26/02/11
‘Stepping through the door like a trabadour’, the Ocean Colour Scene boys have been the strolling minstrels of anthemic British Mod Rock for 19 years – and what a walk it’s been. The understated band have, in their time, knocked Oasis off the top spot, played the largest free-standing gig of all time at Knebworth and been dubbed ‘The Second Best Band in Britain’ (behind the Beatles) by Noel Gallagher himself. I caught up with one of my musical heroes and Paul Weller’s faithful guitarist, Steve Cradock to talk about OCS and we whiled just half an hour away…
I took up keyboard when I was 12 years old and showed my teacher my Moseley Shoals songbook; I said to her that I only wanted to play those songs, as they were the only songs I’d ever need to know… as a kid, did you have intense appreciation for an album as I did for yours?I did, but it wasn’t an album I don’t think; the song that really kicked in for me was the B Side of ‘Bitterest Pill’ by the Jam and the song was called ‘Pity Poor Alfie’ and I kind of had this thing where I played that song everyday for about 15 years I think. It’s one of them things where I didn’t know the lyrics and I had to kind of make up your own image of what the lyrics were and what it was about and sometimes that’s a better thing when you don’t know the full score, I think. I mean, I think most people who’re into music have their moments, don’t they?!
Before OCS, you were a member of mod revival band The Boys, which was before the Britpop explosion – did you ever feel you were chasing a scene that received limited attention at the time? Erm, from where I came from right, from Birmingham in the late 70s and 80s, musically everyone was into heavy rock and it was like Nerd City to me, so I think that might have been a reason – and obviously you’ve gotta remember there was the two-tone thing from Coventry at the time – there was obviously the Mod Revival thing with bands and that looked kinda glamorous to me compared with the 70s kinda punk rock image. At the same point, I quickly got disappointed by that whole Mod scene; I travelled all over the country – I was only about 16 and I remember a mate of mine driving up to Blackpool in ’87 – we drove all the way up there and he was refused entry because he had an earring and it was just little things like that that made me think they were narrow-minded. They all just went around looking like Paul Weller and Steve Marriott anyway and that’s not what Modernism is about, is it?
You persistently frequented Paul Weller’s studio in Marble Arch trying to give him some of The Boys’ material only to be removed by your now Tour Manager, Kenny Wheeler – is that right?Yeah, it is… I only went down there twice though!
Was that absolute belief, balls or determination?It was a time that I ended up missing my exams, which I got a bollocking for, to be honest with you but I don’t know why I did it – it was just one of those things that you do when you’re a kid. I wanted to go and do something that meant something to me, as opposed to exams. It’s all a load of bollocks really though, isn’t it? It’s the reactionary side of people when you’re that age, you’re not really thinking straight about it… or maybe you are, I don’t know. You have a different energy on your side when you’re that age, d’you know what I mean, that you only see in hindsight I think.
When The Boys and The Fanatics joined forces, did you feel a spark that had been lacking before? Could you predict the imminent success? Not really, I was just happy to join Simon’s band, ‘cause in Birmingham he was the only person who I thought was serious about it and really good. He was more into the underground sixties scene like the Velvet Underground and Nuggets and Pebbles, and being a singer he was a big John Lennon fan as well. He was the best singer in Birmingham, so I was really happy to be playing with him.
After being taken on as Paul’s guitarist on tour, you self funded Moseley Shoals using money from the tour to pay for studio fees – was the pressure on you then, or more maybe on Simon to come up with the goods? There wasn’t any pressure no, I mean, it sounds like such a big thing to say to say I funded Moseley Shoals, because at the time we was on the dole and I had a bit of money from Paul, all I did was I came back and I’d pass out the cash, then I’d rent out the studio just so as a band we had somewhere to go. It sounds better when you say it to be honest with you! There wasn’t any pressure and Simon would be writing songs when I was away, for example, he write ‘One for the Road’, ‘It’s My Shadow’ and ‘Downstream’ in one afternoon…
Wow, that’s a good afternoon!I know! It would give us something to do the next day in the studio, so it was just a little fun really – it came very easily; we were very motivated, I suppose.
