Thanks so much to Bernie Smith and all Rik Rak for the interview! I discovered not too long ago their wonderful music, after Firestation Records from Germany announced they were putting together a compilation album. That album is out now and it is called “Illuminated” and it is a must-have for any indiepop lover. If you are like me, and don’t know much about the Blackpool band join me in this interview to find out the story behind Rik Rak!

++ Hi Bernie! Thanks so much for being up for this interview and getting in touch! How are you? Still making music?

Yes, I am good thanks and very pleased to have this chat on behalf of all the other band members, Pete, Linda, Karl and Bryan. Yes, I am still writing and playing, and love playing live more than ever.

++ You just released a superb compilation on Firestation Records called “Illuminated”. Why the name “Illuminated”? And what can people expect from it? Especially people who haven’t heard your songs before?

I am glad you like the album. The name ‘Illuminated’ came together pretty quickly. As a band we are proud of our northern UK roots and that we come from the famous seaside resort of Blackpool. It seemed appropriate to try and find a title that would somehow capture this heritage. Linda suggested ‘Illuminated’ and we all immediately liked it. The title is a nod to the famous ‘Blackpool Illuminations’ an annual lights festival founded in 1879. The ‘Lights’ run for a six mile stretch along the Promenade, August to November each year. Britney Spears switched them on this year though, I hasten to add, I wasn’t present. As this is a retrospective album, we amicably split in 1990, the term illuminated also fits quite well with what the album is all about. Rough Trade our UK distributor describes us as ‘jangly neo acoustic indie pop’ I guess that is a fairly accurate description. A distinguishing feature is that Pete and Linda shared a dual singing role so vocally we didn’t really sound like most of our contemporaries.

++ How did Firestation Records find you? And so far what has been the feedback of this great record?

A couple of years ago I placed two music videos we had produced and some live footage on a YouTube channel – Rik Rak Blackpool Band – and Uwe the driving force behind Firestation Records (a German label) found the channel and got in contact. The pre-sales of the album were very high and over half of the initial run of CDs and Vinyl were sold in the first couple of weeks. We also know the album has been purchased by a good number of local people who used to come and watch us back in the day, which when you consider we haven’t played together for nearly 30 years is quite exciting. The YouTube channel is now receiving hits from all over the World, and record stores outside of Europe including USA, Brazil and Japan are retailing the album. I guess it demonstrates the potential power of Social Media. I certainly never expected this sort of development when I created the YouTube channel.

++ Let’s start from the beginning. What are your first music memories? Do you remember what was your first instrument? How did you learn to play it? What sort of music did you listen at home while growing up?

My parents loved classical music. My first musical fixation was the Tan Tantara Tzing Boom riff from Iolanthe when I was about two years old!!!!! I remember asking to hear it over and over again. Maybe not the most common initial musical influence. My parents didn’t listen to pop or jazz, but I loved the radio. I was fortunate to have access to a reel to reel recorder when I was about eight and started taping the radio. John Peel’s shows and Alan Freeman’s Saturday afternoon show were very influential. I also used to go to sleep at night listening to Radio Luxembourg, despite the AM reception being terrible, and wake up in the morning to static from my radio as they didn’t broadcast during the day. My mum tried to get me to play the violin, which I hated, and the piano but after the piano teacher’s dog urinated on my leg on two consecutive weeks, that thankfully was the end of that!! My first single I bought was Voodoo Chile when I was about 8 years old and my sister and I used to buy Marc Bolan singles in particular. At eleven I joined my school’s music club and started to spend nearly all my spare cash on going to see bands. First gig was Hawkwind. I was blown away, pardon the pun, and after that experience I knew live music was for me. I didn’t start playing guitar until I was 16 and I am self taught. Three months after getting the guitar, a cheap Strat copy, I played my first gig at a local tennis club with a couple of friends. We played mainly original instrumentals. It was awful but we had fun, as did our friends who came to listen.

++ Were you or any of the members involved in other bands before Rik Rak? I read some of you were in Hot Julys, Turnpike Cruisers, Deuces Wild and Way Out West. How did these bound sound like? Similar to Rik Rak? Are there any recordings?

Most of us played in bands before we got together. I was lucky to tour the length and breadth of the country when I was 19 and played on three studio recorded albums no longer available. Bryan our bass player was known locally as a rockabilly double bass player before he switched to electric bass with us. One of the tracks he played on, when he was with The Turnpike Cruisers, ‘Devil’s Car’, was used on an American TV advert not so long ago!! You should be able to find it on YouTube. Pete had a band before Rik Rak called Peter Rabbit and Karl our drummer’s band Hot July’s were influenced by Joy Division/New Order. They produced a tape called Making Sense of the Word, but Karl hasn’t seen/heard it for over 30 years!!! Rik Rak was a step in to a new style of original music for all of us.

