Thanks so much to Keith for the interview! I wrote about The Honeymooners time ago, and happily he got in touch with me to tell me the story of this great Scottish band! I have only heard 3 of their songs and was amazed to know there are more, albeit, still looking for them! Would be great if anyone could help us track those demos. The band was active during the heyday of indiepop and released one 7″. It is good time to discover them of course, and if you already heard them, I think you’ll love this interview. Oh! And the photo up there was taken by Ross Donald.
++ Hi Keith! Thanks so much for being up for this interview! How are you? Are you still involved with music?
Hi Roque – I’m good, thanks, and it’s a pleasure. I’m just doing stuff for myself these days. Over the years since the band went its separate ways I’ve learned to play bass, drums and a bit of keyboards and I’ve been doing home recording since the 90s. I’m just starting to get good now, ha ha.
++ Let’s go back in time. What are your first music memories? Do you remember what your first instrument was? How did you learn to play it? What sort of music did you listen to at home while growing up?
My first musical memories are probably my dad playing the piano at home, and a specific memory of being in an empty church with him when I would have been four while he practised playing the piano for my cousin’s wedding. I remember him playing ‘Wedding Day at Troldhaugen’ by Grieg, which is a bit of a banger in its own modest way, and probably the first piece of music I was conscious of liking. The first single I bought, aged about 9, was Crazy Horses by the Osmonds, and the first LP was Aladdin Sane. First gig was Queen at the Glasgow Apollo in 1977.
I got a nylon-strung acoustic guitar on my 15th birthday. I learned to play from a book, then from listening to records and periodically buying/borrowing books of chords or sheet music. I’ve still got the sheet music for Another Music in a Different Kitchen.
++ Had you been in other bands before The Honeymooners? If so, how did all of these bands sound? Are there any recordings?
My first band was called Sound Diagrams. We were a Postcard-influenced guitar band and played Skids, Joy Division and Buzzcocks covers. We played two gigs in 1981, both birthday parties, and recorded one demo/cassette EP the same year. I don’t have any copies of this, or indeed any of the Honeymooners’ demos.
++ What about the other members?
I think you wrote about End Result in your blog piece – the same line-up eventually became a poppier guitar band called Yeah! Yeah! I joined them as second guitarist in 1982 and when Joe, the singer/guitarist, left in 1984 we regrouped as the Honeymooners with Jean singing.
++ Where were you from originally?
I was born in London and grew up in Stockton-on-Tees, moving to Helensburgh, a town to the west of Glasgow, when I was twelve. I think David lived in Manchester at some point before he lived in Airdrie and Stewart and Jean were from Airdrie and Coatbridge respectively.
++ How was Glasgow at the time of The Honeymooners? Were there any bands that you liked? Were there any good record stores? Or what about the pubs or venues to go check out up and coming bands?
The most exciting time for me was probably 1979-1981 when I lived in Helensburgh but could get up to Glasgow on the train to see bands. I saw the Skids, the Undertones, the Specials and the Buzzcocks (supported by Joy Division!) at the Glasgow Apollo, and the Cramps at Strathclyde University Union. In 1981 alone I saw The Fall supported by the Scars at Eglinton Toll Plaza (and one of New Order’s first gigs at the same venue around the same time), the Gang of Four, Pere Ubu and the Delta 5 on the same bill at Tiffany’s, and Orange Juice and the Fire Engines at the Roseland Ballroom. Graham, who was the other singer/guitarist in Sound Diagrams, bought Blue Boy and The Only Fun in Town, and that’s how I first heard them and got into Postcard.
By 1984 the Scars and Fire Engines had split, the Orange Juice line-up had changed, and I remember going to see bands who were tipped for big things but never made it – the Fruits of Passion, His Latest Flame, Sunset Gun. I think 1984 is also the time that the first of those cod-American bands – Love and Money, Hipsway and the like – appeared.
I do remember that things seemed to be picking up indie-wise in 1985 – I was quite enthused by a benefit gig for Youth CND at the Kelvin Hall where Duglas’s pre-BMX Bandits group shared a bill with the Pastels and pre-fame Wet Wet Wet. Then the Splash One club started, and they seemed to be into a lot of the same things we were, and I personally was – both the iconography (Warhol, The Prisoner…) and some of the music (The Loft, Felt, Julian Cope), although we were never a part of that scene other than going most weeks, and I don’t think they thought much of us as a band.
