| How did you form ? What were your
influences and what did you sound like then ? How did you
get involved with Chris Spedding ?
*** We were a bunch of
friends/acquaintances and mainly through Eddie's
instigation we decided to start a band and see how it
went.*** Our influences were: Knox - Lou Reed/Velvet
Underground/Iggy Pop, Eddie- Stones/Faces, John Ellis -
Peter Green/Blues, Pat Collier - pop stuff.*** We sounded
okay, not that brilliant. We were playing a lot of R
& B covers, which I didn't like, but we had to do
them so we had enough songs to do gigs straight away. Then
we started rehearsing in our own songs.*** Chris Spedding
was booked to play the second night at the 100 Club Punk
Festival and didn't have a band. The promoter Ron Watts
asked if we could back him so we said yes and Spedding
showed us a few songs in the dressing room.
What was the music scene
like then ?
*** If I remember it was
pretty boring, a lot of record company bands repeating
themselves, and the music was pretty soft bland sounding
apart from some metal bands.
There was a definite
shift from 'We Vibrate' to the harder more punkier songs
we all know and love. was this is a conscious decision ?
*** We'd started off
doing pub rock stuff, just stuff we all knew, as we
wanted to play straight away, and we started almost
immediately putting our own songs into the set and
playing faster. I think "We Vibrate" was Mickey
Most's choice of a single and was probably the popiest
thing we were doing. We were already doing things like
"Whips and Furs" and "Sweet Sweet
Heart" as I'd been doing them in bands two or three
years before. It was a conscious decision to play more
agressively, but only because that's what we felt we
should do, nothing to do with making money.
At the 100 Club You
stood out a bit from the other punk bands with your r'n'b
set.. What do you remember of the gig, the other bands
and how did you get on the bill ?
*** We probably were a
bit different to the other bands. We did some R & B
stuff, some with Chris Spedding as we had to work out
songs in the dressing room we both vaguely knew,
otherwise we couldn't have done hardly any songs with
him. The gig was going okay until someone threw some beer
glasses and badly injured a couple of people, it was
pretty awful then. I think it picked up a bit later, but
it was spoilt. We were asked to play on the bill as we
were getting a reputation for playing this hard fast
music.
| Pete
Shelley on the !00 Club Punk Festival." My
lasting impressions? I always remember the
Vibrators' drumkit. On the bass drum they'd
painted this, like, house. The windows were cut
out, and whenever they hit the bass drum this
piece of cloth from behind flopped out. I
thought, that's not very punk, that. They were
one of the London bands. I don't think time's
been kind to them. They're not remembered as one
of the great punk bands. But when Caroline Coon
did her original piece about punk she did have
the Vibrators in there. " |
Of your
contemporaries in the first wave of punk who did you rate
and why ? Who did you not rate and why ?
*** I thought the
Pistols were good as they had their image and the sound
and the songs. Also the Clash, the Jam and The Damned, but
there were quite a lot of depressing/awful bands
supporting you when you were doing gigs.
What do you remember
about filming Automatic Lover on Top Of The Pops ?
*** I remember being
nervous, and singing live which could have been a
disaster. Also I had the wrong guitar when I got there so
they had to get me another one.
Where on Pure Mania
is
that bloody clip from Hendrix's 'Red House' ?
*** It's near the end,
on one side of the stereo. This is probably the
earliest sampling of Jimi Hendrix ever done.
Pure Mania was a a
seminal punk sleeve and Knoxie you looked well cool.
Whose idea was it ?
*** The album sleeve was
designed by a company I think Epic (our record company)
found. It was the result of the design company, us and
our manager, and I think it was very successful.
What was / is your
favourite Vibrators song and why ?
*** My favourite
Vibrators' song has to be "Baby Baby". I always
think when I play it it is like being on holiday.
Looking back on it now
how do you view punk and the Vibrators place in it?
*** I think we should
have a bigger place in the punk thing. I think because
most of the time in the band we didn't have a manager and
a PR company we've not got the recognition we deserved.
You sometimes don't get mentioned in articles where they
mention really tiny bands and it's annoying. Plus
they occassionally still say we jumped on the punk
bandwaggon when if these people really did their homework
they would know I was playing early Vibrators' songs two
or three years before the Vibrators started in a band
called Despair out in Beaconsfield, and in 1975 (a year
before the Vibrators started) playing those songs
two London bands, the first one was called Lipstick, and
the second one was called Stilletto.
What now for the
Vibrators and plans for the future ?
*** We've just recorded
a cover of Nirvana's "Come As You Are" which
hascome out okay.It's for a U.S.A. Nirvana tribute album.
Basically we plan to carry on making albums and gigging
for a few more years yet. I sometimes find it amazing
that there's still a audience for us after all this time.
Whatever happened to Pat
Collier ?
*** He's the most
successful of the Vibrators. He went into producing and
has produced loads of bands.
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