++ Were you all originally from Blackpool?

Yes we all grew up around here.

++ How was around Blackpool at the time? Were there any bands that you liked? What were the good record stores? Or what about the pubs or venues to go check out up and coming bands?

Local bands that were well known and quite big at the time included Section 25 and the Membranes. I was at school with Chris Lowe, from the Pet Shop boys, but he was a couple of years older than me and I didn’t really know him. There were lots of record shops around Blackpool especially in the early 80s, Music Mania, Sinphonia, Cobweb, Graffiti. As Blackpool is a major tourist resort most of the venues catered for the more mainstream sounding covers bands but we managed to get gigs and always had a decent turn out. Some of these venues no longer exist, but we played in venues such as The Galleon, The Blue Room, Downstairs at The Station, Adam ’n Eve, The Showboat, Illusions, The Tache, Jaggy Thistle. Later we played in the big and iconic venues such as The Empress Ballroom, Tower Ballroom, The Arena, Spanish Hall.

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

Pete and I had been hanging out for a while and he played me a song he had written. We then decided to have a go at writing some stuff together. Within a couple of months we had approached Bryan and Karl. Pete had been at junior school with them and having invited Linda, a close friend, who we knew had a great voice, we were complete.

++ Were there lineup changes?

No, we remained together until we went our separate ways. We have remained firm friends ever since and, apart from Linda, still live locally.

++ Why the name the Rik Rak? Was the band originally named Summerhouse?

Difficult to really remember. I think we wanted a name that didn’t really mean anything and Bryan came up with it. I think it was written on the back of a stuffed toy he had. Later we found out it was something to do with zig zag woven stuff. Bryan designed all our gig posters and tape covers so I think we all felt that if our visual creative guy thought it was OK, then it was OK for the rest of us. We had some major record company interest towards the end of our career and in retrospect rather foolishly changed our name to Summerhouse. CBS in particular didn’t like the name Rik Rak. Summerhouse didn’t stick and most people, including ourselves, preferred and remember Rik Rak.

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

In general Pete and I would write together and then bring what we had to rehearsals. Sometimes Pete would have something completely formed already, sometimes I would, or perhaps I would develop a progression and a bit of a melody and Pete would polish it up and write the lyrics. Linda was great at developing her vocals that blended so well with Pete. Both Karl and Bryan of course would develop their parts as we started to jam the tracks out. We practised at rehearsal studios including Red Box and Berlin recording studio. We would also jam at rehearsals and things would just come out. I wrote the riff to ‘Hard Times’ at a rehearsal. It is unfortunate that this album really only covers the first year of our writing process. At the time of our split in 1990 only one song on this album remained in our live set. We regrettably didn’t record the later songs as we were more interested in playing live, hoping that a record/management deal would pay for the later recordings.

++ You were around in the late 80s, but whoever listens to your music might categorize you as a C86 band. What do you think of that term? Do you like it? Were you fan of the bands from this period?

Nobody really mentioned the C86 thing at the time but recently we’ve been associated with that movement. I’m not sure we actually fit in to that category. But yes I would say we liked some of the C86 bands. I know Karl liked the Wedding Present and Mighty Lemondrops, to name a couple that I guess fit that category.

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

I guess we all brought our own tastes in to the mix. Probably the closest influence you may detect in our music is through Pete’s love for The Smiths, though Pete also is a massive Elvis fan!!!!

++ I’m only aware of you releasing a tape called “Sometime in the Sunshine” in 1988. Was this a demo tape?

All our recordings were effectively demos done on a shoestring!!! We produced three products. ‘Sometime in the Sunshine’ and ‘Crawfish’ were two cassette releases, each with four songs. We recorded on to a simple 4 track cassette recorder. ‘Way Back When’ was a two track cassette single we recorded on an eight track at a small studio close to where we live.

++ This tape was put out by Engale Marketing. Who were they?

I believe Engale was a totally made up name developed by Bryan for the cassette cover. That tape was developed by ourselves with no involvement from any other party.

++ You recorded the four songs at the Ansdell Baptist Church. That is a pretty unusual place to record, right? How did that happen? Did you usually record there? And how was that experience?

