The Rezillos in the Twenty First Century!

In June 2004 Ross McIntyre & myself met with Fay, Jo and Eugene in Edinburgh to carry out an in depth interview with the band exclusively for the band’s web site. Angel was unable to participate in person but he did assist with some answers to questions via e-mail from his home in Germany.

What follows are the first three sections of the interview with many more, covering the rest of the band’s history, which will follow on over the course of the coming months. Additions will be publicised in the Rezillos Newsletters as they’re posted on the site.

I hope you have as much fun reading the interview as Ross and I had conducting it. Both of us would like to thank the band for their hospitality and their frank and detailed answers to our questions.

Martin Percival – September 2004

Episode 1: A New Beginning

Quick Links -

Edinburgh - Hogmanay - December 31st 2001

The USA tour 2002

Europe 2003

The Future

Edinburgh – Hogmanay – December 31st 2001

Martin – What was the sequence of events that led up to you playing for the first time in 23 years at the Edinburgh Hogmanay gig in Princes Street Gardens on Dec 31st 2001?

Fay – I was studying Psychology at the time with Charlotte, the wife of Stuart Nisbet of the Proclaimers. I got chatting with her one day in the mature students café. I’d had a few thoughts around that time that we, the Rezillos, might be ready to do something again. Stuart knew that Charlotte knew me and he thought that we might be up for something so he approached us. The offer we received was a very good one too.

Martin – So what was your reaction to the idea?

Fay – Excited! I rang Eugene and I said that I’d really like to do it. Eugene said he was up for it too and that he’d ring Jo.

Jo – Yes, so I got the call from Eugene and I said "yes" immediately. Unfortunately I’d just had a very bad case of food poisoning. The call from Eugene was in October 2001. It was only 4 days before the gig that I got off the train from having been staying with my dad whilst recovering from the illness and I went straight to rehearsals. In fact the very first thing we did together again actually was to pose for photos for the press on December 27th and then, later in the day, we started the rehearsing. We did two hours on the 27th without a bass player. The next day Mekon joined us to play bass. We’d originally assumed that for Angel it would be impossible to do the show, seeing as he’s been living in Germany now for many years.
Martin – So who approached Angel?

Fay – I said we should approach him. Eugene was round at my flat and he rang him. Eugene speaks German as he’s done a lot of business there with his motorbike business.

Martin – How did you end up in Germany?

Angel – My wife is German and she’s from the Bremen area. Back in 1987 I’d given up full time music, was studying in Brighton and was keen to leave "Thatcher’s Britain" and experience life in another country so I made the move. I now have my own architect’s business and three children.

 

Martin – Was it a tough decision to say "yes" to the Hogmanay gig?

Angel – The decision was instantaneous. The Rezillos members have always been very special to me, as was the time we shared together. The opportunity to be involved with them all again was enticing, and the prospect of the gig itself was, of course, exciting. Eugene rang me up, told me about the gig, asked me if I could do it. I just said "Yes!", of course! "No Doubt About it" – to quote a wonderful Hot Chocolate tune!

Martin – Had you kept playing music?

Angel – Yes, I’ve kept playing fairly regularly in a variety of combos – mostly R&B influenced.

Martin – Had you played together at all since 1978?

Jo – We had actually tried doing something together a few years before with local guys playing bass and drums.

Martin – So in some ways the Rezillos reforming was down to the Proclaimers?

Fay – Yes, I suppose it was.

Jo – The rock n roll thing was back on track at long last with bands like the Strokes and the White Stripes and so on coming through, so the timing just seemed right this time.
Martin - Had you had any previous offers?

Jo – Yes, but nothing really worthwhile. Hogmanay in Edinburgh of course is very special.

Fay – The timing was good. The band previously might not have necessarily been interested.

Martin – Had you tried playing new songs when you’d played a few years before?

Jo – Yes, but it didn’t really happen, it didn’t gel. We did a few new songs and recorded them. The Hogmanay reunion started with a gig which was great for us as obviously we originally started out as a live band.

