April 14, 2025 • 49 mins
As a punk provocateur, design obsessive, and relentless shape-shifter, Spizz emerged from the chaos of late ’70s Britain with a DIY ethos and a sci-fi imagination that still defies categorization. He’s never fit the mold, not as a punk frontman, not as a designer, not even as a radio host.
In this episode, we trace his wild trajectory: from gatecrashing the Birmingham Punk Festival to supporting Siouxsie and the Banshees, from four John Peel sessions to touring with the Human League, and designing record sleeves, fonts, and alter-egos along the way.
“I saw The Clash and thought, I want some of that… I blagged my way on stage and just made it all up.” (Spizz)
Over the decades, he’s played Wembley and the Marquee, written Star Trek musical trilogies, and used monikers like SpizzOrwell to collapse past, present, and future into one surreal performance.
A relentless shape-shifter, we talk about Bowie and Orwell, about rebellion and surveillance, about fandom, identity, and why he’s still remixing the future in his 60s, broadcasting from the edge of tomorrow, hosting Spizz FM, generating AI musical experimentations, and performing acoustic sets as Spizzology – proof he’s still a cult figure with extraterrestrial ambitions.
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Or visit us online: https://destroypunkpodcast.com for transcripts, show notes, and more.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:02):
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(00:45):
everywhere. Acast.com I.
Did say that I wasn't recognized.
We were considered not to be cool.
We would never call with a roughtrade scene.
We would never call with the music papers.
We were never called fashionably.
For much of the 70s, English society was in turmoil.
(01:07):
Unemployment was rising, industry was collapsing and
political tensions were soaring.While movements like Rock
Against Racism clashed with the growing presence of movements
like the National Front on the streets in cities such as
Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool, the decline was
impossible to ignore. Once hubs of manufacturing, they
were now marked by factory closures and dead end prospects.
(01:31):
The mainstream music scene fell out of touch.
Rock had grown bloated and self indulgent, pop had become
nauseatingly trite, and what dominated the charts rarely
reflected the frustration of everyday life.
Through this noise, punk emergedas a necessary rupture.
But for some, punk itself wasn'tenough.
(01:53):
Artists like Susie Sue blurred the lines between fashion and
provocation, while polystyrene of X-ray specs defied
expectations of what a punk front woman could be, and radio
shows like John Peels champion the strange, the new and the
unexpected. In episode 12, we meet someone
inspired by Barry Starman and the desire to perform jumped on
(02:15):
stage in a moment of spontaneityand has remained resistant to
standing still ever since. This is Spitz from London SE1
and you're destined to destroy with your host Richard Smith.
They are Trump rockers. Raw.
Outrageous and crude, the new craze, they tell them.
(02:35):
More into chaos than anything else.
People really don't understand what kids want.
Worthless, nasty now. Hello.
Welcome to Destroy, a podcast about how the punk movement of
1976 or the Cultural Revolution still being felt today.
You have to destroy in order to create.
Destroy is produced by Be Right Back Studios.
(02:57):
Visit berightbackstudios.com/destroy
to learn more. If you're enjoying the show,
visit our website destroypunkpodcast.com to learn
more about every episode, including interview transcripts,
show notes, music videos, curated playlists and more.
Thank you for listening. As a young aspiring musician and
(03:20):
a typical teenage troublemaker, my guest today was a huge
inspiration on my misspent youth.
He's a reverence and semi sardonic perspective on the
world appealed to my adolescent exuberance and naive sense of
empowerment. Throughout the early 80s I saw
him live on multiple occasions dancing and singing to every
ballistic beat. Please welcome to the show the
(03:43):
wonderful Spears. Spears, welcome to the show.
Hello. Hello.
Hello, how are you? I thought I'd become computer
illiterate there for a minute. When I was listening, it was the
Martin Ware show you were on andI was listening to that and I'm
like, fuck, I remember seeing you so many times at the Marquee
and I'm like, my God, I got to get Spizz on.
(04:05):
He was just such a hero of mine.I.
Think, Martin said. It's one of the funniest ones
he's ever done well. That was another reason I wanted
to talk to you. I'm like, I could have someone
on there who's a little more light hearted or surrealist.
