The thing is, England produces so many bands that there's a massive turnover.

John: There's just so much music press and television, and someone like John Peel, that it's very easy there to switch fads stylistically as a culture. In America, you've got to appreciate things for the quality a little bit more.

Stuart: The scale of everything is so different here. There may a bit of an interest (because of YMG), but you have to bear in mind that in a way, I shot myself in the foot with Embrace the Herd, so that doesn't help either. Maybe I'm overestimating that.

You're not happy with the way that came out?

Not really, no. It was a mistake of thinking I could improve on the demos in a better studio.

It seems like half those tracks, especially the instrumentals, sound unfinished.

But they weren't really unfinished, it just didn't translate. You should hear the demos; they're great, completely different.

John: The ones I've heard are great. There's an instrumental version of "Clean Bridges" that, vocal aside, is superior in every way.

Stuart: I'll tell you a studio story: We did "Clean Bridges" in Cold Storage at Brixton, we did the whole album there. It was at the end of five weeks of recording, and we'd been up 24 hours the day before. Everyone, the whole band, took loads of speed to do it. We did about half of "Clean Bridges," and made a mistake; tried again, and literally got to the point where we were so manic that on the first beat someone made a mistake. So on the album, there's a point where the whole thing fades out. That was just a copout, so we could get rid of it to finish the session on time, because we had hired the equipment and had to bring it back.

What exactly are they singing on the chorus?

It's "Clean bridges in wasteland Europe."

I could not figure that out. Alison's got the purest voice I've ever heard, but half the time I can't figure what she's singing.

That's what my mother always says as well. Actually, she's changed a lot as a singer. She's become way more conventional, which suits me. I never liked the bathtub style of singing. The great thing from my point of view is she's like a machine in the studio, where you press a button and it does what you want. I sing her a melody and she can come back with it. She's just really there.

GOING WAY BACK
You're from Cardiff originally?

Yeah. Born and raised. Spent 25 years there, and then got extremely bored in a small pond, and joined the Royal Navy. That was a big mistake. Bounced back to Cardiff, and then got my motorbike and drove to Norwich. Worked on a farm. Bounced back to Cardiff, and then with the Young Marbles achieved all my ambitions and got off the dole. Moved to London...

John: Met Lora Logic.

Stuart: Met Lora Logic, squatted. I started playing when I was 20, so I was quite a late starter, really. A friend of mine named Matthew Davis showed me the first few chords and we both wrote songs together and worked off each other.

Had Philip and Andrew been playing before you had?

What happened was I was completely, utterly enamoured with playing guitar. I taught Phil, Andrew, my cousins and everyone else to play guitar. Then Matthew formed a band to play cover versions named True Wheel, and Phil took up the bass in that band. He actually joined before I did; I came back from Norwich to be the singer of that band, and then it all split up. It was me, Phil, Matthew, and two backing singers: Alison and Louise. At the time, they were very young, like 16 or something, and Phil started a relationship with Alison at that time, which went on until our tour in America.

What kind of covers did True Wheel play?

Rolling Stones, VU, Stevie Wonder. We did a few of Matthew's originals.

It was your and Philip's first band?

Yes. Then we formed another band that never really went anywhere. Again, he got in the band first, and they needed a guitarist. But it never really happened. I think they were gonna be called Charade or something New Romantic like that. But it never really happened, and I almost had a fight with the guy who started the band. We just decided, independently of each other, that the answer was to form our own band. Phil came round to my flat one day, and I said, "Phil, I've got this great idea. I want to form my old band and I want you to play bass."

He said, "Aha! I had the same idea, but Alison and I are a unit as far as music is concerned."

I didn't want to have Alison in the band, but I did want to have Phil. So I thought, "Well, nothing's gonna come of it anyway. No one's ever had any success as a rock 'n roll band out of Cardiff." So that's how Young Marble Giants got together, with this seed of resentment in my heart.

How long had they been playing music together?

Alison had been a backing singer with True Wheel. Couple of years, maybe?

Was there any sort of underground scene whatsoever in Cardiff?

I think True Wheel was a self-consciously punk band. Punk hadn't happened in '77 in Cardiff, only in London. In fact, one of Matthew's songs was "I've Got Everything I Need," which was meant to me ironic toward Cardiff. So there wasn't much of a scene at all. Cardiff was an R&B town, and as long as you were playing Rock And Roll, you could play any of the 10 places in Cardiff. We had a hard time with the Young Marbles, so we decided to put out a cassette before we did any gigs. That way, anyone who was interested would know the songs and what we were trying to do before they saw us.

