- By Fred Spanner
“We had a Loaded journalist who came on tour with us back in 1998. He got absolutely trashed to the extent that he was really unwell. He had to be lifted on and off the tour bus.”
Lock up your furniture! The Bluetones are back on tour. With 13 top-40 singles under their belts, 3 top-10 albums, and the pleasure of knocking (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? off the top spot, they’re back on tour with the original line-up, after a 14-year break.
With a new EP and album on the way. Fred Spanner chatted to singer Mark Morriss and guitarist Adam Devlin to discuss the good old days, furniture dismantling, and the episode of the drunken Loaded journo on their tour bus…
Mark: “We had a 14-year hiatus, but we just missed each other’s company, so we started touring again. After five or six years of that, we discussed making a record again, but then the pandemic hit. There are a number of factors involved in us getting going again. I don’t think it can be understated that things changed for the better when we found a new place to rehearse, which was a house; not a recording studio for a change.
“It also meant that we could be closer to our producer, Gordon, and we found we had some impetus. We thought we should carve out some time in our diary to focus, and we found it really rejuvenated us.”
Adam: “Absolutely, but we work in a different way now. In the old days, we were stuck somewhere for a few weeks and asked to come up with a few songs. It was a much gentler pace, but now we try and get as much done as we can in three days. That way of working really helps to focus the mind.”
Mark: “I think we were always very good at distracting ourselves through socialising and stuff.”
Adam: “Yeah, I mean we’re mates, and when mates get together they want to socialise, listen to records, and do the crossword.”
You’ve had 13 top-40 singles and 3 top-ten albums. What would be your career highlight?
Mark: “For me, they would have been very early on in our career. Like when we first signed our record deal and when we started recording. We wondered how everything could suddenly have gone so right for us. Lots of nice things happened to us, but we didn’t really stop to smell the roses too much.
“We headlined Glastonbury in 1997, and that feels like a dream now.”
Adam: “The first time we went to Japan was a big thing for us, too.”
Mark: “Yeah, we couldn’t believe that our silly little band from the garage could suddenly be halfway around the world and landing at Tokyo Airport.”
Who were the good guys of the music scene back then?
Mark: “When we first started out, we did a 6-week tour with Supergrass. They were just breaking out at the time, and their debut album had just been released. It’s always nice to cross paths with people you’ve toured with in the past. Super Furry Animals were great, too. All the “Super” groups.”.
“We love the guys from Shed Seven too. They were great to hang around with. Everyone was on the same slide, really. I mean, there were a couple of petty little rivalries here and there, but I think that was more down to youth and inexperience rather than any serious sense of animosity toward anyone.
“I think with the journey we’ve all been on, we have a lot of overlap in our lives, and we do have a lot in common. If there ever was a competition, it’s certainly evaporated over time.”
How wild did it get back then when you were touring?
Mark: “It was never really that wild. We had a Loaded journalist who came on tour with us back in 1998. He got absolutely trashed to the extent that he was really unwell. He had to be lifted on and off the tour bus. For us, it was a normal gig day- you do the show and have a drink afterward, get back in the tour bus, and away you go to the next venue. Then he wrote this article about how he drank us all under the table!”
Adam: “I remember having a lovely chat with Emma Thompson at this swanky Christmas party. It was going really well, but then it turned out she thought I was Tim Burgess from The Charlatans. It took me a while to twig.”
Mark: “I swapped placemats with Sheryl Crow at an awards ceremony once, so she’d have to come and find me. She walked over eventually and said, “I guess you must be Mark.” I got my wish, so that was cool.”
Adam: “We were never really that ‘Rock N Roll. I remember we stayed in a hotel in Stoke once, and Scott put all the furniture up on the roof because he wasn’t crazy enough to throw a TV through a window. Instead, he thought he’d just put some chairs outside.”
Mark: “I remember we were in Norwich at the end of a rather long tour. I was really bored, so I took all the furniture apart in my room with a Swiss army knife and then piled it all up in the bath. Tables, chairs, beds, the lot. I put all the screws in a cup.”
Adam: “It was deconstructing a room, rather than trashing it, but the nice gesture of leaving all the parts there so it can be reconstructed again, easily.”
Mark: “We did a ridiculously long tour once and got bored in a hotel in Exeter and decided to use the coffee table as a toboggan to go down the stairs.”
Adam: “Yeah, we’d find small tables and ride them down the central staircase. There were a lot of furniture-based high jinks back then.”
So how different is it these days?
Mark: “I guess social media has its good and bad points. It’s great for letting people know what the band is up to, when you have a release, where you’re touring, etc. On the other side, there’s the perception that you need to hear someone’s negative thoughts, and that’s not necessarily a good thing.”
Adam: “Vinyl was disappearing, but now it’s back, and that’s a good thing. So many parts of the music industry have changed over the past 30 years. You used to send demo tapes to record companies and tried to get influential people to come and see your gigs. That’s all changed now as recording music well is much easier. If you can build an audience, you don’t really need the support of a record company anymore. We were on the cusp of all those changes.
“We used to go into our manager's office and reply to messages from people. That was a completely new thing to us.”
Mark: “I think the music industry has gone hand-in-hand with the changes in technology. From sheet music to wax recordings, records, cassettes, and CDs, it’s constantly changing. When we began, cassette tapes had only been around for about ten years or so. Bands before us during the punk generation didn’t make demo tapes. Maybe it was reel-to-reel? Christ knows.
“Streaming makes music easier to share, but there has to be a better way of handling the division of the money. It seems to be criminally unbalanced.”
Is it harder for someone to make it in the music industry these days unless they have a bit of a leg-up financially?
Mark: ‘The danger is that you don’t want to resent someone just because they come from a privileged background. It’s not their fault that they had a head start. But I think it’s harder for working-class people to bust out than it was. I mean, we had access to unemployment benefits, which gave us the space to hone our craft. We just pooled our money together for food and weed.”
Let’s talk about the lead single from your forthcoming EP, “In The Cut”.
Mark: “Yeah, it’s about embracing bad experiences and just getting on with it. Rather than being bitter about what’s happening, just move forward.”
It’s instantly recognisable as a Bluetones song from the first few seconds.
Mark: “That’s really nice of you to say. I think, as a band, that’s one of the things you’re always striving for, that sense of individuality. Like in art, someone can recognise a Picasso or a Monet. That’s something we hoped to carve out for ourselves.”
Is it all a bit more relaxed these days?
Mark: “I would say I enjoy touring more nowadays. But I’m also taking it more seriously. I’m more focused on the show. I’ve always enjoyed touring, but more for the things that go with it. The actual show was sometimes a distraction.
“Now, it’s very much the other way around. We don’t have alcohol in our rider anymore. We just don’t feel it’s necessary. It means we can put more into a show. The gigs aren’t as physically demanding as a result. We can really enjoy being up there under the lights.”
Adam: “I’d agree. We work at our own pace now, too. When we were in the eye of the storm, we’d get monthly diaries handed to us to tell us what we needed to do and where we needed to be at any point. We’d get these sheets from the record company with all this stuff on it telling us what was required of us. Now, we plot our own timeline. There’s no one in the corner of the room pressuring us.”
You have a new album coming up. What can you tell us about that?
Mark: “It’s a much fuller experience. You can feel like you’re in the room with the band, with few overdubs. It feels like a youthful and celebratory record. It’s trying to squeeze into a pair of trousers that are a bit too small.
“It feels like it’s not too aware of its age.”
We can all relate to that.
The world is a better place with the band in it, that’s for sure. Catch The Bluetones on tour. Their new EP, “In The Cut,” is out on 28th March.
