Author: wamdines

Alright, maybe that headline is a bit much. But you can stick your Kent, that I do know! From where I’m sat right now in my house in Southend, I can see Kent in the distance, ruining an otherwise beautiful view of the Essex riviera, the inhabitants probably over there feeling smug about all the hipsters who relocated from Hackney Wick to Margate. I’m shaking my fist at you, people of Kent!

It is probably not healthy for the soul to adopt such a combative siege mentality about where you’re from to the point that you refuse to take your family on daytrips to the Kent coast (heard it’s nice, refuse to believe it), just because you consider it a betrayal, but I am who I am.

I was born in Walthamstow, east London, in a time way before no-one in their right mind described it as “Awesomestow”, as its new influx of residents are prone to (it was the 80s, it was more like something out of Mad Max), and I moved to Essex as an 11-year-old. I still considered myself a Londoner for a lot of my teens, probably thinking it was cooler because I was a loser, but the older I’ve got, the more I have become prouder and prouder of being from Essex. I stand before you, about to try and convince you of its musical pedigree, as a proud, mid-40s Essex boy.

Even if I don’t manage to successfully argue the case, hopefully you will, at least, come out of this whole foolhardy fandango with an appreciation of this glorious county’s contribution to UK music. That one is not up for debate.

If you’re for some follow-up reading then check out Tim Burrows’ excellent book The Invention Of Essex, and if you’re up for further investigation after that, get in touch and I’ll recommend some estate agents.

The Prodigy

Transport yourself to 1997, to a field on the outskirts of Chelmsford. The Prodigy are headlining one night of that year’s V Festival. Blur are headlining the other. It’s one of my favourite teenage memories: two bands from Essex who have taken over the world headlining a festival in Essex at the height of summer. Braintree’s The Prodigy reinvented what dance music could be, a cut and shut of techno, punk and rock. In an early sign of how territorial I would become about my music tastes, I swapped my copy of Definitely Maybe for Music For The Jilted Generation. I realise now, 30 years later, it’s OK to have both.

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Blur

Like me, Damon Albarn left east London to move to Essex as a teenager. Unlike me, he went on to form one of the greatest British bands of all time and then invented a cartoon band who were also mega-successful and mega-brilliant. Although Blur have too many songs about west London and the Westway and not enough about Essex, I will let them off because they come home from time to time – I saw them do a warm-up show at Colchester Arts Centre a couple of years ago and it was one of the most joyous shows I’ve ever seen.

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Dr. Feelgood

But let’s go back, right back… to 2014. I have just moved to Southend and returned to the homeland. I have lived here less than 24 hours and I am driving out of the tip in Leigh-on-sea and I look up and see Wilko Johnson, guitarist extraordinaire, punk progenitor, Game Of Thrones star, strolling past. This is the equivalent of getting a “Welcome Home!” thumbs up from the Essex gods. The late, great Wilko was local royalty. His band’s raucous, bluesy rock’n’roll was hugely influential on an array of artists who went on to reshape British music, their jagged brilliance inspiring Joe Strummer and Paul Weller, to name just two.

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These New Puritans

A day or two after I saw Wilko near the tip, I saw Jack Barnett, the creative dynamo in These New Puritans, going for a jog near my house. I felt like I’d moved to Essex musician Stella Street. These New Puritans, who are made up of Jack and his twin brother George, are one of the 21^st century’s most underrated bands. They have released four records of experimental, art-rock brilliance, music that can be atmospheric, ambient and serene at some points and dramatic and explosive at others. Think Radiohead, Massive Attack and Steve Reich going on a geography field trip together. Their fifth album is out in May.

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Mark Hollis

Mark Hollis was born in Tottenham and raised in Rayleigh. He died in 2019 but what music the Talk Talk leader left behind: a genius meld of 80s pop, tranquil soundscapes, loose jazz and hypnotic dynamism that would come to be known as post-rock.

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Depeche Mode

Depeche Mode are all-timers. Their music was a neat mirror of their upbringing. They were raised in Basildon, a new town with no echoes of what had gone before, so it made sense they invented a brand new sound, first conquering the world as electro-pop trailblazers and then morphing into the muscular synth-rock titans who made Music For The Masses and Violator. Every time my train went through Basildon, I always wondered when the last time Dave Gahan visited his hometown. In a cover feature for Q in 2017, I got to ask him: he’d taken his family there the year before to show them the house that he’d grown up in. Nice one Dave!

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Vince Clarke

Pop svengali Clarke co-founded Depeche Mode and was their chief songwriter until he left shortly after the release of their debut album Speak & Spell in 1981. The band still play one of his compositions in their set over four decades on, a little ditty you might know called Just Can’t Get Enough. The split was down to the rest of the group’s wish to get a bit darker and Clarke’s desire to make uplifting, bright pop songs. That’s exactly what he did, first with Yazoo and then with Erasure, who’ve sold over a whopping 28 million records. The fella knows his way round a memorable tune, that’s for sure.

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Alison Moyet

There was some mad shit in the water in Basildon in the 70s. Not only did the town give the world Depeche Mode and Vince Clarke, it also gave us their schoolmate Alison Moyet. She was in Yazoo with Clarke after he left DM and went on to carve out a successful solo career and establish herself one of the UK’s most enduring and distinctive singer and songwriter talents.

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The Horrors

When The Horrors first emerged in the mid-00s, the Southend crew were cartoonish garage-rockers for whom every day was Halloween. Who knew what a special band would emerge from what felt like it could be a quickfire thrill: with every record, they have tweaked and shapeshifted into one of the UK’s most inventive and exhilarating guitar bands.

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Underworld

And so to the last slot, which could have gone to pioneering IDM maverick Squarepusher but instead lands at the feet of techno dons Underworld. The story of Underworld, you see, just shows the supernatural power of Essex. Underworld were rubbish before they moved to Essex, a ropey funk-pop band whose career was petering out. Then Rick Smith moved to Romford, met DJ and future member Darren Emerson, started making dance music, and the rest is history. Essex, then, is totally responsible for all their deserved triumph since and I won’t hear a word otherwise, I’m finishing writing now so it’s not even worth you trying to raise an objection.

Niall Doherty is a writer and editor whose work can be found in Classic Rock, The Guardian, Music Week, FourFourTwo, on Apple Music and more. Formerly the Deputy Editor of Q magazine, he co-runs the music Substack letter The New Cue with fellow former Q colleagues Ted Kessler and Chris Catchpole. He is also Reviews Editor at Record Collector. Over the years, he’s interviewed some of the world’s biggest stars, including Elton John, Coldplay, Arctic Monkeys, Muse, Pearl Jam, Radiohead, Depeche Mode, Robert Plant and more. Radiohead was only for eight minutes but he still counts it.

When Kiss lumbered on to the scene in 1974 with their self-titled debut album, no one could’ve predicted how much a part of popular culture their bat-winged, fire-breathing, blood-drooling totem, Gene Simmons, would become. When Simmons – born Chaim Witz in Israel, the son of Hungarian Jews – relocated to New York at a young age he immediately embraced the American dream. As Kiss’s career exploded – quite literally – the bassist/vocalist proved he was no shock-rock novelty act, masterminding an extensive merchandising range and helping transform the band into a global business.

