This is an interview with the Boomtown Rats' Simon Crowe from May 2014, transcribed by me from chrissym.co.uk. (some parts may be slightly off, some parts I couldn't hear at all - sorry!)
C: You're listening to Susy Radio with myself, Christine, and I'm in Studio B today talking to Simon Crowe, who's drummer from the Boomtown Rats. Hello, Simon, welcome to Susy Towers!
S: Thanks, Christine. Thank you very much for having me.
C: It's a pleasure to see. Now, we have met before, haven't we? At the Gate in Ifield.
S: Yeah, that's right. Well, last year, when we got together, we needed somewhere to rehearse and we did a dress rehearsal gig, which is where I met you. A private sort of set-up, so we could run through the motions and we had a big gig just a couple of weeks after that at the Isle of Wight Festival.
C: Yeah, so after 27 years, how was that playing at the Isle of Wight with a lot of big names, actually - on the same stage as you, on the same night, there's Bon Jovi, there's Script, (...), and Newton Faulkner who's actually from around here... so how did it feel to be back together after all that time?
S: Uhm, it was great, you know, we got together the early part of last year - the Isle of Wight was the big one to sort of kick it off. It's just great to be back together again, and to play at such a prestigious event such as the Isle of Wight Festival, so, you know, it really... I felt important, it turned out to be very important as well!
C: Yeah, no, it's all good! So, whose idea was it to get back together or was it just a natural evolution?
S: Hard to say exactly how it happened, but Bob's solo band has Pete Briquette who's our bass player and Alan Dunn who plays keyboards with Bob, and then there's myself and Garry had another band with a different frontman, obviously, so we were doing Rat songs and Bob's band does a few Rat songs as well. I don't quite know who got together first, I'm sure there'll be an argument about it.
C: (laughs) Yeah, it was my idea!
S: Yeah, exactly! One of those 'who thought of putting this band together in the first place?'s. Suffice to say, we decided to go for it, then we put out some feelers as to what sort of gigs we could do and the whole thing gradually came together. And we put in a lot of work last year, and, you know, what was amazing was that after very little time we could actually tell that, you know, we were actually going to be able to produce the same sort of sound as we did all those years back, 'cause 27 years had gone by which is... you know, no small amount of time, and the way you play things changes, you know, as you grow older and or you, you know, move through life - you're never gonna play a song in exactly the same way, but essentially the sound, the very what I say is a very powerful sound of the Boomtown Rats just came to be because the same people were in the room together, and that was a very important thing for us, we wanted to make sure that the band sounded as good as possible so, you know, we put a lot of work into it and prepared for the Isle of Wight as best we could.
C: Yeah, absolutely, and I've got a quote from Sir Bob, he says, "I just feel it's time to re-Rat and go back to Boomtown for a visit." and I couldn't agree more, I can't wait to see you at GuilFest, which we'll talk about in a bit. You've got an EP out, Ratlife, which I've listened to, and I like the mixture of things on that, because you've got 'Ratified' which is a bit more heavy, and 'The Boomtown Rats' is a little bit dubstyley, then we've got 'Back to Boomtown', the remix and then the ballad 'Ratlife' which has got sax and keyboard in so it's just a sort of example of the new stuff that you're doing. So are you actually working on a new album as well or just at your gigs, is it mostly (...)?
S: No, this summer we'll be going out and doing festivals. We're not actually working on new material and such at the moment, but you know, that was really to just... put a mark on the map and say "this is the sort of material we do now". It would be easy to go back and try to sort of replicate some of the hits of the past, which is I think what a lot of bands might try and do.
C: Yeah, but this isn't that, like, it's different-
S: Yeah, it's not that, and, you know, hate it or love it or whatever... it is what it is, and when we go out and play we'll be doing mostly the hits which people hopefully will recognise.
C: Oh, they will, they will. And that's what the public wants to see, isn't it? Plus a few new ones in there too.
S: Yeah, I mean, we do 'Rat Trap', 'I Don't Like Mondays', 'Mary of the 4th Form', 'She's so Modern', 'Like Clockwork' - you know, the better-known songs from back in the day, the late seventies, so if you're old enough you might remember it.
C: I do remember it. We're not talking about ages, though, are we? No, they're just numbers, aren't they? Some things get better with age, like wine and the Boomtown Rats! And really, that's all you need. You add the two together and that is really good. GuilFest, I'm coming onto that now, Friday 18th of July, so for the Susy listenership, this is in our area. Personally, I love GuilFest, and the great thing for me is the Boomtown Rats have never been there because you weren't reformed then. GuilFest has been going for I think 20 years.
S: Only 20 years, woah.
C: I (...), yeah! So that's gonna be great. So, the GuilFest people will have never seen the Boomtown Rats.
S: Really looking forward to it, it should be great fun.
C: Yeah. So, your first festival date's coming at 25th of May in Devon, and then you've got quite a lot of festivals. Have you just focused on the festivals rather than the small gigs at the minute? ... the way you're gonna go?
S: Yeah, I think what's really great about, you know, the modern era is that we have a sort of festival culture which was only in a very embryonic stage way back in the seventies, you know, we had the sort of Glastonbury and Reading and Knebworth and so on. We didn't have the number of festivals you can attend now, up and down the country on every summer weekend, it's amazing. I think it's a very important culture that keeps music live, it gets people out, it gets people enjoying themselves, mixing together. I think it's a fantastic thing that we have because in this day and age there's a temptation to sit at home and watch a screen or listen to, you know, digital recordings which are amazing, but they're not the same as live music.
C: They're not, no. I know Glastonbury is covered all over the television so, so much it almost thinks 'why am I going there?' - but yeah, live music for me is a big thing and I love festivals.
S: It's quite heartwarming to think that people want to go out and see live music, so, you know, it's been important for us that we do that as a band, we put ourselves about at the festivals, and then, you know, later in the year we do an autumn tour up and down the country which is something we did last autumn as well and so we will go back and do (...) of the cities that we didn't do the last time, as well as the major cities. So that'll be something to look forward to.
C: Yeah, yeah, and across the largest ever audiences you must've had was Live Aid - 72,000 people. I know it's a long time ago - obviously Sir Bob has brought the profile up hugely for himself but also the band.
S: Absolutely, I mean the thing about Live Aid was it was such a momentous occasion that I don't think any of us knew quite how big it would be, going into it, the same way when the Band Aid single took off, you know, and we turned up to do the video and suddenly everybody's there and it's all happening. You talk about 72,000 people, but actually, around the world, I don't know how many millions must've been watching.
C: Well, they estimate 1.9 billion.
S: That's an audience!
C: It was because other countries joined in - I remember it myself very vividly, and I think a lot of people remember where they were when they were watching it at a certain age.
S: The thing about that is that there's been nothing to come close to it.
C: Not ever, no. Never again.
S: And it is part of the history books now, you know that gig... and it was just fantastic and amazing and, you know, very humbling to think that we were a part of it. As a band, I mean, obviously, you know, Bob was responsible for organising the whole thing but as a band it was just an amazing thing to be at.
C: I can imagine, yeah. Well, thank you so much for popping down to Susy! I shall so look forward to seeing you at GuilFest, getting the Boomtown Rats up there and hearing them play live is gonna be sensational, thank you!
S: Excellent. Thank you very much indeed, Christine.
Mr. Crowe