I interviewed Terry Chambers in Swindon in September 2019, for the XTC Convention 2020 Facebook group. All words and images (c) Darryl W. Bullock
Now, I know that the man needs no introduction here, but it’s
impossible to frame an interview without an introduction of sorts, so here
goes. I was lucky enough to spend an evening recently in a rather nice pub near
Swindon with XTC’s former (and only permanent) drummer Terry Chambers and his
lovely partner Lynn. We had met briefly before on a couple of occasions (some
of you may remember Lynn selling TC&I t-shirts at the live shows last
year), but this was the first time that I’d had the opportunity to sit down
with them for a proper chat, ostensibly to talk about next year’s convention
but – as is often the way – we ended up covering a lot more besides, including
his favourite cheese (“Extra mature cheddar from Aldi: I buy it all the time,
lots of it!”) and his pet hate, which is “All the rubbish in town. One of the
biggest shocks when I came back to the country was how much litter there was
around. We should bring back the Keep Britain Tidy campaign... what was wrong
with that?”
But, far from being a grumpy old man concerned with litter, he’s
a genuine, warm and funny man who is only too happy to talk about his life
behind the drumkit. So, as Maria von Trapp would have it, let’s start at the
very beginning.
Terry was born on 18 July 1955 in the same nursing home as
future XTC guitarist Dave Gregory. The youngest of three children born to Peter
and Eileen Chambers, his sights were originally set on a career as a
professional football player, but although he had a trial for Swindon Town
Football Club, his life soon took another, altogether different direction.
Before he had reached his 15th birthday, he had decided that he rather liked
the idea of a career in music.
“I wanted to play piano” he says. “But my father said, ‘we can’t
afford to have that great lump of furniture in the house’, and that was the end
of that! But I still wanted to be part of this. I was in town one day and I saw
a drum kit in Kempster’s, and I thought ‘I might be able to find my way around
this’, so I plunged in. That was about 1969. Suddenly there was all this great
music about, this early rock stuff. The very first Zeppelin album, the first
Deep Purple album, Black Sabbath, Cream... those heavier groups. They took a
different approach to drums. Prior to that it, other than Dave Clark, the
drummer was just the guy at the back in the gang of four; the rest of them were
the good looking blokes in the suits with their guitars. It was like that from
the Beatles onwards… Herman’s Hermits, the Tremeloes, the Searchers, all of
those pop groups… then suddenly all this underground stuff started.
“I suppose it had the same effect on me as punk did when it came
about. I jumped on that; I thought, ‘this is really going for it’. This wasn’t
the stuff people were playing on Top of the Pops. It was a little more
meaningful, to me anyway. This was real, it was raw. they were touring bands on
the road, and that’s what triggered it for me. I saved the money up myself: I
had a part-time job stacking shelves in the local shop. I was 14 and getting
about 15 bob a week [15 shillings, the equivalent of 75p in today’s money] but
as a kid you haven’t got a lot to spend money on I suppose. I said to dad,
‘look, I’m thinking about buying this drum kit… can you pick it up for me?’
Anyway, because I’d saved the money up myself he must have thought that there
was something in it, and he allowed me to do it. He had no idea that these
drums would be crashing and banging and all the rest of it.”
It was certainly a lot noisier than the piano would have been.
It was certainly noisy. “I did the old tea towel routine to try and calm the
thing down, but I still annoyed the shit out of the neighbours! My next door
neighbour was a retired schoolteacher: my mum came home one day and said, ‘I
don’t know what’s up with John next door. He’s going up and down the yard out
back banging this biscuit tin with a stick!’ I think it was a case of ‘if you
can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’! She said, ‘I think he’s gone mad’, and I said, ‘I’m
sorry mum, I didn’t hear a thing’! We had a few problems like that, but my dad
wouldn’t take any nonsense off the bloke because we were there first and they
moved in afterwards.”