Was there ever a time that you thought it was too much of a risk to carry on?Too much of a risk? I don’t know… I think we’re going through a pretty bleak period at the moment…
Do you think?!I think around the ‘On the Leyline’ time and from then, yeah, and we’re gonna bring out an album next year so stuff’s coming out of that time for that. I think when you’ve been in a band for 19 years then you’d be a liar to say that there aren’t times when things don’t go swimmingly. That’s just a part of it, in a way and it’s not like a major comedown from it all.
Carry forward a little bit to the success of Moseley Shoals – did it surprise you or did you think ‘finally, people have opened their eyes’? It totally surprised us, I mean, we made the album for a Japanese label called Pony Canyon and then funnily enough, my wife – ‘my wife who I’m married to now’, I was gonna say! Sally was instrumental in getting us a deal with Universal, then there were all these crazy things like Chris Evans – I mean, we thought ‘The Riverboat Song’ was like a 60s pastiche underground record, but Chris Evans ending up putting it as his Record of the Week for two weeks running on Radio 1 in them days, so then the first single we had went to number 14 I think and was on Top of the Pops, so then it kind of rolled. That album ended up going to number two I think three times that year, as you know. So yeah, we were very surprised about it – there was no vitriol at all.
It must have been a heady time when you reached that level of success – looking back, do you think you remained grounded? I don’t think we remained grounded at all! I think we just sailed the boat that everyone was sailing the mid-90s.
Even early on, there’s a line in one of my favourite songs, ‘Lining Your Pockets’ which says, “Well I wandered through fortune and I flirted with fame…” As a band, were you very aware of the transience of musical success?Er, no we didn’t think about it, no. I think because we was in Birmingham, that distanced us from all the crap that was going on in London and in a way it allowed us to form sanity if we wanted it. At the same time though, you’ve got to remember that I was only 24 and selling a million records – it’s not young by any age now, but like I said, we sailed that boat for a while and there’s only one way down from there. Our next album went to number one after that, Marchin’ Already went to number 1, so after those two albums, there’s only one way down.
You have some very famous fans, but seem to have avoided the trappings of some of your contemporaries. You’ve appeared to be a very private band… did you never have any desires to get in to a ruck with Blur or show your arse on the Brit Awards?!We’ve never been offered an award…
Oh, so you would’ve shown your arse?!It’s possible! The thing is, that whole Britpop thing you’re on about, that was just a huge press campaign – the press needed it, the country needed it, Blur needed it and Oasis needed it and it sort of tethered everyone’s needs I think, but we weren’t important enough as a band to sort of get involved with that – I think we was lucky just to have to sort of success that we had with that.
You’ve sold out the biggest arenas in Britain, but are you looking forward to playing the more intimate venues on this tour? Er, I enjoy playing all the time anyway. I like playing guitar, I like playing with Ocean Colour Scene and I like playing with Paul, but I’d like to see Ocean Colour Scene getting back to playing big places, y’know, but it’s not our time yet. I believe it will be our time again some day. In the mean time, we’ll be playing the places we’re playing.
Is there a motive behind this tour… can we expect a new album? Yeah, we’re gonna be playing some new songs because we go into the studio in January. Actually, we’ve got a few demos already and we’d like to put a new album out next May time I think, or complete one by next May – I don’t know when it’ll come out, September maybe. So yeah, that’s what we’re gonna do and hopefully we’ll play some new songs on this tour.
We interviewed Natty recently, who said you were one of the best live acts he’d ever seen after watching you at the Oxegen Festival in Ireland. What is it that you do live that garners such respect?Erm, I don’t know. We just play and we are what we are – it’s a hard one to answer really, ‘cause you can’t see yourselves. It’s nice to get a compliment about it though.
