Date of Interview: February 2008

In this Stone Gods interview frontman Richie Edwards discusses success, avoiding The Darkness pop crowd and promises that Stone Gods will tour, tour, tour…Is the immediate plan to be putting yourselves out on the road?Richie: “Yeah. I mean, we did a small tour in January which was fantastic. It went really well and we basically just want to continue in the same vein. We’re hoping to squeeze in a support tour in March and then some more of our own dates in May and the June through September it’s off

around Europe doing the festivals. Maybe finish off the new year with another little run round the UK and get to some of the countries we haven’t yet visited. It is going to be a case of touring, touring, touring and getting ourselves playing to as many people as we possibly can.”Is it weird being back to, shall we say, more ‘intimate’ venues after all the arenas and flying white tigers?Richie: “It’s great, actually. I mean, don’t get me wrong – playing an arena is great and playing a festival to 85,000 people all going nuts, that’s pretty cool as well. But this tour we did in January, it really was fantastic to be playing these smaller venues. You’ve got the audience right in front of you, you can see the whites of their eyes and you can interact with them. You get a vibe of how things are going that you just don’t get from the stage of an arena. If you’re up there and there’s a good twenty feet between the stage and the start of the audience, you have no idea what’s going on out there. It’s really difficult to get the vibe, whereas when you’re onstage in a 200 or 300 capacity club, you can see everything that’s going on, right to the back of the room. I think it’s fantastic – you feed off the audience and they feed off you. It’s a far more intense experience and we all absolutely loved it. Just getting hot and sweaty and really feeding off the vibe of the crowd, it’s great.”Do you think Stone Gods can come close to the success of The Darkness? Does that even matter?

Richie: “It doesn’t matter to be honest and it also depends on how you measure success. My idea of success for this band would be for us to be at a level where we can carry on touring and we can carry on making records and if we could maintain that I’d be immensely happy – if things get too big too quickly, things can start to go pear-shaped, y’know? I certainly don’t think we’ll appeal to the crossover pop audience that The Darkness did, the kinda Saturday morning kids’ TV brigade. I don’t think we’ll pick up those fans at all, which to me is no bad thing really. Because once you start appealing to that audience, the only thing they’re really interested in is the next thing that’s coming along, whereas the core rock audience – which is hopefully what we’ll appeal to – is more real fan-based. If they like you then they’ll latch onto you and support you forever and that’s really important to us. As long as we have that core audience that allows us to tour and make records, we’ll be happy.”

So, will anyone expecting a Darkness Mk II from Stone Gods be disappointed?

Richie: “Yes is the short answer – we’re certainly not The Darkness Part 2. Some of the same influences are there but it is a very different beast really. For a start there’s no way that I could ever sing like Justin and his unique voice was a big part of The Darkness’ sound really. Even if we were playing The Darkness songs they’d sound completely different by the time I’d finished with them anyway. But the general sound of Stone Gods I’d say is far edgier than The Darkness was.”

How would you describe Stone Gods’ music?

Richie: “Because there’s four individuals we have a very diverse set of musical tastes and I think that’s reflected in the songs we write. We’re certainly not a one-trick pony. There is definitely that classic rock element in there. There are also folky elements if you will, there’s some out and out metal in there. The album is done and finished and ready to go and it’s a very, very diverse album. There’s a whole range of styles on there and that reflects the way that we wrote, which was the four of us just sat around with an acoustic guitar and a pad of paper, throwing sh*t at the wall and seeing what stuck. It was far more about writing songs than it was about writing big riffs and they just took the shapes they took. We didn’t sit down and go: ‘Okay, we need to be heavier than The Darkness’, we just let it evolve as it would. I’d say in essence we are a heavy rock band but there’s a lot of different elements on the album.”

Your debut EP Burn The Witch is actually out today – are you nervous? Excited?