Fay – We had stopped working on the songs previously as we didn’t have anything to hang them around. We just didn’t know what to do next.

Jo – "Number 1 Boy" had been done plus "Pressure Cooker" in that previous period.

Fay – If the Rezillos were going to play again we had to have new songs. For the first gig there was a lot of enjoyment in doing the new things. If you do only old songs it’s more like just doing an entertainment turn.

Jo – Doing the new songs focuses you. The old songs are still very good fun to play though of course.

Martin – So Mekon played bass for that one Edinburgh gig?

Fay – Yes, he was the obvious choice, great guy. He’d played previously with the Revillos.

Jo – I’d met him and I liked him and he knew half the songs already. We only had 4 days to rehearse so he was perfect.
Martin – Were you surprised at the level of press interest?

Jo – I was.

Fay – No, I knew there would be interest. I’d done some really obscure music related things in Edinburgh before, in the late 90s, and they’d got a lot of interest at the time. Like some music workshops I did and a girl group I put together, the interest had actually got over the top. I thought it was bizarre. The headline in the local newspaper was something like "Fay Fife is now a Morningside Wifey". They were wrong of course, I cannot cook apple pie! I thought though that if there was that level of interest then there was still something there.

Martin – How did it feel to be back on stage again?

Jo – Just like we were carrying on after Christmas 1978. The 23 years in between had vanished.

Fay – I remember at the rehearsal we had a good laugh together and the chemistry was still there. We started playing "Head Kicked in" and you changed the words to "Shed kicked in".

Jo – That’s right! There was an allotment war being mentioned in the newspapers at the time! People were stealing marrow's from their neighbour’s allotments so I changed the words.

Fay – Of course all of us need reading glasses now. It was funny seeing them for the first time at the rehearsal!

Jo – Yes, I was worried I’d actually need my glasses to read the set list on stage!!

Fay – There was an incredible level of continuity. The chemistry was great, but I was extremely nervous before the actual Edinburgh gig.
Jo – It was freezing cold too. I had to put my hands in Eugene’s coat to try to keep my hands warm! When we came on, I went on first and everyone else seemed to be hanging around at the stage side. I’ve only had to wear underpants under my kilt twice – that night in Edinburgh, because I was so cold, and Philadelphia because I was ill and I was shitting everywhere!! Grant Stott is a well known local dj and TV presenter, and he introduced us and I went on, but the rest of them though were waiting at the side of the stage, they seemed nervous.

Fay – We had done a tv thing earlier in the day at 6pm. Oh, it was SO cold, but really special.

 

Ross – It was amazing for me seeing you play a new song. It made me realise that, if there was a new song, then there must be a future plan to do more than just a one off gig.

Jo – I can remember that people were singing along to "Number One Boy" - I was amazed – it was a totally new song, never played live before!! I guess it’s catchy and they worked it out quickly.

Martin – That was the only new song you played?

Jo – Yes, we only had time for that one. We just came straight into it. We were originally only due to do about 4 songs but in the end we did a 25 minute set right up to the 1am curfew. I’d even had to borrow a copy of the album, I didn’t have a copy of my own. I was listening to it on the train down to London to help re-familiarize myself with the songs. I was visiting my sister Jacqui and her family for Christmas (Editor’s note – Jacqui Callis is a talented musician in her own right, a one time member of Delta 5 and an alumni of the late 1970s Leeds University scene that not only spawned Delta 5 but also the Gang of 4 and the Mekons. She also helped the band out with much of the technical and design work for Mk 1 of Rezillos.com – thanks Jacqui!). I worked the songs out for the Edinburgh set down at Jacqui’s place in London.
Martin – "Out of this World" was a song you’d also worked on before I believe?

