Issue Two Band Interviews - Red Guitars

Red Guitars were a band who emerged from the Hull music scene in the 1980’s and went on to find national acclaim. The photo below was taken by a friend of mine at a Red Guitars gig we went along to see in January 1984 at Spring Street Theatre in Hull, several months after we interviewed them. I can still feel the electricity in the air when I look at that photo even 33+ years later!

Check out the Red Guitars website for more information about the band, but on a personal note I think their 1984 single Marimba Jive was one of the most uplifting tunes of all time. If ever you’re in need of a pick me up its well worth a listen. It works for me every time! I still stand by what I said in the interview below about the Red Guitars 1983 single Good Technology being one mighty powerful, stirring tune too. The lyrics however are probably more relevant today than they were when the song was released. The B side of Good Technology is an instrumental track called Heartbeat Go. Have a listen and I defy you not to get swept along with the powerful jangle of those guitars!

There are many more fantastic gems, videos memorabilia and anecdotes etc on the Red Guitars Facebook page which is regularly updated. I was particularly happy to find a video tucked away in there of a live performance of another of the band's classic tracks - Paris France. It was filmed in Hull in July 2018 and proves the old magic is certainly still there! Well worth a look.

Contrary to what I previously recorded about the interview with the Red Guitars taking place in Hull's historic Spring Bank Tavern, I have been reliably informed by my brother that the  venue was in fact the now sadly demolished historic Oberon. 

Here follows the interview featured in issue 2 of Kindred Spirit.

It would be fair to say that the Red Guitars are the most nationally successful outfit to emerge from the city of Hull within recent times. Regular listeners to night time radio will almost certainly have heard some of the band’s material. John Peel recently featured a 4-track session including “Dive”, “Fact”, “Marimba Jive” and “Paris France”, and both he and David Jensen gave considerable airplay to the band’s debut single - “Good Technology”.

In my opinion “Good Technology” which incidentally reached number five in the independent charts, is undoubtedly one of the finest and most powerful singles to be released in 1983.

Hopefully by the time you cast your eyes over this page the band should have appeared on The Tube. The filming took place on a scrap yard overlooking the River Hull... but please don’t be influenced in any way by this rather unfortunate choice of backdrop!

Although their live act doesn’t quite match up to their highly polished recordings, the genuine enthusiasm displayed overshadows this. On and off stage the five members of the Red Guitars namely Jerry Kidd (vocals), Matt Higgins (drums), Lou (bass), Hallam Lewis (lead guitar) and John Rowley (rhythm guitar) work as a team.

After intruding on one of their rehearsals at the Riverside Studios in preparation for a session on the David Jensen show, we retired to a nearby drinking house with the band. Amidst the chinking of glasses and kicking of tables (just to set the scene) questioning commenced...

How did you first manage to interest John Peel?

Jerry: We sent him a copy of our single.

John: We sent loads of tapes out to all the different people on the radio asking for sessions - and they all returned them saying they just weren’t interested. I mean, “Good Technology” was on the tape, but they obviously don’t listen. The one thing we’ve learned through all this is that demo tapes are absolutely useless, and you can tell any local band that.

Jerry: No demo tapes are okay, providing you spend £1000 on them.

John: There’s no point in sending them anything that isn’t perfectly produced with a glossy packaging, photographs, an image and everything.

Who produced the Peel sessions?

John: A guy called Dale Griffin. He used to be the drummer with Mott the Hoople. He wasn’t very good.

Hal: Oh he was alright, it’s just that we didn’t get on very well with him.

John: The engineers at the BBC were brilliant. The main strength was the fact that there was a really good engineer there.

How long did they give you to get it together?

Jerry: You get an afternoon.

Lou: For getting the drums out!

Hal: It’s really high pressure sort of stuff.

John: We got there at 1 o’clock and by the time we got the drums set up and sounds on all the instruments it was about 4 o’clock. So from then until 11 o’clock at night you’ve got to actually record four songs, mix and produce the four songs and then copy them on to tape.

Jerry: In comparison to that we spent five days recording one track, that was “Fact”- our latest single. So you can see they require a completely different approach.

Did you produce the single yourselves?

Jerry: We’ve got an engineer - Roy - who knows how to work all the machines, but we more or less produced it ourselves.

