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The Lancaster Bombers
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Article
written by Mary B
Nov 7, 2006.
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Make way for The Lancaster Bombers (John-Paul / Tatsuki / Johan / Rob) They are making an impact on the musical landscape that will leave it's mark for many years to come. It was an absolute privilege to question their front man, the modest John-Paul, a man full of ideas who is not afraid to share them.
SoundsXP: Let's talk about the band's name first. It is an obvious nod to the WW11 RAF aircrafts that were a destructive yet necessary force. Why that name? And is it apt where your music is concerned?
JP: I don’t know, I mean it’s heavy, y’know and those guys in the RAF looked fucking great, they had far better uniforms than the Nazi’s and far cooler more imaginative nicknames, like ‘Tiger Smith.’ I mean looking at the planes it’s hard to believe they even got off the ground! I also wanted a name that reflected Woody Guthrie’s ‘This Machine Kills Fascists’ sentiments and that at the same time would kind of undermine any kind of British patriotism and give the finger to conservative middle England. I mean I am hopelessly anti-war and have kind of stupid Utopian ideals of the Huxley mould but I’m also sick to fucking death of hearing brainwashed morons bang on about their fucking religious doctrines and the cowardice of suicide bombing. It’s all terrorism though isn’t it? It’s just that some of it is politically sanctioned. Above all that it’s also just a fucking excellent iconic name for a band. It’s good to have something that sounds fucking massive when you have a massive fucking sound I reckon.
SoundsXP: Did Shane MacGowan really design your debut single sleeve cover? If so how did that come about?
JP: Yeah it’s true although it’s not the cover, if you look in the top left corner on the back there is a drawing of a fucked up Lancaster Rose by Shane and his signature. It came about quite simply because he really liked ‘Cruelty Boxes’a lot. He just got it. When I first played it to him and Gerry O’Boyle he said, “Everyone seems to care about it when it happens to animals but no-one gives a fuck when it is happening to humans.” Absolutely, I mean Cruelty Boxes was about a lot of things of it’s time like Abu Ghraib but it also is in a big way about human rights abuses across the board. Obviously, it was amazing to have that happen, we’ve re-recorded it now and it’s called Stripes. The original version is available as a free download from our website although SOMEONE is selling it on itunes, probably the record company. I am making nothing from that, I only realised it's happening today. We were under the impression they had collapsed.
SoundsXP: Talk to me about 'The Fall of Rome' and your other new material. What can people expect from it and how have you grown, musically, as a band over the past year?
JP: The Fall of Rome is kind of a song about the zeitgeist or Armageddon, whatever you want call it really. It has the Christian figure of Eve in it. The chorus, to me, evokes this image of this tough kind of er ‘fallen woman’ and she’s called the Fall of Rome. She’s a metaphor for the failure of capitalism and all that fucking shit I suppose. When you listen it’s pretty obvious what it is saying, like anything though it means to you whatever it means to you and whatever that is, it's valid. Far more importantly it is an attempt to marry the groove of The Faces with T Rex and Primal Scream in a 21st Century way and get a song on the radio that isn’t about sweet fuck all. It’s also very sexy, because, ahem, I’m bringing sexy back right, not like that other ponce who looks like he’s most likely to overdose on milk and fucking cookies. To be honest I am just simply obsessed with sex, religious imagery, war and The Rolling Stones and I think over the last year the band have got closer to reflecting that and what I always envisaged them as musically. I would say to anyone that we actually are the fucking band of the moment because we are fucking amazing and are going to reclaim the word revolution from toothbrush commercials by selling our music to toothbrush commercials in an ironic way and spreading the word via subversion. Yeah right, I think Einstein said ‘The angry man always thinks he can achieve more than he can” but it’s still good to be angry. The Fall of Rome is just a collection of images really, I do dream vividly and a lot of the words come to me via dreamtime, it’s all Milton and Blake and those cats, that’s the stuff I loved as a kid. Other new songs like ‘Reasons’ and ‘International Bastard Club’ are again about specifics but also products of the Ginsberg school of free association. ‘Reasons’ is one of the best songs I have ever written I think whereas ‘Kitty Jane’ is pretty much a big nod to Lou Reed and the mighty Velvets. A live favourite at the moment which we are recording right now is ‘So Long’ which is about a transvestite who gets murdered. It’s funny cos’ the lads on the piss don’t seem to get that and all join in on the chorus. ‘Black sand’ is my favourite to play at the moment, Johan says it reminds him of ‘I Can’t Stand It’, ‘Dust Nationale’ is about the notion of an American revolution and ’Sevens’ is kind of about the number seven which is my soul number in numerology. We are still in the process of recording those, it is fair to say I have three albums worth of material. I may bang them all down on acoustic guitar for the moment in the way I did with the stuff on the website that I did with Sterling Roswell, we’ll see. The other one already done with ‘The Fall of Rome’ is the definitive ‘International Bastard Club’ which I am massively excited about. It’s got all my usual interests in it, “You can fake Christian Death in your final breath, I’ll be getting high…” stuff like that.
SoundsXP: Are The Lancaster Bombers a tight unit or is there dissention in the ranks at times?
JP: Well it is a damn tighter since I kicked out all the fuckwits. It has been well documented the fuck ups, breakdowns and beatings along the way, but I got sick of those cunts and turned the band into a benevolent dictatorship, much in the same way Anton Newcombe did. Tatsuki, Rob and Johan are The Lancaster Bombers, they have been for a long time now and they are all very incredible musicians, well I mean Johan’s a drummer but the other two are definitely musicians, haha. He will kill me for saying that. Dissention? Not unless they want a smack in the chops, nah they are alright, I love ‘em really.
SoundsXP: Do you really consider yourself to be a 'cult' JP? Or was that a spontaneous comment? I will join you but I will not drink the poison...
