Ringer bandets manager Paul och bestämmer tid för en kort intervju. När jag anländer till Akkurat strax efter sju, är bandet ännu inte på plats. Det blir lite barhäng och en öl i väntan på Spike och herrarna. När jag väl leds in i den trånga logen, möts jag av en högst förvånad Spike som inte verkar veta något om vår bokade pratstund. Det är dock inga problem utan Spike kränger på sig bootsen och ber mig sitta ner.
Bordet är belamrat med glas och flaskor och det luktar gammal fylla om både bandet och det lilla rummet. Att The Quireboys gillar att ta sig ett glas eller två, är nog ett understatement. Nåväl, det blir några snabba frågor som besvaras glatt med många skratt.
I know you´re working on a new album. I found some titles like “Troublemaker”, “Gotta get a message to you” and “Some kind of outlaw”, are these songs that will be on the album?
Spike: We´ve been working on them and we´ve demoed seven so far. You should speak to Griff because he´s the best one at this. (laughs) I´ve been very busy over the past few months. Had a bit of an accident. Do you wanna tell him Griff?
Griff: There´s about 20 songs to pick from and we´ve got a song called “Crying out loud” and there´s a song called “Beautiful curse” and “Mother Mary”, which we´re gonna play tonight and “Too much of a good thing”, which we´re playing as well. It´s about 20 songs and we´re hoping for the next month or so.
When do you reckon it will be done?
Spike: We´re looking at having it released in May, aren´t we?
Griff: Yeah at the beginning of May. We´ve got a release party in Ibiza.
Spike: Are you coming?
Absolutely! (laughs) If I had the time and the money I´d be there in a heartbeat.
Spike: I´m sure we can fly you in there. (laughs)
Why has it taken five years since the last album?
Spike: Basically, we´ve been touring all the time.
Griff: Since “Homewreckers and heartbreakers” (2009), we´ve had a live album and “Halfpenny dancer”, which were some new songs but mainly acoustic versions of songs. This will be the first studio album I suppose, with all new material. We´ve just been on the road so much but things are gonna change from now on. When we´ve done this record, hopefully we´ll be back in the studio before the end of the year to do another one. No one can really afford to not put albums out regularly now. I think you really need to do one album a year at least.
Spike: This album would´ve been finished, but my girlfriend broke her neck so everything got put on hold for a while. A very traumatic time.
Sorry to hear. Is she ok?
Spike: Not nearly but she´s getting there. Plus we´ve just gotten back from Brazil and Argentina and we´ve been playing nonstop all over the place, but of course everything stopped when that happened.
Terrible to hear. These two shows in Sweden so far, all good?
Spike: Yeah, brilliant! They´ve been really good.
You´re playing everywhere. It´s nine dates all together. It´s like the good old days, isn´t it?
Spike: (laughs) Yeah yeah! We´ll be fine. We just thought we´d get out there and over the next few days we´re gonna be playing some more new material.
Ok. Do you have plans for anymore solo albums or stuff like that?
Spike: Well, I think the guys have been doing another Down ´N´Outz thing with Joe Elliott. I just finished off an album with Frankie Miller songs and it should be out this year some time. It´s with Simon Kirk, Andy Fraser, Ronnie Wood and Ian Hunter and I´m doing a duet with Bonnie Tyler and the guys are playing on it as well.
Nice. How´s Bonnie Tyler doing?
Spike: Oh, the song sounds great. She´s brilliant!
An old thing. When your first album came out, while recording it, did you have a feeling that it might get some attention? Did you feel you had the songs?
Spike: The thing is, I started the band like in 1984 and doing the transit van for years and then luckily in ´88 or ´89 we got our record deal. It was just being in the right place at the right time, but it was a lot of hard work to get there, you know. We got to go to LA and Phil Mogg was looking out for us and we got the gig with Guns N´Roses. We were just about to split up at that point, because we did five or six years before that. Then we sold out every venue in England and it just shows you the difference and how things have changed.
You lived in LA for a while, didn´t you?
Spike: yeah, when we stopped playing. We stopped playing for a few years. Griff moved there, Nigel (Mogg) moved to New York and we just had a rest from touring.
Any crazy Hollywood parties?
Spike: Many. (laughs) Too many to mention. I used to live with CC Deville for god´s sake! The house of horrors! (laughs) I might as well have lived there since I was there every day. We had some good times, yeah. (laughs)
Figures. You started out as The Queerboys and I read that there was some controversy surrounding that name. Was it really that? Was it in England?
Spike: Yeah. We were banned from every university.
Just because of the name?
Spike: Yeah. Originally it was gonna be The Choirboys and then someone said “Oh, you should be called the fucking Queerboys!” and we said “Great!”, but the funny thing was that when we got banned, we really didn´t get all the attention till after we were signed and then it all came out. Just one of them things, you know. It´s funny, because there´s an Australian band called The Quireboys and I remember meeting one of them… at the time Sharon Osbourne was managing us and she offered them… it´s a generic name and you can´t copyright it and they had an album in the Billboard chart before us in America and we actually offered them 50 grand and they refused. Years later I see the guy and he says “Fuck man! I wish I took the money because we got dropped two weeks later.”. (laughs)
Great story! Before a show like this none tonight, do you get nervous?
Spike: I always get nervous. Like five minutes before. You gotta get the blood rushing, you know what I mean? We´re doing two sets tonight and we haven´t done that before. We´re gonna do one for 40 minutes and then come off and then go back on. We´ll see what happens. We haven´t done that since we´ve been in New York. A matinee show and an evening show.
Ok. Well, thank you!
Spike: Thank you!
/Niclas
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