Richie: “Hugely excited actually. I got sent a couple of copies last week and they look awesome. I’m expecting a phone call later and I believe – I read in an email this morning – that it’s actually already sold out. Which is pretty cool. I mean, it’s a limited edition release anyway. We

just wanted to get something out there and get a bit of interest going but I understand it has already sold out, which is pretty good. I should point out, you can still get it by download though…”

Nice plug, sir. You say the album’s finished – do you have a title and release date yet?

Richie: “We haven’t got a title yet. We’ve got a whole pad of A4 of band name ideas that didn’t quite stick but there’s some fantastic album titles on there so we’re going to go back through all that and pick a title. Release-wise it’s going to be this summer to tie in with the start of the festival season. What we’re hoping to do at this stage – and we are still putting the final plans together – is get a proper single release out in May and the album probably in mid-June. That’s the plan at the moment.”

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Robin Goodridge Robin Goodridge I met up with Robin about 3 years ago on a night out with some drummers and ended up in an after hours club in Camden town. We talked about the Bush days, why a UK band which was massive in the USA and would play in front of 80,000 people struggled in the UK, what made him come back to the UK and losing his passion for drums. I told him we need to get together and do an interview it took us this long to get it sorted out! Since that night Robin has given up London life for the fresh air and seaside of (my home town) Brighton and has got a new gig with The Stone Gods. We met up after the band opened the Download main stage. Let’s go back to the beginning of the 90s, when you joined Bush. Yeah, I wasn’t the original drummer, Spencer was the original drummer and he went on to play with Morrissey. I went down and saw the band and I loved them. I went in the studio in my usual way and told them that I should be their drummer. I auditioned and got the gig and we started writing songs.  They had a couple of songs written and a few I didn’t really rate so Gavin, Nigel, Dave and myself all started writing together. ‘Everything Zen’ came out of the first session and there was an identity appearing in the band, the rest is history as they say.  We got very lucky with a record deal in America.  We were a very good live band; we went out and did our job playing five shows a week, 78 dates on an American tour. That’s how we achieved what we did more than anything. In American you would be out there playing in front of 40-50,000 people and then in England it was the complete opposite. Why do you think that was? A lot of it was politics to be honest.  I think the press in the UK were just really upset that everyone was going on about us in America.  In 1994/95 we were the biggest band in American and it upset everyone because Oasis were doing everything over here and it was like ‘No, we want Oasis to be exported to America’. The Americans were bouncing back saying ‘No we’re not bothered about them, we like Bush’. This went on for quite a while and I think once that happened I think everyone got very entrenched.

A lot of people like Steve Sutherland, just flatly refused to get involved in us, so we basically became a rock band for the rock fans.  Thankfully Kerrang and the true rock magazines, they came in and were like ‘No, we dig it’, it was a really hard time for English rock bands, 1995, it was really tough. There wasn’t anybody of our ilk so they were happy. It’s become so much more entrenched now; rock is in another world now, whereas at that time you couldn’t hear rock music.  There was Radio 1 Rock Show and then regional Rock Radio. I mean you’re never going to get massive playing on regional Rock Radio.  Now there’s so much more out there, so many more places to go out and find bands, that particular scenario wouldn’t happen.  If you went out to America and got massive you would be massive over here in 2 weeks because people would just be going for it. Did that annoy you guys? No, not really.  It was boring because politics shouldn’t get involved with music but in the greater scheme of things that’s not such a big deal.  I loved the fact that America embraced us, to be honest with you, everywhere in Europe, we were in Germany, the Netherlands, Northern Europe we did great. Southern Europe, not the same – Spain never really worked out for us. Japan, Australia really good, it was just the UK, Spain and France that didn’t. No-one really understands why nobody likes bands in France and Spain.  We did really well, we worked hard, we did loads of festivals in Europe, we played Reading. I thought we were great that day; we got a lot more kudos out of playing it. We played Glastonbury twice and got a lot of kudos out of that, but no-one really wanted to give it up for us and when you’ve got an agent in American going ‘Why are you bashing your head against a rock when you can just come over here and play wherever you like to 30,000 people?’. The Internet never really was in force in that day, it made things a lot different.  We were lucky.  For god’s sake when we played in America there was only MTV and VH1 and we had 3 videos an hour on MTV at one point, which would never happen now.  There’s so much diversity now I don’t think we would ever have been as big but we were really big because MTV just loved us that much that they kept playing our videos and that was the only source of TV access rock music.  In three years it completely changed, there was MTV1, MTV2, it spread into a thousand different channels. So you moved out to America. I was in LA for four years, It’s a funny place, its great when you’re working, coming in and out of it, a few days in your house, a bit of sushi, then off for another tour; I really liked it, but when Gavin pretty much said ‘I want to go and do a solo record’ I just thought I don’t want to live in LA waiting around for Gavin to decide what to do, so I moved back to London where I was from and hung out with my mates; I had 10 years where I didn’t see my best pals very often, so I thought I’d go back to London and get on with other things.  I was right, because here we are nine years later and Bush still haven’t done anything, I would have been sitting in LA.

