Feb
Thanks so much to Mark Wilsher for the interview! I wrote about Faith Over Reason months ago and while I was away, leaving the blog on a well-deserved holiday, Mark got in touch. He was very kind to answer my questions and this way, learn a bit more about this great South London band!
++ How did you all meet? How was the recruiting process?
The four of us were all from the South London area, actually more like right on the fringes of the suburbs. I was the last to join after meeting Bill Lloyd and Simon Roots at a party. They had some songs and needed a drummer. I first met Moira Lambert when I turned up to play and she’d already written half a dozen songs or so. I thought they sounded great. Before that I’d only jammed and got drunk with friends from school so it was a significant step up.
Simon and Bill had been at school together, and Bill had briefly dated Moira who also lived just along the road from him in Coulsdon right on the edge of the countryside.
++ During your time there were many great independent pop bands in the UK, so I wonder if you have any recommendations for obscure bands that didn’t get a chance to make it?
I always thought that Shelleyan Orphan should have received more attention. There’s a brilliant box set available from One Little Indian.
++ How was the creative process for you? Where did you usually practice?
We were so young when we started, just 19. We rehearsed in Bill’s bedroom which was in the roof of his parents’ bungalow. We’d put his bed up against the wall and set up anywhere we could. I remember drinking a lot of tea, eating instant noodles and sitting out on the roof smoking with a view over a little valley of houses.
As things went on we soundproofed the garage at Moira’s folks’ house and used that as a practice room. It wasn’t very soundproof so I can only apologise to the neighbours now! Moira was the main songwriter and she would usually turn up with something fairly complete written on an acoustic guitar, which we would work out an arrangement for.
++ I don’t know if you know the answer, but I was curious about where in Africa Moira grew up and if that African upbringing brought anything to the band’s music?
I think she grew up for a bit in Istanbul, her Dad was working there. She talked about the flowers painted on the walls, and we had a song named after the famous mosque Hagia Sophia. She talks about this on one of the tracks on our album Easy, but you have to listen hard as it’s buried in the mix.
I think she was actually more influenced by her family’s Scottish roots, singing folks songs at drunken get togethers and so on.
++ What’s the story behind the band’s name?
We just couldn’t think of anything better! It’s a name that – shall we say – reflects who we were at that time in 1989. I think we all grew to dislike the name but we were stuck with it after a few years. People either thought we were a Christian rock band, or else mixed us up with Faith No More.
++ Who would you say were influences in the sound of the band?
We were into all the moody indie stuff that was about in the mid to late 80s. The Cure, Cocteau Twins, Jesus and Mary Chain, U2, The Sugarcubes, that kind of thing. All the American acts that 4AD signed had a big impact too – Pixies, Throwing Muses. Anything on 4AD basically.
We were encouraged to explore British folk music more by our manager Abbo, so we got into Nick Drake, The Pentangle, Fairport Convention, Roy Harper. Moira was quite into Neil Young, Crosby Stills & Nash, Joni Mitchell of course, and she loved to watch CMTV on cable too.
++ Moira was on vocals for Saint Etienne’s “Only Love Can Break Your Heart”, I was wondering what was the band’s connection with Saint Etienne, you mention it was through Pete Wiggs brother?
There was one pub in Croydon where everyone into alternative music went, The Ship. There was a really diverse mix of goths, indie kids, greebos and old rockers who drank there, with a couple of big skinhead lads on the door. That’s where I met Pete’s brother Danny and we were very close for a few years. When his brother and Bob Stanley decided to start a band they had the idea of using different singers for each song, so they asked Moira to record a couple of demos for them. It took about five hours to record from start to finish in a bedroom studio and was never even meant to be released. But it went on to be a massive cult hit – I still hear it on the radio thirty years later, it’s amazing. They gave her some money when it became clear it was doing well. Whenever I hear it now it takes me right back to that bedroom studio.
There was such a huge division between what we used to call “dance” music and indie music. The Rave explosion had been just a couple of years before and a lot of my friends were into banging techno. So we didn’t take advantage of having our singer on this big club hit, in fact we tried to play it down. It’s hard now to understand just how big that cultural divide was, but it seemed important at the time. Things relaxed a bit by the mid-90s and you started to get more guitar based bands in the charts and more musical crossovers generally.
++ Your records came out on Big Cat. Who were behind this label and how did you end up working with them? Did you have a good relationship?
Abbo approached us after a gig at a small venue called the Bull & Gate in North London. He had a management company (with Linda Obadiah) that had success with EMF so there was some money around. His thing was to licence interesting acts from the States, like Will Oldham and Pavement. I remember he was always saying that it was the song that was important, and I guess that’s what he saw in Moira and in us as a band. He managed to get us a publishing deal with Polygram which was amazing, and we used his record label Big Cat for the releases.
