18 & Life

For two decades now, Newcastle-upon-Tyne’s The Wildhearts have been making glorious hard rock songs laced with feel-good vibes, punk spirit and choruses that burrow into your brain like a denim-clad tick. Having toured the world with legends including AC/DC and Motörhead, but never achieving the same level of popularity (bar a few Top Of The Pops performances), they have become a cult favourite in the UK rock scene and further afield.

I caught up with guitarist and founding member CJ at the Glasgow leg of their UK tour to discuss the new album, touring the world, and spray-on tattoo booths…

How’s the tour going?
CJ (guitar): It’s going really, really well. It’s all a bit new and refreshing for us ‘cause we’re basically playing the whole new album every night, then coming back on and doing some old songs. The show’s in two halves, and it feels like we’re supporting ourselves! And more and more people are getting into the album and singing the words back to us. We haven’t had a bad show yet.

You’ve just released your new album, ‘Chutzpah!’, and it’s been getting very positive reviews. How was the writing and recording process for that?
CJ: We all went into a studio in York at the end of last year to start writing the album, and then went to Finland to make a demo of it. Our manager, Virpi, recommended that we work with this Danish producer, Jacob Hansen, who had worked with a band called Volbeat. She played them to us and we thought they sounded really good, so we went over to Denmark to work with Jacob for a month. We were having some vocal problems with the songs in standard tuning, so he suggested we tune the instruments down. We did, and it’s really paid off. We still sound like The Wildhearts, but there’s a much darker, heavier feel to it. I don’t think there’s a band in the world that tunes down to C and still has harmonies and poppy bits!

So does this show a new musical direction for The Wildhearts? Will you be sticking to the new formula?
CJ: Yes. It’s still us, but it’s cool that we’re discovering new things so late in our career. It’s the twentieth anniversary of the band this year.

What are some of the inspirations behind the songs on the new album?
CJ: It’s everything, really. Ginger [Wildhearts frontman] still writes the majority of the songs, but the things we sing about are the things that happen in our lives. We don’t make things up. The band’s a lot more democratic now, decisions are made as a group, and it’s good because since we band re-formed in 2001, I think this album has had the best reviews in the magazines. It’s bringing on a younger fanbase too; there are a lot of teenagers showing up to see us, and magazines are picking up on the band.

Speaking of which, you recently won the Kerrang! Award for Spirit of Independence. How was that?
CJ: It was great! Kerrang! seem to like us again. It’s about time they gave us something! Ginger and I have been to the awards ceremonies in the past, but it was nice to actually get something for ourselves and get a standing ovation from so many other bands. I had a lot of young acts that I’ve never heard of telling me how much of an inspiration we’ve been to them. Which bands? I’ve no idea what they’re called. The ones with funny fringes.

Didn’t Ginger once smash up a Kerrang! office?
CJ: Oh yeah… that was a while ago. I can’t remember why he did it. We don’t smash things up anymore!

Before the new album, you had a covers album (‘Stop Us If You’ve Heard This One Before, Vol. 1’). Is there a Volume 2 in the making?
CJ: Yeah, but I think we’ll probably do another studio album before that. We’ve left it open, so it’s something we can go back to whenever. We’ve got millions of ideas when it comes to bands to cover. We recorded the first one in about five days, so it’s just a case of if we have the time, we’ll go in and do it. Right now, ‘Chutzpah!’ is still very new and is coming out in a lot of places we’ve never toured before, like Russia and South America, so we wanna go to those places before we make a new record.

It’s well known that Ginger has had many side projects. Are you working on anything else at the moment?
CJ: I’m thinking of doing another solo album, but I don’t want to do it with a band, and I don’t know if I want to make a rock record; I might do something a bit more experimental. I don’t make much money from it, so I’ve got nothing to lose by doing something off-the-wall. I’m thinking of doing it over Christmas – I’ve got a home studio, so it’s just a matter of me getting off my arse.

Did the current recession affect you in making the new album in any way?
CJ: No, not at all. The good thing about Jacob is that he’s very cheap. He gets loads of offers from bands around the world, but he doesn’t want to leave Denmark. He’s a real family man, and he has this really weird work ethic where he starts at 9, finishes at 5 and doesn’t work on a Sunday. It kinda works, because it gives you a window of time to get things done in; once it gets to 5 o’ clock, he’s off! But because he only uses his own studio, he does offer a really good price. I think there’s a good possibility we’ll make the next album with him too, because we really liked working with him.

What’s your opinion of the current music scene?
CJ: I think music is always changing. I don’t really keep up to date with a lot of it at the moment; personally, I’d rather see a good movie or read a good book than listen to a new band. I think that too many people rely on the Internet, because it can dilute the whole music scene; you’ve suddenly got millions of MySpace pages, and it becomes too much. I really think that to be heard, you need to have a big marketing team behind you – it’s not enough to have four decent songs on MySpace, ‘cause there are loads of decent bands on there who no one has ever heard of. Profile pages are tools that can be used, and there’s a lot of hype about them, but they just aren’t enough. I feel sorry for a lot of younger bands, ‘cause there’s too much competition at the moment; when we started, it was easy to get deals just from having good songs. Nowadays you need to have everything else. Most bands kind of look the same to me these days, actually, so it’s nice when you see a bit of originality and not the likes of… what are they called, Metro Station, is it? I looked at them and thought ‘Fuck me, not another band covered in tattoos.’ They look like they’ve gone into a booth and had them sprayed on! (laughs)