Yes it was good fun. We had no budget for recording, but we did have access to a Tascam Porta One via Bryan’s cousin Adrian. We wanted to release our music somehow as our fans kept asking. Ansdell Baptist was my home church and they had a 24 channel mixing desk. So one Saturday we went down and recorded four songs, using the Tascam. Adrian and I engineered and I produced it. It is not easy recording a whole band on to four tracks, with very little opportunity to bounce without losing fidelity, and when you are also playing the guitar at the same time, but we had a go and it didn’t turn out too bad, especially considering we had no compressors, gates, reverbs, delays etc. I had Karl and Bryan and myself in one corner and Pete and Linda in another and so what you hear is mostly live. We sold all our first lot of tapes so a few months later we did the same again with four more songs. It literally cost us nothing to record those tapes.

++ On this tape your most well known song was included, “It’s Not Easy”. What’s the story behind this song, what inspired it?

That was the song that really birthed Rik Rak. Pete wrote that song and although it has a great uplifting melody, it is autobiographical and deals with Pete’s difficult childhood experiences growing up following the early death of his father. Pete played that song to me. I had my guitar, I played along, wrote the guitar riff that accompanies it and rather emotionally realised we wanted to do more of the same. Hence Rik Rak was formed.

++ This song also got a promo video which is ace. Where did you film it? Who directed? And why did you decide to put a video together? How much fun did you have while making it?

I am glad you like the video. We actually produced two videos over the same weekend in 1989. The video for ‘Hard Times’, also on our YouTube channel, was shot at the same time. When we recorded the ‘Way Back When’ double A sided single cassette, we had in mind to send it to record companies. We also thought it might be beneficial to let them ‘see’ us via video. Our friend David Scott and his friend Simon had access to some decent video gear and a portable video editing suite. They came across from the other side of the country on a Friday night. We took some footage at our usual rehearsal studio on the Friday, then spent the Saturday shooting both videos around Blackpool. It was bitterly cold, but great fun. I remember running through a wave breaking on the promenade and getting totally drenched to get a shot!! On the Sunday David and Simon edited the video, without time coding, and by Sunday night we had the two videos!! Amazing. We went on to duplicate quite a lot of the videos and people bought them as a video single!!!!!

++ On the liner notes of the “Illuminated” CD I read that you had released a double A sided single with “It’s Not Easy” and “Hard Times”. I can’t seem to find any information about this single on the web. Who released it? How many copies were pressed?

So I think I have just about answered that one now. It was a cassette single totally produced by ourselves. Can’t remember numbers, probably about 200.

++ Were there any compilation appearances by the band?

No we were not on any other products.

++ Why weren’t there any other proper releases?

As mentioned above we were hoping to get a label to finance our next recordings professionally so we concentrated on playing live rather than recording. In retrospect this was probably a bad move as we may have received more label interest if we had put our efforts in to recording our newer material.

++ Was there any interest in your music by any labels?

I still have the letters we received from CBS, Virgin and Island, expressing interest. I hand delivered the Way Back When cassette to the record company offices in London. What amazed me was that the day after I got back from London the CBS A’nR guy rang me. I was totally amazed, but tried to sound not surprised. He really loved the songs and wanted to come and see us. We had a number of companies do the same but unfortunately nothing concrete transpired.

++ What about gigs? Did you play many? What was the farthest you played from Blackpool?

We loved playing live and possibly had the biggest live fan base of any Blackpool band during this period. We often coupled our gigs with Indie dance nights at clubs. The fans knew they would get to dance at the events we put on. The crowd would dance to the likes of the Pixies, Smiths, James, Primus etc etc and we would then play and the crowd would keep on dancing, tremendous atmosphere. We also seemed to get the majority of the support slots when bigger bands came to town, which further increased our exposure and allowed us to play in bigger venues and with better PAs etc. Our second ever gig was out of town 30 miles up the motorway playing at Lancaster University after someone at our first gig at the Illusions night club was impressed and invited us to play. We played in Manchester a few times and hired a double decker bus on two occasions to take people from Blackpool to watch us. Our last ever gig was also out of town, in Preston.

++ And what were the best gigs you remember? Any anecdotes you can share?