So Bush has not broken up. No. It isn’t finished, 3½ years ago Gavin contacted everyone and wanted to do another Bush record but the songs he’d written were as a solo artist. Everyone listened to it and got together and we were like ‘Gavin you’ve written a solo album, just go and release a solo record’.  It’s like you’ve got a pair of trousers and you’re trying to cram three other people into one pair of jeans, it’s just not going to happen.  Just go and do your thing and if and when we want to make a record that everybody’s happy to do we’ll do it but otherwise it doesn’t make any sense. I would be much more interested in just going out and playing the hits for an hour and 20 minutes, that would be great fun because I wouldn’t have to do anything, I’m playing it as per the record, if that was ok with everybody, there would be not creative input because that was done back in the day, you’re not going to mess around with your hits, so from that point of view I would like to do it. There is an inevitability about it but it’s not my priority now because it has already happened, what I want to happen now is I want Stone Gods to be a big successful rock band in their own right. So after some time out you joined up with Spear Of Destiny. Tell us about that? I was in Bush from 1992 and there was a lot of tours, a lot of stuff, four albums – it was nice. After Bush I had a couple of years where I didn’t do a lot, I did a few sessions, did favours for people and then I started touring with Spear of Destiny and I found I really enjoyed touring again, it was easier, it wasn’t 75 dates, it was 20 dates in the UK, Europe. And the musicians were amazing – Craig Adams (Sisters of Mercy and The Mission), Adrian Portas, Kirk Brandon. I was like ‘Yeah I’d love to play with those guys’ and that turned into a really great re-entry into touring again, without all the dinosaurs and dragging trucks around, it was just four musicians, a couple of techs and a splitter bus and I loved it, I got back my passion for playing again.  There was a lot of baggage with Bush, when a band gets the size of Bush everything gets really big, it’s like why can’t we just do a small show without all the rig? Well it costs £10,000 to get everyone together and it’s like ‘Well how does that work, I’ll set my drums up’.  It got to that point where it becomes a giant machine you’ve got to start up.  It’s cool, but you can’t do things for fun. Vince this tech guy who did the guitars and the drums, we had such a laugh and I thought I’m all right, I can play and I enjoyed it and I don’t need all that other crap. Did you doubt yourself?

I didn’t doubt my playing, I lost being right there at the front line, you’re just used to sitting in this bubble and then get plonked on the stage and play to 30,000 people.  Everything was done for you – I never tuned my drum kit – I just thought I don’t really enjoy this anymore. When I got back into it I opened up flight cases in the lock up and I’d go ‘I didn’t know there was all this gear in here’, I was finding snare drums and things, we’d obviously been sent or bought and I just either never used them or I’d use them on one day and then go ‘No I don’t like that’. It was great fun going out on the Spear Tour and saying ‘I know, I’ll take that snare drum I found the other day, I’ll take that as a spare and see what it’s like’. I got back in touch with what it’s about, I really enjoyed it, and from that it made me able to get involved properly and be creative again.