So anyway, I'm really psyched that you made time to speak.
I'm really grateful. Thank you.
(04:26):
I didn't have anything else on at this particular time frame.
Well I I saw that your radio show is out today.
I guess you've pre recorded that.
Yeah, I recorded that on Tuesdayand I sent it to the radio
station. I used to go into the studio,
but then COVID happened and we lost the studio.
But I've got so used to working the work where I do now with
more control over what I do and how long.
(04:48):
Have you been doing that? 8 1/2 years.
Wow, how did you get into that? Well, I've done a couple of
guest spots for Gary Crowley when he was on Soho Radio and he
would get DJ friends, including me to step in for two hours for
him and also try to get into radio ages ago with another
friend as his sidekick Paul, Paul Hallam, right Mod DJ.
(05:12):
I'll go to a Christmas party forthe radio station Residence
104.4 FM in London and online@residencefm.com and I0IN
on the The Boss and he actually heard of me.
So a good two way conversation. I said Alcatel radio show.
He said, well, put your idea in an e-mail and he gave me his
card and then I'll have a look at it.
(05:33):
And of course I wake up in the morning with a hangover and go
what the hell? And so this went on for a couple
of Christmases because I did it every Christmas.
And then I came from home, from the 100 Club, left early and I
thought I could catch last orders in my local pub and in
there on a Tuesday. It was dead quiet in September
but he was there with one of hiscolleagues.
(05:53):
So I went and sat and had a chatwith him.
He said what are you doing next week?
What are you doing on Friday, Thursday?
What are you doing on Thursday? I said why?
He said well I've got 6 shows tofill, someone's just pulled out,
what would you do? And I said well I've been
meaning to write my audio autobiography but I'm never
going to get round to it. But I could talk it and then
play some records to illustrate a story of my past.
(06:16):
Like when I talked with Susie and the Banshees and then I
could play a Susie record and when I met Joe Strummer and play
a class record and just fill outthe show like that.
He said, great to see you Thursday.
So after six weeks, it's coming up to Christmas.
I said, what happens now? He said, well, funny enough, can
you do Friday's tea time? I said, yeah, I'll drop every
anything Friday night. It's usually not going out,
(06:37):
going out at 5:30. And then when that season
finished, they were starting to think about moving the premises.
So we had a lot on his plate. And he said just carry on now.
It's just like a radio show witha variety of stuff.
And what I got to last week did.I see you do new releases, you
(06:58):
do, interviews you do. I do decide interviews on on on
my phone and then edit them in. Obviously now I'm on the radio
for so long I get people sendingme their records MP3 and if I
like it I'll play it. As simple as that.
Like John Peel I. Was going to say you're the new
John Peel. Yeah.
Do you know that his whole radioarchive is online?
(07:19):
I only stepped into a couple of them, but I would religiously
listen to them all the time. It was just like something I
did. And then I, I had a tape
recorder next to my radio. And if a song came on, like do
do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Oh, I like that.
Yeah, well, I, I got, I got on the Job Peel show in 1978 as
Spizz Oil and that opened the door for us to get on Rough
(07:40):
Trade and then we've got the record out.
We could do the Susie tour. So I went from playing in a pub,
being on the radio and on stage at Hammersmith Odeon in 10
months. You were on John Peel like 5
times or something? I've done 4 John Peel sessions
and at one point I did more sessions in David Bowie or the
Jam. That's amazing.
There's something about your music, though.
(08:02):
There is an element of politics in what you sing about to a
certain extent. What was I listening to, 1989?
I'm like, is he so obsessed with1989?
And then you sort of marked off all these different things in
the lyrics. Yeah.
Was there a political angle to any I?
Was always, I was always mindfulof the history of the world and
(08:24):
it's potential. A news junkie as well.
Amnesia. The B side of Where's Captain
Kirk? Where's Captain Kirk's a jolly
song, but he's actually got schizophrenia involved in it and
then they've got amnesia. This is all about 1984.
Listen, Winston, you don't have to suffer.
Confess the thoughts you're heldagainst, Big Brother, things
like that. Right.
(08:44):
So I've always been mindful of totalitarianism, which just
seems to me authoritarian ugly head again.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
I don't know, in 19, not even 1984 or all over again.
