Gedge confesses

The troubles with record labels and are the Wedding Present really gone for good?

A man of true independence, a man who had one hit every month for a year by accident simply because he thought the vinyl single was a good idea, a man whose last album under the guise of Cinerama actually contains better songwriting than his earlier “classic Wedding Present albums”, one of this country’s best songwriters for a long time, perverse to a tee, stubborn to his Leeds bones, David Gedge talked to Charm editor Graham Chalmers in the tiny confines of ‘Charm Towers’ in posh little Harrogate.

Graham: It’s been three years or more since your last Wedding Present record, Montreal, in January 1997. Can we now say officially that the Wedding Present are finished?

David: No, not all. For a start, Simon, the guitarist in the Wedding Present, is actually in Cinerama as well now. I’ve never really thought the Wedding Present was finished. At first I did kind of think maybe I could do both bands at the same time but it was just too difficult from the writing point of view and from a logistical point of view. It was a nightmare waiting to happen. But the idea of doing the Wedding Present again does appeal to me.

Graham: In a 1997 readers survey in Orange Slices, the award-winning Wedding Present fanzine, there wasn’t a single one of your songs in their top ten favourite tracks that was recorded after 1990.

David: (laughs) Was there not?
Graham: Not one. How do you think the Wedding Present diehards are going to take to the new Cinerama album, Disco Volante?

David: I might be wrong but I think they might possibly like it more than the first Cinerama album. On Va Va Voom, I actually purposely tried to get away as far as I could from the Wedding Present because there was no point in doing something which was the same kind of thing.

With the new album I’ve been truer to my own tastes.
Graham: When I heard you were working with producer Steve Albini, the man behind grunge and the Wedding Present’s Sea Monsters album, I thought Disco Volante was going to be a retreat back to those old loud guitars and pinched vocals. I was quite surprised when I listened to it. Only on 146 Degrees, the opening track, and a little bit on Your Charms and a lot on Wow, the single, did I hear that classic Gedge-y guitar sound coming through.

David: I don’t feel I really need to use the Wedding Present approach because I’ve been doing it for so long. I just think Steve Albini’s a really good recording engineer. I started off by thinking that some of the sounds he’s achieved might enhance what I’m doing with Cinerama and then a few people said “oh god, Albini for Cinerama? Are you sure?!”

That was like a red rag to a bull for me. If someone says “you can’t possibly do that”, I think “well maybe I should have a go, then.” It was a bit of a gamble. The results are a bit more extreme in some ways.”

Graham: It doesn’t sound that extreme to me but it’s definitely more bold in the sound and instrumentation. It sounds more cinematic than Va Va Voom - early 60s surf guitars, strings, sound samples.

David: I think the answer to that is that I actually know what I’m doing now! At the time of the last album I was telling people “I’m really influenced by John Barry and Ennio Morricone.” And, eh, it sounded nothing like that. I’m proud of that album but I think I was selling a pig in a poke.”

Graham: How successful commercially was Va Va Voom?
David: It depends on who you talk to really. I was quite disappointed because I thought it had a more commercial sound than the Wedding Present stuff. I naturally assumed it would sell more.

It’s been annoying the number of people who’ve come up to me and said “you’re David Gedge from the Wedding Present, I’ve got all your albums, what are you doing now?” You say “Cinerama” and they’ve never heard of that.

We had a meeting with one of our pluggers last week and he was saying basically, it’s going to be very difficult to get this on Radio 1, the way it is now, aimed at 14-24-year-olds and the dance market. But even on specialist programmes, apart from John Peel who’s always supported me, I’m seen as ex-Wedding Present 80s guitar band so it’s completely irrelevant what Cinerama’s music is like.

Graham: What’s happened with Cooking Vinyl, briefly, your previous label?
David: Well, I think it was an inappropriate label for Cinerama. It was fine for the Wedding Present. . .(pause) actually, I don’t think it’

s fine for the Wedding Present anymore to be honest. It seems to be this label where bands go (pause) - at the risk of sounding dramatic - to die.

Graham: It’s like a graveyard for great bands.
David: Exactly. They’ve just signed Echo & The Bunnymen and they’ve got XTC. I think it’s people who can’t get a deal anywhere else.

At the time we’d just left Island Records and Cooking Vinyl came along and we met the bloke who seemed really interested. But it turned out to be completely inappropriate because Cooking Vinyl are fine at actually selling records to bands’ fans but, when it comes to launching a new artist, which is what Cinerama were, it did really take a bit of imagination and I don’t think they’ve got it. It was a bit of a nightmare, to be honest.

