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Interview
by SashaS
21-6-2004
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| Pink Grease in action to the world's end |
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Defying darkness
Pink Grease on a self-appointed duty
There are too many voices, too numerous sources telling us what to do/buy/wear/think, a bombardment of our senses, mind, soul with ‘ins’, ‘dos’, ‘musts’, ‘don’ts’, ‘outs’… How to look, what to watch, what to follow, and then buy, buy, buy, obey! Groundwork of compliance is well laid down by educational system, misplaced social values and moral codes that are so materialistic, we are all turned into slaves-to-shopping.
Music hardly differs from television: 57 (or is that 200?) channels and no variety. Well, almost - until you encounter Pink Grease, a Sheffield sextet who are ready to glamorise the punk-rocking to its previous glory. And, in the process search and destroy all the sonic fakers, poseurs and sexed-up/vacant imagerees, they claim imprudently… Pardon, impudently. Perhaps - not: tracks served on their 31-minute debut album ‘This is for Real’ are bursting with energy, riffs, shouts, upbeat lunacy, frenzy, lust for life, surge for purge…
In an off-Park Lane hotel members of Pink Grease are arriving individually during the interview, that is presided by singer/lyricist, Rory Lewarne. He is eventually flanked by Steven Santa Cruz (guitar), Nick Collier (machine), John Lynch (gtr/synths), Stuart Faulkner (bass) and Marc (drums). The band is in the rather luxurious surrounding not due to having received advance three times by mistake, nor discovered an oil-well in their Sheffield garden but are playing a private party in the hotel that is providing free accommodation.
‘We finished the album last September,” Lewarne explains, “and have been wondering how is general public going to react to it. We’ve heard opinions of our families, friends and you, media guys, but that is not the same.”
Don’t you got reactions after playing live?
“Yeah, but that is instantaneous,” Lewarne reasons, “a gut-reaction in a special atmosphere. Songs work differently when you are on your own with a recording. That’s the reaction we want to find out. We’ve heard it in a club and it sounded very good.”
Are there many different mixes?
“No,” John Lynch joins in, “we’ve always wanted the album to sound good and across the board, not to be one genre. But, it also has to sound good on the radio.”
Mary-Jane's feast
Sheffield, the Steel City, regularly throws up adventurous pop that, while androgynous to the outer limits, remains majestically unphased by trend-dictating London. Not such a glamorous location only the likes of Cabaret Voltaire, The Human League, ABC, Pulp but also Joe Cocker and Def Leppard to have come from, you can't help but feel that these bands have thrived so spectacularly precisely because of the weird seven-hills isolation the town provides.
Pink Grease fit in perfectly: this disparate group, head-fulls of ideas and self-destructive energy, was born out of a mutual addiction to filthy parties, the need to Rock as no-one before and the lust for human flesh… Sex, we are talking. Named after a killer party record, a compilation of 50’s doo-wop called 'Pink Grease', a tide of teen breaks over their aching bodies and they're struck by an electric idea. And, with a chance of becoming truly the most outrageous performers of our time!
“We feel like there are diverse songs on it,” Lewarne analyses, “because we want to be open and not known as one-kinda band only. We all have a lot of interesting influences, varied backgrounds, so the music has to reflect it all.”
“We want the whole diet in our music,” Lynch offers, “not just one course.”
A dozen-course feast…?
“…And breakfast the morning after,” argues Steven, the main songwriter. Guitarist would later confess to writing songs about “moments of sex, moments of politics, moments of fear, and then you - party.”
Dissing '4 Real'
Good twenty years ago the missing Manic Street Preacher, Richey James Edwards, was doing an interview with the once-rock-Bible NME and was accused of being ‘fake’; the guitarist took a penknife and carved ‘4 Real’ on his forearm. [Was that ‘4 Reel’? - morbid Ed] There is a sense of genuine belief that Pink Grease are an authentic outfit who are not simply doing the posturing.
Are you starting a movement against “getting more lightweight”?
“We formed the band,” Lewarne speaks in a warning voice, “because we knew we could make better music than the one being made. We’ve also been inspired by the bad bands…”
Would you to name one of these ‘bad bands’?
“Oasis, Stereophonics, Linkin Park, Coldplay…” Steven machineguns dead-panly.
“No, I think we’ve been getting influences along the way,” the singer counters. “When we started it was punk and glam rock, MC5 and the [New York] Dolls; recently we got into DAF (Deutsche Americanische Freundschaft), Depeche Mode and Can…”
What is the magic ‘machine’?
“It’s a home-made synthesiser,” Lewarne motions towards the man…
“I studied computers,” Collier shrugs, “and thought I could change, modulate few things and get some more interesting sounds out of it. It was made it with the guy, T. Hartley, a Sheffield inventor who designed the drums for one-armed Leppard man…”
As we reach for the doorknob, singer states firmly, after a casual prompt about destruction of ignorance/pretence/kitsch/clones: “We are here because we are dedicated to destroying darkness of taste and The Darkness.”
We can certainly do with a lot of it…
Live dates:
03 July- Return To N.Y. SE1 Club, London Bridge, London
20-22 Aug - Tapestry Goes West, Newquay - tapestryclub.co.uk
27 Aug - Carling Festival, Reading
28 Aug - Carling Festival, Leeds
SashaS
21-6-2004
Pink Grease’s album ‘This is for Real’ is released 21 June 2004 by Mute
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