You never really know how an interview with the legendary Speedhorn is going to go. We’ve spoken to various members of the band over the years, once in a dressing room, post-gig and once in a local pub to which they’d disappeared to escape the festival crowd. Always entertaining, usually insightful, they are happy to talk about anything and everything with the conversation frequently heading off on weird tangents. What never comes across, unfortunately, is just how much laughter and life there is in each interview, the dizzying pace at which the discussion unfolds inevitably reduced in an attempt to make sense of it all. Nonetheless, it’s always, cool to sit down and chat with John and Jamie from Corby’s multi-headed killing machine and at HRH / Hammerfest we had a chance to catch up on the band’s current activities.
A few big things happening this year – there’s new tracks coming together, there’s the original line-up gig, but first of all I want to ask about the book that’s coming out covering the early history of the band…
John: It’s actually written by our original guitarist, Gaz, he’s one of the founding members, he was in it until 2008 and he decided to write a book about fights… the first ten years of being in a band and the kind of stuff we got up to.
I’m surprised you can remember it…
John: It’s taken a lot of chatting between us all to remember it, let’s put it that way!
So he involved you all pretty heavily in the writing of the book then?
John: Well, I mean we all talk about crazy stuff we used to get up to back in the day anyway and he’d been writing a blog, recounting some of it, and he’s contacted me a few times… you know “when we did this…” and that brings us on to the next thing and “oh god, why did we do that?!?” [laughs] and after an hour’s worth of reminiscing and regretting he carries on his blog…
Jamie: Mainly regretting…
John: Mainly…
I remember the first time round Kerrang and Metal hammer used to follow you guys around and a big part of creating the narrative around the band at the time was talking about the things you got up to outside the music…
John: It was never just about the gigs for us, that was the thing, it was like the gigs and the party and the trouble you get into after… you know!
Jamie: Normally the gigs are the pain in the arse really [laughs] they just get in the way of having a good time!
John: They’re just the step you have to get apst and then the rest of it’s alright!
Jamie: “Just remember boys you’ve got a gig to do at ten o clock!”
John: Oh fuck off!!!!
I suppose there’s a balance between alcohol and still being able to play…
John: Um… nope!
Jamie: We don’t always get that balance right…
John: Who does that?
Jamie: Who knows what will happen! You never know… until there!
John: There’s one rule and that’s you write the songs drunk, you see, so you can play them drunk when you’re on stage, you never have to worry about it! You write them drunk, so they’ll sound great when you play them drunk.
So, putting together the original line up – how did that come about? Is that partly through the book?
John: The book came about partly because we’ve all been talking about this stuff and our old manager got together and we were talking about it all on group chat and he was saying about doing a twentieth anniversary show with the original line up – one more time for old times sort of thing – and everyone was like “yeah, let’s do it!” and then we got chatting and reminiscing about old times and that’s when Gaz said that he was writing a book about it… and then he let us know he’d already started the book, so hopefully it’ll be coming out next year some time. I can’t wait to read it. I’ve got quite a bad memory – I’m a stoner – so it’ll be as much a surprise for me as it will for you!
Jamie: Can’t wait to hear what I’ve been up to! [laughs]
Jamie: [adopts shocked tone] “I never said that!”
John: That was not me! I wouldn’t do that!
When you got back together it wasn’t clear at first if it would be any more than a few shows, then you did the 7” single and then ‘lost ritual’ but from what I’ve read in previous interviews it was a very organic process…
Jamie: Yeah – we never planned any of that really.
John: We took it all at our own speed. When we first decided to get back together and do the shows there was never any talk of doing anything else.
Jamie: We basically just said that we’d do the Corby show and Sonisphere, and they were cracking.
John: Then we had Damnation, and because obviously between July (Sonisphere) and November (Damnation) there was kind of a big gap, so we were like “what do we do?” So, we got together and figured we’d practice a few times before Damnation, and everyone was happy with that, so about four / five weeks before Damnation we got together and sat around and everyone was shiftily looking around the room, whenever there was silence, and thinking “shall I play the new riff I’ve got? Or not…” and then Jim Palmer finally played something and we were all like “what’s that?” and he just said it was a riff he’d been playing about with and we all looked at each other and decided to do it, and the next thing you know we had ‘halfway to hell’.
Jamie: Yeah, and that was really well received and then we figured that we could write a few more… then it turned out we couldn’t and we had to bodge it all together in a weekend…
John: Yeah, we basically wrote 80% of the album in two days!