Do you think the isolation of Cardiff had anything to do with the way the music sounded?

I think if we'd been in London, we'd have been much more aware of the global music scene and much more into the hip things. We'd have been into reggae in 1979. I definitely think that in terms of influences, that was the case. But the real reason the music was so minimal was that both Phil and I hated this business of Phil Spectorism, this whole idea of masses of strings and layers of sound. We basically thought, "this is a good bass riff, we don't want anything else in the way." We didn't want drumbeats, so we had a drum machine. That's what it's all about; why have anything else? What do you need?

So it was a reaction to overkill.

Absolutely. Punk rock's distortion is full, but the idea was to hear the notes, and also seems to me that the easiest thing in the world is to be original. I mean you've got everything there laid out for you; you hear it on the radio, it's in the record shop. All these genres people stick to. And in between are these massive areas and all you have to do is go that way, use a few reference points to keep people happy. My personal idea of what I'm trying to do is to lead people down the garden path, make them feel secure and they suddenly realize they don't know where they are. It's got to be refreshing. At time, I hated cymbals and innately didn't like drummers.

Where'd you get the drum machine?

There was a fourth member of the Young Marble Giants. Up until the point that Rough Trade said they wanted to work with us, my cousin Peter Joyce – a technical buff who knew a lot about synthesizers – had tape recorders. He built the drum kit from a diagram in Practical Wireless magazine. It was probably the first drum-machine plan ever, and you still can't get one that can do what it could do, because it had like 12 sounds. There's a track on the Testcard EP in which Phil just made the drum machine go mad with a million beats, and then took things away like cutting through stone to get to the statue.

John: How calculatedly did you write "Searching For Mr. Right" for Alison? I was under the impression that you wrote a lot of the songs for you to sing, and at what point did you start writing a song for her instead?

Stuart: Well, Alison was in the band. The song was written from my point of view; there's someone out there in your future, and you'll find that person. Obviously she was singing it, so it had to be from a female point of view. It wasn't written because there was a female member.

Did the tape gather you an audience in Cardiff?

It did. I met some lifelong friends from doing that. A peer-group thing, in a way. In fact, the first record we ever made, the tracks on Is The War Over?, was on Z-Block Records, which is the label run by the band Reptile Ranch. They came to see what we were doing, and liked us.

John: That was Spike's band. They put out a few records on Z-Block. They were in the whole Scritti Politti/Desperate Bicycles DIY ethic. Experimental in a postpunk kind of way.

Stuart: What happened with that compilation was that there was nowhere to play in Cardiff, except for this coffee bar called Grass Roots, which was council-run. So there was a scene there in about '79, about eight bands playing. For 200 pounds each, we thought, we could all get on an LP. So we booked the room upstairs. The first four bands did their five minutes the first weekend.

John: But Beaver should have been the band to make it.

Stuart: Beaver contained a guy named Dave Dearneley, who's a good friend of mine. He builds guitars, still lives in Cardiff.

That's a completely warped slide-guitar he plays in "Include Me Out."

What happened there was he did the first take, which was OK. But we did another one, and we put them both together. That's actually two overdubs.

How did Rough Trade discover the band? Through the compilation?

Spike took Is The War Over? up to be distributed (by Rough Trade), and came back and said they were interested in what we were doing, and to give them a ring...Our goal, as YMG, was to sign to a major label initially. We laughed at Rough Trade. We thought it was a bunch of arty nonsense from London. Of course we rapidly changed our minds when they showed interest in us.

Even before that, did you sense an audience for your music: that if you could get it distributed in Europe or America people would like it?

I just went by the philosophy that if I liked something, it stood to reason that someone else might as well. In terms of writing those songs and the way the music turned out and everything, we had our influences: Eno, Kraftwerk, Can, early Ultravox, early Roxy Music, etc. But at the time I remember thinking, "I've got to tailor what I'm doing to have maximum appeal. I have to achieve certain objectives and the way to do it is like this." And the music was tailored to that.

I remember reading that Colossal Youth didn't come out the way you wanted it to.