Simmons’s larger-than-life personality helped him inveigle his way into rarefied social circles, and he enjoyed unlikely love affairs with a couple of the world’s top female singers. In 2010, Gene looked back on several of the (non-sexual) encounters he’d had with the great and good of rock’n’roll, Hollywood and even the White House.

Lou Reed

[Producer] Bob Ezrin started rehearsing with us for the Destroyer record in 1975 and he had just come off working with Lou Reed on Berlin. We rehearsed in a place called Carol’s on 42nd Street and 6th Avenue in New York City. Lou walked in and I’d been aware of, and had been a big fan of, Walk On The Wild Side, which was produced by David Bowie and Mick Ronson. Reed walks in, we’re rehearsing, trying to work out songs, and Bob says that he would like Lou to work on lyrics with us and maybe get another angle. But it didn’t work out, actually, and we went off and did Destroyer, because we couldn’t wait to put all these new songs down, like Detroit Rock City and Flaming Youth and all that.

So then the next time Bob Ezrin worked with us was on (Music From) The Elder [1981], which had the best of all intentions but was misdirected. It was intended for the band to kind of move inward, to write something that meant something, and I take full responsibility [for it being a commercial disaster]. It was my concept, the title, the ideal and the idea, the story line. I wanted to do a motion picture. As we were working on it, Paul [Stanley] came in with something called Every Little Bit Of My Heart or something like that, it was sort of a pop ditty, and we tried to work it up but it was too pop. Lou came up to King’s City in Toronto and we sat around and he scribbled away on song title ideas and so on, and everyone immediately focused in on A World Without Heroes. It just felt like the song could write itself. So we took the chordal progression of Paul’s Every Little Bit Of My Heart and the line ‘A world without heroes… it’s no place for me… it’s like a bird without wings…’ and it’s pretty poignant. That was Lou’s contribution, just the title, so he got a songwriting credit.

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Frank Zappa

I knew his son, Dweezil, socially and he actually learned to play guitar from a guitar player I discovered… Eddie Van Halen. So it all comes full circle somehow. Dweezil actually brought me over to see Frank before he passed away and we started to talk about stuff – music and life philosophies and so on, and after he passed away it was his family that actually gathered around the idea of doing something post his passing. I asked if they had any unfinished Frank pieces because I’d love to finish them and get the family around, and so we came together on Black Tongue, which was Frank’s title, not mine. I had this 30-second bit that I built an entire song on, this loop, and I played all the instruments and got all the Zappa family in. It was the only song in the entire Zappa history where the entire remaining family members actually sang around the same mic.

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Cher

Cher had just signed to Casablanca. Kiss were the first act on Casablanca, but she was gonna do a disco record. The label president asked if I’d come by for Governor Brown, some kind of charity event, and also he wanted to introduce me to Cher. So I said, “Great, sure!” So I got there; I was just scouting to see who was there and I wanted more people for my solo record.

Cher, in the meantime, was forced to go to the party that she didn’t want to go to by Chastity, her daughter who was a big Kiss fan. Chastity told her, “You’ve got to go to this thing, Gene Simmons is going to be there!” So when she got there, I walked up and said, “Hi, I’m Gene Simmons.” But she looked confused. She was off-centre because she thought it was the female Jean Simmons in movies. Cher had no idea that the Kiss thing had infected her household through her kids; especially Chastity, who wore the make-up and did all that stuff, and Elijah too when he was little.

Literally that first night I said, “You wanna come with me?” So she hopped in the limo and off we went. It started that fast. Hey, you want my advice when it comes to women, it’s this: say what you mean and mean what you say. If you see a beautiful girl and you find her attractive, say those words.

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Diana Ross

I was going to buy Cher a Christmas present. By that time we were not living together and I was off touring, but I wanted to buy her something. But what do you buy someone who has everything? Cher said, “Call my best friend, Diana. I tell her all my secrets and she knows exactly what I want!” So when I was in New York, I rang Diana up and said, “Would you help me?” When I met her at her apartment she gave me a slice of chocolate cake… and then she gave me a different slice of chocolate cake. It happened very fast.

Thereafter Cher and Diana weren’t such good friends. But I continued to be close to both and valued our time together. The word ‘lady’ in the dictionary has photos of both of them. I had my own place in New York but I was living with Diana too, and Cher was often coming to New York to do Come Back To The Five & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, which was her at the beginning of her acting thing. Cher didn’t want to stay in the city alone so I said, “Stay at my place.”

And so sometimes I’d stay with Cher at my place and sometimes I’d stay at Diana’s place. Everyone complicates things. Just simplify it and be clear with everybody. The only thing that bothers women is the dishonesty and not being clear. You see a Rottweiler coming towards you, it’s very clear what’s going on. You have to get out of the way because it’s a Rottweiler. so it’s clear. You see a French poodle and then it bites you, you’re pissed off! Be clear about who you are.

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Bob Dylan

Next to Zappa one of the other pivotal people for me is Bob Dylan. There’s certainly no greater lyricist in pop culture. But Dylan is classic poetry to me. And I’ll never forget, he got on the phone to me out of the blue one day. I go, “Hey Bob” and he’s like, “Hey, alright, Mr Kiss!” Always called me Mr Kiss. Even to this day, he won’t call me Gene Simmons. I say, “How you doing?” and he says, [something incoherent and Bob-like]. “Uh, what did you say, Bob?” [Laughs] His voice is instantly recognisable; no other human being has ever had that sound. You can’t quite figure out what country it’s from, never mind which town.

But I have the tapes, I recorded the whole thing. “Gee, I wanna write with you, Bob.” “Alright, man…” [more Dylan-esque gibberish] and I’m thinking, “Does he want to know what time and where?” So I say, “How about so-and-so on this day?” He says, “Sure.” And sure enough, there he was. A little van pulls up, and we both pulled out acoustic guitars… actually, one acoustic and one electric, because I haven’t a second acoustic. I tossed around an idea and he says, “How about this? Try and do that.” I sang a melody against his lyric and the tune happened fast, about 45 minutes. But of course, there were no lyrics, just a sense of melody and a chordal structure, and then Bob was gone. That was in 1994, and it took me eight or nine years. I kept badgering Bob, “Write the lyric!” “No, Mr Kiss, you write the lyric!” “Bob, you write the lyric! That’s why I called you!” “No, man, you gotta [gibberish].” Anyway I couldn’t get him to write the lyric, so finally, in desperation, when I had my solo record come out, I actually finished the lyric because I couldn’t wait any longer. Bob liked it. It’s called Waiting For The Morning Light, about a guy on the road, sees the picture of his love next to the telephone and here he is staying up all night, you know, waiting for the morning light.

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Michael Jackson

I knew Michael. I ran into him a few times. I met him the first time before he became the superstar, when he was sort of teenagey, when he was still a Jackson Five. This was in the Cher days, when Cher and I lived together.

I remember this shy kid who knew his stuff and actually suggested we did a record with this guy called Mutt Lange, who he liked very much. So, yeah, he knew his stuff. It would have been a great record.

