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| Justin
Welch from Rhythm 07.97 |
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Where have Elastica been? Everyone¹s favourite chart-topping pre-Britpop new wave/mod art-pop combo have maintained an enigmatic silence for the past two years. Now, with a new album on the way, drummer Justin Welch gives Pat Reid the lowdown on fame, success and buying second-hand gear... Summer, 1997. Justin Welch, drummer from Elastica, is feeling the aftershocks of an all-star Phoenix Festival soccer tournament. "Gar," he says, sounding like he's clearing his throat. "Why do I play football? I gave it up when I was thirteen to get into bands, and I thought that was it, but every now and again there's these tournaments and I get roped in..." The thinnest drummer in the business (with the possible exception of Danny Supergrass) pauses to inspect a bruised rib. "Want a roll-up at all?" he beams. Just for the record, Justin's team at Phoenix included such luminaries as Bez (ex-Happy Mondays and Black Grape), percussionist Pablo Cook, and New Order's Bernard Sumner. Justin himself took a defensive role as a sweeper, not without success. "I actually nobbled the new vicar from Eastenders," he says darkly. "Studded him. They had to bring the ambulance on and send him to hospital. Which I shouldn't be proud of. I did feel quite guilty at the time..." So that's what Elastica have been doing for the last couple of years. After scoring with a chart-topping debut album two years ago, the London-based art-poppers promptly disappeared overseas on a seemingly endless promotional tour. During this time, bassist and founder member Annie Holland quit the band, citing repetitive strain injury and other high-stress factors. And then Elastica really did disappear. To be fair, they re-emerged briefly during the summer of '96, playing some low-key gigs with new members Sheila Chipperfield (bass) and Dave Jackson (keyboards). Then they pulled that disappearing act again. So what's been going on? "Basically, when Annie left we had a lot of problems," Justin explains with an uncharacteristic air of seriousness. "We felt like a unit with a gang mentality, and when she left it disrupted everything. And we just toured so much, all the way round the world for a year and a half. When the record company said, 'You can break the album here if you do one more tour', we did it and it just fucked everyone up. Everyone lost their marbles a little bit." In dire need of recuperation, Elastica went their separate ways for a time. For one thing, they simply couldn't face going back inside a rehearsal room. Not that they weren't coming up with any new songs guitarist Donna Matthews kept count of the new material, as the band stockpiled tunes for future recording. The problem was the band didn't like the tracks they'd already done for the second album. "We've all moved on," reflects Justin. "We're just not the same band any more." Elastica reached a decision: the old stuff was out; it was time to move in new dir-ections. But doesn't this run the risk of alienating long-term fans? "We've been out of the picture so long..." Justin ruminates. "As long as we're true to ourselves that's all any band can do really." East Cote Studio, in the W10 postal district of London, is compact, to say the least. Upstairs, where re-formed indie godlings Curve are ensconced, is literally a front room. "They heard me through the ceiling, and thought I sounded quite thuggish," Justin comments. "So I played on one of their tracks as well." Top producer Alan Moulder bustles back and forth, his dog Turkey waddling behind him. Alan has worked with everyone from The Jesus And Mary Chain to Smashing Pumpkins; he's also the husband of Curve singer Toni Halliday. Ex-Magazine and Bad Seeds member Barry Adamson, now a film composer, shuffles past with a walking stick, looking very dignified. There's no sign of Elastica frontwoman Justine Frischmann, but Donna pops in, fresh from her first film role in Velvet Goldmine. She's tall, with a canary yellow feathercut and a smile that makes the sun look like a low-watt lightbulb. Dave and Sheila arrive, exchange friendly greetings, and get ready to work. It's all a far cry from the first Elastica album, which was recorded at Konk, the studio belonging to Ray Davies of The Kinks. "It's so easy to get bogged down in posh studios," reckons Justin. "There's too many temptations." Perhaps surprisingly, one contributor to the current sessions has been ex-bassist Annie Holland, who plays on a few tracks which may find their way onto the album. "She's on some of the tracks that are more like the old style," says Justin. "More punky and fast. Annie's got that style. She's a great guitarist, she plays guitar lines on the bass, the Stranglers way, which we still like." By