Well, some things have not been released. There's a track called "The Man Shares The Meal With His Beast" on the first tape, and that's a good example.

So what was it about the Kouros statue that inspired you to name your band and album after it, and to put it on the "Final Day" single?

We were looking for a name for the band and couldn't find one. We were going to be called The Lumps. Then I happened to be looking through this art book Alison had, saw it, and thought, "Yes! This is it!" Everyone liked it and we just took everything from that book. It just seemed to fit. I put it on the single because everyone was asking, "Why are you called Young Marble Giants?" So I thought I'd just put it on and never have to answer it again. But people still ask.

What was the power breakdown in YMG? Was it a group effort?

Basically, either Phil or I would write the drum machine part. He'd do 90 percent of the bass lines, and I'd do everything else and Alison would sing it. A few of the songs Alison wrote: "Eating Noddemix," the lyrics to "Salad Days." Phil really wrote "Choci Loni," I just wrote the words. What happened was: after I had Young Marble Giants where I wrote 80 percent of the music, I could now form a group called The Gist and not put up with anything I don't like. And everyone would come screaming up to me saying "God, you're wonderful," and it didn't work.

What kind of equipment did you use?

The guitar I used is pretty distinctive; I wrote to Rickenbacker and they didn't write back. It was a very trebly, beautiful Rick with one pickup and the organ was an old Italian 1960s job which I sold to This Heat. When we recorded Colossal Youth, we had to take off the top of the organ, twist these little tuning plugs and make it sound right. And Phil played an English bass, a Hayman 40/40. In fact, he did a tune named after his bass. He customized it and everything.

Did the music change at all in the studio? Was it hard to capture that sparse sound in that setting?

Nope. Not at all. It was all part of a plan. The plan was this: We'd form a band, we'd write a set, we'd go into the studio and do it with no overdubs. I think there were maybe three overdubs on the entire album.

I heard it was only four days' work.

Five days, including mixdown time. And then we'd tour, using the same mono cassette for the drum machine, so the set was always exactly the same. People would call out for the songs before we did them. So we weren't really a live band.

Was it just something that didn't lend itself to live performance?

I mean, I'm a total show-off, a total egomaniac.

John: You should see his kung-fu kicks when he plays live. (Rent the first Target Video compilation, with YMG performing "Include Me Out," for proof. –MA)

Stuart: I think since I've started playing solo, when you have to work according to the sense of occasion, you have to get real about yourself. I'd rather see the audience than not.

It seems like there's a whole mystique that's built up around the early-80s indie scene. Particularly by those of us who weren't there.

It was great. I mean, possibly the most exciting, zeitgeist time of my life was after we'd been to see Geoff (Travis) and we'd actually cracked it. Someone had taken notice and we were going to make a record. In fact, once we actually recorded the album, that was it; we didn't want to do anything else.

John: Aside from the album and single, disregarding Testcard EP, were there ever any other songs?

Stuart: Well, the stuff from Is The War Over? and the original cassette. It was all very meticulously planned for ease and efficiency. There were a few more songs they didn't do that I'd written on tape somewhere. There's a track on Embrace The Herd that's an instrumental version of a track we were going to do. "This Is Love" was a YMG reject.

What had happened was, I was pissed off from the very beginning because I didn't want Alison to be in the band. Not because of anything personal, but because I didn't like the way she sang. It wasn't my choice, you know. I wanted Phil; I wanted to sing my own songs. So she was extremely unhappy about that, obviously. I made it well-known to her; I tried to kick her out and everything, and she ended up in tears.

And you had the sibling thing going on as well, since she and Phil were dating.

Well, I'll tell you what happened: when the group split up, I'd lost my relationship with Phil, and it broke my heart heavily. In a way, it could be seen as her getting in the way of the two of us. I could go into great detail here about how my elder brother (Richard) and I were like that. He was expelled from school from making bombs out of nitroglycerin in the chem lab, went out of my life. I was 12 1/2 when he disappeared out of my life completely, this is before anything. So I was gutted, so I've always been looking for my brother. He joined the navy and disappeared; in fact, I joined the Royal Navy as part of an effort to find him and it didn't work. So then I had to try and bond with Phil. Now I didn't consciously try to do that at all, but when I had this amazing idea to have this project and Alison joined, I was obviously jealous as fuck. It took me years to work this all out. She innocently strayed into this; she was completely unaware of what was going on.