Jo – Yes, Eugene and I had done a "techno rock" version at one time. We had to discipline ourselves to do the set for Edinburgh as we were excited about new songs. We decided it was essential to do at least one new song. As time went on we started going through old tapes we’d had lying about with outlines of song ideas on them. We took a lot of things that we thought might work for the Rezillos. "Number One Boy" was inspired by a film I saw on tv about Australian journalists during the Vietnam war. It showed them in bars and the hookers were saying in pidgin English "You buy me drink, you number one boy!" So it was inspired by prostitution and warfare really!! I had the backing track and the title and then Fay and Eugene finished the song off.

Martin – I believe the Edinburgh gig had a mention in a New York Times review that led to the US interest?

Jo – Yes, I think it got a write up and then Bryan Swirsky, a US promoter, contacted us and offered us the US tour.

The USA tour – June/July 2002

Ross – What were the highlights of the US tour?

Fay – Oh, there were lots.

Angel – The US trip was physically gruelling but momentous. When we left New York back in 1978 after recording the album we had expected and hoped to come back that same summer. Due to circumstances that was, of course, postponed – until 2002! The US tour for me was the epitome of the feeling of "carrying on where you left off".

Jo – Hoboken was great. We thought it’d be a dump, interesting because of the Frank Sinatra connection, but it was actually a lovely area. Maxwells was a great venue too. It was the night immediately before the World Cup Final took place in Japan the next day. Some of us went out partying with the road crew after the gig, a really great night.

Fay – By the time of that gig we were really getting pretty slick as it must have been about the 6th date of the tour. Early on, after the flight over, my voice had been giving me some difficulty. The first gig in LA was quite extraordinary. The audience was great, it was a good night but we were very nervous.

Jo – It was June 2002 and we still had the shock of actually playing in America at long last. We’d done the one off spot at CBGBs 24 years before in 1978 and that had been our one and only previous US appearance. We had no idea what to expect.

Fay – It felt right and we were doing more new songs by that time too, it just felt right.

Jo – Johnny’s first gig as our bass player was in Los Angeles. I can remember turning around and seeing how he looked in his shades just before we went on stage and thinking "It’s the fucking Terminator!" I was expecting him to say at any minute "Give me your sunglasses and your jacket!" - that’s how he got his nickname.

Fay – It’s extraordinary what happens to people when they get on stage, how much they can change.

Jo – He hadn’t discovered his alter ego yet. He looks like a cyborg on stage – very scary!!

Fay – Yes, Johnny looks pretty normal off stage. As soon as he got on stage though he looked such a thug! Very scary, but we all gelled very quickly.

Jo – We like people in the band that look scary. Fay, imagine what people think when they see you in your Alice Cooper make up, mascara all over the place?! (much laughter)
Martin – How come Johnny came to be in the band? Couldn’t Mekon do the US tour?

Fay – He wanted to do it but he had family commitments. He and his wife had just had a baby.

Jo – So therefore he recommended Johnny to us, he was one of Mekon’s musician pals from the Glasgow area, Johnny lives in Cumbernauld.

Europe – Jan/Feb/March 2003

Ross – What were the highlights of the European dates?

Angel – All the gigs in Edinburgh were, as "home games", always important and special. When they go well it’s a great feeling!

Fay – Barcelona was a great night. One of our best EVER gigs. Absolutely brilliant.

Jo – Yes, it was a great venue, nice big stage. About 800 to 900 people there and the Datsuns had played to only 200 in the same venue around about the same time!

Fay – The local technical staff were good too. We were really tight, we were well played in by that time too.
Jo – Yes, we’d played Derby and London over a weekend and then later in the month Bradford, Blackburn, Leicester, Brighton and then on to Rennes in France before the Spanish dates. Bradford had not been good. Angel had bad flu, the venue was in the middle of nowhere and the show hadn’t been well promoted. Brighton was the next day though and it was great. Packed out, fantastic audience, nice venue and then on to the ferry across to France. This time around the highs seem higher at the gigs and you do tend therefore to notice the lows a bit more. We’ve learned to appreciate it more. By and large you’re on a much higher high. The first gig we did in Spain was in a very small venue, less than 100 people, the Spanish sound guy had never done live sound before but he was excellent. It was Fay and Angel’s birthday too that night. The next day was Madrid which was another excellent gig, a really enthusiastic audience. Then we went to the Basque country and then back to Barcelona and Valencia to finish off the tour.