Justin's reckoning, the new songs are a lot longer now; in place of one-minute punk toons is a dark maturity. "None of us really like pop music at the moment, so we've gone a bit goth," he laughs. "We're all mods at heart, but goth's not a bad thing." Justin's recent listening has extended to the not very gothic likes of Happy Mondays, The Verve and Swervedriver. He evenwent along to see Kiss at Finsbury Park, purely for kicks ("I hardly knew any of the tunes, I just went for the Spinal Tap thing"). He's also developing a fondness for dance music, particularly the heavy beats of The Prodigy. Naturally, this has led to studio experimentation, with Justin recording a normal kit sound with a massive bass drum underneath it, or bunging in an 808 bass drum. He may have started off as a self-confessed Keith Moon clone, but now he's into drum machines and samples, as well as using triggers, Octapads and 'weird sounds'. It's all about as far away as possible from the current vogue for retro '60s stylings. But then Elastica's success was always ironic, seeing as they never set out to make commercial records. Not that this stopped them having hits. We mention that this morning we heard 'Connection' played on Radio One. "Ker-ching!" Justin beams broadly. "Want a beer?" Back in the '60s, Justin's dad was himself a drummer, playing in a series of mod bands. Years later, when Papa Welch discovered his young son bashing along to Top Of The Pops, it seemed like a good excuse to get a kit in the house again. He shelled out £25 on a red sparkle bass drum, a tom and a hi-hat, which he and Justin renovated and sold again. Next, Justin got a four-piece blue sparkle kit. He hadn't actually learned to play yet, although he and his friends often bunked off school to bash around on any available kit. However, Justin always had drums knocking around and renovating old kits became something of a sideline. "A lot of junk kits that have been in peoples' bedrooms and under stairs and stuff are just a bit dusty," he says. "Just change the heads and treat them with a bit of love and they start to look good. I actually prefer old kits. I just picked up a Slingerland 1966 for a friend of mine, just out of Rhythm, actually, for £800." Oh yeah? Who's the friend, then? Anyone famous? "Got it for Graham from Blur," Justin tells a barely-credulous Rhythm. "For this little studio he's building." Cripes on a bike! So Rhythm is useful after all? "I always get it," Justin confirms. And, get this when he was a kid, Justin wrote a series of letters, demanding that the magazine interview the then up-and-coming Steve White. We're speechless extremely chuffed, you understand, but speechless. Justin recalls being brought up on Motown and mod music, before becoming what he describes as "a bit of a Keith Moon" in his teenage years. The first band he ever got into were The Jam, along with Blondie and the other punk and New Wave acts (Wire, Buzzcocks, Stranglers( which originally inspired Elastica. "I do like quite fast drumming," he admits. Hailing from Nuneaton, near Coventry, Justin moved to London at sixteen with the express purpose of getting into a band. Living in a one-bedroom flat with three other guys, however, there was no way he could set up his kit and play. "I was totally into playing," he recalls. "So I used to get Melody Maker and answer the adverts. I had no intention of joining any of these bands but I found it quite useful in the sense that you have to learn what they want you to play on the first listen." It was on one of these jaunts that Justin first encountered the remarkable Justine Frischmann, who was then guitarist in a student band that was destined to become quite legendary. "So I was Suede's first drummer," Justin says matter of factly. Justin duly played on Suede's first white label single, with Justine, her then boyfriend Brett Anderson et al, but the band was not yet the world-beating proposition of later years. By now Justin had left work and signed on the dole. Within a week he had a call asking if he wanted to go on tour with Spitfire. He'd never even heard of them, but he met up with the band in Brighton and, without having played a note, appeared with them in an NME photo session. Ecstatic to be on tour for the first time, Justin learned the set in a day and hit the road. "We were constantly in the van," he recalls. "Up and down the M1, the M6, up and down the country, tour after tour. After a while I thought, 'I don't really want to be in this band'. It wasn't really my cup of tea. We had a great laugh, but it wasn't really music that I wanted to make. They were heavily into The Stooges and Mötörhead, which I like, but I wanted to play something different. Don't get me wrong though, Spitfire was a good time". If Spitfire was indeed a good time, it also enabled Justin to do some high-level ligging