When The Wedding Present announced their current tour, Friends of The Heroes was determined to make sure that this momentous rock and roll moment did not go by un-noticed. With this as the plan the Friends of The Heroes rock and roll correspondent, Johnny Mac, was despatched to Manchester with his tape recorder and camera to grab a small insight into the band in it's current incarnation. In the bowels of Manchester University Students Union he did battle with the hopefuls in the queue for the Student Pop Idol competition to grab a few words with Terry de Castro (bass) and Simon Cleave (guitar) before they called security...here's what they had to say...

Monday 21^st February, 2005, Manchester:
Terry de Castro, bass goddess with The Wedding Present, glances out of the window, and across the courtyard sees, in an adjacent stairwell an orderly queued column of young people all waiting eagerly, but for what…

“It’s student Pop Idol” Simon Cleave informs us,

“Stupid Pop Idol” enquires Terry, before realising her faux pas “oh, ‘student’, I thought you said ‘stupid’”,

“Well, you weren’t too far off the mark the first time”

“And they’ve got rag week soon” follows up Simon Cleave, with an unnerving understanding of the Mancunian student calendar.

“What’s rag week?” Terry enquires in her warm Californian drawl, before Simon launches into a thorough description of possible charity fuelled escapades that may be undertaken by over enthusiastic undergraduates. And then down to business.

JM: “O.K, so the tour, how is it going?”

SC: “Good, good, we’re five dates in and it’s going really quickly this time”

JM: “Around Ireland, was that a plan to perhaps ease you into things a bit?”

TdC: “It was actually, yeah, and it was good to do that too, we feel really relaxed now, definitely settled into it”

JM: “I suppose the early dates make up for any limitations in rehearsal time”

TdC: “Well, we do some preliminary rehearsing on our own, and then we had a week and a half of every day or so…”

SC: “…but there is only so much that you can do in that, compared to actually going out and playing, and actually the people who see us at the start usually get the more interesting gigs”

JM: “Yeah, I read about there being problems with ‘Perfect Blue’ in Dublin”

TdC: “Oh, yes, it was because the guitar was tuned wrong”

SC: “Was that Dublin, I thought that was Belfast”

TdC: “You know, you’re right, Dublin was the amp, or was it Cork”

SC: “Belfast was definitely the guitar, because it was the first time that Jessica had tuned it to that…and she did it wrong”

JM: “Oh dear”

SC: “It’s just one of those things, you have to make the mistake once, and then you’ll never make it again.”

TdC: “and then the next gig, I did a terrible thing…you know the layering in Health and Efficiency….the really naked part of the song…and they’ll just razz me about it for the entire tour I know. But that’s all part of the fun”

JM: “But don’t you think that in the live setting, the audience, not expects it, but quite enjoys it”

TdC: “…the little mis-haps?”

JM: “yeah, I remember in Bath last year, when David’s microphone stand was knocked over during ‘Brassneck’, and Jessica had to dash on to put it all back together”

TdC: “Oh yeah, in Moles, I know…and there was this long, long pause, and some guy shouts “1,2,3,4” and David starts up again right on cue without missing a beat, oh that was really funny”

JM: “There is always that great audience interaction?”

TdC: “You know there is, on every Cinerama tour that we have done someone has always shouted for ‘My Favourite Dress’ and it’s really satisfying this time because we’re playing it and Simon will quite often just burst into it right after the request”

JM: “I didn’t think I would ever hear that song live again”

TdC: “Yeah, I used to play that song on my college radio show, back in like, 1987.”

JM: “So when you were playing it, did you ever think that you would one day be onstage playing it with The Wedding Present?”

TdC: “I often think of that, I have always been a music fan and I always said when I was a young kid that I was going to be a rock star – I mean, I’m not one, but I never thought that I would get this far for real, so I think that I would have been very pleased if someone had told me that I was going to be doing this in the future.”

