++ Hi Dominic! Thanks so much for being up for this interview! How are you? Still making music?

I’m the youngest of eight children and my musical tastes are very much influenced by the different music listened to by my older brothers and sisters. When I was young, I could walk around my house and hear different music emanating from each bedroom. For a while I shared a bedroom with one of my older brothers who used to practise his songs for busking, which made me a slightly odd eight year old as i knew all the words to most of Leonard Cohen’s songs (Leonard has been my hero for more than 40 years). I was slightly too young to be a proper punk but spent my teenage years listening to mostly post punk bands like Joy Division and Echo and the Bunnymen and the bands they were influenced by (the Doors, The Velvet Underground etc)

++ Had you been in other bands before Penelope’s Web? What about the rest of the members?

I started Penelope’s Web with two school friends, Witold Leonowicz and Gary McCormick in the early 80s. We were joined for our first ever gig at Wolverhampton polytechnic by Paul Chivers (now a successful DJ/Producer under the name Ramjac Corporation) on drums. We were without a name at this point and as the gig was for the Chinese New Year and it was the year of the Rat we were billed as The Ratty Band!

++ Where were you from originally?

My family moved to Wolverhampton when I was about ten. I was actually born in Leamington Spa but have only been back there once since, to record ‘Potboiler’ at Woodbine studios

++ How was Wolverhampton at the time of Penelope’s Web? 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?

Wolverhampton was pretty bleak in the 80s with fairly high unemployment and not many venues, but the poly had some amazing bands playing (The Fall for 75p i particularly remember!) and JBs in Dudley was another gig we played fairly often. There was quite a few well known Midlands acts a couple of years older than us like The Mighty Lemon Drops, The Wonder Stuff and Pop Will Eat Itself (who rehearsed in the same studio as us) but the only other local band i really remember well from that time were the excellent The Sandkings who we shared a bill with a couple of times. Their singer later became Babylon Zoo who had a huge hit with ‘Spaceman’.

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

Gary, Witold, Paul and I shared a house in the student area of Wolverhampton for a while. I didn’t play any instrument at all at this stage but wrote all the lyrics (i didn’t really play guitar until about four years ago) so most of the songs we wrote were collaborations between Witold and I or Gary and I. We made our first demo at this point, which i sadly no longer have a copy of anywhere. After the first gig at the poly we recruited Andy Barnett on saxophone (who i believe went on to play with Goodbye Mr Mackenzie and now runs a brewery in Edinburgh, Barney’s Beer) and Mark Sayfritz (who worked with Goldie later). Paul Chivers moved away and we recruited Steve Markham to play the drums and settled on the name (the idea being, as with the greek myth, it was a never ending project) and recorded another demo which, after a bit of promotional help from my then girlfriend’s dad, was much to our surprise played by legendary Midlands DJ/Journalist on his local radio show and I was invited on the local arts radio show with Barney to do an interview.

++ Your first release was actually a self-release, right? It was the 12″ “The Gap” EP on your own M.T.G. Records. Wondering why did you decide going that way of putting it out yourselves? And what does M.T.G. means?

We recorded our debut EP at a studio in Derby, i think it was called The Square or something very similar, by which time Witold had left the band to pursue his career in art (his work being used as the cover for the EP) and been replaced by a good friend Gavin Abbs, who had produced our very first demo as The Ratty Band, and we played a number of gigs (the high points of which were supporting The Shop Assistants at Huddersfield Polytechnic and John Otway at JBs in Dudley. We released the EP on our own label MTG records (i had been visiting my girlfriend in London and heard the station announcer recording at Bank saying ‘Mind The Gap’ and as our new song was The Gap it seemed appropriate) and received a fairly decent review in Sounds for the EP and seemed to attract a bit of record label attention and I have vague memories of meetings with EMI and Siren, amongst others, which amounted to nothing. Mike Davies introduced us to some potential managers. Ben Bates (allegedly former manager of The Sweet) and Rober Wace (The Kinks, Stealer’s Wheel) but neither came to anything. Around this time, Alex Patterson (later of The Orb), who was then A & R for EG records, came to a few gigs and for a moment this looked promising but again nothing concrete materialised.

++ Then you’d end up signing with Cherry Red Records. How did this relationship come to be?

In 88 I moved to London and made contact with Robert Wace again and Gavin and I signed a management deal with him. We recorded a demo with Charlie Llewellyn (ex Blue Aeroplanes producer) at Pathway studios in Islington and Robert got us a deal with Cherry Red records. We recruited a bass player, John Thompson and recorded more demos at Blockhouse Studio with Jezz Wright (soon to have a worldwide hit as Liquid with ‘Sweet Harmony’) and then added drummer, Steve Oldham but although we then recorded the single ‘Potboiler’, the B sides ‘Low Sun’ and ‘Mistress Quickly’ and the planned follow up single ‘Political Nightmare’ at Woodbine studios with John Rivers (lovely man, great producer), we only played one gig together, at Wolverhampton Poly again.

++ After many years Firestation Records would release a retrospective compilation. And I was wondering who made the selection of songs? I ask because I notice that for example “Rags” wasn’t included?

In 2014 I was contacted by German label, Firestation records about putting together a compilation of Penelope’s web recordings. As many of these were owned by Cherry Red (including the demos recorded at Blockhouse and the woodbine studio recordings), we concentrated mainly on demos from before we moved to London so there are still Cherry Red recordings (Rags, Stress Timed, Political Nightmare that have never been released). The cover is a photograph by Witold Leonowicz of his son Theo.

++ When I see the amount of songs, I wonder why was there never plans to release an album?

I think it was a real shame that Penelope’s Web never got to release an album. We could easily have done so in the late 80s in the midlands, material wise, and again had enough new stuff to do the same with Cherry Red but somehow it never happened. I’m trying very hard to make up for that now!

++ I think my favourite song of yours might as well be “Potboiler”, wondering if you could tell me what inspired this song? What’s the story behind it?

Thanks for your kind words about Potboiler. It’s a pretty straightforward break up song i think about trying and failing and trying again to move on. I was reading Robert Graves ‘Goodbye to all that’ at the time and just adapted the title for the chorus.

++ If you were to choose your favorite Penelope’s Web song, which one would that be and why?

I think if i had to choose a favourite Penelope’s Web song it would probably be ‘Little World’ from the first EP, mainly for lyrical reasons but also because I think Witold has a very original musical angle. I’m enjoying working with him again after all this time.

++ Did you get much attention from the press?

Potboiler received airplay fron Whispering Bob Harris on radio one and got a decent enough review in the melody maker but office politics seems to have caused a great deal of problems at Cherry Red around this time and it was not long before we (and all the other bands there as i understand it) were dropped from the label, Gavin returned to the midlands to start a dance label, fried egg records, Steve and John joined Bad Manners (for the next ten years) and I started playing gigs with Penelope’s Web founder Gary McCormick and other friends Phil Heap, Martin Wendholt and Claire Lingham) under my own name and released a cassette ‘the daylight and the dream’ on our own Oddball records. Robert got us some interesting gigs (eg, a deb ball at cambridge university) and had talks with other labels which came to nothing. I continued my association with Robert Wace, which was never dull (I could probably talk for hours about him and his very old school ways, meeting Ray Davies etc), up until the early noughts by which time i had four young children and needed to try to make a living, taking on a number of different jobs which forced music into the background. Since 2008 i have run a youth football club, Walthamstow Wolves (obviously we are all avid Wolves fans as a result of my being brought up in Wolverhampton), with my two oldest sons, Louie and Joe.

++ And what were you up to music-wise after the demise of Penelope’s Web?

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Listen
Penelope’s Web – Potboiler