Now you’re with the Stone Gods how did that gig come around?

Well, Ed, the original drummer, (ex-Darkness drummer) got an injury about 18 months ago so my first ever gig with Stone Gods was Download last year. I took the job just for a three week tour and it just kind of turned into the way the band played, they really enjoyed it and they asked if I was interested in making it a full time thing.

I have a certain way of playing and a certain way I like to play with other people and if they’re open and want to do that then that’s great and that’s how it happened, they were really happy to adapt the music slightly to let me do what I like to do as well, from a feel point of view, because a lot of it was quite straight. If you listen to it, it’s quite straight and I like to have a little more groove in it than was on the first record.

With the success you’ve had with Bush and now Stone Gods, what advice would you give guys and girls who want to get into this business?

I read your interview with Dave Mattacks who is a bit of a historical gem. I was in a blues band when I was about 18 and Dave Mattacks came to see us. He was playing with Richard Thompson and he had three months off and he nicked my job for 3 months in the blues band I was in. The guys were all in their early 40’s and I was about 19 and he became friends with them and ended up doing my gig which was cool. I went to see them play, I love Dave Mattacks, he’s a legendary great technician, sound, time; unbelievable.  So I thought, fair enough, if I’m going to lose my seat for a few months I better go and watch what he’s doing, so I can get my head around it.  I was playing in a blues band but I was playing more like the drummer in the Fabulous Thunderbirds.  Dave Mattacks told me when I talked to him about stuff later on, the name of the game is to find the music that you really do play well and play that.  Because a lot of drummers make the mistake of trying to be a rock drummer, funk drummer, jazz drummer, they never get to the real depth and roots of one particular discipline and if you can get that discipline and really study it that’s where you start. If you start there you’ve got a much better chance of getting on in the world of music I think.

Words Mike Dolbear

www.mikedolbear.com

Monday, 06 July 2009 12:25

“We didn’t exactly play it safe on this record,” explained Stone Gods Dan Hawkins concerning their debut album ‘Silver Spoons And Broken Bones’. “There was definitely a possibility that we would confuse the fuck out of everyone and it could’ve really backfired but we wanted to put out the best songs that we had written and that was the main agenda really.”

It’s certainly a chord that has struck with their fans over the last twelve months, from supporting Velvet Revolver to a stunning slot opening for Airbourne towards the end of the life of London’s legendary Astoria Venue, to heading back out on the road on their own headline tour alongside Hate Gallery and the Black Spiders. At every stop this band win people over, and surprise more than a few who perhaps expect the band to sound akin to The Darkness, for it was out of the ashes of that band that the Stone Gods were forged.

Tazz Stander spoke with Hawkins on the final night of their UK tour in London, looking back on the past, and into the future with one of the UK’s brightest ascending stars.

Lets start off with your tour.  It’s the last night of your tour tonight, how has it been?

Dan:  It is yeah, yeah.  It’s been awesome, it really has.  The last headline tour we did, the venues were generally about half full, maybe a bit more than that in places and a bit less in others but on this tour there has only been 2 venues that haven’t sold out and those have been pretty close like 20 people short of selling out.  It’s been great and this is probably the last headline tour we will do on this album so we are just enjoying it really.  The last bunch of touring we did the album hadn’t yet come out so we had our fans come along and they still didn’t know the album so this time around, everyone has got the album and they’re all singing along and just enjoying it really.  It’s nice to hear people singing the songs back.

Can you tell me what the plans are for a new album yet?

Dan:  As soon as this tour finishes we will be cracking into it.  Last week was the first time we showed each other our ideas as we all write separately and then bring all our ideas in together and then work on them from there.  I’m really happy with the stuff that I have been writing and I’ve made a conscious decision not to leave it because I have made that mistake in the past where I have waited until it was time for the new record and then you have to rush into it.  Every spare second I have had for the last year I have been writing.