Abbo was an ex-punk (the singer from UK Decay) and 10 years older than us, and he showed great faith in us for several years. We got new instruments, amps, a Ford transit van, a tiny weekly salary, and loads of great stories from his rock n roll years. Bill would often do bits of work for the label, delivering things around in his van, helping out in the office – Bill was the most focussed and ambitious out of all of us I think, and it paid off for him.
++ And was there interest from any other labels?
Really early on, within about four months of forming, Island Records had asked us to come in and meet them, and paid for a day in a studio to record some rough demos. But they passed – we were pretty unformed at that point so I don’t blame them. We had a bit of interest from 4AD and Rough Trade but nothing came of it in the end.
++ You worked closely with producer Barry Clempson. How did you enjoy working with him?
Barry had worked with both Shelleyan Orphan and The Sundays, so it should have been a great fit for us. But we were quite dissatisfied with the clinical sound we ended up with on those two EPs. At that time, after all the excesses of 80s chart music, anything that suggested ‘over production’ was ideologically suspect! We were already heading in a more loose direction.
++ In 1991 the band released a collection of demos called “Eyes Wide Smile”. I am curious about this release as it is not common to see a demo compilation while a band is active. What was the reasoning of putting this out?
Because we had a bit of success very quickly, we felt that a decent record deal was just around the corner and we didn’t want to put out a full debut album on Big Cat, which was after all our management’s own label. We also had a whole load of well-recorded demos that we had done at a little studio in Luton. So the idea was to use them to create more of a buzz, it was meant to be quite low-key. It was also nice to capture the incredible innocence and naivety of our sound at that point (although we would have denied that at the time). None of those tracks were recorded with release in mind, it was just us exploring our sound and what we could do in the studio. But I’m glad it’s out there now because that album is a fantastic record of what we sounded like around 1990.
++ The “Easy” album came out in 1994 and you got Stephen Malkmus to produce the record. How did this happen? Was it the label who hired him? Were you big fans of your music? Was it a good experience working with him?
Pavement had released Slanted and Enchanted on Big Cat, and we had also supported them at quite a few gigs around the UK, so we knew them a little bit. They were older than us and a hell of a lot cooler, obviously. Abbo had heard the songs that would go on to form the next two Pavement albums (Crooked Reign & Wowee Zowee) and there was a more lyrical, California rock type sound emerging, so he convinced us that Malkmus would be a good choice. By that point we had a new guitarist Te-bo Steele, and a much rockier sound ourselves. We were trying to fuse lyrical singer-songwriter material with more adventurous music.
It was fun to have him around, but he was more of a mentor than a hands-on producer to be honest. He spent a lot of time playing chess on his Gameboy! He really encouraged us to try and get a live sound down, to allow some mistakes to remain, which we appreciated after our previous experience with Barry Clempson. There’s an unreleased track with him doing backing vocals knocking about somewhere.
He stayed with Bill’s parents in leafy Coulsdon and one memory I have is of him working on a collage from old bits of the Radio Times and some nail polish in their living room, which ended up part of the artwork for Crooked Reign. That’s a very weird juxtaposition of cultures!
++ Something that always make me curious are songs with personal names on them. I wonder if the songs “Song for Jessica”, “Sofya”, “Evangeline”, “Billy Blue” or “Sophia” (is it the same as “Sofya”?) are based on real people?
Sofya was named after the mosque in Istanbul, as I said. Billy Blue was written when she was dating Bill, and Jessica was a song to her imaginary future daughter (she had three sons in the end, ironically). Moira wrote a few songs with her future children in mind, like Lullaby (Mother Love).
++ And do tell me, how come there were no more releases by the band? Was anything planned?
It’s the classic story of tensions between songwriters, between singers and guitarists. After Easy came out we toured Europe with Jeff Buckley for a few weeks and by the end Te-bo had just had enough, so he quit. We looked for another guitarist for a few months but, having spent 1992-3 trying to find someone to replace Simon Roots, I decided that it was time for me to leave as well. So sadly the album never really got promoted, we never toured it properly, and it never really got a chance to be heard.
++ Are there still unreleased songs by the band?
Oh yes, there are quite a few actually. After Simon quit around 1992 we had some material just written and demod. Then there was quite an interesting phase working as a trio until we found Te-bo which led to some alternative-type instrumentation. I may get around to putting them on You Tube one day if anyone’s interested.
++ I think my favourite song of yours might as well be “So Free”, wondering if you could tell me what inspired this song? What’s the story behind it?
Moira was always writing about her relationships. She was at the University of Brighton and had a few boyfriends down there which gave her good material. I guess it’s just that perennial theme of wanting to be with someone, but also enjoying their spirit just as they are.
