The
American Ruse
This article originally appeared in NFH #21 in
the winter of 1991.
This is one of those
rare interviews where I mailed away the tape and the questions and what I got back
is coherent enough to pretty much print it just as it came out on the tape. For
those in the dark, the American Ruse are a British band that don't sound like a
British band at all. Their first lp, called Death By The Gun after the Radio
Birdman song, was released on the label Shakin' Street, which is run by Pilly, the
band's drummer. When I heard it, I liked it but thought it was a little bit too
derivative...I'm probably less a stickler for originality than most people, but
these guys wore their fandomania on their sleeves about as loudly as anybody. Their
second lp, Hard Junk Meat, erased this impression...the American Ruse came
across as a driving rock and roll band with their own ideas and their own way to
express them. It's a powerhouse. Since then there's also been a handful of singles; one on
Shakin' Street and two on Sympathy here in the US including a brilliant bashing of
the Only Ones "Another Girl Another Planet". Pilly told me that he had at
first tried to do the interview with the whole band present and that when he
played it back it was fairly impossible to decipher, so he decided to redo it by
himself, sticking in what he remembered of the comments of the other members. At
the moment they're looking for another singer, but Pilly is convinced that this
hurdle will be overcome eventually and they'll be back out there slugging it out.
"We started
about 1984. It was Arif the bass player who was the drum roadie for this band that
I was in at the time, and he knew these two brothers who were into Johnny Thunders
and stuff. The idea was for a good time bit of fun practice only type of band.
Things really started to take off the first practice we had...we ran through about
twenty songs straight off. The bulk of our first set was about 90% Heartbreakers
and Dolls songs. We started playing in the industrial north of England. It's not
exactly the most exciting place in England, but it's no more unusual to find
anybody into Johnny Thunders there than it is anywhere else in England.
"The first time
we ever played was at this charity gig, and there was like 800 people there, and we
went down so well that every gig we did under our own steam after that...we'd pull
between 700 and 800 people.
"That would be
up till the middle of 1985 I guess, and then I moved down here. And I was down here
for about three years during which time we didn't do anything; the band had stayed
up north, didn't get a new drummer, and I didn't get another band. Then when I
started the label, we thought we'd do an American Ruse farewell lp, if anything
just to document the band. We enjoyed it so much that we took it from there really.
"What bands
influenced us? Well, I can say for myself it would be the Heartbreakers, Raw
Power era Stooges, Radio Birdman, the Dead Boys. I guess the Heartbreakers is
pretty much a common theme for everybody in the band. At this point Arif said that
the Replacements were also important for him.
"Once we'd done
the lp...we actually recorded it down here near Brighton...then slowly but surely
Andy and Arif actually moved down here to live and started paying a bit more
attention to us. Neil, who is Andy's brother, did one tour with us and then decided
that it wasn't the life for him, and he stayed in the north. And that was that.
Here we are now at the present day.
"As for how
we've been received, well we're generally received well. Prorated to the number of people
there, be it 5 or 300, or whatever. But the press in England certainly don't
receive us that well, or certainly not the popular press, anyway.
"In England if
you can actually get to play to the people, then they actually like you, unless you
get some snotty art students or something. The crowds (or the gatherings, as the case may
be), it's about 70 percent converted and 30 percent curious onlookers. It's
definitely true that there don't seem to be that many people interested in this
kind of music in the UK. I don't know why that is. The popular music press like
Melody Maker and the NME seem to be full of drippy avante garde rock bands with samplers
and sequencers and shit like that. They'll go for something totally manufactured
like Manic Street Preachers where it's just based on an overactive publicity
machine, whereas a good honest band that's gone out there and paid their dues, they
don't seem that interested. But that's life, I guess.
"When we do
play, we tend to play in places where we've actually got some kind of a following;
Liverpool, Newcastle, Edinburgh, places like that. It's generally better the further north
you go. Having said that, it's not like we're out gigging every week. When we go
for a lengthier jaunt we tend to go to the wilds of Scotland or whatever, where
bands don't usually play. It's not as if we're gigging and touring all the time.