Graham: If you’re not going to have a big pluggers’ department working their balls off for you, you might as well do it yourself?

David: Exactly. The best person at Cooking Vinyl left to set up a freelance management company and said “if you do your own label

(Scopitones) I’ll manage it for you.” We did speak to Artful Records who do The Fall. . .
Graham: And Shed Seven now. . .
David: But again it’s that kind of Cooking Vinyl thing again and, to be honest, I don’t think they’re doing anything I can’t do myself. I’ve got exactly the same set-up now as at Cooking Vinyl - and they don’t use a plugger because they had an in-house radio promotions team.

(pause) I’m saying “plugger” all the time, assuming that your readership will know what a plugger is!
Graham: Stuff ‘em. When you released 12 singles in one year, which were all hits, it seemed really successful at the time but didn’t it mean everything about the Wedding Present was doomed to be less exciting to the media after that?

David: It’s a very good point. I am known for that and it’s seen as some sort of great achievement but maybe it wasn’t s healthy for the band as people think it was.

Graham: It made you associated with the defence of old things, too.
The defence of vinyl, the defence of singles. . .and now you’ve got your own label so you’re independent again. You’re like a living champion of the old ways.

Your recent music’s probably the most commercial and romantic you’ve ever done but you’re still associated with northern grittiness.

David: I’m a bundle of contradictions. Im also, as I’m getting older, still making music which is actually quite modern, even though it’s got a retro feel.

Graham: It doesn’t sound like the late 80s or anything you did when you were at your most famous.
David: That’s one of the problems people have with me, I think. I’m not supposed to be doing this Cinerama thing now. I’m supposed to be Paul Weller, a bit more. . .

Graham: Like the grungey Sea Monsters sound, only a bit slower and more mature?
David: (laughs) Okay, I’ll do that next time!
Graham: I’ve always thought your vocals were a weak link to a certain extent, straining too hard. On this album they’re high in the mix and there’s a lot of intimate vocals going on which are very convincing. Do you think finally, after all these years, you’re comfortable with your own voice?

David: I think so, yeah. I think that started to happen on the later Wedding Present stuff and, obviously, with Cinerama. If I look back on some of those early Wedding Present records I do cringe. For instance, something like Sea Monsters, which is really powerful but then I hear my vocal performances. I do feel quite disappointed that I could actually sing the whole album a lot better now.

Graham: Quite a few of the songs on the new album like the new single Lollobrigida or Unzip, which is a particularly good track, have got a really seductive feeling. It’s almost like David Gedge has discovered sex.

David: It’s quite an erotic album for some reason.
Graham: Downright dirty in places.
David: When we were mixing it, Dare Mason, the Cinerama producer was saying “you sound like Barry White!” I don’t know why it came out like that. It wasn’t particularly planned. Maybe it was something to do with the fact it’s cinematic and I’m moving towards. . .

Graham: French porn?
David: I was going to say “conversational”. The lyrics have always been quite erotic, even on the Wedding Present records. Maybe it’s the singing.

Graham: Ray Davies is a great songwriter but he didn’t have many hits after the 1960s which I think is because The Kinks didn’t have many powerful ideas in sounds and stopped sounding contemporary. You’re a great songwriter. Don’t you think you’d do better of you worked with someone with power over your sound?

David: I probably would be more famous and sell more if I gave that power to someone else but (laughs) I don’t think I want to really. It might be giving away too much.

It’s that kind of wilful (pauses) obscurity which I bring upon myself.
I’m not that confident vocally. I’m good at the writing but I know I’m never going to be a fantastic singer.
I know that people would arrange my songs in a different way and make them maybe better. But I’m okay with that. I love what I’m doing too much, I suppose.

Graham: I can picture you on stage playing sitting down, never standing, looking mysterious, surrounded by smoke. It would help your career a lot if you had some kind of image or if one of your songs was recorded by Kylie Minogue in the pop charts.

David: Everytime I go down to London, it’s amazing how it works. I’m friends with Sean Hughes and I go out for a drink with him and his friends are very important people in their own fields in music and the media. And you just know if you hung out with him long enough, you would make the connections to make you successful, which I think is what Bobby Gillespie’s done. I’d rather be at home watching telly.

Graham Chalmers
 

© Modern Music Review (2008)