Thanks a lot to Matt and Geoff for the interview! I wrote just a few weeks ago about the Dudley, UK, band The Mercenary Tree Freaks, who were around in the early 90s. They didn’t release any records but did appear on a few compilations and released a bunch of demo tapes. I liked their music and even found a website, but there was really not much information about them. So I asked them for an interview so they could tell the whole story about the band!

++ Hi Matt & Geoff! Thanks so much for getting in touch! How are you? Where are you based now? Still in Dudley?

Matt: I’m good thanks and now live about 2 miles from Dudley.

Geoff: I’m good too, I actually made it to Dudley!

Matt: I think the other two have much posher addresses; Martin is in Leamington Spa while Steve is  living it up in Surrey’s stockbroker belt.

++ I believe you all are still in touch. What are you up to? Are you still involved with music?

Matt: After MTF ended we all went our own way, all of us left the Midlands. It was 13 years before I met up with Geoff again. 21 years before Geoff and I met up with Martin and 26 years before we saw Steve again. Blokes are so rubbish at keeping in touch.

Geoff: After MTF I jumped straight into another band- a 3 piece post punk band called ‘Phantom Planet’ who then became ‘Push The planet’ and finally ‘Subway’ that lasted around 2 years and we had a similar setup to MTF whereas we would release demo cassettes and sell Tshirts. I then moved away and did nothing musically for over ten years. After returning to the Midlands I Joined a band called ‘The Knowing’ a 4 piece made up of a couple of work colleagues and the Bass player from Subway, this again though only lasted around 18 months. The last 12 months I have been working on an electronica/ sound track project called Agents of Evolution- we have been gigging locally and been involved with a couple of film festivals- we play live to a backdrop of horror/ sci-fi influenced visuals!

++ Let’s start from the beginning. Like what are your first musical memories? What was the first instrument did you get and how?

Matt: I loved The Wombles as kid and wanted a Gibson flying V just like Wellington Womble’s. Then I saw Thin Lizzy in 1979 and that was it, I wanted to be a rock guitarist. 12 months later I had a cheap Les Paul copy and could just about manage the riff to ‘Smoke on the Water’. I’ve been through about 15 guitars since, but never did get a Flying V, I now own a proper Gibson Les Paul!

Geoff: Drums- my parents pressurised us into learning a musical instrument- I think I just chose the one that would give them the most grief!

++ Had any of you been involved with other bands prior to the Mercenary Tree Freaks?

Matt: Loads, Argon & Sea Witch were both (shockingly awful) metal bands with school mates. The Imps of the Perverse (shockingly awful Bauhaus wanna bes). The Bobbles (just two of us with amped up acoustics belting out Beatles songs in Portugal). Incee Wincee Spider (post punk, not quite goth) was where I met Steve, from there Oddfellows 151 (REM wanna bes) morphed into MTF after a fall out with the guitarist.

Geoff: just a couple of school ‘garage’ band really, nothing serious- MTF were the first band I played with that gigged on a regular basis and actually recorded something!

++ Were all of you originally from Dudley?

Matt: Actually, not one of us came from Dudley, we were all quite close to it though, and rightly or wrongly, we chose to distance ourselves from the Stourbridge bands.

Geoff: We all lived in the leafy suburban outskirts.

++ How was Dudley back then? Were there any bands that you liked? What were the good record stores?

Geoff: Dudley and Stourbridge pretty much blended into one for me, the obvious bands I liked all hung around the area- Neds, PWEI and The Wonder stuff. It was such a vibrant time for music and most people we knew were in a band- you could go see up and coming bands most nights of the week and JBs seemed to have the best of them- you got to see bands like Blur, Jesus Jones, Ride, The levellers and The Stone Roses just as they were breaking- great times for live music.

Matt: I liked Fretblanket, they used to support us, then they overtook us and we supported them.

++ What about the pubs or venues to go check out up and coming bands? I heard there was a popular one called JB’s?

Geoff: Think I just answered this one!

Matt: The Mitre in Stourbridge, The Source in Worsdley, The Hummingbird and Barrel Organ in Birmingham.

++ When and how did the band start? How did you all meet? How was the recruiting process?

Matt: Steve and I came from Oddfellows 151, with the Doc (drums). Martin answered an ad in local music shop. The Doc left after our first demo, we then had another drummer briefly before we just used a drum machine until Geoff came along a year later.

Geoff: I answered an advert for a drummer wanted in local magazine, spoke to Steve and arranged to go see MTF at Wolverhampton and go along for a rehearsal- Matt was a little frosty towards me at first as he wanted to keep the drum machine, until I told him we could keep both me and the drum machine- I then became a ‘stand up’ drummer/ drum machine programmer and our relationship blossomed!