The best record shops were Listen and Bloggs, which I think were both in Renfield Street/Union Street (and possibly ‘Wee Bloggs’, which was in St Vincent Street). I remember going up to Glasgow for a university open day and slipping away to visit the record shops. Listen sold badges in its basement and I bought Buzzcocks and Josef K badges there.
++ During your time there were many great Scottish bands, so I wonder if you have any recommendations for obscure bands that didn’t get a chance to make it?
One band that I think should have been bigger is a post-punk funk band from Aberdeen way called APB who we all saw a couple of times in the mid-1980s.
I didn’t find many of the local bands that made up the Splash One scene musically interesting, and I’m quite surprised at the careers some of them went on to have. I did like the floppy-fringe, ‘sha-la-la’ version of Primal Scream, and the Mackenzies.
++ How did you all meet? How was the recruiting process?
In 1982 I had moved up to Glasgow and was living in a student residence next to the Botanic Gardens. I put an advert up in McCormack’s music shop (which was where all the local musicians advertised). I think I mentioned Postcard and Josef K. I received two phone calls, one from an individual, and one that turned out to be from a band called Yeah! Yeah! I met Stewart and Joe in the Rock Garden pub in Queen Street and then joined them for a rehearsal the following Sunday in Joe’s house, which was in the countryside outside Airdrie.
I began contributing songs and at some point Joe didn’t want to be in the band any more, I think because the songs I was contributing were taking the band in a poppier direction, and we regrouped with Jean as singer. As the Honeymooners, we carried on with just me playing guitar for a while, which I did on the first two demos, then Gudgie (Gordon Keen) joined us as a temporary guitarist and finally we met Martin, again in response to an advert, I think.
++ How was the creative process for you? Where did you usually practice?
I was unemployed for a year after graduating and had a lot of time to sit and noodle on a guitar. Every so often I’d stumble on a ‘good’ chord sequence and top-line melody, and very often another one would quickly follow that seemed to fit with the first, so that was my verse and chorus sorted. I was borrowing a lot of jazz records from Hillhead Library, and trying to learn to play that kind of fast, fluid jazz guitar with all the treble rolled off, by playing along with records by Django Reinhardt or Charlie Christian. I used to borrow books of tricky chords from the library and whenever I learned an interesting new chord or voicing I usually got a song out of it.
The jazzier songs came out of learning to play a bar chord based on A major 7. I remember writing Pulsebeat, which is almost all barred major sevenths, at my grandad’s house in Edinburgh, where I was staying the summer after I graduated. The part of Another Fit… that I think of (with great cultural insensitivity) as ‘the Spanish-sounding bit’ is based on the Amaj7 shape.
The first Honeymooners practices were at a studio/rehearsal space called the Hellfire Club, and after that we rehearsed at Berkeley Street studios.
++ What’s the story behind the band’s name?
I think we would have been looking for something vaguely kitschy and 1960s-referencing. I think we considered The Avengers, which at the time in the UK only meant the 60s TV series. The Honeymooners came from a book called ‘The Patrick McGoohan Screenography’, and was the title of an episode of ‘Danger Man’. None of us were aware of the US sitcom of the same name, which is practically all you get if you google ‘The Honeymooners’.
++ Who would you say were influences in the sound of the band?
Purely from my point of view, I can hear a lot of our sound, and my guitar style, in Josef K’s cover of ‘Apple Bush’ from the John Peel session. We all liked the Monochrome Set and before we did a bit of a pivot towards jazz, a lot of my guitar work was very twangy and Lester Square influenced. I also assimilated some of the jazzier lead guitar on their second LP, ‘Love Zombies’. Another big influence on my guitar playing at the time was ‘early’ Go-Betweens (i.e. the first three LPs), both the nervy, scratchy guitar of ‘Send Me a Lullaby’, which I think of as being Robert Forster, and that lovely, warm, twisty, melodic guitar (Grant McLennan?) like in the solo on their song Unkind and Unwise. I also attribute the awkward time signatures/extra bars in some of my songs to the Go-Betweens’ use of the same.
I think my interest in a jazzy sound starts around 1982 with Night and Day by Everything but the Girl, The View from her Room by Weekend, and, less obviously, Portrait by Five or Six, which is on Pillows and Prayers.