Who were his chief influences? “Mainly English rock drummers,
Ian Paice, John Bonham, Brian Downey, Simon Kirke, Bill Bruford… those sorts of
guys. that’s what kicked it off initially, but since then I’ve come to
appreciate guys like Dave Clark and Ringo, Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa and those
sorts of guys. Louie Bellson is another. I didn’t want to listen to them to
begin with, I was living my whole rock ‘n’ roll life with the blinkers on. It’s
not until later that you think to go back to the guys that your heroes were
influenced by. I reckoned that if they were influenced by these people maybe I
should start listening to them too, to find out how they got to where they
were.
“I can’t really remember the first proper band I saw, but I do
remember when I was about 16 and I wanted to get into McIlroys [the Swindon
department store had a Ballroom above the shop that doubled as a live gig
venue; the Beatles played there in July 1962]. Atomic Rooster were playing and the
guy on the door said, ‘you can’t come in here!’ You had to be 18, but there
wasn’t a big turnout for this Atomic Rooster show – it was midweek in Swindon,
pissing down with rain. We said we’d sit in the back and not do anything, and
so they let us come in. Their first single, Tomorrow Night, was in the charts
around that time [if Terry’s recollection is correct, that means this took
place around February or March 1971]. I didn’t know much about them, but I went
anyway.
“I left school and got a job working at a place called
Bamberger’s, which was a builder’s merchants –dad said, ‘you’ve got three
months to get a job or else!’, so I made sure I had a job, albeit selling paint
and wallpaper. There was a guy who used to come in there and buy paint on an
industrial scale, and he had a nephew whose dad ran a pub, the Bolingbroke Arms
near Hook. He found out that I was playing drums and he said, ‘my nephew plays
a bit of guitar. Are you in a band?’ I said ‘no, I’m not’, so he introduced me
to Steve Philips, and that was the first guitar player that I ever played with.
he had this guy called Brian Mills, who later became a roadie for the Helium
Kidz. He was trying to play a bit of bass, but he wasn’t particularly good, but
by that time I’d met Colin at a pub we used to frequent, and I said to Philips
one day, ‘look I know this bass player. He’s a good guy and he’s got some
really good equipment.’ He had a great big WEM stack so you could tell he was
serious. You can always tell someone’s intention by the gear they had: if they
had shit gear then usually their intentions were not full on, but if you had
pretty good gear but were hanging around in rags because that’s where all of
your money was going it was a pretty good indication that you were serious
about what you were doing.
“So, Philips said, ‘yeah, great. get him to come along.’ My
brother used to shuttle us and our gear about in his Mini, to the Bolingbroke
pub where we rehearsed; it used to close at 2pm in the afternoon on a Sunday
and reopen at 6pm, so we had a four-hour window where the landlord would allow
us into the pub, set our stuff up, play like crazy, and that’s when Colin and I
got together. Within weeks the landlord, who was also Steve Phillip’s dad,
kicked us out having discovered that one Sunday afternoon the three of us had
helped ourselves to shots of every spirit on the top shelf! As a result, we
then began to rehearse at Hook Village Hall costing one pound sterling for a
full Sunday rehearsal. Later Star Park, Helium Kidz, and I think even XTC used
the hall for rehearsals.”
The group was having fun, but there was little sign of a
financially rewarding career on the horizon. Then a young fellow called Andy
Partridge came into the frame. “Colin knew Andy from school and at some point
suggested that we give him a go,” Terry recalls. “Steve Philips wanted to do
Rolling Stones covers and that sort of thing, but we wanted to do something a
bit more experimental, a bit heavier. Partridge had a WEM Copicat, it was all
echo-y: he was into effects and was pretty experimental right from the start
[the Copicat was an early, tape driven effects unit], and I thought, ‘yeah!
This is really happening’.”
But there was a complication. “Andy already had a group. Star
Park were a group at that time, and he was sort of courting Colin to try and
get him in as their bass player. So, he had Dave Cartner, and Colin said,
‘well, I’ve got this drummer that I’ve been playing with,’ so he dragged me
into that. That’s basically how we got together; that group was still known as
Star Park for a little while because they had a bit of a name, but it wasn’t
long after that we thought we needed a change. The music had changed quite
considerably, and we thought we needed to start afresh. The band was called
Star Park, but everyone knew them as Partridge’s Mob, and we all wanted to get
away from that!” This line up of Star Park played their first gig, supporting
Terry’s heroes Thin Lizzy, at Swindon Technical College in May 1973.