Once when I was managing Liza Minnelli’s recording career, she was playing Universal Amphitheater and Michael came to pay his respects because she was one of his childhood idols. I don’t remember if he walked in with Elizabeth Taylor or Sophia Loren… either one… and we both just hung out and shot the shite.

When I lived with Diana Ross, it was she who brought me to the Encino Compound and I joined Michael as he went to a corner juice place and had a glass of orange. That was all he had to eat that day. He fasted two, sometimes three days a week. That was his regimen. I was always taken by his innocence and he was always very polite and kind.

But as time moved on, and no matter what my fond memories and fond images of Michael were, with one allegation of paedophilia after another and another and another… Oh dear. I knew some of the musicians he toured with, and specifically one who quit because of seeing boys coming out of the hotel rooms. And then you factor in that his travel agent was put on the stand and in court said that she was authorised to fly to Brazil and bring boys back to America for him… Well, you know, where there’s smoke there’s fire. There’s no question in my mind he molested those kids. Not a doubt.

What we do know is Michael settled for $20 or $25 million to keep one suit dead and the other one was $3 or $4 million. Now what $25 million dollars means is if somebody said the most vile thing about me and I paid a lawyer $500,000 a year, I could defend that case for 50 years for the amount of money that Michael paid to make it go away.

Michael’s on tape going, “Give the kids Jesus juice.” Which is wine. I mean, it’s just endless. So on one hand he’s a sad kind of a character who seems to have been lonely… And incidentally, there’s never been a single female of any age that I’ve ever known about who has ever made a claim that she has had a physical relationship with Michael, ever. In fact, while he was alive, I never heard about mature men ever making that claim either – and believe me, you can’t keep it a secret. If you’re a celebrity, somebody somewhere will say, “Oh yeah, I shagged him.”

The only sexual references ever made about Michael Jackson that were made by anyone, anywhere around the world, have always been made by kids, and specifically males usually 10 to 14 years of age; never females, that age or older, and never grown men. Oh, I don’t think this is going away any time soon.

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Robert De Niro

It’s just a hello, goodbye kind of relationship. But the interesting thing about De Niro for me is that he has a long and very public history of exclusively loving dark flesh. He loves black women. And so here’s the Kiss connection: Eric Carr, our beloved drummer who unfortunately passed away to cancer in 1991, had a really sweet and pretty hot black girlfriend named Pantera, before the band of the same name. I mean, you could tell, with a name like that she was gonna be hot! It’s not Magda, it’s Pantera. She was hot stuff. De Niro met them both and wasted no time on zoning in on Pantera.

The connection there was that one of the biggest fans that we had was this guy called Fat Vinnie, who must have seen 200 or300 Kiss shows. He travels around the world, he’s had triple-bypass heart operations, and all the way through the recovery process he has still seen every show. Now, De Niro was about to start filming The King Of Comedy which deals with an extreme fan of Jerry Lewis, and De Niro wanted to meet one and get to know one. So Eric’s like, “Hey Bob, meet Fat Vinnie.” De Niro actually lived at his house because he wanted to get see what an extreme fan was all about. He fashioned his idiosyncrasies and his style of talking for the entire film on a Kiss fan! In fact, there’s a pivotal moment where De Niro said he wanted Fat Vinnie to come and work for him as his driver and personal assistant, and Vinnie said, “Sorry, I can’t – Kiss is going back out on tour!”

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Eddie Van Halen

Edward, as Edward likes to be called. I went to see The Boyzz play at a place called the Starwood, and the first band is a group called Van Halen. By the second song they had knocked me out. I was like, “What the hell? Look at the guitar player, look at the singer doing acrobatics and stuff!” So immediately I was waiting for them backstage. I even curtailed my groupie activity – they were that good!

When I got there, Edward and David [Lee Roth] and all the guys – they were babies – were telling me how excited they were that I was there. They were big Kiss fans and they often did Firehouse in their sets – you can go on YouTube and pick it up – and they were excited because there was a yoghurt manufacturer that was going to invest in them. I begged them and said, “Don’t do it! I’ll finance your demo and fly you to New York.” And I did.

I bought David his first pair of platform heels and some leather pants. I put them up in a hotel, got them in Electric Lady studios and got in Dave Whitman, who engineered some of our records and worked on Humble Pie and lots of other stuff. And we recorded about 15 songs and it’s still never been released.

I took the tape to our then manager, Bill Aucoin, and I let Paul hear it and the guys in the band. Everybody shrugged their shoulders and went, “So what?” And I’m going, “You’re killing me! Whaddya mean, so what? Listen to that!” But everybody was too busy with their life. So I got Van Halen to do a showcase for Bill but he still didn’t get it. He thought they were like Black Oak Arkansas, because Black Oak had a guy with long blonde hair [Jim Dandy] and all that.

So even though they were signed to my production company exclusively, Man Of A Thousand Faces Incorporated of course, Kiss were about to go out on tour with Love Gun. I said, “I’m tearing up your contract because I don’t want to tie you down. I can’t ethically, morally and in other ways keep you locked in if I can’t work on you. I’ve got to go out on tour. I’ll get off tour in six months, eight months. You’re free to go get your own deal. If you don’t get it in that time you can come back to me and we’ll try it again.” And within a month they were on Warner Bros and off into the studio. By the time we got off tour You Really Got Me was on the radio and it was a massive hit.

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Simon Cowell

I like Simon! We understood each other right away. He’s the only honest one on American Idol. I’ve known Randy Jackson for a long time too. Paula Abdul and I were going to do some projects together. I was a judge on American Idol for a few episodes three years ago. But the only one who tells the truth is Simon. Just because you’re on television you’re supposed to say nice things, but in the real world, if you get off stage and you suck, you suck! And tough love is good. But he’s not nasty. Truth hurts.

There was this one guy who came on the show, a black guy with a gold, I think they call it a grill, where your entire teeth are covered by a piece of jewellery that you put on. You couldn’t understand what he was saying. He was so extremely bad that it was fascinating. It’s like Keith Richards’ skin. When I met Keith I was fascinated by his hands and fingers. Now most people would say that’s ugly, but it’s not – it’s fascinatingly beautiful in its ugliness. Have you held his hand? It’s like leather on a sofa and you’re fascinated by it.

I said to this kid on American Idol, “You don’t belong here, but you’re a fascinating guy. You should be in movies, because you look like a guy who could hold up a 7/11 [store] and be like that.” And sure enough, he was arrested for holding up a 7/11 after the show. He’s in jail as we speak.

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Well, Donald is a huge fan of Gene Simmons. Mostly he’s jealous of my hair which is much cooler than his. Everybody thinks we both wear wigs, but no, we don’t. They’re all just jealous. I’ve known him off and on for a long time. Even though he comes from a good background and all that, he’s a self-made man, I’d like to think that he thinks like me. He would like to think he’s like me of course, but the bitch never will be and he knows it!

I like to kid with him because he comes off as this hard-headed guy because it’s part of the game, but he’s a pussycat. You’ve got to hand it to somebody like him. Like Richard Branson, who I know well too. Branson, Trump, self-made guys who continue to live by their own rules.