My favourite gig was when we supported The New Fast Automatic Daffodils in the Arena at the Winter Gardens. We were fans of the Fads, and that night we played particularly well and it was just a great atmosphere with such a large audience. Back stage we got on really well with the Fads. We played an impromptu game of Cricket with them using balls from a ball pool and Dolan offered to lend me his Tele if I broke a string as we both only had one guitar each at the time – incredible!! They were playing a few weeks later at the Sugarhouse in Lancaster and they put me on the guest list.
We also supported the Mock Turtles in the Tower Ballroom. The contrast between them and the Fads could not have been more marked. Whilst we were playing our set and still within the allotted time, with our fans enjoying themselves on the dance floor, a member of the Turtles came on stage and turned our backline off mid song!!!! Nuff said!!!! However our most memorable gig, perhaps for the wrong reasons, was probably on an occasion when we played at the famous Blackpool venue ‘The Tache’. A Manchester band was supporting us that night. They hadn’t gone down too well and as soon as we started playing we filled the dance floor. An angry fan of the other band came to the front of the stage and started to spit at Pete and basically act aggressively. I think he then went and got an ash tray and through that at Pete, and we could see Pete getting angrier and angrier. This guy moved away presumably to get more ammunition. This coincided with an instrumental break in the song. Pete who by now was furious jumped off the stage and hit the bloke to the ground. We all looked at each other in disbelief at which point our fans piled in as a mass scrap ensued on the dance floor. We carried on playing not really knowing what to do. Just as the next verse was due to start Pete managed to get up, from under the pile of bodies, jump back on stage and sing. It couldn’t have been better choreographed! After the gig this oldish drunken guy came up to me. He looked me in the eye, put his hand on my shoulder and said ‘hey lad, that was the best f*****g gig I’ve been to since I saw the Sex Pistols!!!!!!!!!!’

++ There are a bunch of videos of a gig of yours in 1990 at the Winter Gardens. It looks like a lot of fun! The crowd is really having a great time. Would this be a good example of a regular Rik Rak gig? And how was that gig in particular?

Absolutely, we were supporting Cud that night. Yes, that is an example of the normal reaction we received at our gigs and as you can see everyone was up and dancing. That was a good night, though as we were supporting, we only played for around 35 minutes or so.

++ When and why did Rik Rak stop making music? Were you involved in any other bands afterwards?

We had toyed with getting a manager, and got as far as having a contract assessed by the Musicians Union, and done all we could to promote ourselves. I guess it all started to get a little stale and we weren’t enjoying ourselves as much as we had. So we decided to call it a day. We all in various capacities carried on playing. Karl most notably went on to drum in the Nature Things for around 3 years. Bryan joined them briefly too. They had a 4 track EP on Action Records which had air time on Radio 1 including John Peel’s show, an article in Metal Hammer, which stated something along the lines of ‘at last an Indie Band with balls’ and they got to support a good number of bands including Blur, PJ Harvey, Senseless Things, Boo Radleys, Slowdive, Lush etc. I played in a band called ‘K’ that produced an album called ‘Sense’ to good reviews and played all over the country headlining gigs at such notable venues as the Borderline Club in London (twice), Duchess of York in Leeds, Hibernian in Birmingham, Queens University Belfast, Durham University, Edinburgh, headlined the Summer Madness festival in Northern Ireland and a trip to Germany too. We used Ocean Colour Scenes old touring van!! We also were due to support Chumbawamba, Saturday night mainstage at the Greenbelt Festival in 1995, but they had to pull out at the last minute and we supported the Acid Jazzers the ‘James Taylor Quartet’ instead, which was great as I was fan. That was to a capacity crowd of around 16K, who moshed away to our music. I have some great video footage to show the grand kids (if I ever have any)!!!!!! Pete has carried on writing, recording and playing in various bands and as a solo artist and Linda played in a number of combos around Blackpool during the 1990s.

++ Has there ever been a reunion? Or talks of playing again together?

We have laughed about it, but no more!! We lost a musician friend in a tragic accident a number of years ago and Pete and I did at least one Rik Rak number at a special event in his memory but that has been it.

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

We were extremely well supported by local press but not so much by the local radio stations unfortunately

++ What about from fanzines?

Most of the local fanzines tended to cater for the ‘punk’ side of things which we clearly didn’t identify with.

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

I guess knowing that people genuinely liked our music and it is certainly a great privilege to be remembered so proactively via the release of this new album. So big thanks to Uwe at Firestation Records for approaching us and making this all happen.

++ Been in the UK many times but never visited your area. So maybe I can ask for some suggestions? Like what are the sights I shouldn’t miss? Or the traditional food or drinks that you love that I should try?

Blackpool is pretty unique. Google it and have a look!!! It is dominated by Blackpool Tower completed in 1894. The Winter Gardens is an amazing piece of architecture built even earlier in the 1870s. Seriously worth a visit. If you like Rollercoasters and other rides you need to check out the Pleasure Beach. Traditional food would be ‘Fish and Chips’. It does of course get a mention in our song ‘Sometime in the Sunshine’ – ‘whatever the weather, we’ll eat chips together’ they are nothing like French Fries!!!! I could take you to some real ale pubs which I think you would enjoy.

++ Anything else you’d like to add?

Only to say thank you so much for your interest and if you do venture up to Blackpool, let us know and we will show you around. I am sure Bryan would love to drive you around in his 1960s Mustang!!!!!!!

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Listen
Rik Rak – It’s Not Easy