++ If you were to choose your favorite Faith Over Reason song, which one would that be and why?
It has to be Alone Again. I think that was us at our absolute peak in terms of writing, arranging, performing, recording. I still love that song and it brings back so many memories from 30 years ago.
++ What about gigs? Did you play many?
We toured the UK quite a lot, both headlining smaller venues ourselves, and supporting bigger acts. So we went on the road with Lush and Slowdive on a couple of UK tours. Plus we played a lot around London – everywhere from tiny venues to the Town & Country Club which was one of the largest venues at the time. I remember we supported Spiritualised, the Violent Femmes, Julee Cruise, the House of Love as well. We learnt a lot playing all those gigs, became much better musicians.
++ And what were the best gigs you remember? Any anecdotes you can share?
Well I have to say that supporting Jeff Buckley and his band on their debut European tour was an absolute highlight. There was a huge buzz about him and they put on a spectacular show every night consistently. He was a total pro and a real sweetie. There were record company people at most of the stops on tour, and many well-known musicians were dropping in backstage to say hello. We drank and partied a lot on that tour – which probably contributed to our tattered mental state by the end! Don’t forget we were still only 23 or 24 years old and very innocent. In fact one reason we got the support slot was out innocent reputation. The record company was trying to steer him away from hard drugs, and Moira had been known to get her knitting out at gigs from time to time. I would get up early and go to the art galleries in each city – it wasn’t exactly Spinal Tap.
There was also a brilliant trip to Cologne in Germany for Pop Kom 1994, an MTV festival. Big tour bus, loads of bands, being filmed for MTV – wowza.
++ Were you involved in any other bands afterwards?
I went to art school in 1995 and started getting into the art world, which has been my life for the last twenty-five years. But I did play drums with Broken Dog for a few years which was great because I was a huge fan of theirs, so it was brilliant to get to know them and be involved in their creative process. The legendary BBC radio DJ John Peel was a big supporter of theirs so I got to play on a couple of sessions from Maida Vale studios, and we were asked to record a song for his 60th birthday party. In fact I ran into Steve Malkmus again at that party (Pavement were playing as surprise guests) and we had a brief chat – probably my moment of peak coolness!
++ What about the rest of the band, had they been in other bands afterwards? I read that Moira was recording with Patch from The Sundays, were those songs ever released?
Moira did release a single under the name Ova, but then moved to Canada with her young family soon afterwards. She released a solo album in 2006 (Coming Up Roses) and a few more dance-oriented tracks. But it’s a shame she didn’t get the chance to do more – she has a great voice and writes great songs.
Bill, Te-bo and myself formed a psychedelic rock band called Soup and we gigged a little bit and released a split 7” with Placebo. Playing loud and embracing our inner rock tendencies was cathartic! But as Placebo’s career took off they took Bill with them. He’s been their invisible 4th member since the beginning and has experienced the full rock star life: huge arena gigs, long world tours, MTV, drugs, sex, money and all that stuff. In fact he was the one who spotted their potential and set them up with a management deal in the first place. It’s great to see them being so successful, it’s insane actually.
++ Has there been any Faith Over Reason reunions?
Not musically. But I have met up with Bill a few times when Placebo were out on tour. I met up with Moira in the summer of 2021 for the first time in 20 years and that was pretty cool.
++ Was there any interest from the radio? TV?
Oh sure, we were played a bit on several radio stations, and popped up on some cable channels sometimes. But nothing major. Our biggest supported was probably the Melody Maker who did a few interviews and features.
++ Looking back in retrospect, what would you say was the biggest highlight for the band?
Looking back at my much younger self, it is the camaraderie and sense of adventure that I cherish. Being in a band is like being in a little gang or a family. You go through all this stuff together and share your dreams. That’s a wonderful feeling. There’s nothing like that magical feeling when you are well-rehearsed and are playing together in the groove. I’m so glad I got to experience that and I think about it pretty much every day.
++ Aside from music, what other hobbies do you have?
I’ve been a visual artist, art critic and university lecturer for over 20 years now and that’s really what my life has been about. I’ve been lucky enough to run art galleries, have exhibitions at some prestigious museums, and see my writing published. You can take a look at www.markwilsher.com
I play piano and guitar as well now, but just for middle-aged fun. My teenage son is an excellent saxophonist!
++ Been to London many times but I’d like to ask a local about what you would suggest doing in your great city. I want to know what would you suggest them 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 left London in 2006 for Norwich, but I have many fond memories of a tiny bar in central London just off Oxford Street. Bradley’s Spanish Bar in Hanway Street is highly recommended. https://www.bradleysspanishbar.com/
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Listen
Faith Over Reason – So Free