If you take a look at their business model, it defies logic. Branson will sit in a business meeting and when these guys toss due diligence numbers at him he says, “Look, just cut the shit. What is it? Don’t give me 10 reams of information, just give me the sense of it.” The big guys play the big games in simple ways, because at some point you have to say “go” or “stop” or “buy” or “sell”. At some point you have to make that assessment. You can over-think things.

It’s like being in the studio. It’s never been proven that the longer you stay in a studio, the better your record is. Or the more money you spend…

Originally published in Classic Rock issue 142, February 2010

Chris Ingham is the former Group Publisher of Classic Rock and Metal Hammer. He is the author of Nothing Else Matters: The Stories Behind the Biggest Metallica Songs and The Book of Metal.

In 2014, Gong founder Daevid Allen’s cancer diagnosis forced him out of the band’s upcoming tour in support of that year’s album I See You – their best, most forward-looking release in years. He told Prog about the work and his belief in always looking ahead instead of back. Soon afterwards he refused further treatment, and died aged 77 on March 13, 2015.

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“Hopefully the cancer will recede to give me a few more years of creativity, but at 76, I can accept that my days are numbered,” observes Daevid Allen, without any hint of drama or mawkishness regarding the discovery of a cancerous tumour in his neck.

Following treatment, Allen is on the mend, having received an almost tangible current of good vibes from fans around the world since his illness was announced in June 2014. Though profoundly grateful, he remains philosophical. “There are so many people now suffering from cancer that it’s never far from any of us and I wish them all well. As for me, I’m coping… just.”

Talk to anyone who knows Allen or has played with him in one of the numerous variants of Gong, and the same words and phrases keep getting used: charismatic, energetic, sharp, bright, instinctive, funny, free spirit, timeless, intense, incredibly musical, unafraid to speak his mind. Ask anyone who has seen Gong at any point over nearly six decades and they’ll point to Allen’s performance, which still has more sparkle and stamina than most artists half his age.

Ever since he arrived in Canterbury in the early 1960s from his native Australia, he had a habit of being interested in what other people could do, then whipping up a creative force that would make things happen. He did it for musicians including Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers and Mike Ratledge, who gathered around him to form Soft Machine.

Undaunted when he was denied re-entry into the UK following their European tour in 1967, Allen remained in France, ducking and diving between pop festivals, student unrest and confrontations with the police, accruing a ragtag, shifting ensemble that would eventually coalesce into Gong. From being an obscure foreign import to a regular fixture on the polytechnic and municipal hall circuit, the band added their own idiosyncratic, dazzling splash of psychedelic colour to the monochrome mid-70s United Kingdom as they toured albums such as Flying Teapot, Angel’s Egg (both 1973), You (1974) and 1971’s Camembert Electrique (reissued in 1974).

Time will tell as to whether 2014’s I See You will be regarded in the same reverential tones as those illustrious predecessors; but listening to its punchy tracks, wry humour and biting analysis, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that this is without doubt the strongest and arguably the most coherent Gong record in a long time. For a band often perceived as having their heads in the clouds, what’s striking about the new album is its desire to engage with the realpolitik here and now, at a time when no one else seems interested in discussing where society is heading.

So why does Allen think there aren’t more artists and albums railing against exploitation and ideological excess in the way Gong do? “Social media soporifics such as taste tailoring and mindset feedback loops are possibly absorbing radicalism to some extent,” he replies.

”In my own songwriting I try to strike a balance between political clarity and absurdist spiritual uplift. Art as a mirror versus art as transformer. What I see is a great deal of activity, both creative and destructive. Obviously change is all around us. I suppose it depends whether we want things to stay the same or whether we are conservative or adventurist. Personally, I find the future is always more exciting than the past.”

Daevid asked me play guitar in Gong. I pointed out that he’d never heard me play. He said, ‘I don’t need to’

But if the album sounds forward-looking and very much located in the present with tracks such as Occupy, When God Shakes Hands With The Devil, This Revolution and the title cut, it’s also flecked with samples and snippets of Gong’s musical past; little self-referential bubbles percolating up from the leaves in the musical teapot. “They come from my son, Orlando, who’s taking my love of crazy collage to another level,” explains Allen. “He has a huge respect for early Gong history and all its aspects and he feels they should be referenced as flashbacks from the past – reflected in the present moment.”

To what does Allen attribute Gong’s longevity and appeal? “Firstly I would say not letting it get too commercially successful. Virgin Records had a good hard go at it in the mid-70s, but as with Soft Machine, as it started to peak, the wrong people were being sucked in and it smelled suspicious to me. So, as always, I skedaddled till it came back down to earth.

“Secondly, it has constantly changed its personnel, musical style, image and attitude, without losing that central current that made it still sound like Gong. Some attribute this mysterious current mistakenly to myself – but I feel it’s intellectual laziness to do so. Gong has rejoiced in a cast of musicians of extraordinary brilliance and diversity, from Pierre Moerlen to Tatsuya Yoshida, Steve Hillage to Kawabata Makoto, Bill Laswell to Francis Moze, Didier Malherbe to Theo Travis to Ian East – and I could go on and on.”

Though possessing little in the way of formal musical training, Allen’s antenna has always been finely attuned when it comes to picking up potential musical partners. The newest recruit to Gong, guitarist Kavus Torabi of Knifeworld and Guapo, remembers the moment Allen approached him to join the band.

“He was in London in 2013 playing with Marshall Allen from Sun Ra. We had Daevid as a guest on the radio show I do with Steve Davis, and out of the blue he asked if I would like to play guitar in Gong. I told him I’d love to but pointed out that he’d never heard me play. He said, ‘I don’t need to. I can tell you’re right. I was like this about Mike Howlett. I just know you’re going to be right.’

“I’d heard Gong in my mid-to-late teens, starting with Flying Teapot, and straight away I was hooked. For me, Gong starts with Camembert Electrique and goes up to You. Those are the four main Gong records for me. With that in mind, I told him that I couldn’t play like Steve Hillage. He said to me, ‘Kavus, I’m not interested in what you can’t do – but in what you can do.’”

He’s keen to say the current band is a democracy, that we are all equal – but I think he’s more equal than others

Alongside Allen and Torabi, I See You features Dave Sturt (bass), Ian East (sax and flute), Fabio Golfetti (guitar) and Daevid’s son Orlando (drums). There are points on the album which sound utterly unlike Gong, yet at the same time it couldn’t really be anybody else, as on Shakti Yoni & Dingo Virgin, suffused with Allen’s eerily shifting trademark glissando guitar and Gilli Smyth’s echo-drenched space whispers. While Allen’s presence is of course significant, it’s nevertheless the work of a collective process, as Sturt points out.

“The album comes from a mixture of jams, as well as swapping files remotely. It’s quite surprising how homogenous the whole thing is; a really good mix of formally composed and music made in the moment. That’s definitely one of its strengths, and I think that’s what Gong’s always been about. The members who are involved now have all melded together really well – a good mix of musicians and compositional ideas.