Other temporary members would come and go before the nucleus of
the band was finally decided upon. “Andy’s girlfriend knew this guy from Purley
[near Croydon] – how she knew him I can’t remember – but he was a singer and
Andy was a sort of reluctant singer, and he’d be the first to admit that. We
were doing some covers at the time in order to get some gigs, but we were
shovelling in some of our own stuff as well – Neon Shuffle goes back to those
days – but Steve Hutchins wasn’t really delivering the vocals the way Andy
wanted them delivered. He was more a traditional-style vocalist, but we were interested in him because he claimed to know Gerry Shepherd, the guitar player in
the Glitter Band [Gerry sadly passed away in 2003]. Anyway, we went up there
and did some Helium Kidz demos in somebody’s house [Steve Hutchins recalls this
as being the home he shared in Wallington with his former bass player, Alan
Parkin, in December 1974]. We stayed up there over the weekend and when we went
out that night with Hutchins, Gerry Shepherd came into the pub, a girl on
either arm. The whole idea of taking on Hutchins was so that we could get this
cassette to Gerry Shephard and that the rest would take care of itself. That’s
how naïve we were, but whether or not Hutchins ever got that cassette to him
we’ll never know.
“On the strength of that we managed to get people like Tony
Gordon, an agent-cum-manager in London, to see us. He was reasonably interested
in what he’d heard [Gordon and Hutchins were involved in arranging another
Helium Kidz demo, for Pye, in 1975], but nothing was being offered to us. In
the end I think that Andy decided that Hutchins wasn’t the right fit and so he
got Colin to ring him up and sack him! And that was the end of that."
“So, we were back to what we were, and at this point – on the
strength of this cassette - we had the opportunity to go and do some
demos," Terry says. "I don’t remember getting any gigs on the back of
that cassette [Andy recalls at least one show, at the Greyhound in Fulham,
around this time; while Hutchins was still with the group he funded a demo that
was recorded at a studio near the Greyhound], but we were invited back up to
London to do these demos [Colin remembers this as a session for Decca: this
would predate the Sun Studios demos by more than two years] but Cartner was
forbidden to go by his wife and his mother-in-law because it would jeopardise his
job working for the post office. We went and knocked on his door and said,
‘listen Dave. It’s all on tomorrow and we’re all going no matter what the
consequences,’ but he said, ‘I can’t go’, so we went up and did this demo as a
three-piece. Obviously, Andy couldn’t do both guitar parts, so things fell to
bits and that blew it, and Cartner was never forgiven.
“This all took place in three or four years, which is not a long
time, but it seems like forever when you’re trying to get a group together.”
It was after Dave Cartner was forcibly evicted from the band
that they decided to get in a keyboard player. Enter Jonathan Perkins. “We felt
with Cartner gone we should do something different, so how about we get some
keyboards? We felt Jon Perkins would take us in a bit of a different
direction.” The addition of a keyboard player was accompanied a change of name,
to XTC.
The rest of the story is well known to most people reading this.
Jon Perkins left the band to concentrate on his own group, Stadium Dogs, and Barry
Andrews joined to fill the void. XTC took off and it looked like they were
really going places, but tensions partly caused by Barry wanting more of a say
in the songwriting process caused him to quit after the release of their second
album, Go 2. I wondered if Terry had ever felt any need to contribute any of
his own songs to XTC. “Not really, because other than the drums I don’t play an
instrument. People like Phil Collins and Don Henley who sing, play piano and
play other instruments other than the drums very well really piss me off!”, he
laughs. “How dare they! They’re not in the Drummer’s Union as far as I’m
concerned, they’re lead instrument imposters! It shouldn’t be allowed!”