It's actually sort of reality. Oh yeah.
All well. So you now performing as or one
of your monikers is Spiz Orwell?That's my Instagram handle.
(09:06):
Someone had already taken Spiz energy so I thought, well
because it's largely A photographic platform.
My song City of Eyes is all about espionage, surveillance,
stalking, spying, government e-mail, spying.
Spiz, Orwell and huge fan of thebook 1984 Introduced to me by
Bowie through Diamond Dogs album.
(09:29):
OK. The whole album is based on the
book. One of the tracks is called
1984. I read that you were a huge
Bowie fan. I know you saw, or rather I
should say he was a big influence and it was what Star
Man or something I think you sawon top of.
Well, like most people in the punk scene, they were either
influenced or duly influenced byRoxy Music first album and Ziggy
(09:53):
Stardust album and a star man was lifted from that.
And I, I love this on the hearing it on the radio without
seeing David Bowie. And then after we got back from
our holiday, got the telly up, they did have TV's in the
chalets on holiday in Bournemouth.
And so went to see Top of the Pops.
And there he was in the Mick Ronson and the redhead Bowie and
(10:13):
his red hair pointing down the lens with his finger and wow.
And my parents also going, what the Hell's that?
I'm going, Oh yeah. So then I got a ticket to go and
see him play live. I started buying all the albums
and backtracking with the albumsand my first proper going out to
a rock concert with flashing lights and loud speakers was
(10:34):
David Bowie and the Spiders fromMars.
Birmingham Town Hall, 1973, June22nd, 2nd 3rd row seat 33 seats.
Row C33. But more importantly, who did
you go with? I've been on my own.
That was my first night out in Birmingham on my own.
How old were you? 14.
(10:55):
Wow, I think my first gig was atthe Marquee.
It was, I was meant to see the Undertones but they cancelled
and I saw lurkers who were completely different band.
I was probably about 14 or 15 back then.
So you're from Birmingham originally, but you, your
parents moved out to Solihull, is that?
Right, I was born in Solihull and my parents, oh sorry.
(11:16):
My dad wanted to move further and further away from
Birmingham. So when I became a late teenager
I wanted the city. So I had to go into the city.
And then my first trip to Londonwas to see David Bowie for the
Station to Station 1976 tour andI thought yeah, I want to live
here. So that was 16/17/17 and then I
was playing as always. My second ever show was actually
(11:39):
after A Gate Crashed, the Birmingham Punk Festival on
August the 29th 1977. The DJ was managing the band.
I borrowed the guitar off to go down and do what you did here in
London and so I went down to London.
I was appalling but someone thought I was funny.
It was a Booker for booking the Vortex, which was the punk club
(11:59):
that came out of the ashes of the Roxy.
Yeah, yeah. What compelled you to just jump
up on stage and do that? What was Well, I just wanted to
be a superstar. I've seen Bowie live, and I
tried learning guitar at home and I didn't sound any good.
And then when I saw The Clash a month before this punk festival
in July 1977, I thought, yeah, Iwant some of this.
(12:20):
When I was doing our college course and I knew the
hairdressing girlfriends of the two guys in the punk band called
Model Mania, and I got to know them and I said, look at this
punk festival, kind of borrow a guitar.
And just I blagged my way on. And then they realized like I
had no material. I just made it all up, made it
all up on the spot. So I suppose audacious and awful
(12:43):
in Elizabeth equal measure. I'm guessing like for a lot of
kids, Barry was the role model for dressing up, for acting, for
being a performer. Was that true for you?
Was that what you drew from that?
Well, I want to be an actor fromabout the age of 9 because I
thought you could kiss girls and, and they were acting, so
(13:05):
that means you didn't have to chat them up because it was in
the script. So I thought it'd be a great way
to be able to kiss girls. And then when I saw Bowie, well,
that changed everything, you know, I thought, wow, this is
fantastic. And then when I saw The Clash,
they also were very dramaticallydressed with a quite stylish
look about them. And I like their stung and their
(13:26):
political strand in their music as well.
So that's it, that was it. Check the acting away.
I will come and go be a pop star.
You can act in a different way. You can get on stage and sing
songs about Captain Kirk and some of the but.