We all really liked the Laughing Clowns. Stewart sent a fan letter to the drummer, Jeffrey Wegener, and got a reply. I also loved the first few Blow Monkeys singles (Atomic Lullaby, Wildflower, The Man from Russia) and their first LP, which has the brass and fretless bass of the Laughing Clowns, but is much sweeter and poppier.
++ I read that as early as 1984 you were releasing demo tapes. There’s one demo tape from that year including “Fate”, “Wild Woman” and “Fun Machine”. I was wondering if through the years you put out more demo tapes? Can we do a demography?
Demo 1 (1984) Recorded at Park Lane studio, Glasgow
Fate, Wild Woman, Fun Machine
Demo 2 (1985) Recorded at Berkeley Street studio, Glasgow
Apple of your Eye, Pulsebeat, What Pleasure, What She Says…
Demo 3 (1986) Recorded at Berkeley Street studio, Glasgow
Taste of Good Things, Untitled, Change of Heart, Pulsebeat (Live in the studio)
Demo 4 (1987?) Recorded at a studio in Edinburgh
I think we recorded this one twice because there was some kind of major falling out with the engineers and the owner ended up giving us another day in the studio. I can’t remember any titles, although I think we might have got round to recording a song with the working title ‘A Wee Gem’. There was also a very good song of Martin’s.
++ You only released one record, the wonderful “Another Fit of Laughter” 7″ in 1987. I was wondering how easy it was to pick these songs from your repertoire for the record? Were there any other songs that were possible singles?
Looking back, I think we knew our best songs were Taste of Good Things, What Pleasure, Pulsebeat and ‘A Wee Gem’. What She Says… is a lovely moody ballad with an outro a bit like the arpeggios in ‘I Want Her (She’s so Heavy’).
I think we chose the two songs on the single as they were relatively new and fresh and we had the idea that Taste of Good Things would be the second single, after we’d been snapped up by a ‘proper’ indie label. So we were kind of throwing forward to that with the message in the run-off groove.
++ Where were the songs recorded? You produced them, right? How was that experience?
They were recorded over a weekend at Ca Va in Glasgow, a recording studio in a former church. No-one produced it as such, and I feel that shows! I couldn’t listen to it for a long time as it just sounded tinny. I remember the response from some friends of the band being, “It sounds like a demo”.
The reason for that was that we wanted the recording to be as live as possible, and even went to the trouble of taking a rehearsal recording of the two songs to the studio beforehand and explaining what we were looking for. I think getting a rough, ‘live’ sound with minimal overdubs was a ‘thing’ at the time, maybe a reaction against slick 1980s production values.
I think the record would have benefitted sound-wise from having a producer, a sympathetic ‘grown-up’ who knew our songs and had the authority or the people skills to overrule us on certain choices. There’s enough ‘live’ feel from the bass and drums to have been able to overdub some of the guitars, say a fatter lead guitar, and maybe double some parts. The arrangement of the A side is pretty good, though – the way it quietens down to acoustic guitar/side stick, then builds to the end with the sax and trumpet stabs. I didn’t really have anything to do with those ideas, and don’t know if they were planned out by the others or just done in the heat of the moment.
++ Was it your first experience at a recording studio? Any anecdotes you can share about the recording sessions?
We’d done quite a few demos by that time and Stewart and David had had the End Result songs released on record. On the first day, we blasted through the songs together and got them down on tape and then at some point the engineer said, OK let’s overdub the guitars now, and we said, “no, that’s them done – we explained to you we wanted to do it this way”. We pretty much fell out with the engineer at that point.
I think by that time we’d got the impression that engineers were just there to say ‘no’, to explain to you why you couldn’t get the sound that you wanted. I remember this particular guy moaning to us that the guitars and Jean’s voice were all bunched up in the same frequency range and there was a big hole in the mid-range. He was right, but he should have spent more time on recording the guitars during the live take. Martin overdubbed that nice acoustic guitar on the A side, but I don’t think any of the electric guitars on the record were overdubbed in the end. The studio/engineer aren’t credited on the sleeve – I think they might even have asked us specifically not to mention them, as it would reflect badly on them, but somehow that doesn’t sound plausible. I think some magic was worked at the mastering stage with compression and the like to give it a bit more oomph.
++ The 7″ came out on Mr. Ridiculous Records. Who were they? Was it yourselves?