It was at this point that guitar virtuoso Dave Gregory joined
the band and the classic line-up was completed. Their first chart hit, Life
Begins At the Hop, soon followed, and four months later Making Plans For Nigel
consolidated their hit-making ability. Things were looking rosy but, as we all
know, after three more gruelling years of tour-album-tour to increasing success
but little financial gain, Andy’s health brought their ascendant star crashing
back down to earth, and the world tour laid on to support the hit album English
Settlement and UK Top Ten single Senses Working Overtime was abandoned. “After
the tour was cancelled I went straight to Australia,” Terry reveals. Although
he returned to Swindon to begin sessions for the follow up to English
Settlement, things ground to a sudden and unexpected halt when Terry decided to
leave the band.
“I remember we were rehearsing some of those songs, like
Ladybird, and I sort of had this rush of blood to the head. I still do believe
that those songs weren’t a good enough follow up to the English Settlement
album. That’s my opinion. Andy was playing more acoustic guitar, they were
going down this more pastoral path, he wanted a change. Each of the records, he
wanted to change things a little bit, which is progress I guess but I didn’t
think it was right. From Drums and Wires, through Black Sea and English
Settlement I thought we were progressing in a good direction.
“We were in a lot of debt as a result of the cancellation of the
American tour. We had to pay compensation to the sound company, the lighting
company… financially it nearly killed the band.” Finances were always a sore
point for XTC: their management deal and record contract far from making them
rich kept the band in debt, and the individual members on a wage of just £52 a
week each. “I never received any royalties from XTC for 18 years after I left,”
Terry reveals. “A lot of that was due to the fact that they had a five-year
standoff with Virgin. I never got any money because they never had any money! I
had to go out there and do an honest day’s work to keep myself and my family
going.
Settling in Australia, Terry tried to keep busy. “I demoed for
Icehouse. At that point it was just Iva Davies and perhaps one other guy. They
were originally called Flowers and they supported us in Australia, but Iva
sacked the rest of the group, which I thought was a bit harsh, and he was doing
the demo with [drummer and producer] Keith Forsey, who went on to do
Flashdance. I did the original demos for the album that became Primitive Man -
Great Southern Land, and all those songs – but in the end they used a drum
machine on it! They paid me for the session, picked my brains but then did it
all electronically without having me anywhere near the place! But that’s
session work I guess.”
Tantalisingly, that means that somewhere out there are demo sessions
for that album that feature Terry’s live drumming. “I did one studio album with
Dragon, and I was on the whole of their live album. I did part of the Body and
the Beat album; I’m in the video for their single, Rain[a Number Two hit in
Australia], although I didn’t actually play on that track, but I think I’m on
about half of that album. They sacked their drummer and I had about two weeks
to learn all the parts, after not having played for 18 months. I was as rusty
as shit! I didn’t have a drumkit, I just had a pair of sticks and I learned the
whole set playing in the lounge on a couple of pillows! I went down and they
still had the drumkit from their original drummer, so that was the first time
I’d actually played on a real drumkit with this band: we had two weeks to get
ready for a tour and during that time we finished off this album that they’d
already started recording.”
He’s not joking. When he moved to Australia he left his drumkit
behind. “When I left XTC the drumkit stayed where it was. I think the kit got
put into storage and eventually they went to get all of the equipment back, but
they didn’t have the money to pay for it, so the guy who owned the storage
place took the gear instead! They lost everything apart from their guitars.”
Peculiarly, Terry was in a slightly better position, at least
equipment-wise than the rest of the band. “After 1979 I got a deal with
[Japanese drum manufacturer] Tama: we went to Japan, and they were kind enough
to give me a kit. I must have still had a little bit of clout with them because
I got a Tama kit in Australia when I was playing with Dragon too! they had a
good manager who used to be able to make things happen, unlike [former XTC
manager] Ian Reid! I was going through quite a lot of drumsticks, as you would
if you played a lot, and Ian Reid suggested that I glue them back together!
That’s how tight he was. He had no idea: some of the things he came out with
were unbelievable!”
I asked him if he kept up with his former band after moving and,
if so, what did he think about the musicians who temporarily filled his seat?