We are a more a performance band.
We're not like a band that just stands there, scowls and shouts
to sing melodies. I remember that.
(13:47):
I don't know why, but I had thisreally vivid picture of you
performing at the Marquee and itjust being like most concerts
there. It was just chaos.
It's so, so small and like you were right there with the band
and you could even go backstage because there was a little door
around the back of the bar, I think sort of.
Yeah, that's right. Something I didn't know about
you was that you trained as a graphic designer and you wanted
(14:10):
to do record covers. Obviously one of the ways you're
going to meet musicians is to goto art school.
Because of all my music paper interviews I'd read from Bowie
to Ray Davies, the Kinks, the John Lennon, they all went to
art school, right? So I thought that's the first
way you go to meet musicians again in a band.
But when I got there, I wanted to do design, record sleeves.
(14:31):
I thought because I was always drawing and I was better at
drawing than playing guitar. I went to college and then I did
actually. And but punk happened while I
was at college. So that's where the crossover
came. And then I got to design me and
earn sleeves. So you when you started out,
were you a one man band? Was it just you?
Well, yeah, basically I've got on my own with the guitar.
(14:52):
And then I did the London show and then I did the local
university again with the same band borrowing their gear.
And then I had to pass my old schoolmate Pete had to get his
terrible job packing tools and afew railway stops away from
where I live. And Pete had just moved into his
bedsit and he's got a car and I've got his giggly London.
(15:15):
And I said, look, hey Pete then he's got a guitar so he wrote 4
songs in his bedsit. And then we thought, well hang
on to yourself is a perfect punkformula.
Verse, chorus, verse, chorus. And we did because Patti Smith
had done Hey Joe, we thought we could do that and get away with
that. So we did that.
We did about 6 or 7 songs at theVortex.
(15:35):
And again, people thought we were so strange that we kept
getting more bookings. So then I was then calling
himself Speed 77 and Pete was called himself Pete Plectrum.
That's right. But then I I didn't want to be
called 77 in 78. I saw his program on the North
Sea oil developments of the new oil rig oil fields.
The first oil rig were the largest man made objects ever
(15:57):
removed across the Earth's surface.
Right Spizoil and for design it was a symmetrical there's two ZS
Spizoil is symmetry and great for design and I persuaded Pete
to change his name to Pete Petrol and then we were off we
were a duo you never looked backand then and after the after the
Susie tour we fell out a bit buthe did come back in Spiz energy
(16:20):
because oil produces energy that's how I changed the name
for I didn't even want people tocome and see Spizoil when it's
not Spizoil anymore right so these name changes were
originally just logical transformations became
obsessional you'd. Said that, you have a massive
list. You have I don't know how many
thousands, maybe hundreds. But basically every word you can
put next to the word spiz. I made a list after list.
(16:43):
So you go through the dictionaryand it's just like, I'm just
gonna read off what's on my screen.
Spiz records Biz Display Spiz optimized spiz video, spiz
timestamp well of. Course, my radio show is called
Spiz FM. When I go out, I've got
Spizology. I go out of Spizology through
the acoustic show so that peopledon't go see.
They think they're going to see Spiz Energy, the full band.
(17:03):
They're going to see Spizology, which is just me and Luke are my
guitarist. Something that I was curious
about was who still calls you Kenneth?
Does your? I don't talk.
I don't talk to those people. I don't know if your parents are
still alive, but they used to ring you up.
Kenneth, what are you doing? When are you going to get a real
job? The reason why I don't like
being called Kenneth or anyone to use my real name is because
(17:25):
my mother had a brother called Kenneth and my father had a
brother called Kenneth and they were both shot down in World War
Two. I was named after them.
So I didn't want any of my silliness to be contaminating
the memory of air. So I call myself space.
That's it. That's who I am.
Talking about growing up, were you into a lot of the bands that
were coming out of Birmingham like Black Sabbath and fans like
(17:49):
that or The Beat or Duran Duran that?
Were you into that scene? No, but Pete Petrol loved Black
Sabbath, and when you hear the live recordings of Spizz Oil, it
turned up to 10. It's chugging, chugging.