Also, we don't spend a lot of time practicing or anything, either. I wouldn't say
it was ESP or anything like that, but playing this type of music, you're either
into it or not, so it's not a case where we have to practice to get songs right. We
know how the songs should sound and we tend to get by with one or two practices
before we have a gig.
"In 1976 to 1977
England did have the best bands in the world, although when I was a punk rocker, I
was probably more into American bands like the Sire stable; Dead Boys, Ramones,
Richard Hell; everything except the Talking Heads. Then what happened to England
beyond that? Boomtown Rats started getting number ones with songs with pianos in
them. There may be a few good bands in England around at the moment, but you could
number them on a Chernobyl hand...about three I guess, and that'd be 16 Forever, a
band from Newcastle, Pulse, and it certainly wouldn't be the Manic Street Preachers
because they're just manufactured shit. It certainly wouldn't be Birdland. I guess
it would be the Mega City Four or the Senseless Things, although I think their
music is a little bit further removed from what we're trying to do. I guess if
there's any band that we feel any kinsmanship with then I guess it would be 16
Forever from Newcastle. That's the only one I can think of.
"What bands do
we go for around the world? Well, personally speaking, perhaps we ought to swap
locations...I go for the California bands; the Creamers, Jeff Dahl, the Lazy
Cowgirls, Mr. T Experience, for talking right now. Cosmic Psychos, I dunno, I guess
Two Saints from Boston, the Queers. Arif did add the Replacements, from start to finish,
and the Fluid. We have a universal hatred for all Sub Pop bands apart from the
Fluid. Oh, and Thee Headcoats, obviously (laughs), 'cos they're groovy. Oh, and the
Devil Dogs; how could I leave out the Devil Dogs; the Devil Dogs are carrying
the flag and they should be number one in NME.
"About the Jeff
Dahl tour...Well it did good. We did 30 dates in Europe, saw a big bulk of the
European continent. Jeff is a great singer, great frontman. We decided to do it
because he fired his band and we were singerless, and as we had pretty much the
same type of music, it seemed like an ideal situation to get both of us exposure.
The shows were arranged through Shakin' Street and a European agency...I sent them
200 copies of each band's records and they shifted them all out to the clubs and
the clubs got back. So I suppose there's 170 clubs out there that don't like either
band somewhere.
"As for high
points, there aren't too many to talk about; it was one big ball. Especially being
a bunch of English beer monsters, myself excepted of course since I'm a sensible
chap. But we were loose on a dressing room with a huge refrigerator full of beer
every night. Mainland Europe is great compared to England. England sucks. Arif
remembered the lowest point of the tour being when we played in this place called
Ravensburg. To cut a long story short, Anastasia Screamed was supporting and they
were being heckled by the promoter for being hippies. We went on and played, and
there must have been about 30 people there, 29 of whom were there to score smack.
We finished our set and there were like 50 Nazi youth skinheads outside waiting and
a bunch of very mean carpenter's apprentices who were all nine foot tall and six
foot wide and very ugly and then the promoter started beating up the police and
these faggots wanted us to stay at their house. Not that we're homophobic or
anything, but these guys did give us the distinct impression that if we did stay
there then we would be walking very differently the next morning and all the rest
of it. So we just got out of there and that was like a total bummer. It was just
weird coming from the night before with a great gig and great hotel to doing this
smack den. But we got over it. But Arif certainly never forgot it. And now that
he's reminded me I'll probably have a few nightmares about it.
"And we all
smoke and we all drink and we're very unhealthy.
"Shakin'
Street...Well, I started to do it because I've always been a record collector and I
still am interested, but there's not as much now to be interested about as there
was a few years ago. In Australian imports especially, I was sick and tired of
paying 8 pounds or ten pounds for an lp and 4 pounds for a single, and in my
misguided wisdom I presumed that the rest of England's record buyers would feel the
same. So I started writing off to labels to license various recordings for Europe.
