How did the band get together?

Greg: The band came about in 1977. We were sick of the shit like The Human League.

Jeff: Crappy pop bands

Andy: We were doing all the songs we liked, which was garage stuff from
the sixties and the assholes around at the time thought we were a new wave
band! We’d say, well no we’re a garage band, and it was unheard of to do
that stuff at the time, so they thought we were weird!

Greg: We don’t want to talk about the other guys that were in the band
because they’re just a bunch of fuckin’ pieces of shit!

What’s the attraction of sixties punk?

Greg: Well let me just clarify. There was no such thing as sixties punk,
it was called Top 40. It wasn’t punk, y’know, the Shadows of Knight had a
top 10 record. In the sixties it’s not underground, it’s not obscure, it’s
nothing, it’s a hit record thing. What we like about it is it’s something
that’s part of our culture, we grew up with it.

Do you think garage music is ever likely to be accepted by the mainstream
in the nineties?

Greg: Like I just said, ‘garage punk’ was a term made up in the 70s and
has nothing to do with the original records that came out 35 years ago.

Andy: As far as it happening today, whatever radio station puts on gets
popular. I mean, people are just dumb machines that listen to the radio or
watch TV and whatever they’re programmed to listen to they’ll listen to.
So I’m sure if they played the Raiders ‘kicks’ constantly on every radio
station over the world they’d be huge again, or if they put it in some
lame movie then it would be popular again. I think it has a lot to do with
what the media will actually get behind. The media’s not hip, so it’ll
never get big.

Greg: Unfortunately everybody in the mass media is a just a bunch of
fuckin’ assholes. They’re too stupid to know what’s good and bad.

Jeff: There’s a select few that know what is good, but they’re not allowed
to use their minds!

Greg: The masses are deprived of stuff like the Music Machine ‘cus they’re
stuffed this shit out of your ass crap which they’re told is good by some
fat old goats.

Jeff: Yeah, like drum machines and shit, that’s real music?

Greg: (laughs)…You have something to say about this Jeff?

Andy: What do you think about drum machines Jeff?

Jeff: No comment

Andy: What do you say, ‘pumpkins bouncing off a house’ (laughs)

Jeff: I really don’t see why people think that that’s music, it’s just
crap

How do you feel the spirit of current garage bands compares with that of
the original bands of the sixties?

Andy: I think that it sounds like a bunch of people that think they are in
the sixties, but really belong nowhere.

Jeff: Most of them belong playing in their garage.

Andy: My observation, after doing it for a few years now, is that a lot of
the bands doing it now should learn more than three chords, ‘cus there’s
minors and 7ths they should learn too!

Greg: They should listen to The Zombies, Kinks, Yardbirds, Stones and The
Beatles.

Andy: Yeah and be a little more clever with melody as well.

Greg: I think a lot of them look at Pebbles and collections like that as
the Bible, but yet they don’t know bands like The Kinks and The Yardbirds
who invented the bands that are on these records.

I assume that playing straight garage rock for all this time would have
been quite limiting, you’ve varied you’re style a bit over the years?

Andy: There was a time when we were doing what we were doing and it got
really pathetic, because every Johnny come lately that saw us play then
decided that ‘oh, we could do that’ and they’d get a band together and
jump on the bandwagon. So we got pretty fed up with that and made a change
as a band because we’re a band not a fad, and we never tried to be a fad,
we just did what we wanted to do. That’s when we did a really shitty
album, The Berlin Wall of Sound. We actually wanted it to sounds more like
The Stooges or The New York Dolls or something and it ended up sounding
like, I don’t know, crap.

Greg: Although I like ‘pills’

Andy: That’s because we recorded that in Germany

Greg: That was recorded with a different drummer and a different time zone

Andy: We then did the blues record. We had to evolve into something else
because that whole scene was getting pretty tacky and shitty, to be
honest. The thing is, as far as a band doing the same thing, you got to
realize you can’t do that! The case in point is The Ramones. Good pals of
ours and everything, four or five great albums, but you listen to the last
couple and its really not the best material they ever did and I think its
because they didn’t try to experiment with other stuff. They tried to
stick to the same formula and that’s why they disbanded, because it wasn’t
fresh anymore. Nobody would buy it because, well, I got the first four and
that’s good enough.

Greg: Well, I think their best album was Subterranean Jungle and nobody
else bought that record.

Jeff: I bought it.

Greg: People put us down for that Berlin Wall of Sound, but people have to
realise that we’re a working band. At the time we were paying bills, debts
and stuff. We didn’t have time to sit and fucking contemplate ‘oh well, we
made this heavy metal record’ well, fuck all these assholes who don’t like
it. If they don’t like it they can fucking drop dead ‘cus I don’t give a
shit. That’s like piss in the wind to me, I don’t give a fuck if someone
likes that record. I’m tired of hearing guys going ‘oh, that was a low
period in their time’ well, they can go fuck off. I’d like see some
fucking guy start a band for twenty years and stick around doing that
shit, tour on the road, making a record, all that fucking crap. Then you
got some asshole telling you it’s fucking crap. Tough shit.

