Interview by: Mark Lacey
Live Photos: Adrian Hextall / (C) MindHex Media
Singer, poet, showman, storyteller. There can be few frontmen more recognisable for his distinctive voice, style, charismatic stage persona, and his rapport with fans. In early 2022, the shock waves that followed his departure from the previous line-up of the Quireboys, were followed by an outpouring of emotion across social media, spawning a public spat that became increasingly uncomfortable viewing.
Spike’s salvation was to re-unite the back bone of the band’s classic line-up, bringing Nigel Mogg, Chris Johnstone, Rudy Richman, alongside co-founder, and best friend Guy Bailey for a one-off show in London. Whilst Guy did not perform with the band, he was there in person, and the promise of new music tantalised fans. Guy’s untimely passing just a few months later left a huge void, and so the announcement of a new Quireboys album ‘Wardour St’ was met with a warm sense of nostalgia, as it provides a nod to the foundations of the band, and the scene of some of their earliest shows.
MyGlobalMind.com caught up with Spike, Nigel Mogg and Luke Morley whilst they were in London to celebrate what would have been Guy Bailey’s birthday.
MGM: It’s been 5 years since your last album with the Quireboys, ‘Amazing Disgrace’. The intervening time has been plagued with turbulence, with the dissolving of your former band, leading to two versions of the band performing. You re-established your most successful line-up with Guy Bailey, Nigel, Rudy, and Chris, until Guy’s sad passing last year, and further changes to the band since. And with a new album on the way, that feels like a rollercoaster.
Nigel: It certainly has been.
Spike: All thanks to Luke Morley.
Nigel: It’s been quite a shake-up over the last few years.
MGM: Did it ever get to the point with all that chaos where you thought, this is just too hard, and you should just give it up?
Spike: What else would I do? What job could I do? We always knew it was going to happen. You know, it’s been the best thing that’s ever happened to me. We’re moving on and everything’s how it should be.
Nigel: It was a stressful period.
Spike: But it’s fine now.
Nigel: And it’s a satisfactory conclusion.
MGM: Even though there was a lot of noise between the fans on social media, you guys have largely kept out of it.
Spike: We’ve never said a word. We haven’t said anything, and we’re going to keep it like that.
MGM: You’ve decided to call your new album ‘Wardour Street’. Those early fans that have followed you since the beginning will remember how important Wardour Street was to the music scene in the early-to-mid eighties.
Spike: We can’t remember.
Nigel: I wish I could remember.
Spike: You were definitely there.
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MGM: Talk to me about the significance of Soho and Wardour Street back in the eighties.
Nigel: That’s where we did all our first shows and played with some of the biggest bands. That’s where we all met, and where we all know each other from.
Spike: There was the Ship, St Moritz, The Marquee, The Intrepid Fox, and the nightclub at Gossips. Could you imagine …. we used to go out every night back then. We were fit then.
Luke: I lived a bit too far away, so I didn’t go out every night.
MGM: Back in those early days of the Quireboys, Terraplane were already signed.
Luke: Terraplane got signed to CBS, but it couldn’t have gone any worse than it went. But it was about that time that I met these guys when they were called the Queer Boys. Then it’s a little bit of a blur. What year did you guys’ sign to EMI? It must have been ’88.
Spike: No, we signed to Survival in ’88, and then EMI picked it up for £2.50. Yeah. Cheap at twice the price.
Luke: Terraplane signed to EMI, I think it was February ’89. But you guys were already on EMI. I remember me and Spike having a chat in the St Moritz, when you had a deal and we didn’t.
Spike: You signed to EMI. We signed to Parlophone, same as the Beatles, and Duran Duran. All the good bands were on Parlophone. EMI was Kylie & Jason, and the Wurzels.
Luke: Anyway, it was the same guy that signed both bands. Then we ended up on the same bills and seeing a lot more of each other socially.
Spike: Terraplane would have been huge if they just hadn’t have worn those jumpsuits.
MGM: With Terraplane in those bright outfits, and the Quireboys in the sharp pin-striped suits and scarves, did the fashions allow you to mix?
Luke: I think with Terraplane, and with Thunder to an extent, we were always the type of band who were naturally the jeans and t-shirt type of guys. I was always jealous of the Quireboys because they always looked much cooler than us.
Spike: When we played at Wembley, Luke came into our dressing room and he went, “your dressing room smells. What ‘s going on in here? It smells really nice”. I went, “Women? Ha ha!” But actually, I never thought you dressed that bad in Thunder though.
Luke: Yours was much cooler, though, the suit and the carnation and the eye makeup. You guys looked like a bunch of male models. We were just like a load of brick layers.
MGM: 40 years ago, you and Guy Bailey brought this whole thing together. You two were the co-conspirators, and sadly, he’s no longer with us. What did he mean to you in those early days, both personally, and also professionally, in helping you find your voice?