“As a player, while the album comes together you focus on one track at a time. But Daevid is capable of holding the overview, knowing what the whole finished album is about and what he wants to present.

“Since 2012 he’s been very keen to say that the current band is a democracy, that we are all equal – but I think he’s more equal than others. Why? Well, because he’s been there since there were riots happening in Paris in 1968, when Gong came together. He’s got the overarching vision as to what it’s all about, but he needs other people to feed off.”

While Allen’s illness meant the cancellation of a tour that would have included Glastonbury and other high-profile events, the band will be playing live dates – albeit without its founder. “We’re honouring the album and his music,” Sturt says. “We’ll be playing some old songs and some of the new songs from I See You in the spirit of Gong. The hope is that Daevid will recover enough to be able to play again with us, but there are no concrete plans at the moment. We just want him to get well.”

When asked to choose the Gong record on which Allen feels he got closest to realising what he wanted to achieve, he replies, “This one, of course! For me this album is also a grateful farewell – as you can tell from Thank You.” He’s referring to a lyric that states ‘Thank you for the music, thank you for your cheers, thank you ’cos you’re here now.’

“This current album and line-up makes me very proud. My greatest wish is that Gong can become a musical tradition and continue to give pleasure, excitement and positive uplift for a long time after I am gone.”

Sid’s feature articles and reviews have appeared in numerous publications including Prog, Classic Rock, Record Collector, Q, Mojo and Uncut. A full-time freelance writer with hundreds of sleevenotes and essays for both indie and major record labels to his credit, his book, In The Court Of King Crimson, an acclaimed biography of King Crimson, was substantially revised and expanded in 2019 to coincide with the band’s 50th Anniversary. Alongside appearances on radio and TV, he has lectured on jazz and progressive music in the UK and Europe.  

A resident of Whitley Bay in north-east England, he spends far too much time posting photographs of LPs he’s listening to on Twitter and Facebook.

Banjo player, folk music aficionado and actor/comedian Billy Connolly once described The Dubliners as “folk music’s Rolling Stones”. If that’s the case, then The Pogues were its Sex Pistols: controversial, outspoken, unapologetic, but ultimately revered and respected for breaking the mould, and evolving the Celtic folk sound. Released towards the end of summer 40 years ago, The Pogues’ classic second album, Rum, Sodomy & The Lash, was a remarkable progression from the previous year’s debut Red Roses For Me – in terms of lead vocalist Shane MacGowan’s songwriting as well as the band’s rapidly accelerating popularity and notoriety.

Formed in London’s King’s Cross in 1982, The Pogues were originally named Pogue Mahone – an Anglicisation of the Irish phrase ‘póg mo thóin’, meaning ‘kiss my arse’. (Shane’s previous band, punk rock upstarts The Nipple Erectors, similarly abbreviated their name to the slightly less puerile The Nips).

With their punk background, their singer’s insatiable thirst and the exuberance of their early material, it’s easy to assume that life in The Pogues followed a clichéd rock’n’roll template of wild living and non-stop partying. But the famously raucous party atmosphere of the band’s live shows belied the dedication of the self-taught musicians.

“I wouldn’t say it was that chaotic,” says tin whistle player and vocalist Spider Stacy. “We were following a steady trajectory; we were getting more and more popular. Shane’s songwriting was just expanding.”

“There certainly was a fair amount of hard drinking,” says drummer Andrew Ranken. “But we were also working hard. There was a degree of professionalism and discipline, if somewhat unconventional and hard to recognise at times. We liked to get things done.”

Rocketing out of the vinyl, the three-minute blast of The Sick Bed of Cúchulainn is a perfect opener for Rum, Sodomy & The Lash: energetic but shot through with darkness and death while retaining an indefatigable determination. Shane reimagines Irish folklore warrior Cú Chulainn on his deathbed with operatic tenors John McCormack and Richard Tauber singing by his side. The song also name-checks Irish Republican Frank Ryan, who fought in both the Irish and Spanish Civil Wars. Indicative of MacGowan’s prodigious literacy and historical knowledge that informed his songwriting, it follows a similar – yet amped-up – narrative to traditional folk standard and Dubliners favourite Finnegan’s Wake; the protagonist is thought to be dead but revives to carry on drinking and carousing.

“There’s a doughtiness there,” says accordionist James Fearnley, on how the opening track epitomises the album’s overall theme. “He’s just going to keep going. There’s a determination; despite the circumstances, we’re all going to live”.

The album title was suggested by drummer Andrew Ranken from an alleged quote by Winston Churchill about the British navy: “Don’t talk to me about naval tradition. It’s nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash.”

“It certainly wasn’t meant as a description of life in the band,” says Andrew. “I think I might have come across it through reading George Melly’s autobiography Rum, Bum And Concertina. Certainly not from reading anything by Churchill, which I’d run a mile from. I don’t think I was terribly serious about it, I just threw it at the wall and it seemed to stick.”

The album’s morbid mood is reflected by its sleeve. Suggested by Jem’s wife Marcia, it features the band members superimposed onto characters on The Raft Of The Medusa, a bleak 18th-century painting by Theodore Géricault that depicts dying and incapacitated shipwreck survivors floundering in turbulent seas, desperately clinging to the remains of a boat in anguish and despair, searching for a route to survival. It’s the ideal image to express the dark and haunted songs: the anti-war Wilfred Owen-influenced A Pair Of Brown Eyes and cover of And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda; the exhilarating but lachrymose Sally MacLennane; the plight of the Irish labourer in Navigator; the distressing ballad The Old Main Drag; the anti-imperialist satire of Billy’s Bones – and even the fate of an American Robin Hood-style folk hero.

Spider’s gravelly tones take lead vocals on that cover of bluegrass standard Jesse James – his version inspired by Ry Cooder’s recording from the soundtrack of 1980 western The Long Riders. Despite its Americana roots, the song is a natural fit with the rest of the album: poignant and sombre despite its upbeat celebratory nature. Its inclusion emphasises the similarities between Americana and Irish folk, a recurring Pogues subject explored further in the following album – their 1988 commercial peak If I Should Fall From Grace With God – with its themes exploring the Irish diaspora’s emigration to escape homeland famine and poverty at the turn of the previous century.

That influence of evergreen Americana folk rock would also inspire Rum producer Elvis Costello. Already an accomplished singer-songwriter and producer by the mid-80s, Costello later described his task at the helm of Rum, Sodomy & The Lash as to capture The Pogues “in their dilapidated glory before some more professional producer fucked them up”.

“We were big fans of The Specials and their album that Elvis produced,” says Andrew. “We wanted that really open, bleak kind of feel.”

Impressed by Costello’s dedicated professionalism and the end result – especially in comparison to the Rizla-thin production of their debut – the band remember Rum’s studio sessions fondly. Mostly fondly.

“A spark went off between me and him,” says James. “Being a busybody, I wanted to play everything for the overdubs. There was a certain amount of competition between myself and Elvis because I was trying to think of things before he did. If he had an idea for doing a particular overdub, I got shirty with him because he’d just pick up a guitar and go into the studio and do it. I said: ‘We’re the band, you’re the producer.’ So Elvis called a meeting and said: ‘If anybody’s got any ideas, just speak up and do whatever needs to be recorded.’ And Spider said: ‘Oh, James, what have you done now?!’”