And the other thing, what was remarkable about our early gigs
with the Banshees was the Sandman was a bit of a volume
freak. So we just filled the PA with
(18:10):
me, my voice and Pete's guitar and we were like a concrete wall
of sound, a sledgehammer, and I was screaming as instead of a
guitar solo, I would scream at really high pitched screams and
it just freaked people out. You toured with The Human
League, is that right? Is that?
What happened was on that Screamtour, the Susie Tour, the
(18:31):
primary support was Nico from the Velvet Undergrounds.
Oh, yes, yes. But she was going down so badly
because she was just sitting near an organ, pissed out of her
brain amongst other things, and all her 17 year old kids wanted
to do is Pogo to Hong Kong Garden.
So after a few shows they had toremove her from the tour, drop
(18:52):
her. So Osby's Oil moved up the bill
to be second on appeal and they thought, well who are we going
to get? We're just getting some of these
new bands emerging. And Ganga Ford did a can full of
shows. Cabaret Voltaire did a couple of
shows. Oh, wow.
Human League got the lion's share of the remaining shows.
So I got to hang out with MartinWare, got on well, famously with
(19:13):
him. And then years later, when they
were Heaven 17 and we were living in the same area in
London, Yeah, and hanging out and having laughs and, right,
getting smashed. They had a hit with temptation.
And then Glenn had had a problemwith his knee, so he couldn't
move. He was a bit unable to move
around. Ian Craig Marsh was stuck behind
his sins, and so was Martin. So they just hired me just to
run around the stage with the guitar.
(19:35):
So I did about 7 TV shows in Europe.
I watched one of those on YouTube and you look so out of
place somehow it's like. Wham and Andrew Ridgeley.
I couldn't play half the notes. I just made it look like I
could. Were you a fan of Human League?
Funny little story for you is that I was standing at the back
(19:56):
with Steve 7 and we were watching The Human League and he
said, well Spears, what do you think of these?
I said. I'd say this is quite, quite
good. I don't think it'll catch on so
much. Are you?
The early human league stuff though was really good, like
being boiled and. They also had fun songs as well.
You know, Empire State. Yeah, yeah.
(20:17):
Again, lyrically, what they weresinging about was, so, I don't
know. It was very inspiring.
It wasn't. The latest songs were good.
What was it called? The famous one.
Don't you want me, baby? From the Dare album.
That stuff was good, but like compared to some of the early
stuff I mean. Reproduction and travel
travelogue is great. Travelogue.
(20:38):
Yeah, yeah, that's the one I'm thinking of.
So many bands were pioneers of electronic sound.
Martin Ware's job, before he goton stage with the synthesizer,
was computer programming. When computers read cards with
punches, hole punches in. There wasn't even any floppy
disks in. I know you guys, when you're on
(20:58):
his show with him, you both talked about typography, which I
thought was kind of funny. I'd love to get him on and talk
about typography. Hi there.
Sorry for the interruption, but if you're enjoying the show,
please leave a review or a comment for the latest news and
updates. Make sure to also follow us on
Instagram at Destroy Punk Podcast.
Thank you. And now back to the show.
(21:19):
I love that you are doing all this stuff with AI.
Talk to me about that a little. Bit Oh well, Pete Petrol is in
New Zealand and he sent me this song that he'd done on AI and it
literally takes about four seconds.
So you can either copy and paste, hold lyrics or just a few
words and they'll make it all upthemselves.
(21:39):
So I did, I did. I was a little bit, I was a bit
drunk at night when I was doing this.
So then a week later I went backto it and this time I put in the
words to one of my songs and it came back with outrageous.
And I searched on the the app asall its users like Instagram.
And then people put their tracksin folders and also make their
(22:03):
own playlists of other stuff they like.
And lo and behold, someone's done a bloody reggae version of
Where's Captain Quote word for word.
I play it on this week's radio show.
It's coming up this afternoon. The one that I heard that you
played, I can't remember the name of the song.
The lyrics were sort of something about the world and it
(22:23):
turned it into this real rock ballad.
Death of the Free Band or We Want the World I.
Think it was that yeah. And it.
Yeah, it like it could be a Eurovision Song Contest.
It just made me laugh though, and I don't know whether any
other band could really pull that off.