Spike: Well, if it wasn’t for Guy, I wouldn’t have been a singer because when we started the band, I was a guitarist. I think we wrote ‘Roses & Rings’, ‘How do you feel?’; we wrote five songs in one week. I think ‘I don’t love you any more’ was also in that. It was when my father brought a guitar down to the cricket, because we used to have a flat by the Oval cricket ground. I didn’t even know he played the guitar because we’d never talk music. Guy didn’t have a guitar. He said, what do you like? We both liked Chuck Berry, and the Rolling Stones, and it just clicked from there. But we were instant pals as soon as we met. Then there was me, Guy, Nigel, and Chris Johnson.
Nigel: Chris was actually the bass player for a minute. Then he decided he didn’t want to do it anymore because he thought the band was shit. And he went back to university. Then I played bass and we got another keyboard player.
Spike: I had to hound him, and he wouldn’t join me at first. I pestered him all the time to come down to rehearsal. Chris couldn’t really play the piano, but he could play chords.
Nigel: We had this Irish guy come in on keyboards. Chris saw us and he suddenly realised, oh, they’re not shit. So, we got rid of the Irish guy and he came back to play the piano. That’s how that happened.
Spike: But it was the four of us. We had so many different drummers, but we were the ones in the back of the yellow Bedford van for all those bloody years.
Nigel: But Guy was hilarious. We were at a gig one night, someone shouts out, “your bass player’s a cunt”. He turns round and goes, “don’t you call that cunt a bass player”. But that was just one of many times he’d come up with his witty answers.
Spike: He was very, very intelligent. Me and Nigel went to the University of Life. We didn’t pass. Chris and Guy could speak their three fucking languages. I’m like, speak fucking English, will you!!
MGM: When all that craziness went down a few years ago, and the most recent line-up split, you reformed the Quireboys with the majority of that original line-up. For many fans that line-up reflects the classic era of the band.
Spike: The person that was more mad about it than anybody was Guy Bailey. The thing you’ve got to remember is that we started the band and it was our thing. Every album that we’d done since that day, I’d always ask Guy if you wanted to come back and play. Nigel was on the first two, and then he obviously saw sense and fucked off, and left me. But he’s back now. It’s really good.
MGM: The stars are obviously aligned, with Thunder being on pause, and the Quireboys going through those changes. It was almost inevitable that you guys would come together, but how has it been?
Luke: Fucking terrible.
Spike: All right. Well, tell the truth!
MGM: You’re both strong characters; Spike as the face of the Quireboys; and Luke as the main songwriter in Thunder. Whilst you might both be great friends; the old mantra is that you should never mix business with pleasure. How has that gone?
Luke: Yeah, but we’ve always been mates. I was a fan of the Quireboys. I thought they were a really great band, and there were so many times that we were on the same bill. What I liked about them, was that they were quite different to Thunder in the way they went about things. Thunder has a very organised, meticulous way of doing things. The Quireboys, from the outside, just looks like total chaos. But they looked like they were having a much better time. I always admired their approach, and their looseness was a lovely thing to watch. But over the years, they won’t mind me saying, I’ve seen them a few times, and a couple of times, they’ve not been great. But when they’re good, they’re really fucking good. We did a show together, both bands, in Iceland in ’91 or 92 …….
Spike: Yeah. We flew in on our private plane. What did you fly in?
Luke: You ended up headlining because Poison pulled out. There was a bit of healthy rivalry, and we were going to kick them up the bum.
Spike: You remember what happened on that day as well? We flew in with two American bands, Bulletboys and Slaughter. In the Poison contract, they didn’t let anybody next to the side of the stage, but we ended up headlining. And you got on with us and did ‘Stay with me’. The Americans were like, “you fucking English guys, you all stick together”. We got paid in cash, and on the plane, Guy Bailey got all this fucking cash out, and was like, shut the fuck up and look at me fucking wad.
Luke: I always loved the band and always loved the songs. To me, good rock n roll music is totally dependent on having great songs. They always had great songs. Obviously, in the later period, after Nigel and Chris Johnson had gone, I still kept in touch, and went and saw them a lot. But it was interesting when Spike rang me and said, do you fancy playing guitar? I said, absolutely brilliant, of course. I basically went up to his place before the album got recorded and we went through all the songs. The songs were fantastic. I was thinking, this is a band I’d love to play guitar in, and actually being in there, and being able to help shape it and get it back to what it should have been, was a real pleasure.
Nigel: When Spike said, we’re going to do the band again, but Guy Bailey obviously wasn’t able to, I was thinking to myself, who the hell could we get to play guitar? It couldn’t be a stranger we don’t know. How would that work out? It might last six months, then we’d go, that guy’s an idiot. But we’d known Luke for so long, it was pretty obvious.
Luke: It had to be somebody English as well. It couldn’t have had an American, because we’re British rock n roll, and it’s a different style. It’s a very specific thing.
MGM: Have you had to adapt the way you play to play in the Quireboys, Luke, because your sound is so distinctive?