Martin – So during the 1976-78 era you hadn’t really toured abroad at all?

Jo – No, that’s right. We did the one off at CBGBs in New York and a tv appearance in Germany, that had been it. Just a great many gigs in the UK.

Martin – If you had to single out one of the European gigs as being especially good which one would it be?

Fay – Barcelona, definitely.

Jo – Yes, the people there know how to have a good time and they’re very clued up.

Martin – I was amazed at the Madrid gig. There’s a guy I know who’s a big Cramps fan and he was telling me that there was a massive feeling of anticipation on the local Madrid scene leading up to that gig. The venue had a big article on the Rezillos and a lot of pictures in the February 2003 issue of their monthly magazine so, by the end of the month, the gig was sold out and anticipation was very high. I was surprised at how young the audience was and that a lot of them were singing along to the songs!

Jo – Yes, Madrid was a very special night too. The Spanish certainly know how to enjoy themselves!

Martin – So was there one gig looking back that was a bit of a low point, a disappointment?

Fay – Bradford. It was not a good night.

Jo – Yes, shame as Bradford’s a nice town and can be a very good gig. Angel had really bad flu too. Philadelphia was not good either. It was terribly hot and humid. The dressing room was on the top floor and the stage was two levels below. The stage was very deep and narrow.

Fay – Was that where I broke my nose?

Jo – Yes.

Fay – Oh, that was bad. I remember that. The stage was very narrow and a funny shape. Derby wasn’t such a good show either.

Jo – It was alright, not a classic, we just needed to do a show really before London the next day.

Martin – The place I think you’d have liked was Sunderland Sinatra’s, you were due to play there the night before Derby, but it didn’t happen in the end. It holds about 125 people. It’s a small bar really but a very nice venue, especially for a low keyish warm up type show.

The Future

Ross – So what are the future plans at present?

Fay – I really want to get the new songs released.

Jo – We’re too old for "Fame Academy" now! That seems to be the only way to get a record contract these days.

Fay – We need to work out a way to do it. Playing live is good fun, especially when it’s good venues, but I don’t want to waste time and money on worthless shows.

Jo – So far really we’ve been testing the water to see where we stand. We’ve deduced that it’s worthwhile doing it and it’s gone well generally on the live front. Obviously we don’t want to lose money.

Fay – It’s gone very well really.

Jo - Yes, as a mean average, in most major cities in the world, we should be able to draw over 500 people at least for a reasonably well publicised show.

Martin – Yes, you had well over 500 for a Monday night in Boston which is a very good turn out. They even had to move you down stairs at the Middle East to the bigger hall.

Fay – That reminds me, at that gig we had a really magical moment. We played "Pressure Cooker" at the sound check SO well.
Jo – Funny, same song, similar circumstances when we played that Tiki Bar in Orange County, California - we got a round of applause from the other bands after we played it! Just the right tempo, we got it JUST right.

Fay – Yes, the rhythm is very subtle.

Ross – You did a radio session whilst you were in the US. Have you considered releasing a Peel sessions cd?

Jo – We’d love to. We haven’t got any management at present though, and that does hold us back a bit. We need someone to follow up on opportunities as they arise. We do need to get a plan together to get something to promote. The music business is full of people saying "we must do this and we must do that" and it only ever really happens if there’s someone behind the scenes to badger people into reminding them "we want to do a session, you said you’d help us, so how about it?"
Ross – Are there any more new songs?

Jo – Yes, loads. We’ve got about five now that we’ve played live and two more that we’ve done at band rehearsals. There’s also some from a few years ago that we could use too.

Fay – With 2 or 3 weeks work we could easily have an album’s worth of material.