As for how the thing has done...in some cases it was good and in some cases it was
bad. The God lp, for some reason I only got the rights to England for that. If it
came down to it I'd sooner have the rights to Iraq than England for a record
release. The God lp, which came in a full color sleeve and an inner sleeve and cost
an arm and a leg to produce, sold abysmally and I've still got a thousand of the
bloody things out in the garage right now.
"It's always
weird; some things sell and some things don't. I'm certainly never going to get
rich. If it wasn't for the fact that we run a mail order operation selling other
people's records from America and Australia that we import, like Sympathy and
Estrus and DogMeat...stuff like that, then financially there's no way that we could
have carried on. You get the occasional good seller, like the Angry Samoans thing,
I could have sold fucking tons of that if it weren't for the fact that morally, for
reasons I really don't want to go into and not that I've got anything to be ashamed
of, but morally I felt it was only right just to press enough to cover the cost
of what I've paid out for the tapes. I could have sold tons of those ever since,
and perhaps Triple X or whoever would like to take up the pressing of that. The
orders are coming thick and fast and I can't supply, or I won't supply...moralist!
"Records that
we've done that I thought were going to be surefire killers, like your favorite the
Two Saints, hah! Seriously, it's a great record, and it didn't do that well in
England. It's done well in mainland Europe. The Queers lp has classic stamped all over it,
and we've still only sold about 800 of those. But then again you get orders
trickling in. It makes it all worthwhile when you get some obscure radio station in
the middle of Norway or Finland or something that sends you a playlist and the
Queers or Jeff Dahl, or Two Saints or the American Ruse are like number one on
their station ahead of things like the Pixies and Happy Mondays and shit like that.
Although why a station is playing Happy Mondays and the Two Saints and the Queers
on the same program is beyond me. But I always was a bigot when it came to music.
"Future stuff;
well as we speak, I've got the new Headcoats lp...it's all brand new and I'm not
licensing it to anybody because I'm never going to license another thing in my
life. The new Headcoats lp is like cracking. And the Gargoyles, the San Francisco
band...if there's any justice in the world it would make me and them rich. But
we'll just do a pressing and they'll get their 100 copies and I'll cover my costs,
but if it helps get the name about well and good.
"I've got the
new Two Saints lp out at the same time and a single from a band from Belgium called
the Midnight Men, who funny enough are composed of two girls and three guys. That's
a really good punk rock single, much better than the Manic Street Preachers. Yes,
and I have got a chip on my shoulder about the Manic Street Preachers.
"Best story
about the American Ruse either fortunate or unfortunate? Well, I guess the most
unfortunate thing is that we haven't been signed to a major (laughs). Because we're
an honest band and we're good at what we do. Something funny? I guess that would be about
the time we played in Holland with Jeff Dahl, and we were about 28 days into the
tour and we'd finished playing and these three horny looking chicks came up to us
afterwards, I got talking to one and she had a French accent and amazing long
blonde hair, and I was thinking well, hey, I'm in here. And after a few minutes of
bleary eyed drunkenness, through the haze I thought, god, she doesn't half look
like my wife. And I could see Arif in the corner engaged with this girl with long
curly brown hair, and I thought, oh, it looks like we've both scored for tonight.
And I said to this girl, god, you look amazingly like this girl I know from
England. And she gave me some reply in French which Audrey will have to repeat
because I don't know French at all, and fuck me backwards if it wasn't my wife, and
the girl Arif was talking to was his girlfriend. They'd both hired wigs and
disguises, flown over to Holland and surprised us. I don't know, perhaps it wasn't
that funny.
"Well, what
else? When we're on the road or in the studio it's just like one big laugh. This is
the point where Arif interjected that 99% of all the funny instances were related
to me or was the direct cause of me, and I hate to impose censorship, but I don't
think I really want the world in general to know the sort of things that everybody
else in American Ruse finds funny about my antics (laughs)! I dunno; dare I let you
in on any deep secrets. Well, apart from one occasion of lapsed football holliganery...after
we'd finished playing the club in Frankfurt I sang the famed English football yob
song (to the tune of "Camptown Ladies") "Two World Wars and one
World Cup, Do-dah, Do-dah!" The rest of the band scattered.