So was Elvis an authoritarian producer?

“He had a whip!” jokes banjoist Jem Finer. “He had the lash!”

“We had the sodomy!” Spider interjects jokingly.

“It was really quite sordid…” Jem says, laughing. “No, he wasn’t an authoritarian. He was disciplined and very encouraging.

“He was really very good at his job,” says James. “It sounds brilliant and stands up to time. He really did well with Shane’s voice.”

“I think we had a big influence on him too,” says Jem, “because he then went and made an acoustic album [Costello’s 1986 Americana folk and blues album King Of America]. We fobbed him off with our bass player as well,” Jem deadpans on Cait O’Riordan’s departure. She and Costello became romantically involved after he saw The Pogues live just prior to the album sessions.

Evidently not invited to the band’s 40th-anniversary tour of Rum, Sodomy & The Lash in 2025 – “Don’t go there,” says Spider – Cait O’Riordan didn’t respond to requests to take part in this feature. She was brought into The Pogues as bassist by Shane in 1982 when she was just 17. She was later described by him during the Rum era as “a very strong Irish woman and she could be very aggressive,” as he told author Richard Balls for his exhaustive in-depth biography of Shane, A Furious Devotion. “She was really into her rights as a woman and wasn’t into manipulation,” said Shane.

So do frictions remain between Cait the rest of the band?

“I don’t have a problem with her,” Jem says diplomatically. “I don’t know about other people… When I’ve come across her she’s been fine. But she left the band in 1986.”

Now a DJ with SiriusXM radio, Cait revisited her beautiful soaring vocal on Rum’s striking cover of I’m A Man You Don’t Meet Every Day for Shane’s funeral in 2023.

Equally arresting, Shane’s composition A Pair Of Brown Eyes was chosen as the album’s lead-off single. Demonstrating that The Pogues were much more than a one-trick pony following the debut’s furiously paced songs of drinking ’n’ fighting, the sorrowful ballad marked a new direction. In the style of a classic folk song, it takes the form of a moving tale recollected by its protagonist. In this case, a war veteran recounts the grisly details of his life with only the memory of his lost lover’s eyes to keep him alive. It quickly became a favourite of both fans and the band themselves.

“It’s a great song, and lovely to play live,” says Andrew. “It has such a strong melody and that massive swing.”

Their first single to chart, A Pair Of Brown Eyes firmly established Shane’s talent for songwriting and lyrical storytelling. While he composed all the original tracks on Rum, the album was also the beginning of his co-writing partnership with Jem. Together they came up with ghostly instrumental, The Wildcats Of Kilkenny, featuring blood-curdling screams and sinister metallic strings imitating razor-sharp swiping claws.

“Before the band even existed, Shane would teach me songs and I was sort of playing along,” says Jem. “I’d inadvertently make up instrumental bits. But I didn’t actually realise I was writing music, because I was pretty new to playing,” continues the self-effacing and modest musician. “But they would find their way into things like the intro to Boys From The County Hell and the instrumental section of Dark Streets Of London [both from debut Red Roses For Me]. So that’s how The Wildcats Of Kilkenny came along. Then I would start writing songs but thinking that no way my lyrics would be the lyrics; they were there for Shane to change. So we’d get together and I’d play him bits that I’d written – bits of tune or embryonic songs – then he’d play me stuff and sometimes we’d go: ‘That would really work with this’, or he’d take something and work on it. We didn’t stay together writing for days on end until we got something, we’d meet up and exchange ideas and make cassettes.”

While Jem began his songwriting with Pogues instrumentals, later in the band’s career, he’d go on to co-write Pogues classics with Shane – Bottle Of Smoke, Fairytale Of New York and Sunny Side Of The Street – and his sole compositions the glorious Misty Morning, Albert Bridge and the Eastern-tinged The Wake Of The Medusa. As Jem’s songwriting matured and evolved, Shane said he’d no longer rewrite lyrics. “I didn’t think that was always the best idea,” says Jem. For Sunny Side Of The Street, on Hell’s Ditch, the band’s final album with Shane, Jem purposefully stopped writing so many words; he simply wrote just the song title in order to galvanise the lyricist.

So did Shane gradually lose interest in songwriting throughout the band’s career?

“I think he sporadically lost interest before we even started,” says Jem. “He was often a difficult person to motivate. It would take weeks to even do the simplest thing. There was endless procrastination. But then, great focus.”

Conjecture and speculation persistently followed Shane’s alleged history as a rent boy in London during the 70s. It was often rumoured that the lyrics of Rum’s most affecting track, The Old Main Drag, a bleak and tragic tale of a harassed male prostitute in the dark underbelly of London, were at least semi-autobiographical: ‘In the dark of an alley you’d work for a fiver/For a swift one off the wrist down on the old main drag.’ With its mournful uilleann pipes and Jem’s measured banjo picking, The Old Main Drag is a melancholy tale of woe before its dramatically abrupt vocal ending suggesting death.

“There was an item in the news about some kid being found in a subway,” says James, “who came down from Wigan, because he had his ‘dancing bag’. [Referenced in the lyrics, ‘my ole dancing bag’ was how Northern soul fans referred to their kit of non-work clothes kept for strutting their stuff at renowned nightclub Wigan Casino]. It’s about survival,” James says of the song’s theme. “And against massive odds. It’s hard out there, and that song’s about how hard it is.”

It wasn’t until the release of Julien Temple’s 2020 documentary film Crock Of Gold: A Few Rounds With Shane MacGowan that Shane finally admitted to his past. “Shane used to do it,” says Shane’s wife Victoria Clarke, when Johnny Depp raises the subject of rent boys. “But only hand jobs,” Shane responds. “It was a job in hand,” he says, snickering into his drink.

The release of Rum, Sodomy & The Lash was celebrated with a launch party aboard HMS Belfast moored in the River Thames. “We played in nautical fancy dress,” says Andrew. “A great deal of rum was served by some charming and very camp sailors, and a journalist ended up in the drink – with the drink also in him, no doubt.” The story goes that a sub-editor from music weekly Melody Maker ended up overboard. Equally bizarrely, Hanoi Rocks guitarist René Berg allegedly went in to rescue him.

But even as the album was released, the band had already moved on and were back in the studio, again with Elvis Costello producing, working on a follow-up. The four-track EP Poguetry In Motion was released just six months after Rum, with three sole Shane compositions and another instrumental by Jem, Planxty Noel Hill. Shane’s Body of An American would point the way forward to the Irish-American themes of If I Should Fall From Grace With God, and the EP sessions also included an early version of a new Shane and Jem joint creation – a certain Christmas song titled Fairytale Of New York. The demo had its duet performed by Shane and Cait, with Costello on piano, but the song was of course revisited for the eventual version on Grace. With Cait having departed after the EP’s release, on what became The Pogues most famous song her vocal part was done by Kirsty MacColl, wife of Grace producer Steve Lillywhite and daughter of Ewan MacColl who wrote Dirty Old Town (the folk classic covered on Rum). Cait was replaced on bass by Pogues road manager and aide Darryl Hunt.