Ross – Is there any possibility that the new songs that were on the "Mission Accomplished" album could be dusted down?

Jo – At that time in 1978 we were trying to move on. We had done the first album, got off to a good start, had a hit single and we knew then we had to move on and develop towards a new direction. The songs we were doing did try to do that, they were exploring where to go next. We probably split up partly as a result of that process, we didn’t fully understand what was happening. We were doing a couple of Fay’s songs as she’d just started writing. They were taking us in a bit of a Blondie kind of direction, which I didn’t mind, I quite liked that. Others were in a slightly more serious vein, and some were similar to what we’d done before. We were exploring how we could widen the goal posts and didn’t really get beyond that point before we split. So that material is probably like an ox bow lake at the side of a river for us. I’d sooner put it to one side now and look at fresh material.
Fay – An ox bow lake?!

Martin – Clearly he was a geography student!

Jo – Oh yes, a Geography O level and a Higher. Or was it two O levels? I don’t remember! The river’s going in one direction and then it changes direction and it leaves a strip of the old course of the river cut off and left to one side, a bit of isolated water.

Martin – Very nicely described Jo!

Jo – Thank you Martin! (much laughter)

Ross – Are you likely to play any "new" old songs from the album live, like "2000 AD", "Mystery Action"?

Jo – I think it’s always a possibility.

Martin – I love "Mystery Action"

Jo – A lot of people do.

Fay – I like it too. Not so sure about "2000 AD" though, it goes on a bit.

Jo – We said we weren’t going to do "Somebody’s Gonna get their Head Kicked in Tonight". We ended up doing it really by public demand and because it was featured in the "Jack Ass" film. It’s not even one of our songs, it’s a cover of course.

Fay – To be perfectly honest I’m not even sure of what’s on the album.

Jo – I couldn’t see us doing "I like it"

Fay – Although I like it

Ross – And I’m liking it too (Editor - cue much groaning all round!)

Jo – I’ve got an idea for a song that takes a bit of "2000 AD" and a bit of "Thunderbirds are go". Actually, we should be doing that one because of the "Thunderbirds" movie!

Martin – Haven’t you been offered the sound track? (Ed – said very tongue in cheek…..)

Jo – We should have been! That would be great. Look at Tarantino using the 5678s for "Kill Bill". They do a version of a song you used to do in the Revillos. It’s being used in a tv ad too and Jo Whiley plays it regularly on Radio 1.
Fay – Which one’s that?

Martin – "Yeah Yeah", it was originally by the Rock A Teens around 1959/60. The 5678s version is called "Woo Hoo".

Fay (Ed - said with lots of irony!) – The Revillos version was of course was much better. Much more sophisticated and positive, "Yeah Yeah"……not "Woo Hoo"!

Jo – But you only had one one word repeated, whereas they had two different words "Woo" and "Hoo" (Ed - this was said in a Nigel Tufnelesque "this bread’s the wrong shape" Spinal Tap scene type style!)

Ross – But they’re nonsense words

Fay – But our words were more epic!

Jo – True, "Yeah Yeah" is positive, what does "Woo Hoo" mean? All joking aside, sound track opportunities would be terrific. We’re going to get a package together with finished versions of the demos, a biography, the web site fully up and running, with maybe even some downloadable snips of new songs.
 

 
So that ends part one of the interview. Hope you enjoyed it. There’s still lots more to come and it’s great news that, even in the few weeks since the interview was carried out, there have been some major developments with the forthcoming "Rezillos Radio Times" radio sessions release on Damaged Goods later this year……plus the first live dates of 2004!

Next time we’ll cover the questions asked as part of Newsletter Two’s competition, the story behind the recording of the "Can’t stand the Rezillos" album in New York in early 1978, the lead up to the split and the final gig, for 23 years at least anyway, at Glasgow Apollo on December 23rd 1978 that was recorded and released as the posthumous live album "Mission Accomplished…but the beat goes on" – all long ago back in the twentieth century!

Martin Percival