S.C.A.B.Interview: UK Subs

For the start, represent us current line-up.
OK, UK Subs, current line up: on drums we’ve got Derek , he is on loan to the UK Subs, his permanent band is The Restarts, great Irish band. On bass we have Simon Rankin, he is new bass player, but he also has another band called Zero Tolerance, a very good London band. On guitar we have Alan Campbell who is more or less permanent UK Subs guitarist, he also plays bass along Nicky Garrett, the original guitarist of the band. But Nicky Garrett is in Germany with his girlfriend and wants some time to get things arranged cause he wants to move house to Germany and he’s doing all this work and so we have to spend a year, maybe two without Nicky Garrett.
How does his menage New Red Archives since he’s in Germany right now?
He is not entirely selling up his record company, but has sold a good piece of it, and he aims to start up getting in Germany where he will perhaps have some European bands on the label, so it should be good for the New Red Archives.
You’ve been in Yugoslavia years ago. Do you see some changes. How much do you know about our country?
I like to think I know a lot, but perhaps I don’t. We had a great history lesson while we’ve been here. We’ve been showed all around the buildings which have been battered by NATO and all the people that’ve been killed by NATO, and it’s very sad that we’re so close and this have happened. Last time we came here we didn’t know anything about it. Because as you know it was whole Yugoslavia and we came up here in the winter and it was dark when we got here, and we went to that little cellar club and came out and came back to the hotel, so we didn’t see anything really last time and it was about 15 years ago I think.
How do you like it now? Did you have chance to meet anyone new, to see what the life is now like?
We’ve met so much people, we’ve met more people this time, because we came a day early and then we went up to few bars and we went to someone’s birthday party and met a lot of people, although some of them were too drunk to really discuss anything, but we had a great time. These people have been collecting records for long, long time and I think the wars kind of like…well a girl told me that she was lucky that she didn’t know anybody who died in the war, but she still kind of feels horror, everytime she hears thunders and lightning she can hear the bombs cause she was only kilometer away from the center of town.
As I understood, your “U” album (Universal) is already recorded. When will it be released?

I only just finished mixing it, the day before yesterday, and now we have to find a record company to put it out cause we don’t have finance to ourselves.
Anyone interested…maybe Captain Oi! ?
We’ve got two record companies interested. Yeah, they are interested and they want to hear the demos. And it’s very, very good album for saying myself. But everyone is surprised how good it came out, cause normally when you have such a little time to do this and you have to bring it out before the tour, and the tour starts in May, so we have to have it out for the beginning of May. So it’s a big job to try and get it out and we spent such a little time doing it. When we do the album so quick it can be hit or miss, and this one’s done ok so we’re very, very pleased with it and I think someone like Captain Oi! could put it out.
Whose idea was to do the albums in alphabetical order. Do you have any idea what will be the Z album or X album?
Yeah, I wanna do the Z really kinda crazy, really different to the first album if possible. Or idea might be to do the W album, you know we might think of a title in V or W which would take it really out in space and then we could bring it all back home with the Z album. Back to the roots kinda thing. Because along the way you kinda loose your roots and Nicky Garrett, normal guitarist has so many great ideas but the bands is getting kinda heavier and heavier in the fact that they can play very well now. They are not frightened to use their fingers and they make sound just heavier and heavier and lost that light touch when you don’t have any feedback or anything like that. So it would be refreshing for the last album to go back to the naive kind of stuff. Like naïve paintist who don’t really know what they’re doing, but they got the imagination. We’ve got to try and find that little lost spark.
Do you have some plans (and time) for your side projects: Urban Dogs, Truckerss…?
I don’t know how you found out about Charlie And The Truckers, they did played one time and the ideal guitarist for Charlie And The Truckers is Daryl Barth. And we have the kind of the ideal line-up but everytime I get the idea and plan to do it, the Subs are busy doing something, and we have to concentrate on what we’re doing, so it’s difficult. We are actually planing on to book a show in London with Urban Dogs, which is the Subs, and then the Urban Dogs will come on on the on calling due maybe 10-20 minutes or whatever.
Do you ever think of quitting after all these years?
Well quitting crosses your mind quite often, but you think of the alternative…
And what is the alternative in your case?
Working!
Have you ever worked some day jobs, normal jobs?
Yeah, quite a few, but not for a long, long time.
Is it true that you’ve been a hairdresser?
Yeah, hairdresser, pigfarmer, making leather cases, stacking shells…
After all these years in punkrock scene and all the changes, who do you remember as good person or were you ever disappointed with punk rock?
Not really, no. We can talk all day of changes now, cause punkrock kinda diversified. We were having the interview the other day talking about the MTV and bands which I don’t even know, but my bass player is little bit younger and knows all the kind of new bands. I just think it’s another industry, it’s the part of recording industry, big time industry and big time money. We don’t have anything to do with it, we’re just a very small band in England, who happened to be bit more famous as you spread out. We’re like, what we call in England, cottage industry which exist from show to show. We got nothing to do with big world of all new bands and the diversions of punk-rock.
At one moment Lars Fredericsen of Rancid was in Subs line-up. I read somewhere that he wasn’t satisfied with it, so he quit. How do you feel about his new band and everything?
The truth is we send him back to America cause he was such a…he was…errr…because…
Just say it.
Well he just become a chronic alcoholic, so we had to send him back. And the irony of all this it that he joined Rancid when the singer was a heroine addict and had to get cured. And now he’s cured, he doesn’t even drink, smoke or anything.
Do you have any contacts with him now?