It was indeed ourselves. The recording, pressing etc. was self-financed. I think Stewart’s dad contributed as he’s thanked on the sleeve, and we got help with the printing of sleeves/labels from (friend of the band) Martin Muir’s dad (also thanked). Mr Ridiculous is a song by the Laughing Clowns, and a great name for the label, I think, even down to that RID 001 catalogue number. We did 1000 copies, and I think it was distributed by Fast Forward and The Cartel. I remember there being boxes and boxes of singles, maybe in David’s garage.
++ The sleeve had a photo of Jean on the cover. You were telling me it is a photo from a video. Where was it taken? And where are these videos of the band? I’d love to see them!
I think that still came from a video of a gig. I think the video camera belonged to Stewart and Jean, and I think Martin Muir would have filmed us. I don’t have any video material myself, although I’ve got quite a few photos.
David did the sleeve, using a ‘Tipp-Ex’ correction pen on black card. I did the labels using technical pens and Letratone from my job as a draughtsman. Looking at how well the sleeve turned out I should have let David do the labels to match.
++ “Taste of Good Things” was supposed to be the second 7″ single by the band. But it never came out. Was it recorded? Why wasn’t it released?
The short answer is that we split up not long after the first single was released. What little interest we received as a result of the single and the write-up in the NME didn’t translate into anything, and I don’t think we would have been interested in self-financing another single. We did record Taste of Good Things for our third demo the previous year, but I remember hearing it again in the 2000s after not having heard it for 15-20 years, and it just sounded comically fast.
As a result of the piece in NME we were contacted by a guy called, improbably, Paul Rump, but I think he liked us less the more he heard of our stuff! He was interested in Jean as a solo artiste for a while.
As well as the sense of ‘too little, too late’, in hindsight we were all growing apart in quite a natural way, given that we were in our early to mid-twenties and starting to devote our energies elsewhere, getting ‘proper’ day jobs, starting families and the like. I don’t think any of us were very enthused by the way ‘indie’ music was going – C86 and all that.
++ . Are there more recordings by the band? Unreleased tracks?
Just the demos mentioned above and the track on the Leamington Spa CD, which was taken from the third demo, and which I found out about via TweeNet. I’ve no idea how the compilers got in touch with Jean/Martin, and it seems unlikely that they would have the original reel-to-reel master, so I can only imagine it was mastered from a cassette. I went to live in Japan in the late 1990s and again in the 2000s, which involved putting all my stuff in storage twice, and a lot of possessions disappeared in that time, including all my demo cassettes.
++ I think my favourite song of yours might as well be “Untitled”, wondering if you could tell me what inspired this song? What’s the story behind it?
The lyrics are Jean’s. I wrote the tune in the manner I described above by arriving at a set of chords plus top-line melody, then quickly finding another part – in this case, I think it was the introduction/chorus followed by the verse. They both include diminished chords, and seem to go well together. I was trying to remember what inspired the little riff played on the single string in between the chords in the intro/chorus and I realised it’s Up the Hill and down the Slope by the Loft. The overdubbed diminished chords on the last verse sound like me trying to invoke Josef K.
When we recorded it, the engineer put my guitar through an Eventide Harmoniser, and I quite liked the result, but after we got out the studio somebody decided they didn’t like it and the studio was instructed to run off another version with ‘clean’ guitars.
++ If you were to choose your favorite The Honeymooners song, which one would that be and why?
Taste of Good Things. It’s my best top line melody/chords, I like my lead guitar melody and the ‘Pearl and Dean’ ending. I think that song perfectly balances sweetness, which I think verged on cloying on some of our later songs, with astringency.
++ What about gigs? Did you play many?
We played a lot of gigs, mostly in Glasgow and the surrounding towns (Wishaw, Cumbernauld, East Kilbride…), one or two in Inverclyde (Gourock or Greenock), a couple over in Edinburgh, including one at a venue called the Onion Cellar where I think we played with World Domination Enterprises and the (pre-acid house) Shamen, and a ‘mini tour’ where we played Arbroath, Aberdeen and Inverness. We played a couple of times at 46 West George Street, where the Splash One nights were held. I think we might have been allowed to play a Splash One (maybe The June Brides & The Soup Dragons), but only very grudgingly, at the bottom of the bill and not appearing on the flyers.
++ And what were the best gigs you remember? Any anecdotes you can share?