But the real treasure of the Poguetry In Motion EP – included as bonus tracks with Rum, Sodomy & Lash since the album’s 2004 reissue – is A Rainy Night In Soho, perhaps Shane’s masterpiece, a timeless and touching love ballad. It was also played at Shane’s funeral in a heartbreaking performance by his friend Nick Cave.

During the EP sessions, Costello and MacGowan argued over whether the final version of A Rainy Night In Soho’s instrumental break should be a muted flugelhorn, or a cor anglais (an alto oboe). They eventually compromised on the flugelhorn (performed by musician Dick Cuthell, best-known for his horn-section work in The Specials) for the UK release and cor anglais for the US version. “It sounded a bit too oily, if you know what I mean,” James says of the latter.

The release of Poguetry In Motion – their first UK Top 40 hit – coincided with the band’s first tour of the USA, and the start of a long love affair with America that would partly inspire If I Should Fall From Grace With God. The band spent their time on the road listening to the new Tom Waits album Rain Dogs and watching the Sergio Leone 1984 gangster film Once Upon A Time In America.

The EP saw the band’s line-up permanently expanded with the addition of guitarist Philip Chevron, who previously played in 70s punk band The Radiators From Space, and Terry Woods, ex-Steeleye Span, on cittern. Chevron had already played with the band for some live dates prior to the recording of Rum, when Jem took a leave of absence for family commitments when his wife Marcia was expecting their second daughter, Kitty. “Philip took over on banjo during that period,” says Jem. “And then he kinda wouldn’t leave! He became the guitar player. Shane decided he didn’t want to play guitar any more – or Philip decided he did.”

Chevron (who passed away from cancer in 2013) officially joined in between Rum and the Poguetry In Motion EP, but was still included in the album artwork. “He still somehow got his picture on the sleeve,” Jem says of the cigarette card-style photos of the band dressed up in period naval garb for the album artwork, “but he didn’t play on it. He was quite an operator… he was on the album, but he wasn’t.”

Shane was eventually sacked by the band in 1991, following the fifth Pogues album, 1990’s Hell’s Ditch, for increasing unreliability wrought by his alcoholism and drug use. Hell’s Ditch was produced by ex-Clash frontman Joe Strummer, who would replace Shane for ensuing live dates, but Spider took over on lead vocals for their final two albums: 1993’s Waiting For Herb and 1996’s Pogue Mahone. Meanwhile, their former frontman would record two albums as Shane MacGowan & The Popes – 1994’s The Snake and 1997’s The Crock Of Gold. Shane reunited with The Pogues for occasional live dates between 2001 and 2014, but despite the occasional guest appearance on song covers, he released no further material or albums before he passed away in 2023.

The Pogues would have a significant influence on the 90s Celtic punk movement – bands like Dropkick Murphys, Flogging Molly, the Real McKenzies et al. But much deeper, in the same way that they pushed the envelope of Irish folk in the 80s with Rum, Sodomy & The Lash the last few years have seen a true renaissance of the music, with a fertile upsurge of acclaimed bands and artists. Influenced by The Pogues to a greater or lesser degree – even if just by having the door opened – Lisa O’Neill, Lankum, John Francis Flynn, Ye Vagabonds, Junior Brother, CMAT and the Mary Wallopers are taking the genre in an entirely new progressive and alternative folk direction, while respecting its rich history.

In a somewhat precocious question asked of MacGowan at the time of Rum, Sodomy & The Lash’s release in August 1985, the NME’s Danny Kelly wondered how Shane would like The Pogues to be remembered. In hindsight, his answer now seems to sum up the spiritual soul of that seminal album: “As being very good, as meaning something to quite a lot of people,” said Shane. “As having a sense of humour, as being real, down to earth. I’d like it to be said that we reflected reality without being deliberately miserable or offering unobtainable escapism.”

The Pogues feat. James Fearnley, Jem Finer, Spider Stacy, and special guests celebrate the 40th anniversary of Rum, Sodomy & The Lash with six UK shows in May

A regular contributor to Louder/Classic Rock and The Quietus, Burrows began his career in 1979 with a joke published in Whizzer & Chips. In the early 1990s he self-published a punk/comics zine, then later worked for Cycling Plus, Redline, MXUK, MP3, Computer Music, Metal Hammer and Classic Rock magazines. He co-wrote Anarchy In the UK: The Stories Behind the Anthems of Punk with the late, great Steven Wells and adapted gothic era literature into graphic novels. He also had a joke published in Viz. He currently works in creative solutions, lives in rural Oxfordshire and plays the drums badly.

When Cristina Scabbia and Andrea Ferro first met in a metal dive called The Midnight, in their home city of Milan in the early 1990s, the prospect of forging a musical partnership that would take them all around the world for the next three decades was not even a fantasy.

“Italy doesn’t really have the history of rock’n’roll or metal roots or culture,” says Cristina more than 30 years on. “When we were sending our details to labels using a fax machine, we couldn’t even imagine getting signed.”

Back then, no Italian rock band had broken out on a global scale, but Lacuna Coil would change that, becoming international stars and Italy’s biggest-ever metal export in the process. Today their ongoing journey has brought them to Nottingham’s Rock City, where they’re playing later this evening. They’ve already been to look at the venue’s Lemmy memorial containing some of the late Motörhead frontman’s ashes, and the two co-vocalists are huddled against the English chill. Cristina is wrapped in a none-more-black shawl and chain-eats throat lozenges to protect her voice. Andrea leaves his overcoat on, but the pair are all smiles as they look back at their long journey to this point.

The roots of Lacuna Coil go back to 1993. Andrea was playing bass and singing in a band named Sleep Of Right with bassist Marco Coti Zelati, who would go on to become Lacuna’s bassist and chief composer. Cristina was dating Marco and would hang out with the band at rehearsals. She had sung before, without using her name or image, for DJ friends who were producing records. “We asked her to try something with us and we loved the result,” Andrea recalls.

Initially they were just thinking about using Cristina for backing vocals, but the dual approach worked so well that they decided to make it a feature of the band. “There were female vocalists of course, but we were leaning towards the doomy, gothic death metal mix and it sounded very different in that context,” he adds.

They took advantage of a local government offer giving young bands the opportunity to record for half-price at night, working from midnight until 7am. By day they plotted their rise from a makeshift band HQ located at the gothic clothing and shoe store Cristina was working in at the time. Century Media Records took a punt on the band – by this time renamed Lacuna Coil, meaning ‘empty spiral’ – and they headed out on their first ever tour, supporting Portuguese goth-metal mainstays Moonspell. It was an unmitigated disaster.

“Our guitarist was called for mandatory military service, and the friend we got in as a substitute got really sick with diarrhoea. He was getting really skinny and anxious and started freaking out,” Andrea recalls.

The hapless six-stringer dropped out, along with their drummer, but the core trio of Cristina, Andrea and Marco were determined to make the most of the opportunity. They grimly held on and finished the tour with the help of Moonspell’s drum tech and a guitar tech pretending to play the guitar parts, which were actually on tape. A post-tour shake-up saw them jettison the dead wood and recruit long-term replacements with the same level of commitment.