So you have quite a bit of a back catalogue then?

We have got a lot more ready to go before we have even got together than we had for the album we are on at the moment.

Awesome.  Musically, is it going to be much of the same sounds or very different?

Dan:  I think so yeah.  I mean, it will still have the identifiable traits you know.  We are not going to go on a musical journey and change to a prog rock band – when we made the last record we got it together in the studio and it was at the end of it when we were looking back that we were, ‘ah right, so that’s what we sound like’.  Since then we have changed a lot.  The dynamics in the band have changed – we have got a new drummer, Robin and we have toured loads.  You get a much better idea of what people are best at.  In the end, basically, when the next record comes out, people will immediately be able to say, ‘oh right, that’s Stone Gods’.  It will have more of a defined sound probably.

If the Darkness was a roller coaster ride how would you describe your Stone Gods success so far?

Dan:  More of like a Ferris wheel I suppose, a very gradual ascent to the heady heights we hopefully will achieve.  I suppose it has only just started so …

It’s gathering momentum.

Dan:  Exactly but it’s moving – that is the main thing.

How challenging has it been for Richie to move from bass to vocals?

Dan:  He has found it pretty effortless really.  He surprised me and if he surprised me then it would surprise a lot of other people involved.  I knew that he could do it but I didn’t realise how quickly he would get it.  I remember looking at some of our live footage from one of our earliest gigs and it was the first time that I was watching him as a front man and he has got that thing were he immediately puts the audience at ease.  He is not like a rabbit in the headlights or not trying too hard.  He has just got this thing about him which just instantly shows that he is in command of what he is doing.  You cant buy that – to be honest, I don’t even think you can build up to that.  If you’re a musician, someone like me, I spent years until I was comfortable being on stage and I think Richie from the get go was born to do it.

Fundamentally, I know you have had a few changes in the line up but would you agree that Stone Gods is the Darkness without Justin?

Dan:  It’s not, no.  Not at all.

Was there no way that Justin would’ve joined band when he came back into the public eye?

Dan:  No, no way at all.  The band is a collection of the influences of the people that are in the band and we would never sound anywhere near as heavy if Richie was in the band.  A lot of the big riffing comes from him and we probably wouldn’t sound as punky as we do if Toby wasn’t in the band and also, you can never build and write songs to build around Richie’s voice.  Its not like we are playing a bunch of backing tracks.  It was always going to be a new venture.

Have your influences changed from when you were in The Darkness?

Dan:  I think my influences are still the same.  I don’t think you can underestimate the influences of the people in the band regardless of it I am a main song writer in the band – to be honest, on this album it’s pretty level pegging really and everyone contributed.  I have had to change the way I play because I am not a rhythm guitarist anymore whereas in The Darkness I was very much a rhythm guitarist.  Occasionally I would step out to play a bit of lead, it was always something that demanded a little bit of a more melodic sound and I would then do the lead solo at that point but I’m not really playing rhythm in Stone Gods, its a new thing for me to play actual lead guitar – I’m still getting used to it to be honest.

You enjoying it though?

Dan:  I am, its a completely different challenge.  It’s taken a while to be perfectly honest to feel comfortable initially because I’ve always been more inclined to stand in the back and just hammer out the riffs.

Progress!

Dan:  Absolutely yeah, so where my rhythm guitar sound was a key part of The Darkness now Richie’s heavy rhythm guitar sound and that heavy kind of chugging and the more metal sound is the key part to Stone Gods so you can see how the musical shifts have happened.

What do you think of Hot Leg?

Dan:  I think they’re ok.  I went to see them in Brighton and I really enjoyed it.  We are on good terms now and he will hopefully be down here tonight.  There aren’t enough decent rock bands out there for me anyway so regardless of what kind of guise they’re in as long as they’re doing something that is good I tend to like it.

