I wrote about The Crimplene Explosion some time ago and not too long ago I contacted Gary Wollen from the band. I was mostly confused by the use of two band names The Crimplene Explosion and the New Tennessee Waltz, and as I loved the songs very much and wanted tom know more about them, I send him some interview questions.
Gary decided to use the questions as a base to tell the story of the band, so the format is a bit different as what’s normal on the blog, but it still works, here we learn a lot about his music. So sit back, and discover this great band!
Gary Wollen (New Tennessee Waltz, The Crimplene Explosion):
I grew up in a household with music all around. Although none of the family played an instrument. My mum and dad played records by Buddy Holly, the Beatles, the Monkees and a lot of Motown records. When they divorced my stepfather brought disco into my orbit. I loved Candi Staton’s Young hearts run free and Barry white. I was a little too young for punk but those records had an effect on my formative years. I met Paul Gilden at school and he turned me onto The Buzzcocks, The Undertones and Subway sect whilst I shared The Beatles and the Byrds. Although I couldn’t play any instrument I had started writing lyrics which I was convinced were songs. The tunes and instrumentation were filed in my head. After a couple of years cementing this alliance we formed the idea that we may be better equipped to relay these gems to a wider audience with the acquisition of some instruments. Guitars seemed to be the perfect tool for this mission.
Fortuitously I had been hit by a car and received enough compensation to buy an Epiphone semi acoustic and a Roland guitar amp. I bought a Beatles songbook as well as a Motown one called Three Times a Lady (I imagine after The Commodores single). These are books that I still have today. I found that by changing the order of the chords or simply by speeding up or slowing down the chord changes I could appropriate these classics to my own purpose.
At this time life changed my parents made the monumental 10 mile move to Fleet and Paul left to explore Liverpool without a forwarding address. I desperately needed another friend. Enter Paul Haskell whose parents were close friends with mine. Paul was into The Cure and Echo and the Bunnymen so I had another two bands to listen to. Oddly I was unaware of John Peel and simply bought Velvet Underground, Love and Creedence Clearwater Revival records. On one of my shopping expeditions I saw “You Can’t Hide Your Love Gorever” waiting for me in a record store and being a fan of dolphins paid the man and changed my life. I can’t begin to explain how this album consumed me so completely. It referenced the records from the sixties that I loved but added another dimension added level of consciousness that is impossible to adequately articulate.
Paul Haskell bought a bass guitar and a drum machine, the Korg super drums. We now had rhythm . We rehearsed initially in Paul house and then in a factory where my mum worked in Aldershot. We recruited a drummer called Ian Steele and kept writing songs. In 1984 I bought a four track tape and we attempted to translate our sound to tape. How could it sound so different on tape? I don’t know but it did.
After months of trial and error we managed to record passable attempts of two songs, Magazine Girl and My Town. Paul Gilden then returned from Liverpool and just as we felt ready to perform live Ian left leaving us at the mercy of the Korg Super Drums. We were now into 1985 and we decided to perform with a drum machine and hope that someone would see us live and offer to save us from drum machine hell. There is still a cassette of a rehearsal with the drum machine which Jo Bartlett wanted to release but I just hate it so much I begged her not to.
About this time the idea that we may need a collective name for this band if we wanted to perform in front of any kind of audience began to form. By this point we were listening to Creation bands and Bakersfield Country music as well as buying all the postcard records we could find. The Memphis single “You Supply the Roses” was a constant on my turntable in that year and the Pale Fountains 2ND Album . We wanted to choose a name that people may think was an old band and left people second guessing what the band may sound like prior to hearing our creative output. Paul Gilden thought of the moniker New Tennessee Waltz and it felt perfect for us. This time was the turning point for us as we had been pretty much operating in our own vacuum up until now and when I read about the June Brides I went to order it from a Camberley record shop called Our Price. I duly waited my pre agreed two weeks for the record and then went to collect it. The record was presented to me by Danny Hagan whom I didn’t know but I recognized as he was in a band called Go Service that we had seen several times but never had the nerve to speak to. Me being shy and all!
We spoke for a while and he told me he was putting on a gig in Aldershot that the June Brides were playing. I went to the gig and then spent every lunchbreak in Our Price as Danny played me all the new records that he felt I should know about and helped liberate me each week from my wages. After a month I plucked up the courage to thrust a demo into his hand and explained that I was in a band. As 1985 turned into 1986 I met Jo and used to spend a couple of evenings each week hanging out with Danny and Jo at Go Service HQ Listening to records. They offered New Tennessee Waltz our first gig at the Buzz Club. We finally felt that we had met some kindred spirits and we started to go to indie cubs with them as well as traveling up to Go Service gigs in the van they used to haul their equipment about in.