Jamie: We’d already committed to the album with three songs basically…
John: More like two and a half…
Jamie: we had a few ideas and then a week before the studio it was like “oh fuck!”
John: Like the Monday… No it was the Tuesday… Gordon rang me and it was like “yeah – we’re in the studio with Russ on Monday to start recording the new album…” and I was like “alright, cool – did you get a chance to practice and get some songs written?” and he just said “no”…
Jamie: We’d done a pledge campaign and we didn’t have anything…
John: So I said to Gordon, “we should probably write some songs!” and he was like “how do we do that?” so we just had to practice that weekend and then write the rest in the studio…
Jamie: Luckily we had plenty of riffs in the riff-bank!
John: We knew we’d kind of be alright… but eight songs in two days…
Jaime: All the riffs were written in pyjamas and the rest is history…
You’d been trying to work with Russ for ages ahdn’t you?
Jamie: I’d worked with him loads…
John: That’s the thing, we all have… separately.
Jamie: but never as Speedhorn. I’ve done countless records and demos with him.
John: I think Gordon and Jim were the only people who hadn’t recorded with Russ before ‘Lost ritual’ and, because we’d all recorded with him before and been friends with him for a long while…
Jamie: I knew him before he was even a producer – I’ve known him that long – since he was a teenager.
John: Yeah – he used to come along to jams and stuff at the Old Hog…
Jamie: He’s got a studio that’s literally around the corner from our homes, we’re all great friends with him, everything he does sounds amazing, it’s a bit of a no-brainer.
John: As I said, we’d all worked with him before and we’d talked about it when we were in the process of getting ready to record ‘lost ritual’ and we were like “who are we going to get? We need somebody that we can get cheap… we need someone who’ll do a good job.” And then we were like “we need someone who can be both! Who we can get a mates’ rate discount from!” [laughs]
Jamie: and it needed to be somewhere where I could do my guitar parts and then go home for ages.
John: And we were at bloodstock and we only live fifteen minutes away from Russ’s studio and Russ was just over there and we suddenly came up with “shall we ask Russ Russel?” [laughs] Nah – we’ve been mates with Russ for a long while, it was inevitable and it all just came into place and we walked up to Russ at bloodstock and he was sat on one of the benches in the backstage area and we said “Russ…” and he said” If you’re going to ask what I think you’re going to ask fuck yes!” and that was that. The deal was done!
Thinking back to when I was listening to you in the late 90s, when the performances at festivals like Reading were full on chaos – a connection I never made was the darker, stoner groove at the heart of a lot of it, and then you did that split with monster magnet…
Jamie: Well, a few of us always identified with that scene…
John: Yeah, I’ve always loved Monster Magnet – I’ve always identified with the stoner scene and I’ve got a lot of stoner music…
Jamie: being a massive stoner yourself…
John: you actually look at a lot of our riffs, they’re slower… [gets distracted by the giggling from photographer Jola and Jamie] I’m trying to be serious here! A lot of the riffs take a lot of influence from stoner riffs because we’re trying to be heavy and epic and big – you know – a lot of stoner stuff is doing that. It might not look like we’re doing it – we have a lot of fast riffs. There’s not a lot of doom riffs in there (don’t get me wrong, we have got a few) we do try to keep the energy up but we have that heavy, stoner, doom vibe as well. I think we’re one of those bands that’s always struggled to be pigeonholed. We are what we are… it’s not really hardcore, it’s not really doom…
Jamie: There’s the doom thing, the hardcore thing and the punk thing and you put it together and… you kind of..
John: there you go, I’ll give you a new genre to stick us in – we’re “groove filth”! That’s our pigeon hole.
That just sounds like you’ve been to a festival and need to clean your crack at the end of it…
John: I’ll go with that! That’s kind of us anyway… festival crack!
Oh… the underpants on Sunday night at Reading…
John: Crusty Reading pants…
Since you came back you’ve played some really eclectic line ups – you’ve played with Skindred, you’re doing HRH –
John: We’ve done some really strange shows – we’ve supported Graham Cox, we’ve supported Jenny Frost from Atomic Kitten… We’ve supported… we actually, one time, supported Run DMC and Mark B and Blade…
Really???
John: Along with Hundred Reasons at NAS Festival… Do you remember that? Nas extreme sports festival?
Jamie: Yeah, Yeah…
John: Yeah, one year we came out of the studio and we were recording the second album and we came out of the studio to go and play it and the only band that we knew that were there were Hundred Reasons, so we were hanging out with them guys and we asked who else was actually playing and we looked at the line up and it was us, Hundred Reasons, Mark B and Blade and Run DMC…
Jamie: Blade…!!!!