JP: Well L Ron Hubbard said if you want to be a millionaire start your own religion and then he did. So the answer is yes, you can join the Bastard Love Children of St Agnes of Bohemia by sending me a cheque or postal order for a hundred and fifty quid. I will send you some ‘magic beans’, two crickets (live), some ceiling wax and a painted leather doll called juju to stick pins in. Seriously though if you can honestly rationally tell me the difference being a Christian, a Jew a Muslim or a fully paid up member of the second cult of Kermit The Frog I’ll give you a kiss. They’re all cunts. Yeah join the fucking Lancaster Bombers, we’ll put your DMT in the post, I don’t care I’m an alien wizard anyway, if I like you a lot you can provide me with head relief. My question to any cunt into religion is ‘Who wrote that prayer in your head?’ It’s my favourite lyric in ‘Reasons’ as well.
SoundsXP: Your live shows are kind of legendary. Reviews are scattered with words such as 'Dark and dangerous' and 'Sexy and disturbing' Talk to me about your live performances. As a performer what are you trying to give to your audience that they cannot get on record?
JP: Well, basically I just express myself and I love doing it. I’m not setting out to do anything other than sing the songs and have a good time. Sometimes though people are weird about it if you aren’t kissing their ass. I mean this promoter at the Café De Paris kicked me out straight after last weeks show. It wasn’t because I had done fucking anything, I mean it is my drumkit to trash, it was more about him exercising his pathetic little bit of power with his five heavies. Thank fuck for Mickie P that’s all I can say, he jumped in and helped stop a kicking going down.
SoundsXP: Do you have any heros at all? Would you like to be somebody's hero?
JP: I can list a few off the top of my head, The Stones, David Bowie, Peter Cook, Perry Farrell, Tony Hancock and that dude in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square. In fact I think that guy in front of the tanks above any of the others. They are artists I admire, I wouldn’t call them heroes. I think I would rather people didn’t tell lies about me than think me a hero right now.
SoundsXP: I know that certain artists influence you. Can you talk about them a bit more. Any works of art that provide a constant flow of inspiration for you?
JP: Anything by Hieronymus Bosch or William Blake I could look at for hours. I once spent hours looking at this privately owned book of Dali sketches based on Alice in Wonderland and that was amazing. Alice is a constant source of inspiration, Jan Svankmeyer’s interpretation is incredible. On the whole literature is a bigger source of inspiration for me. I love reading Keats, Shelley and Shakespeare. In fact Shakespeare’s imagery, more than any other, I find mindbending. Also Herman Hesse and Phillip K Dick are big influences as is also Hubert Selby Jr. At any rate I could go on about all sorts of books but it’s simpler to say magical realism of the Bulgakov school pump my nads.
SoundsXP: You are named after a few popes, JP, but it is not holy thoughts that spring to mind when I think of you. Does religion play any part in your life? Are you aware of all of the sexual energy that you let off? (wipes brow)
JP: I wrote this thing called ‘Who wrote that prayer in your head” which is like a real pop at organised religion. Organised religion pisses me off. That new pop Ratzinger is complicit in Catholic Missionaries in the Congo telling people that condoms cause Aids for fuck’s sake, how evil is that? The guy is basically the banker in the world with the Nazi gold and he wants a fucking so-called ‘clash of civilizations’as much as any radical Muslim, you had better believe it folks, That cunt Hamza with the hook for a hand makes me fucking sick as well, they all do, they all need to GET THE FUCK OVER IT, “My god’s bigger than your God” etc, fucking morons. It’s playground politics man, roll on 2012. I’m starting a society in 2007 called The Norom Society, fuck it let’s call it The Norom Church, it’s moron inverted, you can’t join unless you are a free thinking individual with a sense of how to dress. You can have a theology of protest or be agnostic or atheist, nothing else allowed in. Bring a bottle. As for sexual energy, I’m flattered, cheers, can I have your phone number?*
SoundsXP: What frightens you? What makes you think? What makes you happy. In that order.
JP: Stupid people frighten me, Plato said something along the lines of people being too smart to engage in politics suffering under people dumber than them calling the shots. North Korea and Middle America seem to prove that. China scares me too, eight million deaths under The Communist Party. Jeez. Finally MTV, Big Brother, X Factor and all the cunts involved in that shit really scare me too.
Nothing ‘makes’ me think, I’m cursed with thinking a lot all the time, I can’t switch off. JoJo, Mr.Wolf and The Lancaster Bombers make me happy.
SoundsXP: I have to ask you what your thoughts on war are, JP. Anything that springs to mind really. Does it have it's place? Should it be documented through mediums such as art/literature?
JP: Herman Hesse’s ‘If The War Goes On’ is an incredible book about how he was amazed that all his intellectual friends in Germany went over to the Nazis. It says a lot about human nature, fear and herd mentality. Yeah, it’s important that it is documented but with all history it is written by the victor, it is around remembrance day this time of year isn’t it and fuck we should remember how many people, on all sides, who lost their lives because it looks like the world is on the brink of a nuclear arms race. Fuck knows why Bush pulled out of the ABM treaty, probably to pursue NMD but that without any doubt was a catalyst for what is happening now.
SoundsXP: Let us end on a light note, JP. You are up there for having one of the best torsos in music :-) Do you need somebody to grease it up for you before your live performances? How important is image to you? (it got serious again)
JP: Well you can get a good torso through exercise or drugs, drugs is probably quicker and easier, that’s just an observation. I guess in a weird way image is important to me because it says who you are and I like to think mine says ‘I love rock n’roll, put another dime in the jukebox baby’
*Girly giggle. Line up the dimes if The Lancaster Bombers are on that same jukebox. Catch the Bombers' live raids in London this month. It is a must.
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