SC: “To be honest ‘My Favourite Dress’ is not my favourite, that’s the thing”

JM: “we were talking earlier about the history of The Wedding Present, and in particular the writing of David Gedge, and you can see a clear progression right the way through his career how he has developed as a writer, certainly lyrically…he seems to write short stories that just happen to become songs…”

TdC: “They are sort of a narrative, and that fitted so well with the ethos of Cinerama”

SC: “…and I think the thing that has helped David along is the line up changes, he really needed to work with different people to get where he is today…”

JM: “but saying that, you could certainly see ‘Take Fountain’ coming,  with the radio sessions last year, those songs didn’t really sound too far removed from ‘Torino’”

SC: “Oh certainly, but we just thought that it was a bridge too far, we just feel that it is a Wedding Present record, and we’ll go back to Cinerama for other projects that we have in mind”

JM: “So Cinerama isn’t dead and buried then”

SC: “Oh no no no, we could have almost done this with ‘Torino’, but it was not the right time to do it, we hadn’t even thought of it, and this record, we started it as a Cinerama record, and it was only when we started mixing it really that we said “What have we got here…?” and it was time to start a new project; but that was the line, we had struggled so hard with Cinerama, but it was worth the effort…”

JM: “Simon, you were in The Wedding Present, Terry, you’ve been involved now for four or five years with these two, and then there was Kari, he’s on the record, but not the tour…

SC: “Well basically he just couldn’t give the time, this is a big wodge (sic) of touring, it’s a huge tour…”

TdC: “...and we’re going to the States after Europe, and then the festivals start and then a little French tour in November”

JM: “So how do you find that affects you?”

SC: “It’s what we chose to do isn’t it, I mean, I was gagging to get on this tour when we were booking it in November, I can’t wait. But ask me that in a months time and…”

TdC: “Usually when you get settled into a tour, you sort of feel that you could do it forever, it’s kind of murky at the start and you kind of think ‘I don’t know if I can do this…’ but once you get stuck into it you can go on for quite a long time, you just get used to it.”

JM: “Do you ever find that you’re just going through the motions?”

SC: “Yeah, but not for the performance, but we are like a well oiled machine, where everybody knows what they have to do to make it all work…”

TdC: “Yeah, it’s a good feeling, and when you stop you really, really want to get back on the road. It’s harder getting used to not touring that getting used to touring.”

JM: “And when you are touring, I suppose you have one eye on the next record.”

SC: “I always write, all the time, and I just send it to David, and he picks out what he thinks he can work with, that’s basically how it works. I write much more than he needs…”

TdC: “It works well, the process.”

JM: “And musically is there any other band than The Wedding Present that you’d like to be in?”

SC: “Well, I wouldn’t like to be in them, but I really like Low, but I’m not disciplined enough to play that well…”

TdC: “You know, I have this secret fantasy to be in a heavy metal band…”

SC: “...I do as well…”

TdC: “…it’s got to be so much fun playing that kind of music, just completely rocking out, with no holds barred, it’s got to be so much fun, but we can do that in some of the songs, it’s pretty satisfying.”

SC: “You know, sometimes David and I get interviewed by these guitar magazines, and it’s really quite embarrassing, because it’s not really how we see ourselves, I mean, we’re competent musicians and I think we’re good at what we do, but if you can achieve the objective with three chords and a simple cello run then that’s fine.”

JM: “So what sort of things do you do on the road to stave off boredom?”

SC: “Well, because we do everything ourselves there is very little time to get bored…”

TdC: “We have these little chess tournaments…”

JM: “Hang on, you can’t be in a heavy metal band and have chess tournaments…”

TdC: “Ha ha, yeah, I didn’t think of that…No, really, if it’s a long tour we’ll find something that we like to do…we tend to work as we tour, a lot of reading gets done, and we write, we write letters and emails…”

JM: “Yeah, the tour diaries that you have written for Orange Slices seem to have proved popular, do you do any other writing?”

TdC: “I do yeah, I do some writing, but always a lot less than I intend, I have it in my head that I’ll be writing a lot more, but we’ll see if it materialises.”

SC: “…and I always drive, and particularly in America you do get a buzz from driving across the country, the wide open spaces, and the Interstates and all that…”

JM: “We were glad to hear that we would be able to speak to you two, because it seems that everyone always talks to David, and whilst he is an interesting enough guy it was nice…”

TdC: “…to get another angle, yeah.”

JM: “Exactly”

SC: “The interesting thing about David is that he feels that he is shielding us from all that, it’s not that he particularly wants to do it, it’s just that the four of us can be sat in a room and virtually every question will be directed at him, and he sort of says ‘You can be doing other things, you don’t have to sit here and listen to me answer these questions…' but it’s also very nice to be asked as well.”