Can you tell us about the publishing deal you’ve been offered with Tritec?

Hal: Well we haven’t actually got it yet.

Jerry: Tritec have taken most of our material, They’ve taken material from four groups. We don’t really know how they came to pick on us because two of the other groups are Duran Duran and Kajagoogoo!

John: I think what happens is that the record industry demands new products all the time so they just look in the independent charts and say, “That single’s alright, it’s getting a lot of airplay.” Fortunately Peel’s producer John Walters liked our single so much he got it on Round Table.

Did the single create interest amongst any major record companies?

Hal: We haven’t really tried yet.

John: A lot of independents have shown interest, but as far as the major companies are concerned the music industry doesn’t work like that. They’re not interested in one off independent singles. You’ve got to do what Orange Juice, Aztec Camera and the Farmers Boys are doing. You’ve got to do four or five independent singles and sell more each time. The music industry only back safe bets. If they can manipulate a band totally - turn out another Bucks Fizz - they’ll get hold of you, but generally they’re not interested.

Did Good Technology sell well out of Hull?

John: It sold better out of Hull. It had to because it sold nearly 5000 copies. There aren’t that many people in Hull, the music scene isn’t that vibrant. I mean there are some good Hull bands around and I think one of the things that’s gonna happen with the success of our single is that a lot of them are going to start turning stuff out. Nyam Nyam have a single coming out in the new year on Factory and Poor Howard are bringing a single out also.

What sort of a following have you got in Hull?

Jerry: We’ve always been pretty popular locally, which is one of the reasons we made a record in the first place. We’ve been lucky in that respect. But there are other local bands who don’t have that and it’s a great shame. I don’t know what you do. Part of the trouble is that the venues in Hull are really dreadful. They’re dismal and drab, terrible really. There isn’t anywhere that you can go and have a really good time. Like we played at a place called the Leadmill in Sheffield about three weeks ago. That was brilliant!

Are you communists?

John: (Laughing) Not really. The name came from sitting in pubs hour after hour coming up with ridiculous names.

Who writes your material?

Jerry: I suppose we all write together in the sense that we all get together and make it into a song. As a rule Hallam writes the tunes and I write the lyrics, but there’s a lot of exceptions to that rule and everybody contributes.

How would you describe your material?

Hal: There’s a certain element of African rock in it but that’s by no means an overwhelming element.

Jerry: We do have quite a wide range of stuff.

John: Yes we’ve got a lot of different songs and it’s dead important to play them all. We’ve got to the point now where we can start a set with slower, more sinister political songs like “Fact”, then slowly change through so that by the end everybody hopefully is up on their feet and not listening to anything other than the feel of the songs. It’s a deliberate thing to do it this way and to make people listen because there is a narrative and there is something in there.

What are your main aims?

Jerry: We want to be recognised as professional musicians. I mean we want to reach a wide audience and everything that goes with it. The whole reason we’ve stuck at it is because we believe we’ve got some good songs. Somebody doesn’t wave a magic wand and you’re up there in the top 20, especially if you want to speak with your own voice.

But do you want to be classed as TOTP material?

Jerry: That’s a kind of trick question. We don’t aspire to be pop stars. Given that one person in every hundred is going to like a given record, you obviously have to reach as many people as possible to pick up that one in every hundred. We just really want to find the biggest audience we can for our material.

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John Peel described Red Guitars as one of his favourite bands to come out of the 1980s. They recorded two Peel sessions, in 1983 and 1984 and Good Technology was number 11 in his 1983 Festive 50. If you'd like to see the full chart you can view it here. It gives a real flavour of what 1983 was all about musically.

The aforementioned video opens with John Peel stumbling about on the rocks at Spurn Point before transporting us at break neck speed to Hull.

Following a clip of Good Technology he chats with Lou Howard about all things Hull, as they sit in the sunshine overlooking the Humber. Sandwiched in the middle of their conversation is a clip of Lou playing live with her band of the time - Gagarin. I wish I could have seen the whole performance. It looks like pretty dynamic stuff to say the least. 

Here is the "John Peel in Hull" video, which was recorded in 1999 to coincide with the Hull 700 celebrations. 

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