John: “what the fuck are we doing on this bill?!?!”
Jamie: What ever happened to Mark B and Blade, eh? Mind you, people probably say the same thing about us! “I can’t believe they’re still going…”
John: “We thought they were all dead!”
So, you’ve been working on new tracks, so is there a coherent album coming together or are you thinking about an EP or…?
John: Yeah, we’re definitely working towards writing an album. At the moment, we’ve got, the same as last time… one track!
Jamie: We’ll wait for the weekend before…
John: we’ll get it booked first, then we’ll worry about writing.
Jamie: It’s always the case with us. We plan and we think we’ve got loads of time… and then we don’t have loads of time!
John: And then time runs out and it’s the weekend before and Gordon rings you and screams “agh, we’re in the studio – have we got any songs?” and the answer’s always “no!”
Jamie: There probably will be another album at some time. Maybe we’ll do it and it’ll be really good — the jury’s still out on that!
John: It may take us two weekends this time – we’ll see.
Given how well it worked, would you go down the pledge route again or are you going to self-fund it this time?
John: I actually think the Pledge thing worked really well. It let a lot of people know, who didn’t know, that we were back and that we were going to be doing something.
Jamie: I think different people in the band have different ideas, but personally, I think it’s the best way to do it.
John: I don’t think the pledge route would be right for it this time because we did it last time – we’re playing enough gigs that we have enough money to pay for our own album. We don’t need to do the pledge thing.
Jamie: I doubt we’d do it via a record label, though. Or if we did, we’d license it out.
John: We all got burned pretty bad and I don’t think we’d ever sign another record deal.
Jamie: Every band I’ve ever been in, including Speedhorn, we’ve never had a good record deal…
John: we got burned pretty badly that way. Licensing deals, yeah. I’d sign them, no problem.
Jamie: you’re better to fund it yourself, do it yourself, do it in your own time, as in a week, and then…
From a lot interviews you did, it sounded like the fun came out of it towards the end…
John: Yeah, it definitely did. I mean, basically what you’ve got to bear in mind is that we were a band, we were out touring, everything was sorted for us, we had management teams, we had this, that and the other and we just turned up, did what we had to do and went home. And then all of a sudden we found that 60% of that team were taking money out of our pocket that they’re not owed. A lot of our money had gone to them and that’s why we’re all still broke! We thought everyone was sweet and innocent and honest in the music industry, what the fuck!?!
Jamie: You go on tour and you get a hotel and a tour bus and a bed every night and you think it’s amazing. You never to think to ask where your money is at the end of it!
John: Hang on a minute – we should be millionaires by now! Where’s all our money gone then… Audit the accounts: “oh! You ripped us off, you ripped us off, you ripped us off and YOU ripped us off! What the fuck?!”
Jamie: There you go!
John: It was a lot of money. Put it this way, I would have my own house and never have to worry about working again, if we hadn’t been ripped off…
So: older, wiser and independent…
Jamie: Yeah!
John: Older, wiser and not signing a contract ever-a-fucking-gain
Jamie: older, wiser and still hasn’t got a house…
John: Leave my box alone! It’s got fucking Samsung on it!
I’m a huge physical music fan and you put a huge amount of effort into the ‘bury your dead’ 7” and then Lost Ritual had that amazing cover art as well… so I’m guessing you guys are as well/ When you put the next record together are you going to be emphasising that side as well?
John: I think… the last album… since we got back together really, he’s actually a good friend of Frank’s from the Manchester / Bolton area called Dominic Saul and he’s done quite a lot of artwork for us. Frank said I know a guy and it was the first tour and you know, and then we figured he could do artwork for the single and then the album… and I think the reason we’ve used him every time is that every time we turn around to him and ask for something, he gives us that and 110% more… He’s one of those artists that just gets what you want and then gives you it and more. The artwork for the last album, we were expecting something… you know… and then he came along with what we got and we were like “wow”. The last track on the album, along with that artwork…. Weirdly, we were recording the vocals, when we got the artwork, for ‘unleash the serpent’, and it came through half way through us writing the lyrics for that song and it kinda inspired us for the rest of the lyrics we were doing for it. It kinda set the vibe for the whole album – creepy, sort of voodoo vibe and it actually fits every song on the album. It’s the perfect artwork for the album. Dominic Sa
Jamie: …and he’s cheap as fucking chips as well!!!
John: He loves us…