Jeff: All the guys that say they don’t like the record are probably a
bunch of fat squares.

Andy: And bald.

Jeff: Number two, they’re like them wanna-be sixties purist guys ‘its
gotta be totally pure and that’s not pure sixties’. All that wanna-be pure
sixties stuff is a real easy way of panning yourself as an asshole.

Greg: I just wanna let that be clear. I’m not saying that’s a good record
or a bad record, it’s something we did and we don’t fucking care about it.
Guy’s always have to bring it up and I don’t give a shit. I took a shit
last week but I don’t talk about it all the time.

You’ve been knocked for veering into Stonsey rock and blues, but isn’t
that just a logical step for a garage band to move?

Andy: Well, it’s true yeah, we did mature. Also we’re in a unique position
where we get to hang around with guys like Mick Taylor and if you don’t
think that fuckin’ influences you you’re a fuckin’ fool! He’s a great guy
and a fucking brilliant guitar player. We’re in a studio playing, this guy
sits down and grabs my guitar, plugs into my twin reverb and then all of a
sudden he sounds like Exile on Main Street! If you don’t think that’s
going to fuckin’ influence you when you’re making a record, well….

Greg: Yeah, not only that but we’ve done stuff with Bo Diddley, hung out
with BB King and those guys and what’s wrong with that? That’s what the
Stones, Yardbirds, Pretty Things and Downliners Sect were doing back then.

Jeff: Yeah, I got a guitar lesson from BB King!

Greg: That’s what we’re into and I don’t see anything wrong with the
blues, if it wasn’t for that there would be nothing.

Do you listen to any modern garage bands?

Jeff: Well, y’know, I classify things as good or not good. I don’t care if
it came out in 1990, if there’s a good band that sounds good that’s great.
Most of the sixties ‘garage’ guys will say that they don’t like something
even though they do, they’re really just a bunch of phony’s. I really
truly haven’t liked anything that’s come out in the nineties. The stuff
that came out in the sixties was good, but I’m open something good that
comes out in the nineties.

Greg: We are looking for bands for our label, Living Eye Records, that are
qualified and have ‘the sound’, y’know?

Jeff: People send us tapes and we’ll listen to them down here in the
studio and a lot it’s just rubbish, it’s pretty bad, but there are a
couple of bands in Scotland and a girl band in London, The Dirty Burds,
they’re pretty good. There’s some bands.

Greg: Allesandro’s band. (The Embrooks)

Jeff: There’s some bands here and there which are good, that actually have
melodies and can play instruments for real. We are actively looking for
bands to produce and put out on Living Eye. Apart from that, regular
popular music is crap. Shit out of my ass!

Andy: A bunch of machines and a guy screaming into a microphone and that’s
supposed to be poetry?!

Greg: I listen to a lot of forties and fifties bands as well. I listen to
Charlie ‘bird’ Parker and if you don’t think that’s cool, well I can’t
tell you anything.

What’s the garage scene like in America?

Greg: The scene in my house isn’t too good, ‘cus I can’t fit the car in
the garage and I get ice on the windshield.

Jeff: We did that Cavestomp and the highlights were The Remains, The
Mysterians, Sky Saxon was fuckin’ phenomenal, Mark Lindsay was great, Rudi
was there with the original Fuzztones. I haven’t really heard of the other
bands and too be honest they all sounded pretty similar, there’s nothing
really unique about them. As far as the garage scene goes, I guess we
don’t really keep track of it, we’re kind of cliquey I think, kind of stay
in our own bag.

What have been the high points of the Chesterfield Kings career?

Jeff: I liked playing with Bo Diddley, I thought that was great.

Andy: Yeah that was kind of a beacon.

Greg: Nothing really specific as far as highlights, a lot of lowlights. A
lot of pieces of shit in the band we didn’t like, a lot of fuckin’
assholes. Let’s say there were more lowlights than highlights.

Did you envisage the band still being popular after twenty years?

Jeff: No, I never did.

Greg: I never knew we were popular!



What are you up to at the moment, any plans for any UK shows?

Andy: We have a new album (‘where the action is’). We recorded that here
in our studio. It’s a bunch of our favorite songs that we always liked and
always said we’d like to record and never had a reason, or the time, to
do. Now we have our own studio we do whatever the hell we like and don’t
have to worry about anything. So that’s what that album is all about. As
for playing in England, this September we hope to go to Spain, Italy and
the UK to support the album. If they pay us enough.

Jeff: There’s a song on there with Mark Lindsay that we wrote together. It
sounds really cool, kinda like Love-Byrds-Raiders meet The Beatles. We
played with him at Cavestomp and it was really good and he’s a really good
guy. He’s really fun to work with and kind of out of his head, in a good
way! That’s one of the highlights on there, it’s called ‘where do we go
from here’

Andy: So, where do we go from here......