The band continued to plug away with steely determination, releasing their first two albums and gradually building a name for themselves on the European circuit. It was their third album, 2002’s Comalies, that would eventually provide their international breakthrough. Refining their developing sound into a fully realised package, it combined dark gothic atmosphere and melancholy themes with shimmering hooks and an aggressive metal crunch. The switches and interplay between Cristina’s crystalline vocals and Andrea’s more belligerent bark added to the shifting dynamics and sense of light and shade. It was a fantastic album, but, as Cristina points out, you also need a slice of luck.

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That luck came when Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne’s son, Jack, brought Lacuna Coil to the attention of his parents, who promptly signed them up for the 2004 Ozzfest. The Italians quickly found themselves part of the chaos of this travelling festival.

“You only had 20 minutes to prove yourself and, apart from the headliners, the bands would rotate, so you might be playing at 9.30 in the morning or the best slot of the afternoon,” Cristina recalls. “Every day was different and all the bands would hang out and party. I was in catering one time and someone said, ‘Ozzy and Sharon would like to say hi.’ I was a little bit starstruck, but they signed this album for me that had all of the bands from the tour on it.”

Their appearance on the Ozzfest tour, combined with radio and MTV picking up on the single Heaven’s A Lie, meant the band’s US profile skyrocketed, and their burgeoning success had a knock-on effect back in Europe. They soon became Century Media’s biggest-selling act at the time, and the success of Comalies kicked off a whirlwind period for the band. They toured nearconstantly and 2006’s follow-up album, Karmacode, continued the success, adding a nu metal bite that alienated some existing fans but won them many more. The constant grind of those years did have some casualties, however, one of which was Cristina’s romantic relationship with Marco.

“When you tour together for such a long time, you get to the point that you really become like a brother and sister,” she says, when asked if dealing with the split caused any friction within the band. “And I really do love him as a brother. I’d kill for him! Maybe we had a few months of assessing things, but I don’t think we brought our problems into the band.”

Cristina would later start a relationship with Slipknot guitarist Jim Root. In metal terms it was an A-list celebrity match-up, but the couple kept things low key. “We were together for more than 13 years, but it’s our stuff,” she says. “There’s a line you shouldn’t cross, not only for respect of the other person, but also the fact that people don’t need to know. I think that many celebrity couples give away so much and then when something happens they’re asking for privacy. If you want privacy, you carve it for yourself from the very beginning. It’s something that we lived and it will stay there,” she adds, politely but firmly.

One thing that did cause a little friction within Lacuna Coil was the fact that much of the attention the band received focused on Cristina. “Not so much for me, but the guys in the band felt a little underappreciated,” Andrea nods.

“We had a talk about it, because the situation was getting out of hand,” Cristina continues. “We had pictures taken in which I was visible and they were in the very back. We didn’t want to be ‘Cristina and her band’. We were and have always been just a band.”

The singer does admit to enjoying the attention and photoshoots that came her way, however. “In the beginning I did feel a little bit full of myself. It went to my head for a while, because it was so peculiar and unexpected. I got over it pretty quickly, but being on the cover of a magazine is still pretty awesome.”

There was also the glut of ‘Hottest Chicks In Metal’-themed magazine issues that appeared in the 2000s and early 2010s, many of which featured Cristina… “I don’t see the negativity at all,” she counters. I know a lot of people are against this because they see it as sexism, but I thought it was just a way to say ‘beautiful’. I didn’t see it as something that objectified me.”

Not all of the trappings of fame were quite so welcome. Some fans were simply over-intense, like the guy who presented Cristina with his wedding ring. “That was to tell me he had ended a toxic relationship and to thank me for somehow saving him from something bad with my voice,” she says. “That was peculiar, but I did have actual stalkers that were potentially dangerous and would follow me around. I remember them sending me weird pictures of me covered in blood or sending me pictures of a foetus. I reported it, and for one complete tour I had an FBI agent in every town checking on me. It was not only disturbing, it was also boring for me because I had to be confined on a tour bus every day.”

Cristina says she was never a big drinker, but for the rest of the band, a bit of partying often served as a pressure valve. “There was some alcohol abuse here and there,” nods Andrea. “That was getting kind of heavy, because when you’re on the road for three months, you’re drinking for those three months. None of us was really an alcoholic and when you’re young it’s easier, but you do start to pay the price.”

“The worst I’ve seen them?” ponders Cristina. “We were out with Rob Zombie and had a party on our bus. Bullet For My Valentine were there and they were big partiers. We were sponsored by Jägermeister back then, and I saw six bottles go in 10 minutes. Even Bullet just left because there was moshing; there was blood on the on the walls of the tour bus the day after. It was insane, but I was sober because I wanted to film it all. I have some tapes, but those will die with me!”

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Subsequent years would see a number of line-up changes, but that core trio of Cristina, Andrea and Marco has held firm. After three decades together, Cristina describes her bandmates as her second family.

“We can have discussions, party together, hate each other for a few minutes and love each other to pieces,” she says. “It’s a very stable relationship at the moment and we have the same goals and drives. We still have that itch of competition, but we’re in competition with ourselves to keep doing better. It’s so fresh that for us it’s like we started a couple of years ago.”

That continued drive now sees the band returning with their 10th studio album, Sleepless Empire. It’s not a concept album, but, like several of their works, it does have an overarching theme. “We’re the last generation to have lived through an entirely analogue world into a digital one, and we can testify to the change,” Andrea explains.

“…And we kind of feel that we are living in a time in which it feels weird to take a break. You have to be present all the time or you’ll just disappear,” Cristina continues. “It can be destructive and it’s a reflection on these things; how they impact our lives and how we can connect and disconnect from it all.”

The album is darkly cinematic, leaning towards the heavier end of Lacuna Coil’s spectrum. It features guest appearances from Ash Costello of New Years Day (on In The Mean Time) and Lamb Of God’s Randy Blythe (on Hosting The Shadow).

“Ash has such a specific voice. I wrote the part specially for her and she did a phenomenal job,” says Cristina. “Randy we’ve known for years. When he comes to Milano we go out for dinner, or just for a walk. He’s part of the extended family.”

Lacuna Coil’s extended family of fans, friends and musical peers now reaches right around the world, but at heart they’re still the little band from Milan made good. “We were the first ones from our country to do a lot of things in metal,” says Andrea. “It’s something we never thought was possible when we started, but it makes us proud and it makes us happy.”

“I was one of the very few females who started in the metal business at that time,” Cristina adds. “I hope I’m going to be doing it for a long time, but if I can pass the flame and inspire others to do their own thing with it, I couldn’t ask for much more.”

Sleepless Empire is out now via Century Media. Lacuna Coil play Bloodstock in August and Aftershock in October, as well as headline dates across North America, Europe and the UK throughout the year. For the full list of shows, visit their official website.

Paul Travers has spent the best part of three decades writing about punk rock, heavy metal, and every associated sub-genre for the UK’s biggest rock magazines, including Kerrang! and Metal Hammer.