Luke: Well, a little bit, but Thunder is a very different thing from the Quireboys. Some things are common, but the music is quite a different thing because, obviously a lot of the songs were written around Danny’s voice, and Spike sings very differently to Danny. Whereas Thunder was coming from the Led Zeppelin, and Bad Company angle, I thought the Quireboys were coming from the Stones, the Faces and Mott the Hoople. There are similarities, but there’s subtle differences. As far as the guitar goes, I’m very familiar with their music, so I knew exactly what was needed when I heard the songs because I know the band so well, and our heritage is the same. All the bands that influence these guys, I love too. It wasn’t difficult for me. The thing about being a musician is about playing what’s right for what you’re doing. You slot in there and you go, what does it need?
Spike: What a lot of people don’t remember is that we never had a second guitarist until Ginger came in. We’d played for a long time just with one guitar. The songs were really based around one guitar, and Luke is doing an amazing job coming in. He’s seen us back then, when we were just a five-piece. We wanted that British rock sentiment to come through, not to be heavy rock, but to be more like rock ‘n’ roll.
MGM: Fans are already describing your new album ‘Wardour St’ as your best recordings since ‘A little bit of what you fancy’, and an authentic reminder of those early days of the band. What was the thinking behind the title and approach to this album?
Spike: I was with Guy (Bailey) on Wardour Street.
Nigel: It’s going back to basics, too. That’s where we started off.
Spike: This is how Guy would have wanted the album to be, one guitar. I know for a fact, he loved Luke, so he’d be loving this.
MGM: Maybe we should begin the campaign for Guy Bailey to have his own blue plaque above the St Moritz club? This album really manages to capture all the essence of the Quireboys; it has the humour, and the energy; but it’s also got that real depth of emotion. Speaking of which, you’ve recorded the Frankie Miller classic ‘Raining Whisky’ for this album too. Why was that important to you?
Spike: Well, I did an album called ‘100% pure Frankie Miller’ with Luke playing on it. I’d got Frankie’s voice off a demo. I didn’t put it on that album, but I had it, and I was going to release it later on as a bonus track for an album that we’d done when we played Sweden Rock. We were saying, whatever happened to that song ‘Raining Whiskey’ with Frankie’s voice on? Let’s do a Quireboys version instead of a country version, because Ronnie Wood was playing pedal steel on it and there was Simon Kirk. It was a different thing altogether, but we do it at the same speed, obviously because of Frankie’s voice. That was the whole reason behind that. I could do another five Frankie Miller albums, with the songs that he gave me. I’ve got a set of CDs, full of them from his personal stuff. It’s amazing. One day we’ll get around to it.
MGM: You’ve been playing a new song called ‘Jeeze Louise’ on tour already, which has a wonderful Chuck Berry style rift to it. Who’s Louise?
Spike: Before we did it, I actually looked it up and I was thinking, Little Richard, or somebody must have done it. It’s a popular expression, but nobody’s done it.
Luke: Louise is whoever you want her to be.
MGM: Talk to me about the title track, Wardour Street. This area of Soho has a real hustle and bustle about it, and yet the feel of this song is serene, and calming.
Luke: It’s the misty eyes of time. It’s thinking about back in the day, isn’t it. It’s nostalgic. There’s that element to it.
Spike: Plus, at the end, I’m singing lyrics that me and Guy Bailey wrote together.
Luke: When I went up to Spike’s and we were going through the material, he started talking about the concept of the song, and he mentioned ‘Albatross’ by Fleetwood Mac, which has got that very relaxed, serene thing. When he showed me the chords, I was like, that’s really cool. It was trying to keep it as dreamy and as sparse as possible.
Nigel: It’s like walking home after everything’s shut down.
MGM: As well as the album which came out in early November, you’ve also got the tour starting on 14th November. You’ll be joined by the delectable Harry James on drums. Where are you looking forward to playing most on that tour?
Spike: Actually, we’re also going to do a show on the 12th. Our old guitarist, Luke Bossendorfer, has unfortunately been diagnosed with a brain tumour.
Nigel: He played on ‘This is Rock N Roll’, and was in the band for a little while. He’s from Bedford, and so we’re going to play at Esquires in Bedford.
Spike: And all the money is going to his family.
Nigel: Then the tour starts on the 14th, so it’ll be a little warm-up show.
Quireboys will be touring throughout November:
12th November: `Esquires, Bedford
14th November: Yardbirds, Grimsby
15th November: Venue 23, Wakefield
16th November: The Palace, Bridgwater
17th November: Corn Exchange, Newport
20th November: Limelight, Belfast
22nd November: Queens Hall, Nuneaton
23rd November: Old Cold Store, Nottingham
24th November: Islington Assembly Hall, London
28th November: Winterstorm Festival
29th November: Asylum, Birmingham
30th November: Gorillas, Manchester
https://www.spikequireboys.com/tour.htm
https://www.facebook.com/SpikeQuireboys
The new album is available through Cadiz Records:
https://cadizmerchstore.com/collections/quireboyswardourstreet
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