++ Why the name Mercenary Tree Freaks?

Matt: Ugh, I never liked it, much preferred just MTF. The Doc (our original drummer) wanted to be called Lemon Tree Creek, Steve misheard it as Lemon Tree Freaks, we dropped the Lemon and ended up with Mercenary from a random word point in a copy of Macbeth!

++ How was the creative process for you? Where did you usually practice?

Matt: I used to put the bare bones of a song together, words and rough intro, verse, chorus then take it to our rehearsal room behind Donovan’s Music in Stourbridge, where everyone would add their own touches to it.

Geoff: I remember going around to Matt’s mum and dads house once a week to program the drum machine to any new songs we were working on (and play Sonic the hedgehog)

++ And who would you say were influences in the sound of the band?

Matt: When we started we weren’t sure what we wanted to sound like. It was a bit confused. In fact our musical tastes were quite diverse, from Metallica to Duran Duran! Then we did have a brief The Wonder Stuff period. In fact, it was only when Geoff came along that we developed our own identity. Having heard ‘Michelin Man’ do you think we sound like anyone?

Geoff: As I said earlier this was such a great time for music- I worked in a record shop and so got to listen to loads of stuff- I’d count it all as influence!

++ The first time I heard your music was through the Elefant Records 7″ compilation “La Línea del Arco” from 1992. How did you end up contributing a song to this compilation, on a Spanish label?

Matt: Elefant contacted us, I think they had picked up on us from a fanzine interview.

++ And before this recording, had you put out anything at all? Perhaps demo tapes?

Matt: Yeah, we put out five demo tapes. Demo-One (no idea who we sounded like on this 3 song one; Disintergrating, Mascara and I really can’t remember the last song), Swooosh (four songs from our The Wonder Stuff period; Marshmellow Brain, Alfie Can’t Stop, Silly Stupid Eyes and Mr Twilight). Geoff joined after those first two and it gets better from there; 152 or Faster (three songs, sadly recorded at a poor studio; Bitter End, Shot Down Big Sky and Overdose[a song from Incee Wincee Spider days]). Then we started using the studio where The Wonder Stuff recorded their early b-sides. Ou est le canard? (3 songs; Colonel Clutz, Mania Maniac and Beautifully Absurd) and finally The Cogwinder (I think our four finest songs; Michelin Man, Bitter End, Cynicism and One for the Disco Kids).

++ The song that appeared on that 7″ was “Michelin Man”, wondering if you could tell me the story behind this song?

Matt: It was a self-deprecating look at growing old and fat. I think we had been over doing the fast food and beer while hanging around to sound check at gigs.

++ You were to appear on more compilations in the 90s. How was that tape comp scene? How did people find out about the new tapes? How did you find out that there was a new compilation you could contribute to?

Matt: It was strange, sometimes we’d be asked to contribute, other times I think they just lifted our songs from our demos without even letting us know.

++ And who is “Colonel Clutz”?

Matt: Not a real person, just sort of inspired by one of the friendly-fire incidents in the 1991 Gulf War. Whether he was based on British or an American colonel, you can make your own mind up.

++ And how come you set up a web, so many years after?

Matt: I think this is Steve’s handiwork? Did you know about it Geoff?

Geoff: No, not until you found it. They must be his favourite songs, ‘cos only ‘Michelin Man’ was on The Cogwinder of the four there.

++ Was there any interest from any labels? I would have thought Elefant would have been interasted?

Matt: Sony were interested and we also had a vague interest from Food (Blur’s label).

Geoff: Oh yeah, Food, do you remember when we crashed a management meeting at their offices, after a few in the pub? I think they went off us after that.

++ Did you consider self-releasing?

Matt: We’d self funded a 7” when in Incee Wincee Spider. That put us off ever going down that path again, we were much happier with the cost of producing demo tapes. Geoff used to sell them in his record shop. I think we made the top ten a couple of times?

Geoff: And we did put all our money into T-Shirts, I think we sold more t-shirts than tapes.

++ Are there any more unreleased recordings by the band?

Matt: No, everything we ever recorded appears on the five demo tapes. There were about four other songs that would have been recorded had we not split.

++ What about gigs? Did you play many? What were the best ones that you remember?

Matt: I lost count, I guess over the 3 years of MTF we probably played around 100 gigs. Before Geoff joined it has to be at Wolverhampton’s Wulfrun Hall in front of 700 people. JBs was always a good gig and I used to like playing at the Sir George Robey in London.

