STACK #152 Jun 2017

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tour the album? I always plan to come out there, I always do. I’ve got two daughters who live out there. Whereabouts? Perth, in WA.  I always love coming out there. It’s just one of those places that in the early days never got toured, and now all of a sudden it’s always on our roster. It’s on our f-cking list of places to go and it’s become as important to play there as it has London. That’s good to hear. It has to be. It’s important to play there – we want to take our records all over the world.  We’ve always wanted to do that. When we released Telling Stories we never got a chance to go to Australia, but the last three albums we have. It’s proving beneficial to us and to the people out there. Do you ever get fed up with the front rows of pissed up 50-year-old ex-pats jumping around to Sproston Green? Do you know what? That’s just like playing Manchester on a Friday night. That’s who we’re playing to - the people who couldn’t get to Manchester on the Friday night come to the gig on the Monday in Australia. That doesn’t bother us. You know what? If they buy the record, we’ll play for them. You lads have a prolific writing rate: an album practically every two years.  What’s the secret? That’s unheard of these days . I reckon we could’ve probably put out two albums this year! I think sometimes when you’ve got something to write about and you’ve got something to sing about or play about, things like that come very easily. We’re fortunate that we can get together and make a good record, and enjoy making music together.

So the chemistry is clearly still there when you get together to write? Chemistry’s really good. We don’t live in each other’s pockets, we live miles away from each other: I live in Ireland and the rest of the lads are spread out across the UK. When we get together it’s like you’re best mates. You meet up again and you go for a beer, on the piss and have a few – although there’s a couple of non-drinkers in the band now.

we’ve done okay but definitely not in the f-cking kind of Cold Patrol or Snowplay or whatever the f-ck they’re called [laughs]? Never on that scale, but we’ve always thought we could. I think we’ve always tried to be leaders rather than followers in music. You talk about success in the States. In America is there a similar following to Australia, with a lot of ex-pats, or are there many Americans into the band as well? No, there’s not many ex-pats at all. When you play in New York, it’s I would say 95 percent are all New Yorkers. Finally, is Tim still sporting that mad Brian Jones haircut? He is, yeah. You know what, at least he’s got f-cking hair to do it [laughs]. There’s plenty of people who lose their hair by that age, you know what I mean? [Laughs] Pleasure talking to you, Tony. And you, Paul. Listen, I’ll see you when we get over there. God bless.

...we want to take our records all over the world.  We’ve always wanted to do that

Dare I say a family? I think we are family.  I think we’ve been together long enough that if we split up there’d be a f-cking divorce case. Do you ever take the time to reflect on your career and look what we’ve achieved thus far? Well, I always think we could’ve achieved more. In what way? I think that’s what keeps us going. I think we’re still hungry. We’ve always done well in the UK, Ireland, and parts of Europe, but we always wanted to spread out internationally.  And we did okay in America but it was never on the global scale, do you know what I mean? I think that’s what keeps us hungry.  Globally

Different Days

is out now via Liberator.

stack.net.au