“I spent 34 years in Australia, and I had very little to do with XTC while I
was out there. I didn’t have the wherewithal to go out and buy these things and
they never sent me any, so I never really heard them until I came back three
years ago. I might have heard the odd song - Mayor of Simpleton,Peter
Pumpkinhead – somewhere, but I really wasn’t familiar with any of their stuff
at all: there was no reason for it.
“I did have a copy of Mummer, which I’m only playing on two
songs [Beating of Hearts and Wonderland: Terry also drummed on Toys, issued as
one of the B-side tracks to Love On A Farmboy’s Wages and subsequently included
on the CD edition] and I thought Peter Phipps did a good job. I wouldn’t have
played what he was doing, he’s a jazzier player.”
Phipps, like Shepherd, had also been a member of the Glitter
Band, but apparently that tenuous connection was not how he got the job: “He
actually got the job because he had played in a group called Random Hold and
they supported us on one of the tours [Random Hold played several dates with
XTC during the Drums and Wires tour]. He was a good guy and played well, and
Dave liked him, so they brought him in to finish the record.”
After more than three decades in Australia, most of it outside
of the music industry, Terry found himself back in Britain. It wasn’t long
before Colin suggested that the pair, and their partners, go out for a drink.
Their friendship had endured, and once he had made the decision to move back to
Swindon he quickly renewed contact with the other former members of the group.
Things began to happen very quickly after that. “Colin asked me what I was
doing, and I told him that I was in limbo,” he admits. “That’s when he told me
that he was doing this solo record; he already had a drummer, but one evening
when we were out he asked me if I’d be interested in doing it, and it didn’t
take me too long to think, ‘you know what? It sounds like a bloody good idea!’
I thought, ‘you’re dead for a long time, and I don’t want to die wondering
about it.’ I didn’t want to turn him down and spend the rest of my life
thinking, ‘what if…?’ So, when the opportunity came up, I thought I’d jump in,
boots and all, and see where it would go.
“We started recording it in Colin’s shed. I had Lee’s [Colin’s
son’s] kit, because I had no drumkit here, but it all started from there.”
He’s the first to admit that the interest from fans in all
things XTC-related took him by surprise. He is also very moved by how fans think
of him as central to the XTC sound and story, despite not being involved in any
of their albums after 1983. “I used to speak to Colin and Dave and Andy
periodically on the phone, but I never had any idea of what sort of fan base
there still was. I thought by that time that Gregsy had left that the whole
thing was sort of dead in the water: nobody was coming out with any new stuff –
at that point I thought that the thing had gone, that people would naturally
keep hold of what they had and move on. To find that people were still
interested surprised me immensely!”
Terry and Colin were both surprised by the warmth that met them
when they attended the 2017 XTC Convention, and even more so by the demand for
Great Aspirations: “We put this thing out there not really knowing how it would
go and it was received quite well,” he says, modestly. How soon after recording
the EP did the idea of taking it out live come along? “Well, I didn’t see it
coming,” Terry admits. “We’d recorded this thing and that was it. I was ready
to play but had no idea what might happen next. I think that Colin must have
just woken up in the middle of the night and thought, ‘I wonder what it would
be like to play all of these songs that have never been played before in a live
situation?’ He put it to me, and I said, ‘yeah! If we can get some other people
on board then I’ll be in it, but who can we get to play?’ The first person we
asked was Dave Gregory, naturally. Obviously we knew that Andy wasn’t into
doing the live thing, so he wasn’t even asked, but Dave said he’d be interested
in doing it if Andy was involved… but that’s about as close as it got.”
Putting a live band together brought Steve Tilling into the
frame, and he and Terry soon became firm friends. Steve quickly deciphered Dave
and Andy’s guitar parts and did a magnificent job bringing them to a live
audience, but was it hard for Terry to have to learn other people’s drum parts?
“Yes, that was very difficult,” he admits. “There were some great players on
those records, you know. Dave Mattacks, Prairie Prince, Pat Mastelotto, Chuck
Sabo, they’re all great players and some big shoes to fill. Obviously we’re all
different, but I just tried to pick as much as I could out of the original
songs and do it in my own way. I tried to get them as close to what I felt I
could play and customised them a little bit, hopefully to Colin’s satisfaction!