Yeah, we’re good friends still. For a little while we weren’t good friends cause he really felt bad about us sending him back home. We just bought him a ticket and said “Look, you gotta get home and clean out.”
You’ve been on scene for 25 years. What new bands can you point out?
As I said before, I don’t know any new bands. You have to interview our bass player, he knows all the kind of new stuff. All I know is kind of craziness like emo-core and when I hear I can maybe recognize it. The way they sing is…well, may as well be in a church choir.
How do you feel about the politics of the punk movement today and where do you stand today? Is it still the same?
What I feel about politics in general is like the politicians are out there and they’re just finding ways to rob the people…just to screw the people up, with all the money (tax and three times over…). But politics in punk-rock, well we’re pretty apolitical…against politics. It’s our job to play the music because we kinda live close to the street and we know what the people are saying, what the young need and want from life and how they’ve been stopped and blocked on every direction. So we do point out these things and we just trying to play & tell and the newspapers comes out daily and they have a different story every day but we make sure we hit hard in one direction and people always know that this is what the government are doing, this what are they trying to do to you, this is what they are trying to build for you and we will always do that.
Did you had any problems in life both from the those on the opponent side and the ones from the establishment?
So far, only as being arrested for just looking strange and stuff like that. And you’ve gotta be careful, cause we haven’t had passports with us at the moment. You know, the hotel takes them which in the west we don’t like. We have the tour manager who won’t let us passports be taken away, but here we just got the receipt for the passport and having that with us in case we got arrested. Because if you don’t have a passport, the police find you a lot of money than again you’re robbed by the system…so again they got you. But it’s so funny in case of major Juliano of New York, when we were in NY we used to get stopped by the police all the time. And now he’s kinda cleaned up it, we’ve never been stopped and searched or arrested in NY while major Juliano, and I’m not saying he is good or anything (cause he’s been responsible for a lot of really bad shit) but thing is he’s kinda zero tolerance. They had to clean there own backyard as well, so it’s stupid just stopping people on the streets but there’s bums dead on the street. New York was like western Calcasa…people passing the dead people on the street.
After 20 years on the scene, do you feel better now or like you did 20 years ago?
Is it spiritually or sexualy or…Ha ha, do you remember that Roling Stones question? I think it’s better today because in 20 years ago it was only the little management business which we had or they had us. It was a small record company, but still there was 14 people behind the scenes working for you. And it was all like “You had to do this…You had to be there…” and I got really fed up with it. I turned up to a rehearsal when the rehearsal was over and I got so pissed of at the whole rock machine thing. But now we had to do it ourselves (DIY) although I have turned op or not turned up for the rehearsal because I got drunk the night before and just forgot about the rehearsal, it still happens sometimes…
Being constantly on the road takes it’s toll.
Exactly, we don’t rehears that much. But also it was just to rehears the drummer for the show. The one in before he played his first show with us, in England. And I didn’t turned up, but it was ok, cause they just went thru all the songs.

And what about making music today?
Yeah, when you’ve done such a lot of music… The Sex Pistols were so lucky, they’ve done that one or two albums and that they can sit back and just live on that for the rest of their lives. And when you’ve done a lot of work like that, you think you’ve done your work, and “Why do I always have to do an album…”; there’s a tour coming on and you’re “Oh, you want a new album, why?…” and I’m kinda fighting it now although I still write songs now. I write them when they come to me, not when I have to sit down and write them down. What can I say, that’s about just what I do, it’s a natural kinda thing.
What was the moment to remember from your career?
The bar where we first played is opening a punk club now and Vibrators just played there and I went to see them, and I’ve actually seen some people from those days. And I was telling the people “This is where we first played!”. And in that days all the band played like every week; Adam Ant would play every week in the little cellar bar, X-Ray Spex, The Clash, everybody played once in a week in some little bar and this was our bar. And I remember when we started writing our own numbers, we were in the bar drinking, and as the people were going out, they were singing “Stranglehold”, one of our numbers, and I was like “Hey, they are singing our songs, they’re not singing the other shit…” and it was then when I thought “Wow, they’re singing our songs, we’re doing something”.
How did you felt when Guns’n’ Roses did the cover of your songs. Did you get any money from it?
Yeah, of course…good royalty. But the thing is it had to pay for courtcase to get out of the contract which our own publishers won’t pay us our money. They would’ve took the G’n’R’s money cause it would come to the publishers first and they would’ve took it. So we got to court case to get out of the contract from the publishers, so that costed us. All the Guns n Roses money all that £1 000 each went to the court case, but after that then we started get our money.
Did you ever had a chance to meet them. I think they should pay a tribute to you by playing your song, and after all they were 10 times bigger than you ever were.
Yeah, exactly. There’s a little story how it happened when they first went to Hollywood and they were down and out; didn’t have any furniture and they slept on the floor on the friends house. And there were just two records and one was “Endangered species” and they didn’t even liked the other one (another English band, hippie or something) and they said that they just kept playing the “Endangered species” over and over again and then they learned to play every song. And when “Down On The Farm” thing came together they said “Yeah, we know this old ‘Farm’ song” and so they learned “Down On The Farm” for you. And that’s how it happened… But we did meet Duffy McKegan and once when we were on tour we went around and he invited us to his house and we had a great time, he was a great, great guy.
For the end tell us your plans for the near future?
We’re getting a bit old now, so we’ve gotta concentrate on what we’re doing at the moment and when we get back to the London, we’ve gotta start doing a lot of work for the May tour in Europe, we may even come down again, who knows.
Do you have any kids and familly?
Yeah, I have three grandchildren!
Great! Thanks a lot for this interview, take care…

I got the photos from the UK Subs offical site - www.uksubs.co.uk