and networking in the pre-Britpop indie scene. The band supported the likes of Blur and Lush, whose drummer, Chris Acland, died last year ("Chris was my best mate at the time," Justin says. "It was very sad. I used to live with him. That kicked in..."). Justin met up with Justine again at Glast-onbury. Blur were playing and Justine was, by now, stepping out with singer Damon Albarn. Hungry for a share of the limelight, the pair decided to get a band together. "We were both on the same wavelength," Justin says. "So it made sense." Bingo, as they say. Justin recorded his first demo at the age of twelve, playing frantic sixteenths over a cheesy synth backing á la Wham or Duran Duran. Today, techno boffin Dave collaborates with Justin on his forays into electronics. "Me and Dave have got a really good relationship going," enthuses the drummer, while admitting that the new Elastica has a very different feel to the one we're used to. "There was no way Elastica was going to make the same record twice," he says bluntly. "It still has a quite poppy side. As soon as Justine and Donna start singing on top of it all, when the harmonies kick in. But the music is definitely darker." Today, Justin's starting work on a new song entitled 'Are You Sure', which calls for a big, garagey, tom-heavy drum sound. There's no talk of singles yet, but, with Alan Moulder nipping off to produce Nine Inch Nails, time is catching up. "We'll put all the songs in a hat, decide what sounds like an album, compile it..." Justin explains. "And then there'll be 50 B-sides, or something silly like that." In terms of style, Justin describes himself as a "meat and two veg player". It's not really a fair or accurate description of his imaginative and versatile drumming though. "I play quite hard," he concedes. "And what I've found from doing a lot of recording is, if it's solid at the back it works. It doesn't have to be technically great if you hit 'em hard, they record well. I play a lot to clicks and, again, if the timing's good it works you can put any music over the top of it. I try and put personality into my playing. There's a lot of drummers who just sit at the back and hold the beat down. I like to try and shine through a little bit but without overdoing things. I try to be as tight and as hard-hitting as possible, with good sounds. And a lot of attitude." Justin's fave Elastica song is 'Two To One', with quirky rimshots going off at different timings to the rest of the music. The drummers he admires are Pablo Cook, who's worked with Pulp and The Grid ("He's a really good mate and I've learned quite a lot off him"), Jez from Swervedriver, Steve White, Alan White and Blur's Dave Rowntree. "From the Leisure tour I learned a lot off him. He's quite a light player, but technically he's really good. I think he had a lot of jazz training, unlike myself. His time's really good." And what about Blur guitarist Graham Coxon, he who buys drum kits via Rhythm? Presumably the bespectacled one plays a bit too? "He does play, yeah," confirms Justin. "Graham's a bit of an all-round musician. He's not great, but he can play some good beats. Sometimes drummers like that can come up with things that you wouldn't really think of. For instance, Donna, when she's doing her demos, will just get beats from a little beatbox or a keyboard and sometimes they work so well that you try to work them out, and you think, 'What the fuck is going on there?' When you play it as a drummer, it is actually quite complicated and it's really good." Talk turns to travel, and the opportunity to see the world that comes with being in a band. For example, Elastica have done no less than five tours of America to date. "We're actually bigger in America than we are here," Justin insists. "We went gold in America. Australia was my favourite though. It was just easy; we had eight gigs in three weeks. It was winter here and I arrived back at the airport at five in the morning with sandals on, shorts and a T-shirt and it was snowing." Talking of snow, Justin and chief mucker Steve Mackey of Pulp are planning to pop off for a long weekend far north of Norway. Their destination is, apparently, the furthest north one can get without actually hitting the North Pole. "We've got an eighteen-hour ferry journey after the flight," Justin enthuses. "Right to the top. We see whales and polar bears... Then we've got a ten-hour drive all the way back to the airport. We're going on Thursday night and we'll be back at 4am on Monday morning. It's costing like a grand or something and all we're going to do is travel." The man from Elastica unleashes another of his trademark boyish grins. "I'm up for an adventure," he says, happily. |
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Copyright? What's that? - Sers 1999 |
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