I just sort of did my own thing, and in fairness to Steve and Gary I thought
that they did a great job as well, especially as they hadn’t played on any of
them; at least I was fortunate enough to have played on some of those songs
originally! It took me a while to get some of the songs, things like King For A
Day, because I’m not a ‘swing’ player; that’s not a thing that comes easily to
me at all.”
Rehearsals went well but the duo, and their band, had yet to
face a proper audience. A few nights before the Arts Centre shows, Colin and
Terry stepped onto the stage at Swindon’s Victoria pub, the first time that the
pair of them had faced a live crowd together since 1982. “We did two shows at
the Vic: we wanted to have a bit of a workout but didn’t want to put anybody under
any extra pressure, so we did those for family and friends really. It was good
to have some people stood there: we didn’t charge anything to get in and let
the Vic keep the bar… it was a Tuesday and a Wednesday night, when they
wouldn’t have had anyone on anyway.”
“I was very surprised at the reaction,” he says when talking
about those live shows. “When we started the Arts Centre gigs we initially
booked two nights, thinking that’s 500 people assuming that no one turns up
twice, which a lot of people did! Originally we were thinking of doing just one
show at the Mecca, but Stuart Rowe told us that the Mecca isn’t very good for
sound. That’s one of the reasons we picked the Arts Centre, because that was
one of the first places we ever played anyway but it was also a better venue to
record live – and we didn’t have to put on a massive firework display there to
get it to work. We also knew that it wouldn’t be full of teenagers, people
wanted a bit of comfort with a bar there and whatever… But we had the two
nights then added another two so we had this block of four and that was going
to be it then they sold out immediately and so we added two more.”
Most recently he has been in the studio with Stu Rowe, working
on the mixing and final track selection for the limited edition TC&I live
album Naked Flames. Sadly, because of technical issues -and Steve suffering
from laryngitis for the first few nights – the only recording that was
serviceable was from the last night of the six shows. “The reason some of the
other songs didn’t make it was because there was some interference in there, or
feedback or some tuning issues,” Terry explains for those wondering why the
whole show could not be put out. “We picked the best songs performance-wise.
The problem with mixing a live album is that you don’t have the isolation; if
somebody plays a bum note it contaminates everything else. As good as we liked
to think we played at those shows, under the microscope when Stuart and I went
into the studio to listen to this stuff and isolate each instrument there was
always something coming from somewhere else, and often it was a case of ‘we
can’t get rid of that’ so those things didn’t get used. We used the best of
what we had, and that’s why that running order is the way it is. Most live
albums are recorded over three or four nights, but the first four nights were
buggered anyway [due to Steve’s loss of voice], so that only left us with two
nights really.
“Dave said to me that he’s listened to the CD and commented on
how good a job Steve did in authenticating the original sound… and Gregsy’s not
played some of those songs live either. It was a challenge, and in fairness to
Gary and the others they did a really great job and held it together very
well.”
Sadly, shortly after the live shows, Colin decided that he was
going to put TC&I on hiatus but, as I had discovered when I recently
interviewed Steve Tilling, Terry has plans to work on a new project that will
see our favourite powerhouse drummer back on his stool at venues across the UK.
“It’s going to happen,” he says firmly. “We had a rehearsal on Tuesday, and
we’ve got another next Tuesday, we’re working with two other guys and need to
give them time to get their head around some of these songs. We’re working on
nearly all of the songs that we did in the TC&I set apart from about six,
which we’re going to replace with six of Andy’s songs.
“We haven’t completely finalised the line-up yet, but it’s going
to be a four piece outfit. It’s still in the embryonic stage at the moment but
we’re looking at some gigs out of town. It looks like most of this will be in
the spring, but we want to do maybe half-a-dozen gigs in the lead up to
Christmas and see how the thing goes. Hopefully it will be reasonably
successful. These things can be a little bit iffy, but if they go well we’ll
probably do quite a few more in the spring.