John: Because there isn't much time between YMG, Embrace The Herd and "Knives Always Fall." It doesn't appear to be that great of a rift.

Stuart: The group never officially said to each other, "We're going to split up." It was all very bad-tempered. The last show we did at Hurrah in New York City was the end of it all.

When Colossal Youth came out, you must have pleased, or even surprised, by the amount of attention it elicited.

Oh, yeah. Certainly. Thrilled shitless, yeah. We never had jobs, really; we sacrificed money in order to be artists. 1980 was our year; we toured Europe and America. We were going to go to Japan, which I regret among other things. In fact, the band started in November 1978; November 1979 we did our first gig; and November 1980 we split up.

Claudia Gonson: Because Phil and Alison split up? I thought that was the reason why.

Stuart: No. Although actually, Alison went off with this bloke we met in San Francisco, right in front of Phil...

Claudia: No WAY!

Stuart: ...And me and my girlfriend weren't getting on so well, either. In America we played with Cabaret Voltaire in San Francisco; Palo Alto, at a Hell's Angels club which was brilliant; Los Angeles, which was awful. I hid behind the curtain there. Got really pissed at Phil in a diner. Then we played two weeks in New York, and then that was that. End of story.

Who did you play with in England?

The Raincoats a lot. They were really sweet; they were looking after us, taking us under their wing. We played with This Heat quite a bit. I virtually didn't like any Rough Trade music; I hated it all.

MORE COLOSSAL YOUTH
Stuart: It was apparently the second-best selling record on the label until the Smiths came out.

Who was first?

Stiff Little Fingers. I don't know; I'd like to find out how much it sold. I heard rumors of 50,000 worldwide.

How did you work with Dave Anderson in the studio?

That's an interesting question. At the time, he asked if he could have a production credit and we did without really wanting to. We didn't think it was fair. But in recent years, I've thought that looking back on it was well-recorded. Having learned about recording and doing other things, you sort of appreciate what he actually did, so good for him.

What is Noddemix?

I've never seen it. It's a Swiss cereal bar, essentially. ("Eating Noddemix") was Alison's lyric. It was kind of a pastiche of film noir, Raymond Chandler talkover lyric. It's like, you could be drowning in quicksand and a plane could be flying 30,000 feet over you, where the passengers are drinking champagne.

Who came up with the logo?

Me.

Was it meant to be sort of hieroglyphic?

It was a naive thing, you know. I just saw it in my mind and drew it.

Who's "Nixon?" (thanked on the back of Colossal Youth)

My dog. A mongrel who converted all dog-haters into dog-lovers. He came to our first gig in London, though. We played with the Raincoats in Deptford. He died on a bend eating Kentucky Fried Chicken. Good question. And the first thank-you, "Peter," was my cousin. "Angie" was Dave Anderson's wife.

"FINAL DAY"
Stuart: The songs (on that EP) were written after Colossal Youth. Basically Rough Trade asked us to do a single. My great dread was that if someone said I had to write a song, that I couldn't do it. But I'm really pleased with what came out. The two big influences in that song were an Ian Fleming book, a very early James Bond story set in America about an assassin in the woods overlooking the target in this wealthy home. They were going on about how effective a place this would be in the event of nuclear war, or at least they would die last. That's how the lyric came out. I'd also seen this film that was made in Britain, just after World War II, about what would happen in the event of nuclear holocaust, and the film was banned until the late 1970s. And I saw the film, and it was so horrific that I had to include it in the song. I think it may be my best lyric.

What was the siren in the background?

I can't remember how we did that; it was probably on the keyboard. "Radio Silents" dates from the first tape; "Cakewalking" was another new song. That one, I remember, was like losing my virginity in a way, in that I had to come up with something. "Cakewalking" may have been the first thing I wrote under those circumstances. There's a line in there that goes, "Coming to life at 4 in the morning," and that was from something Spike said to me.

And you threw the demo version of "Colossal Youth" at the end as well.

We all really liked that version; it's so lively. It's just that we recorded it at home and it was distorted to fuck. The device of having it quiet was partly to cover that up. It's funny, because when we decided to do that, the engineer wanted to have nothing to do with it.

TESTCARD EP
Stuart: When I was a child, my mum would take me down to my grandmother's, who always had the television on as a background thing. In those days a testcard was playing, and a certain kind of instrumental and quite surprisingly radical music. I just grew up loving it.