Musically, who would you compare Stone Gods to?

Dan:  That’s a tough one.  I couldn’t say one band I think.  I would say Metallica, AC/DC possibly in places but not really, I don’t know, there is a 3rd band missing there, like a tune missing, that I would add to that list.  The amount of melody that we have in verses, the hard rock is quite unique I think.

I would’ve have said Thin Lizzy, The Cult and Metallica.  I think it was Metal Hammer that said Thin Lizzy, The Cult and Wolfmother but I don’t get the Wolfmother bit?

Dan:  I don’t get the Wolfmother bit either but then again I don’t get Wolfmother (laughing).  A song like ‘Defend or Die’ is quite hard to pinpoint really.  There are really heavy elements to what we do and then there are also tracks like ‘Lazy Bones’ which is like American High School fucking stuff so its quite hard to pin it down really.

Mentioning ‘Defend or Die’, you have a riff in there that sounds just like ‘Am I Evil’ from Diamond Head  …

Dan:  Which riff is that?

(Drummer Robin is squatting in the corner digging in his bag and he turns around and sings out the riff for me …. saved by the drummer!!)

Dan:  I’m not familiar with Diamond Head.

(Robin then climbs over me saying that he just needs to get something out of his ‘man bag’ next to me)

Talking a bit about the album though, I just enjoy it for its diversity, even the breakdown in ‘Don’t drink the water’ is ingenious.

Dan:  Exactly yeah.  We didn’t exactly play it safe on this record – it has covered a lot of ground.  There was definitely a possibility that we would confuse the fuck out of everyone and it could’ve really backfired but we wanted to put out the best songs that we had written and that was the main agenda really.

I’m really looking forward to the next album.  On this tour you have had support from Hate Gallery  and Black Spiders.  What have you thought of both of them?

Dan: They have been brilliant, they really have.  I’m not just saying it but we are really big fans of both bands, we are now.  We were given options by our Agent as to who would be suitable in support and we picked them so we obviously liked them enough to have them on tour with us and they are just brilliant.  I really like Hate Gallery’s last single New God.

New God is their next single to be released – The idiots was their first single that was released off this album.

Dan:  You do know them well then! (laughs) but yeah, I really like the song New God, I fucking love it, its awesome.  Black Spiders are just a phenomenal band, filthy fuckers.  There aren’t many bands like either of them in this country at all.

What would your ultimate tour line up be?

Dan:  Some of my favourite bands have been some of my favourite people and there is a really good camaraderie with these 3 bands on tour together so at this level I would definitely not have changed this line up for anything really but at the higher end  I couldn’t really say for sure right now.

You playing Download this year?

Dan:  Yeah.  Are you working it?  There is fucking chaos in that press pit.

ZZ Top, I just want to sit on their laps and stroke their beards (laughing)

Dan: (laughing) I’m sure they wont mind that.

Any other festivals booked?

Dan:  It’s still early days.  It is around this time now that bigger bands are being confirmed for festivals but the smaller band like us are very last minute, its a bit of a dog fight, its a scrap for the bottom bills.  I know our Agent will be pushing as hard as he can for Reading and Leeds, Isle of Wight and T in the Park but we just have to see really.  It’s tough out there now because so many bands take advantage of the festival season rather than tour as its not cost effective to tour and that is why you have so many good bands on the bills for festivals whereas it used to be bands that you might not have heard of up until about 4pm in the afternoon, whereas now, maybe the first band is one that you have not heard of and the rest are big names.

Any European tours?

Dan:  Definitely.  We are hoping to do a Scandinavian tour towards the end of the year …

Hate Gallery could take you …

Dan:  Hopefully yeah, its looking positive

(at this point Hate Gallery start sound checking and they play New God – Dan then gets a bit vague as he sings along to the song!)

Dan, anything else you want to depart with me on?

Dan:  Just come and see us play live as I think we have won a lot of people over with the live shows.

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