“Steve and I are going to try and keep this thing going, and
there’s an open option if ever Colin feels like doing something. I’ve got to
keep going; I always wanted to play live, that’s what I enjoy doing, more so
than the others. They prefer to record but I want to play live, it’s the whole
thing. Songwriters always want to get that song perfected: Andy has said to me
on a few occasions that ‘you wouldn’t expect Rembrandt to keep duplicating his
paintings around the world’. I understand that: he’s thinking, ‘I’ll do my one
masterpiece and move on’, whereas I like to get out there. Dave’s very much
like that: he loves to play live.
Was it hard finding other people to join you? “There are a few
people that can be relied upon, but there’s others, as there are in every town,
who think they’re better than they really are,” Terry says. “There are
timewasters, and Swindon is no better or worse than anywhere else. We
auditioned some guys from out of town, but I just felt that the distance and
the logistics of getting everyone together to rehearse was going to prove
troublesome.
“We needed people who had nothing else to do. If they’re holding
down another job then that’s another disadvantage,” he explains. “I want to do
this, and I want to do it for real. If it’s going to be done then I want to do
it properly. If I’m getting people involved to promote and put these gigs on
then I want people I can rely on. There are all sorts of things that can go
wrong and you’ve got to be confident that the three of four individuals that
you’ve got are on the same page, have the same mindset. You’re only as good as
your weakest link in any situation.
“I’ve done a lot of stuff in my time and I’ve always gone with
my gut: if there’s a shadow of a doubt in something I’m gone, but with Steve
I’m absolutely confident that he’s there for the long haul. I want that same
feeling from the other guys. It’s a gut thing. Like any relationship you want
to be as certain as you possibly can that this is the right one. It’s like a
marriage in a sense, in that you’re relying on them.”
Will this new outfit, which Terry sees in some way as similar to
bands like Bruce Foxton’s group From The Jam or Brian Downey’s Alive and Dangerous,
stick to XTC material? “As it stands at the moment, yes. Mainly because Steve
and I know 26 of these songs, and we’re going to put some of Andy’s in, like
Mayor of Simpleton, Peter Pumpkinhead, Sgt Rock, This Is Pop, Senses Working
Overtime, that sort of thing. We think that will add a little weight to what
we’re doing because these are quite popular songs! It will strengthen the set.
You have to remember that some of these are covers for me, but there’s going to
be a lot that I originally payed on and that’s about the best that I can do.
“Unfortunately, these days, in these sorts of bands there’s only
one individual or two at best still involved.” It’s good to hear that both Andy
and Colin approve of Terry’s plans and, even if they’re not going to be involved,
have given their blessing.
Do you see a point where you and Steve might be writing new
material? “That’s where we’re heading,” he admits. “We’re going to do this in
the beginning, get the group together then start introducing our own stuff.
It’s better than starting on the first rung of the ladder: if we can gain
anything by what we achieved last year, then it’s by using that as a platform
to launch from. That’s the big picture: Steve’s got some good ideas, and I’m
more than happy to incorporate that into what we’re doing together.”
I wondered if having spent so many years apart and having
avoided the difficulties that finally split the band had made it easier for
Terry to maintain a friendship with all of his former bandmates. “I’ve seen
Andy a couple of times recently. We saw him when Todd Bernhardt was over
[Terry, Lynn and Todd went to see King Crimson together, which gave Terry the
opportunity to meet Oranges and Lemons drummer Pat Mastelotto for the first
time]; it was one drunken night in the Tuppenny, and Andy was on magnificent
form. He’s one of the funniest human beings I’ve come across in my life.
“There’s something about my
relationship with Andy. I’m not a particularly funny sort of guy, although I
have my moments, but he seems to be the catalyst that just triggers things off.
It was an hilarious night. Recently I was out with Steve and we saw him. It was
his son’s birthday and he was out in Old Town – Harry’s birthday is the same
day as Colin’s – and we had another riotous few hours. I saw Dave recently too:
he came ‘round because I had a record that needed to be signed by everybody [a
12” copy of Senses Working Overtime, to be presented to Swindon Town Football
Club, who have recently taken to playing the song every time Swindon score a goal].
I’ve been in touch with Andy and I’ll see him to get it signed later.”