What was Alison's reaction when she wasn't on it?

I don't know. Never said anything to me about it. I think it was no big deal.

THE GIST
Stuart: Some of the songs on Embrace The Herd have nothing to do with me. What I started doing with The Gist was getting some of my friends onto records. Those people didn't have a record deal, they're great people...The Gist was this nebulous group. I'd ask my friends if they wanted to do a track for a B-side, I'll play guitar or whatever. Basically, the whole thing was a very dodgy exercise. I wanted to continue having fame, fortune, lots of gratification and attention being a musician. My plan was to get the fuck out of Cardiff, to live the life as a rock star. Of course it didn't work; it couldn't have worked, and I didn't know that. And Rough Trade eventually booted me out.

What about Embrace The Herd do you like?

I like the title track very much. I think musically it's great. I like "Love At First Sight." I thought the title of "Concrete Slopes" was great. And I liked the wierdness of the whole thing, too.

"Light Aircraft" seems the most YMG-ish. Maybe it's the drum machine.

I like the voice; she did that in about two takes. It was funny, because this guy in Mickie Most's management company wanted to sign me post-YMG, that way he could rise up in the ranks. And they put "Light Aircraft" on for about two seconds and said "Ah...too wierd."

(how the Gist got dropped from Rough Trade): We'd had demo tapes, and needed more money to finish the tapes. We went to London, the entirely of the Gist, and that's where Geoff Travis dropped this bombshell that there was no more money to make any more records. So I said, "Hey Geoff, what about our contract?" because I believe I was the first person at Rough Trade to have one. Rough Trade had basically paid my mortgage, paid me a wage, in return for I think three albums in two years. And he said, quote, "As far as we're concerned, that's a meaningless piece of paper." So the usual.. I was really pissed off, and my world shattered. I tried to sue them for about two years: Geoff rang me up and said, "Look, you're really hassling us, what's the point of all this?" And I could see his point of view: The Gist second record was never going to make a profit, and I'd been milking as much money out of them as I could. Eventually I wrote and apologized, and we're back on even terms.

THE MARINE GIRLS' LAZY WAYS
Stuart: That was my first production job, outside of YMG. I didn't know their music at all; Cherry Red sent me their music and I really liked it. The whole thing was just smooth, went really well. All I had to do was take them into Cold Storage, get Phil Legg to record it, and all I did was tune the guitars and add a few percussive bits...I decided innately that it would be better if they were in tune. They were so young; no one was older than 20, I don't think. The Lois project is my first production since then...I personally think it's a great shame they split up. They had a lot of potential that was blunted by EBTG.

Their first single and Eden were both incredible...I don't know what happened after that.

Well, Tracey fell in love. I kind of asked Phil about this, since he played with them for awhile. He said, "They know what they want. They've got a flat in Hampstead and they're cocktail heroes."

ETIENNE DAHO
Stuart: But actually, "Love At First Sight" was a hit in France. It's this big Simple Minds production.

Claudia: By Etienne Daho. If you need one of their CDs, Mike, Stephin Merritt has the entire collection, four records. I think he may have been the only American to actually get a hold of them.

Stuart: Well, I'll tell you a tragic story. I wanted to shake the guy's hand, right, because he's made me like 10 grand over the last five years, which financed the 8-track recordings for Signal Path. He was playing in London because he wanted to try to break the British market. We all went down to see him, and apparently we were late. So I went up to one of the band, said I was there to see Etienne Daho, and he'd played. I'd played a gig a little while after in Paris, and the people I was staying with tried to arrange a meeting and that didn't happen, either. I still want to meet him.

SOME LAST WORDS
Are you at all surprised in what appears to be a resurgence of YMG interest? In America there's a YMG tribute record being planned...and bands like Confetti, Courtney Love and even Beat Happening seem profoundly influenced.

Stuart: The album was built to last. We wanted it to be the best thing we could do, and it worked, and hopefully always will work. The music I love best, that we all love best, is the music you can hear over and over again, that sells by word of mouth. And that was the idea, to make something that lasted. What can I say? It worked. And of course I'm happy. If I wasn't here right now...In England I'm unemployed, I'm facing 40 with no job, another baby coming and no desire to have a career. If this doesn't work out...then I'm fucked.

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