The Starries - Interviewed July 2001

Here we were at The Finn and Firkin in darkest Stirchley (that's in Birmingham for all you outsiders!). A venue with a great track record but only recently rescued by Rob from Wagdog Records from its descent into cover version band hell.
The event was a lo-fi all-dayer showcasing the best of the underground and emerging scene. Already we'd seen Theory of Everything, My Imaginary Friend and the excellent Reverends. Still to come was Ego Soso, Autolight, Dystophia, Baxxter and headliners, The Starries.
With a spare half hour we retreated in a quest for privacy to the loading area amongst the crates and discarded drinks. Armed with a dictaphone and cheap cider we started: Geordie (G) and Richard (R) launched into their verbal dueling with Paul (P) and new drummer, Greg (Gr) trying to get a word in edgeways!

G - it's difficult to compare this band now with the band that was interviewed in January 1999. For a start there's only two of the original members left with Steven leaving. Times have changed.

Where did Geordie come from?

G - I used to be in a band with Richard and Steven. We had a brief dalliance with Paul in a college band...
R - ...until he was sacked!

Why expand the line up?

R - Because Geordie would have felt left out.
G - When Icame back after my first year at university Steven was talking to me about quitting and coming back and joining The Starries. I obviously couldn't and I don't think that I would have fitted in at that time anyway. They were playing all the instrumentals. When they went on to start playing songs, verse-chorus-verse, it needed a...
R - ...person to sing in key!
G - No! It seemed a natural thing to join as I'd been in a band with them all before when we were teenagers and in college. We all know how we like to play our music. Me and Richard had done stuff on our own for years - we learnt how to play guitar together.

Geordie's initial contribution, especially in live shows, seemed mainly to be intricate guitar work. Is it fair to say that?

G - I'm a Jack of twiddle. We've cut out a lot of it since...it's more evenly spread...we've had to trim everything, cut the fat off.
R - ...and we've started listening to each other.
G - ...that's something we learnt off Dan Sprigg who recorded the Parlophone demos at DEP Studio last year. He bollocked us for not looking at each other when we were playing. We didn't get anywhere with the demo but at least Fierce Panda put one of the tracks on the Cutting Hedge CD.
R - Parlophone paid for the demo and them never got back to us.
G - £650 thrown at our feet! We went into this huge studio with the guy that had engineered Cradle of Filth. It was a really good experience.

Rumours were that the people at DEP didn't enjoy The Starries' sound!

R - He didn't get the style at all...that wasn't what made us change though.
G - At the time Parlophone already had a bit of a gamble on their hands with Idlewild, let alone signing a bunch of people twiddling all over the place...maybe we chose the wrong songs...maybe we didn't have the right songs at the time, certainly not for a major label. There was no room for another band like us at the time; a slightly more messed up version of what they already had. But it's worth giving it a go and it was worth the experience, even just being in a proper studio for the first time.
R - ...and it led to the Fierce Panda release.

How did the connection with Fierce Panda come about?

R - The connection with Simon Williams was through Helen Williams (no relation), an associate of Idlewild. She passed us over to him as the champion of all things indie and obscure.
G - She was really good to us, getting us contacts in London. Unfortunately we had a bit of a falling out - our fault!
R - I think Simon Williams might have thought that we were a bit madder than we actually are.

There was the night out at Snobs after you supported Seafood where you all ended up in women's clothing!

G - I think that we looked quite dashing, Richard looked quite fetching and Paul just had to lose the stubble. I think I frightened Simon at the Reading Festival as well when I demanded that he warm my hands with his armpits.
R - He's dealt with so many bands that he must have seen a hundred times worse...
G - ...than that. We're hardly Mottley Crue!
R - I wish we were...
G - ...we're working in that direction

Tell me about your experiences in London.

R - The first gig we did was supporting Idlewild at ULU. We played to 600-700 people. The next gig was to 100 people and it went down from there!
G - In all fairness, when we played The Falcon, The Barfly Club had just moved and everybody went to The Monarch! Generally though, we've never been great on advertising and self-promotion.

So why did your original drummer, Steven, leave?

R - We were at a complete dead end. The Parlophone demo wasn't ever going anywhere, Fierce Panda was cool but that just seemed to peeter out, rehearsals were boring, we didn't want to be there...
G - We were coming up with new stuff which was more and more going off at a tangent, no proper song structures. Steve just wanted to go. He wanted to be a singer and guitarist and play his own stuff.
R - It was more fun coming to rehearsals, getting wasted and playing bad cover versions.
G - I think we did a version of Knocking on Heaven's Door towards the end - a real low point! Three notes and an eternity of misery. The stuff that we were coming out with in those last few months was just...
R - ... Crap! I think it was a case of maturing, growing up and realising that within the music industry nation-wide that we'd been 'whooped' a bit. We expected a little more.
G - We thought that after a release on Fierce Panda that people would bandy our name about and that would lead to further offers. Another thing was the Birmingham audience who are so tough to please. When we played in Ireland they were lapping it up - they were really pleased to see us. We actually signed a few autographs! I think that that was another reason why we were so disenchanted afterwards because we were coming from such a high, such appreciation.
R - At the end of the day though the Idlewild dates were really good for us...
G - ...Just seeing our name in the NME!

Steven played his farewell gig with the band when they headlined at Birmingham's ArtsFest2000 in September last year. He's now playing drums and writing songs with Baxxter There followed a couple of showcase gigs with new drummer, Greg, around Christmas 2000 with a reemergence early in 2001 with a harder more focussed sound and a happeir, more motivated band.
Where did you find Greg?

R - A friend of a friend.
Gr - I've been playing now for about nine years though I'd never gigged with a band until I joined The Starries. It'd just been jamming with friends. My background is Metal: Korn, Sepulchera, kind of stuff. Even saying that I love what we are doing now, I would not change it for the world.
R - Apparently we're heavier now..
Gr - I couldn't say - I'd never actually seen the band before I joined!

Tell me about the new EP, The Years Are Hers released in July 2001.

G - I think that it's our most accessible stuff so far. When we first wrote The Years are Hers I thought "Cool, cool". But I knew I didn't want all our songs to sound like that. The second track, Foreign Age, sounds more like vintage Starries - well what we should have sounded like!
P - I think the four tracks on the single are a good cross section of what the band is about.
R - I think this record is one of the stepping stones to where we want to get - I don't think we've written the best songs we ever can...I love it, but we are going to better it.
G - We don't just cobble something together and say "That's a good new song, we might as well play it live". There's a certain amount of quality control nowadays which I think is largely Richard's influence. We're quite harsh on ourselves. If we don't like a riff or a bit of drumming then we tell each other - the only other people who I've read talking about that in interviews are De la Soul!
R - As a three piece, and especially just after Geordie joined, we were just writing music to please ourselves - it's great as a form of release. I think we're beginning to realise that the main point of being in a band is to write music for people. I know it's a cheesy cliche but we're just court jesters, we're there to entertain!