Interview taken from HermAphrodite #2.

I swiftly change the subject - somewhat foolishly in retrospect, to musical influences on the band. Directed at Gaz the song-writer. Who checks the length of tape I have left, and prepares to go through them chronologically. Which in itself should have warned me. Yet at that moment I was instructing Tree that as he liked just nodding to what Gaz was talking about in interviews , he should just do that. Though it probably wouldn’t be picked up on the tape. So he should say when he was nodding. All clear. We begin;

Gaz - ( rattling them off ) “ We’ll go Bill Hailey, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, I’ve got a downer on Elvis, but he was pretty good ( small break as we ( I ) discuss the prospect of Gaz’s chin length hair in a quiff; Tree, initially absorbed, declares himself to be ‘noddin’ off’; the list is resumed ); early Sixties now - Beatles, the Stones, Kinks, The Who, The Pretty Things, The Yardbirds; ooh, Seventies, dodgy time - The Kinks again because they got better ( Tree - “ I’m noddin’ ” ), Bowie, Bolan, The Sweet, NOT Mud, Sparks ( Tree - “ Huge nod.” ), Iggy, Stooges, New York Dolls, Dead Boys, Pistols, Clash, Buzzcocks and The ‘tones ( Tree - “ I’m noddin’ through all them.” ), Stiff Little Fingers ( Tree - “Yers, a BIIIG nod for them” ), Adam Ant ( NB who they’ve met - cool - and who wants to produce their album - very cool ), The Clash again ( now Tree’s just being distracting ), Cuddly Toy, Television, Patti Smith, Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers, XTC, The Smiths, Madonna -she rules, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur, Stone Roses, um, no-one new. That’s it.”

Tree - ( pause ) “Is there anyone left that I can like ?”

Gaz - “Yeah, Slade.”

You think he’s kidding, don’t you...? Uh-uh.

Tree - “ My sister was into The Osmonds, and I hated The Osmonds, and I wanted to rebel against me sister, and like Slade, so I liked Slade. Then me sister moved onto Status Quo , but she was a fraud - she didn’t really like them and I knew she didn’t really like them, it was just cos her friends liked them. And one day, I came downstairs, and my sister was with all her Quo friends, in the living room talking about Quo, and they all had their Quo jackets on, and me sister had just joined this Quo group - I hated it. I thought, ‘I have to show her up...’ so in front of all her mates I said “ You’re not a Quo fan, Linda” - her name’s not Sharon by the way, it ‘s Linda, that was another lie - she says “ Yes I am”, I said “ You’ve only just been into Quo in the last week”, and she’s like always been a Quo fan, trying to put this one over on the gang... I said “ No you’re not - call yourself a Quo fan, you haven’t even got their new single ‘Night and Day’ - I just made this name up... And she went like “ Yes I have - well I haven’t got it yet but I’m gonna buy it tomorrow, I’ve heard it.” And I went, “ Oh, that’s funny, cos I’ve just completely made it up.” And she went bright red, and all her mates just left her, and never talked to her again, and I was dead proud of myself.”

( appreciative pause )

Gary - “ I’ve remembered some I left out...”

You think he’s kidding, don’t you...? Uh-uh.

And so we go back to Phil Spector and the Ronettes, then Ike and Tina Turner...

Then Gaz remembers that, of bands of recent years, he does like Wilson.

Oh, and the Super Furry Animals.

I suggest the Manics.

Gary - “Yeah. We like the Manics. And Suede.”

Tree suggests Radiohead.

Gary - “And Radiohead. ( he thinks about it some more ) Oh, just anyone.”

Tree - “ Not Cast?”

Gaz - “ Not Cast.”

But then, with all the bands he’s stated, I don’t think he’d have the time for Cast. Because each of his baby loves have a certain essence in common with each other - and the bands which he cannot see it in are simply dismissed. And when I point out that most people have about three musical influences, Gaz tells me that that’d be boring. Not diverse enough. And that it’s that variance of influences which make people into the individuals which they are - they can all act as a positive stimulus.