JM: “Well, you’re an integral part of the band, it’s not David Gedge and the Wedding Present, it’s just The Wedding Present”

SC: “But lets face it, he is the figurehead…”

TdC: “…and the revolving cast could change again and it would still be The Wedding Present.”

SC: “...and that doesn’t bug me at all to be honest, it’s an important part of The Wedding Present, all those other guitarists, all those other musicians have brought something to the sound of the band, and David wouldn’t have been able to sustain that without such a  big cast of people. I think it’s quite healthy.”

TdC: “...and now with John in it’s great, he’s a really nice guy.”

JM: “So with The Wedding Present and Cinerama, is there any song that you think is the defining moment of Terry in Cinerama, or Simon in Cinerama/The Wedding Present, or a song that when you write it down on the set list that is the one you’re looking forward to playing?”

SC: “Well yeah, we’ve got ‘Crawl’ back in there now which is great…”

TdC: “…there has been so much debate about that song, because it’s in a key that’s very difficult, but I think he sounds great, it’s very low.”

SC: “Strangely enough, the song that really sums up Cinerama for me is ‘Pacific’ and I’m not even on that…”

TdC: “…I was going to say that as well, it’s like a little oddity…”

SC: “…that’s what I think Cinerama should be more like. ‘Torino’ was heading back this way…but…”

TdC: “it could have gone off on that tangent, kind of trippy, a little bit weird, and nice and light. That was another aspect of Cinerama, but we just didn’t go down that road.”

SC: “But I think that is something that David will explore more in the future.”

TdC: “I suppose for live, my absolute favourite was ‘Octopussy’, and I love playing ‘Health and Efficiency; too…but ‘Dalliance’ and ‘Dare’, all the ‘Seamonsters’ stuff, I love playing them live…’

JM: “'Octopussy’ and ‘Health and Efficiency’, two very similar songs there, with the melodious openings…?”

TdC: “Yeah, and then they both peak, come to a climax, they get pretty rocky, ‘Health and Efficiency’ is in the set tonight.”

JM: “…any surprises in the set…”

SC: “No, because all the set lists have been posted on the (Scopitones) Forum, but I suppose the furthest out there is ‘Anyone Can Make A Mistake’, which we alternate with ‘Once More’. There was a chance at one point that they would both be in the set, but it’s absolutely ball breaking. It’s an hour and a half the set, and we need to find a compromise between both The Wedding Present and Cinerama, and a balance of songs, I think there is at least one song from every album, it should appeal to everyone.”

JM: “Well the fact that you’ve been moved into the bigger room tonight speaks volumes to me…”

SC: “I’m surprised though, a lot of the people at the Irish gigs were people who had got into the new songs, younger people who weren’t around first time around.”

JM: “But you’d still consider yourselves and underground band?”

SC: “Yeah, definitely”

TdC: “We’re certainly not mainstream.”

JM: “Well, you’re not on that other stairwell waiting for pop idol”

SC: “But that’s the thing with David, he has always had the courage to do whatever he wanted to do, with Cinerama, with the twelve singles, he even told RCA that the first record was going to be a collection of Ukrainian folk songs, and he pulled it off.”

TdC: “Oh that was fantastic wasn’t it”

JM: “I don’t think anyone has done so much for traditional folk music of Eastern Europe in this country as David Gedge…but there are no Ukrainian songs tonight?”

SC: “No…but that’s what has kept the whole Wedding Present thing interesting…”

TdC: “It’s a great thing to do, and it takes a lot of guts, if it hadn’t worked out he would never have been taken seriously again, that’s what he was putting on the line. You’ve got to admire that sort of bloody mindedness, you've got to admire it.”

With that our man with the walkman drags out the old 35mm SLR and fires off a few candids, Terry arranges for a press pit photo pass and they all part on good terms. Less than an hour later the two interviewees stroll onto the stage, and with a palpable crackle of electricity in the air the unmistakeable murmur of 'On Ramp' slowly, steadily, but forcefully fills the hall, the lights dim, and a warm roar greets the band. It's official, The Wedding Present are in town, and ready to blow your socks off.

Johnny Mac

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