In 1986 I was working in a sports shop in Camberley In Surrey and New Tennessee Waltz had recorded a couple of new tracks with the drum machine. One Saturday I played them in the shop and one of the lads who worked part time liked the tape and asked if he could borrow it. I agreed. Three days later RICHARD Sedgewick walked into the shop to say that he had heard our demo in the common room at college one lunchtime and was interested in becoming our drummer. I explained that we had a gig in two weeks and we crammed in about 6 rehearsals before the gig.
After that first gig Jo and Danny offered us a support slot for the June Brides who returned to Aldershot to play the Buzz Club for the second time. The Buzz Club was a great place. It was held in the West End Centre and we always got a good reception there. It felt like these were people that liked similar music to us which, at the time, was a million miles from the mainstream and was generally ridiculed by the majority who valued how expensive a record sounded over the passion and indie ethos of capturing a moment. It was a place Where the youth who felt outsiders could feel a connection with other like minded individuals and I am sure bands were formed from that club. Some, if not most of my longest and strongest of friendships were born out meetings made there. It didn’t feel like a scene more of a nurturing environment of people with a similar approach and love of leftfield music.
We played one gig with a heavy metal band. They had a wall of Marshall “stack” amplifiers. We asked if we could use this imposing backline to be told they were empty cabinets and the band were using the 15 amp practice amps to the side of the stage. We knew then ROCK N Roll was not for us. Paul Gilden left them a message in their “dressing room” articulating our disappointment in their stagecraft… and their wardrobe… oh and they needed a haircut. Luckily, as the support band, we had left the venue before they returned to the note filled with good advice.
During the Autumn of 1986 I drove to London to see Go Service support 1000 Violins. After the gig Jo asked me if I could give a lift home to a guy called Dave Driscoll who lived half a mile from me in Fleet. Once In the car Dave said that he had seen New Tennessee Waltz and thought we were shit. We spent the evening home discussing how precisely shit we were before striking up a friendship that continues to this day .
We played around a dozen gigs during 1986 and into 1987 . There was even talk of supporting Go Service on a tour of Germany. We played a lot with them as well as Buzz Club support slots with BMX Bandits and The Brilliant Corners. In October 1986 we ventured into a recording studio for the first time and recorded My Sin, Precious days and Souvenirs all of which were staples of our live set.
Dave Driscoll asked if he could use “Souvenirs” for Uncle Arthur’s Pop Parlour cassette and we agreed. By the time the cassette was to be released Paul Haskell had left the band to be replaced by Paul Maguire and Richard had left to be replaced by Simon Webb. Paul Gilden and I decided we couldn’t continue to use the name without Paul Haskell so we opted for the name the Crimplene Explosion as it sounded like a 1970s pop compilation. We asked Dave to credit Souvenirs to Crimplene Explosion rather than the now non existent New Tennessee Waltz.
“Quality Seems Totally Foreign to Me” was a later New Tennessee Waltz song that we wanted to record but Paul Haskell and Richard had left. So Crimplene Explosion recorded it in the summer of 1987 with a new song that we wrote “His Name Rings a Bell”. We used a primitive trumpet sound in the middle because of the June Brides but we didn’t know a trumpet player. I wanted Dave to use “His Name Rings a Bell” on Uncle Arthur but he preferred “Souvenirs”. I always really liked the conversational vocal on that song and the double meaning of an ex boyfriends name ringing a bell as in being vaguely familiar and also signalling the bell at the beginning of a boxing match to start a fight.
1988 Paul Gilden left the band to join the army and Simon left to go to university once again we were looking for new band members. If I remember 1988 was spent writing songs and planning the next phase. The Aubisons were winding down and Dave Driscoll and I decided to play together. Paul Maguire had moved to London so I spoke with Danny Hagan about supplying the bass in the band. Paul Haskell had said that he would like to sing so I decided to concentrate on writing the songs and learning to play the guitar properly. Dave knew a great drummer called Steven Collings. So now we had the constituent parts of what became Vinegar Blossom.
That, Roque ,my friend, is another story.
It has been fun reliving my 1980s not as much fun as living it but fun, nonetheless.
Maybe we can retell the vinegar blossom story another time.
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