Vintage Rock – September-October 2019

The Astrotones. You won’t ever

see them in denim

“Being in a

rock’n’roll band is

about being in-

your-face with your

music as well as

your clothes”

I didn’t stop properly. It was more that we
all agreed that we should get proper jobs, as
you do, but I still carried on playing with a
little garage rock band on the South Coast
called Thee DB3 with two guys that used
to play with my Dad in a band called TV21,
doing surf instruments and garage punk
records that we’d written together. I don’t
like not having the next gig lined up, even if
it’s six months away, because I don’t enjoy
anything else more than playing live. It’s
what I do everything in the band for, to get
up onstage and be loud and to get something
out of my system for 45 minutes to an hour,
to lose myself in that moment. Nothing quite
compares to it.

You seem to have hit the ground running.
I think people have quite short attention
spans now and if you come out and you’re
not the finished product, I don’t know that
people have the patience to let you grow and
develop. You need to go in, hit the ground
running, with that initial big investment of
time and effort to make sure that the first
time anyone sees you, you are pretty much
the finished product. There’s so much
choice out there, you’ve got a whole world of
music at your fingertips through streaming
services, so unless you make people sit up
and take notice of you from the word ‘go’,
they’ll find someone else who has done that.

The band looks razor-sharp. Was it
important to find people who could play
the music and look the part?

I wanted a band that was into the music

and passionate about it so that energy and

passion could be seen by the audience

and you could all get wrapped up in that

together. I don’t want to be a band that

wears jeans onstage. I’ve always liked the

idea of getting into character, if you like,

and dressing up smarter than you would

do on a night out, because it adds to the

spectacle of the show. You see so many cool

photos from the 50s of Johnny Carroll in

amazing lurex shirts and Gene Vincent in a

leopard-print suit jacket and, to me, that’s

what being in a rock’n’roll band is about. It’s

about being in-your-face with your music as

well as your clothes.

Where did you record Introducing...?

We recorded in November 2018 with a

guy called Ed at Gizzard Studios, a really

lovely bloke. It’s a great place. It’s got a

good vibe to it. I recorded with Thee DB

there, so I knew Ed would understand

my desire to create something that had an

old feel to it, but with new songs. It was

recorded all onto tape. There were a few

overdubs with piano and sax, hand claps

and percussion, but it was all done live, no

digital processing, no interference with

computers. I wanted to capture the energy

of a live performance and make a record

that sounded exciting. It was recorded in

six days, another day for mixing, then we

took it to a guy called Noel Summerville

to master, because he’s one of the only

people in the UK that will master from tape

for vinyl. He’s a Grammy award-winning

mastering engineer who mastered Elephant

and The White Stripes are one of my

favourite bands, so it was quite amazing to

meet the guy. I’m very proud of the fact that

the vinyl I hold in my hand has been created

in the same way that an Elvis record in ’

was created. Just valve technology, the way

things should be done. I feel lucky to have

been able to see the vision I had come

to reality. 9

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