Gaz - “ It’s an old cliché, but even films you hate or books you’ve read and wish you hadn’t will have an effect on you, because you’ll think, consciously or otherwise, I will not be like that, and so you try not to be the music equivalent of them.”

When, later in the evening, I manage to turn the conversation to the terror that is ‘Teletubbies’, Gaz finds it quite disturbing, as this is a young-children’s television programme of which every element is included on the basis of the gauged reactions of its test toddler audience. He doesn’t like the idea of small children solely being shown things which they want to see ( no trains, for example, as it was found they do not appeal ), and manages to extract a hypothetical conspiracy theory from it. He appears very wary of anything which involves losing your individual identity to the mass of society. And is acutely aware of the ease with which this can happen in the music industry.

Gaz - “ It’s a strange thing, because you feel it, even this far down the line, people moulding you - trying to guide you to become something, and they’re knockin’ what the original charm was, slightly, bit by bit if you pay attention to them. I’ve got people on my back saying you should be more like this, you should do this, you shouldn’t do this, and that, in their mind-frame, is what a great band is, but it isn’t necessarily what mine is. If, as musicians, we wanted to go to America, and work in the same sort of places as American stadium bands do - if we practise really hard, we could do that as musicians I think, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you wanna do it.”

You’d lose yourself in that.

Gaz - “ Somehow, somewhere along the line, some band - maybe we should do it if I’m so clever - should figure out how to communicate to as many people as want to see you when it means something to them, without necessarily having to make it completely emotionally empty. Over so many thousand it does become a bit, ( he searches for the right word ) non-committal.”

And its the communicating to people, connecting with them, that’s so important to him.

Gaz - “ If you’re not going to communicate with people then you shouldn’t have words on your records, you should just have tunes and the singer should hum it.”

Though you can express emotions through music with no voice parts, its much harder to articulate exact feelings. And if you’re going to have lyrics on a song, they have to mean something. And yes, The Beekeepers lyrics are personal. When I asked Gaz of this, I was thinking in particular of his tart lines to ‘Suffer’;

‘I only want to see you, I only want to see you, I only want to see you suffer...’

Gaz - “ They are bits of my life, snapshots.” ( he goes quiet, and Tree cuts in. )

Tree - “ Would you show me your diary ?”

me - ( I think about it for a moment ) “ Some bits of.”

Tree - “ That’s it, ‘some bits’; each song’s like a diary.”

Gaz - “ Though I am more answerable in choosing to put it on a stage and on a record, whereas your diary is your own. ”

But the choosing to express it in that format and then getting some sort of response, validates the whole exercise. And when Gaz talks of the reason he can see in common behind each of his adored bands making music, its clear he’s been bitten by the same something himself.

Gaz - “ The reason the Sex Pistols wrote ‘Pretty Vacant’ is the same reason The Who wrote ‘I Can’t Explain’, they’ve got the same driving force, which is just basically frustration. Which is also why boys figure more in dumb Rock’n’Roll, I think girls are a bit above it, you know, mentally. It’s all we can do, so that’s what I’m doing.”

It’s why they make their records. And it’s why they’re touring. They love it. And though the rest of the band do seem to find it tiring ( and Jamie misses his own bed ), Gaz relishes it. And also finds that a job which involves his playing at night validates his sleeping a lot during the day.

Gaz - “ So now, my mum’s like “Oh, you must be really tired ” and I’m like ‘Yes, I had to go onstage for ( ooh ) forty minutes last night...’”

If he finds it difficult, he doesn’t show it. I think Gaz’s love for what he’s doing counter-balances anything other negative aspects. Though he does look upon it differently to the other members of the group.

Tree - “ Being a drummer is a whole different ball-game to being a songwriter, cos basically, my soul’s not into it, because I didn’t write them. I can’t take that from him, or even share it, because it’s not mine.

( Gaz nods. Emphatically. )

Unless he writes a song about me.”

Gaz - ( laughs ) “ I’ve got a beautiful little acoustic song about Tree, but that’s just for me and him when we move into our cottage together...”

>>> Part 3

Last revised: 26/07/01