"We also had a
crazy mad bastard Dutchmen driving us around who used to do his laundry at night in
a hotel sink basin and then dry it on the front of the van while we're driving
along. This is on the inside...he'd hang them on the dashboard...all these like
size 99 Y-fronts; Jesus Christ...we'd get to a border and there'd be these border
guards waiting to stick their hands up our asses to check for drugs, and there'd be
all these Y-fronts. Brrrrrah! It makes me shiver just thinking about it.
"Something
fortunate? God, I hope I don't sound like Morrissey or something, but I don't think
there is such a thing as fortune. You get what you deserve period. Full stop, even.
"New plans?
Well, as things stand at the moment, we're down to a three piece again. And because
of that we're not doing anything. We're waiting for an extra guitarist and another
singer. Although we have actually got two lps recorded, one of which is going to be
a limited 500 only affair with some covers of Johnny Thunders. Shit, it's only
about two months ago that we recorded it and I can't remember what else is on it.
Some Jeff Dahl songs and some songs from our first lp that we've re-recorded. It's
all literally live in the studio on an 8 track. And then we've also got a new
lp proper which is the best yet as they say. But we're going to wait until we get a
permanent singer before we actually put the vocals down on those. 'Cos I'm sick and
tired of putting out records and going out to do gigs on the back of those records,
and the band doing the gig isn't the same as the band that did the record. It's
just so fucking difficult finding anybody who are into it. It would be ever so easy
to get a second guitarist who was into Hanoi Rocks and a singer who was into the
Misfits or something like that. Not that there's anything wrong with the Misfits or
Hanoi Rocks, but we want people who are in the middle ground like us...I might
sound Fascist, bigoted, small minded or whatever. But, I dunno, that's just the way
we are. People say we're sycophantic plagiarists. But it's what we want to do. We've got
no pretensions of ever making it big. We just enjoy what we do and if other people
do then good fun.
"Hard Junk
Meat actually sold out while we were in Europe...it was released the day after
we sailed over to Europe with Jeff and within a week it sold out full stop. And
'cos I was away for three weeks I couldn't get around to getting it repressed. Lee
Joseph from Dionysis is putting it out now. It's deleted full stop on Shaking
Street; in fact I was rummaging through my collection the other night and I don't
even have a copy any more. But Lee Joseph is putting it out in a different sleeve
and stuff and he's doing a CD with that and all the tracks from the first lp Death
By The Gun on it. So at least that will be consigned to the history books now.
"It's
frustrating being an honest band. We've never made out to be anything other than
fans who play music. None of us are in this, and take it from me that nobody will
ever get into this band who isn't into it 100%, and that's the attitude. They
should be into it 100%, digging the right music and digging the kind of music we
play. There's no point in digging out fucking sequencers or samplers and all the
rest of it, or wind canals or whatever. We just play honest rock and roll because
we enjoy it.
"If you want a
character profile; I run the record label, I collect books about serial killers.
Arif plays bass and talks a load of shit (laughs), no he doesn't. Arif is really
committed. Brian, who was been in the band about a year now, is a great guitarist.
He'll drink all your beer, mind, if you don't hang onto it. But that's the way it
is. Andy our old lead guitarist, he's back home and doing not a lot, but we wish
him all the best anyway.
"Sorry that
we're so boring. It's just that we can't really make out to be the new rock gods
when we're not and we don't want to be, and come to that I don't think anyone else
will be now that Johnny's dead and before him Stiv. It puts it all in perspective,
really...if it wasn't for people like those as they were at the time when they were
important, then certainly bands like us, or the Nomads or the Devil Dogs wouldn't
exist. But if I grieve for Johnny Thunders because he was a human being and not for
what he'd done 15 years ago...he really hadn't done anything good since LAMF.
So Alone was OK. In London around Soho there's all these Johnny Thunders wannabees
with their back-combed hair and all the rest of it. I just wonder how far they take
it, whether they've got the tracks up the arms. The American Ruse...we drink beer, we shag
women, we smoke cigarettes...not necessarily in that order."
Good enough for me.