++ It is mentioned that you supported Blur once. How was that?

Geoff: We did an interview in a local paper where we mentioned we had been on Japanese TV with Blur and I think he took ‘artistic licence’ with it.

Matt: I think it was good job we never supported them, in the green room Alex James offered Geoff a very warm can of beer. We don’t think the liquid was beer.

++ And were there any bad gigs at all? Any anecdotes you could share?

Matt: Can you remember when Steve knocked himself out at the Hummingbird in Birmingham during the second song? He played the rest of the gig, but I’m not sure he was playing the same songs as us. Another bad one was when we left Geoff’s drum kit outside the venue, how we missed a drum kit while loading the van? I assume beer was involved.

Geoff: There was The Fire Station in Oxford, actually a good gig but only there was only the bar staff in there. And also, once at JBs we got a whole crate of Red Stripe as a rider, we probably shouldn’t have touched it until after the set.

++ When and why did the Mercenary Tree Freaks split? What happened immediately after?

Matt: Wrong place wrong time I think, we were peaking as indie-pop was on a downward curve and Brit Pop was rising. Label interest died down almost over-night and I took the opportunity to go to university.

Geoff: Plus we didn’t have a fiddle player.

++ Have you been involved in any other bands afterwards?

Matt: Not me, MTF was my musical peak. I tried out with a couple of bands but never found ‘the vibe’ with either of them.

Geoff: Yes as I said earlier- Subway, The Knowing, Agents of Evolution

++ Matt Rothwell has published two books, and he mentions that the story of the band is on the book “The Electric Guitar Daydream Quest”. I want to read this book for sure. Have you all read it? And for people reading this interview, where can they get it?

Matt: I think I told it like it was? Didn’t I? You can get it from Amazon either as a paperback or a download for Kindle.

Geoff: It was pretty much like how I remembered it, and a ripping good read.

++ Did you get much attention from the radio or press?

Matt: loads from local press and we had gigs reviewed in NME and Sounds. It is rumoured that the late John Peel had played us more than once, I’ve never been able to confirm that.

Geoff: A local journo really seemed to like us. He still works at the same paper.

++ You appeared on TV, on a Japanese music TV show called Bandbreakers? And what was the contest about? Did you win?

Matt: That wasn’t the first time! Our first TV appearance was on Sky 1, a talent show called Kieth Chegwins Star Search. I entered us without telling Steve or Martin. It all became clear to them at the auditions; we were lining up against juggling clowns, nine year old disco dancers and a man with a singing dog.

Geoff: On Bandbreakers we made the final five! I think we came second…, we didn’t win the keyboard or drink Alex James’ warm beer.

++ How was the experience of playing on TV? Any anecdotes you could share?

Geoff: Being able to mime to a backing track gave me the ability to down three bottles of Merrydown cider. I then managed to lose my contact lens’ during a very frantic drum mime while we were recording.

Matt: I had to sing live, so unusually for me I waited until we’d finished recording.

Geoff: Do you remember when we recording the backing tracks? It was the day Freddie Mercury died and in the studio’s green room was a grand piano. Bohemian Rhapsody was on a loop on MTV and Mart was playing the piano along ‘Les Dawson’ style.

Matt: Oh yeah, we were in stitches and a couple of other bands told us off for not showing respect.

++ What about from fanzines?

Matt: We were in a lot of fanzines, but I can’t remember the names of them. We usually found them in record stores and sent one of our demos off. Nine times out of ten we never knew if we’d been mentioned or not.

++ And today, aside from music, what other hobbies do you have?

Matt: Cycling and sitting in the garden, drinking beer whilst listening to MTF.

Geoff: Professional stay at home dad

++ Looking back in retrospective, what would you say was the biggest highlight for the band?

Matt: The biggest highlight for me was having fun with three of my mates, enjoying what we were doing and actually getting a very brief five minutes of fame.

Geoff: Agreed, I don’t think any of us were bothered that we never ‘made it’ it was all about having a laugh and playing great music with a great bunch of lads!

++ Never visited Dudley, so maybe I can ask for some suggestions? Like what are the sights I shouldn’t miss? Or the traditional food or drinks I should try?

Geoff: Dudley Zoo and Banks’s Bitter

Matt: Faggots and grey peas!

++ Thanks again! Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Matt: It was a real shock that someone had shown interest in our band after all this time. So thanks for giving us yet another opportunity to reminisce.

Geoff: We were both very impressed with your keen investigative skills too!

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Listen
Mercenary Tree Freaks – Michelin Man