It’s pretty anecdote-free, I’m afraid. I remember playing a gig in Glasgow in 1987 and being pleased that some people in the crowd were familiar with the single. I also enjoyed supporting bands I liked (the first line-up of James, the June Brides, the Monochrome Set). I also liked playing new songs live for the first time. Thinking about it now, I never owned a working guitar amp the whole time I was in the band, so I don’t know how I always had something to plug in to when we played.
++ And were there any bad ones?
Nothing terrible – mostly just the misery of travelling in the back of a van and having to dismantle and load your own gear up at the end of the night when you just wanted to be home in bed. The flyer for the Mayfair gig says ‘Doors Open 10p.m.’ – that’s practically bedtime! We played one Saturday night gig in Edinburgh without having organised a place to stay and had to kill the time until the first bus went back at something like 5 o’clock the next morning – that was miserable. Our Arbroath date was a midweek one in a pub, playing to what clearly wasn’t an ‘indie’ crowd. It’s the only time I’ve ever played to absolutely no applause at all.
++ When and why did The Honeymooners stop making music? Were you involved in any other bands afterwards?
I think it would have been mid-1987, not very long after the single came out. I remember a couple of pretty awful, tense demo recording sessions, my own sense that the new songs weren’t as good as the ones on the first two demos, my own getting fed up with playing to what I felt were fairly indifferent audiences.
++ What about the rest of the band, had they been in other bands afterwards?
We all carried on playing to an extent. I played guitar in a few bands, sometimes with Stewart on drums, but didn’t contribute any songs.
++ Has there been any The Honeymooners reunions?
Not as such – I was still in touch with Stewart and Jean on and off until the mid-90s, but then I went off to Japan, then Germany, and didn’t return to Glasgow.
++ Was there any interest from the radio? TV?
Janice Long played the single on Radio 1, maybe twice.
++ What about the press? Did they give you any attention?
The single got reviewed in most of the weekly music papers (NME, Melody Maker, The Cut (a Scottish music paper), The List (a sort of Scottish ‘Time Out’) and a couple of independent music trade magazines, including one called Underground. The reviews were generally favourable. My favourite one was by Richard Cook in the NME, who called it “an honourable mess, straggly with bits of trumpet and saxophone, with the saving grace of a few ideas that are actually in motion’’. We also got a small write-up at the front of NME by The Legend! (his exclamation mark).
++ What about fanzines?
The first demo got a fairly lukewarm review in a Scottish fanzine called ‘Deadbeat’. Joe gave us a glowing write-up in his fanzine, ‘Know your Product’, and there was a great appreciation in ‘Searching for the Young Soul Rebels’ which I think I only read after we’d split up, and which went a long way to making up for what I felt had been general indifference while we were active.
++ Looking back in retrospect, what would you say was the biggest highlight for the band?
For me at the time it was playing a good new song live for the first time, supporting those bands I mentioned, hearing Another Fit… on Janice Long, and the Richard Cook review in NME. Oh, and the fact that the single was mastered by George ‘Porky’ Peckham. Post-split, it was that ‘Young Soul Rebels’ piece, and then a long time later stumbling on a handful of incredibly perceptive and articulate pieces about the band/the single online, starting with Tim Hopkins on TweeNet, then the appreciations on Backed With and The New Vinyl Villain and most recently your article.
++ Aside from music, what other hobbies do you have?
Drawing, painting and printmaking.
++ Been to Glasgow twice, and really liked it but I would ask a native about it, what are your recommendations. I want to know what would doing here, like what are the sights one shouldn’t miss? Or the traditional food or drinks that you love that I should try?
I haven’t lived there since 1997, but on the odd occasion I’ve been back I’m struck by how much great stuff there was on my doorstep when I lived in the west end – Kelvingrove Art Gallery, the Hunterian Museum, Kelvingrove Park, the Botanics, Byres Road and Ashton Lane. As for food and drink, there were always really good Indian restaurants and Italian cafés.
++ Anything else you’d like to add?
Thanks for writing about the band. I’m really pleased that you find things to like about stuff we did 35 years ago. Looking back from 2021 I think we had a lot of good ideas and we weren’t afraid to plough our own furrow.
A couple of interesting videos that you might not have seen (just for context, we’re not in them):
The Hellfire Club, The Tube, 1982, from a larger feature about the Glasgow music scene
https://youtu.be/wIzMgARjyCo?t=1103
Footage of a Splash One ‘Happening’
https://youtu.be/dJX2LeYalS4
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Listen
The Honeymooners – Untitled