I speak for many fans when I say when you brought out ‘Songs for the Front Row: The Best of Ocean Colour Scene’, my heart was in my mouth – I thought it signalled the end! Since then, there’s been The Anthology and The Collection which have also given me palpitations – why so many ‘Best Ofs’? It’s nothing to do with us – basically, what it is, is that it’s record companies that do it and I think unfortunately, Universal Records are gonna put another Greatest Hits out! I think it’s taking the piss really, but it’s out of our control; the record companies own your back catalogue, so they have the right to release it whenever and however they want to, which is… that’s just the way it is anyway.
The album North Atlantic Drift was seen by many as your revival – did you feel more optimistic at that time? I’m not sure, really. I thought it was quite a hard album to make, really; it was the last album we made with Damon, and he was just being a pain in the arse to be honest with you. I dunno, I do have some fond memories of making that album though. What do you mean by a revival though?
I think it reignited some of the passion of the previous albums, because after Songs for the Front Row, it was something to say “we’re still here” and for many fans, it was seen as another flag in the ground for the band.Right… I’ve got to be honest with you though, I mean, not many people are keen on Mechanical Wonder, but I’ve listened to it a lot recently and I really, really love that record, so I think there’s moments on all of our albums that I could say how good the band is, or how good the songs are and we don’t have hit records anymore and we don’t make albums like Moseley Shoals, which is impossible to do anyway. I think half the album’s always on the money. Mind you, saying that, Oasis’ new record is not all great either – I think there are like four or five songs on that record that are any good. I don’t know if you know, but I’ve got a solo record coming out, are you aware of that?
I am; I’ve got a couple of questions tucked in for that! I’ll ask you them now, seeing as they’re topical! I wanted to ask you why, being producer, guitarist and drummer for so many other acts, why it has taken so long to do your own thing. Because I’ve never had the songs before; I mean, I only started writing about three years ago, maybe even two years ago and because I’m not a writer, it’s taken quite a long time really. When I recorded ‘22 Dreams’ with Paul, I’d finish with him and then have time in the studio.
Are you conscious of making a sound that’s purely your own, different to OCS? I didn’t really think about it, I mean, I play all the instruments on there myself and I recorded nine songs in six days, so I didn’t have the time to sort of think about dressing it up in a certain fashion – it went down like that and that’s the way it was.
Chris Evans has jumped on board; are you pleased with the reaction it’s getting already, even before its release? He’s not played anything yet though, has he? But, yeah, of course it’s great to have his support, very good and I just hope he supports it more.
Over the 19 years together, you seem to constantly be putting out studio albums – is the process involved approached the same every time? Er, I think it is really. I don’t know – I think it is and it’d do us a favour really if it wasn’t the same all the time. I think we need to go in and change something around – I don’t know what that is, but I suppose so, yeah. But I don’t know, I try not to think about it too much.What’s the future for OCS? You mentioned that you’d like to be playing bigger arenas again…Yeah, that’s what I’d like the band to be doing, y’know, we’re a good band and we should be playing these places. I’ve seen the crap that plays some of these big venues and I think we stand up to it, y’know, without trying to be arrogant. I think if we produced another great album, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be playing these bigger places.
I read that you taught new member, Andrew Bennett how to play guitar – is that right? Yeah, he used to live round the corner from me and I started teaching him from about the age of nine!
He’s got a lot to thank you for then…Well, I’ve got a lot to thank him for as well now he plays in the band.
You mentored him just as Paul Weller has kind of mentored you – is it important to pay it forward? It’s not that obvious really, I mean, I don’t think Paul’s ever mentored me in a way, I’ve just spent a lot of his time learning his songs and honing my craft.
Finally, you’ve played in Norwich before a few times – do you have any memories of our fine city? Well, we first played Norwich UEA when we supported Jesus Jones back in 1989, so what’s that – nineteen years ago! We really like the venue and I just can’t wait to get back down there.
Emma Roberts
Ocean Colour Scene return to the UEA on Monday 8th December and tickets are still available from www.ueaticketbookings.co.uk or by calling 01603 508050. Read the extended version of this interview only on Outlineonline.co.uk