Do you think you'll continue to do that stuff or is it just more
for? Sure, you're gonna have to find
a sample of my voice to make it worth doing it as a official
(22:45):
Spizz Energy product, but I did fleetingly cross my mind.
I'll do the whole album. If you were to start your band
again today, yeah, How would youdo it differently?
Would you do anything differently?
Well, I'm sort of glad I I did it when I did, because if I'd
have had a mobile phone in 1977,I kind of knows what mischief I
(23:06):
could have got up to. Which is why you won't hear My
Autobiography Fully Dead Up do. You want to hear all the
details? I can't.
There's too much I won't. There's too much I want to put
in to make it. You know what's an old no holds
barred? If anything, anything else
unless we were too watered down and anything pull on is going to
(23:28):
get me homeless and friendless. So is there anything you regret?
Not really. The only regret is I didn't do
it. More naughtiness.
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(23:50):
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(24:15):
What kind of collaborations, musical collaborations have you
done or do you want to do? Like whether if Barry was still
alive, let's say. Well, I got 22 records mixed by
Tony Visconti. Oh, did you?
That's big kudos. Yeah.
Yeah, because I met him in 1980 when I was in the film Breaking
(24:36):
Glass as a bit part player. But he was the MD, so we had to
oversee that we were playing ourinstruments well enough to look
like we were musicians, not actors.
I ended up playing drums in Hazel O'Connor's first band in
the film. So now I used to bump into Tony
and Soho occasionally and so he'd Remember Me.
And then he started working, doing these Bowie, revisiting,
(25:00):
touring. So I went along.
So we were just talking in the VIP after show bar and I said,
I've got a song about Denmark St.
We're talking about Denmark St. And he said he sent me over the
demo. I, we hadn't even recorded it
yet. I don't just written it on the
on the way home after the club had closed in Denmark St. the 12
bar club. And so me and Luca fleshed it
(25:22):
out and then we made, we start recorded it and sent him over
the files because now it's COVIDand he mixed it in New York and
then sent it back to us. And it's, it said that he did it
for because he liked the principle of it.
He did it for the mates rates. And then he said, well, look,
another thing we've done is we got to do this Bowie convention.
(25:43):
And we learned Valentine's Day to be, you know, different from
everybody else doing Rebel, Rebel, Jean Jeanie, Life on
Mars. We did a song that was under the
radar a bit, Valentine's Day. And so.
Oh yeah. Yeah.
It's the only song that is the original was produced and mixed
by Tony Visconti and he's done the cover version, which many
(26:04):
people regard it as a very few of Bowie songs that have been
done by cover versions that are better than the original.
But the only reason why we thinkthat is is because it was when
Bowie was beginning to start to be ill and he never got to tour
it. So he only ever he only ever
studio album track, so he never toured.
(26:25):
So we managed to toughen it up, see playing it live and gave it
a bit more edge and we extended it a little bit.
And when I did Bowie Convention last year, I was the house band
learnt my version right. I should say Luca Comacini's
arrangement my my guitarist and they say they preferred it and
(26:45):
they're going to do it that version from now on.
Wow, that's a pat on the back, that is.
The last album was phenomenal. Yeah, no, it took me a year to
watch any of those videos. Oh.
Really. Yeah, when he died, he died on
my birthday. The news broke on my birthday
and I went to the pub when he died and because I'd already
arranged it for anybody who could be passing by to come to
(27:06):
the pub. And by then it was also a
Monday. So there was no one in the pub
apart from me and my friends. And the barman put on one of
them pub computers where they just lifted off the Internet and
it was just wall to wall Bowie. Right there was an exhibition
here of Bowie and it was just mind blowing and so moving.
(27:28):
It was after he died. Is it?
Was it the V and A1? It could be the same, I forget
the name of it. Yeah, I, well, I went to it on
the last day when it was in the V and a in after he'd been there
for about 6 months and I managedto get in and I, I literally I
was welling up, but when I got to the last room.
Every time I hear so many of thetracks from Black Star.
Look up here. I'm in heaven.
(27:49):
Got things I can't see. I've got scars that can't be
seen. Yes, it's just wrenched.
Yes, totally it does. Barry was obviously very
obsessed with the future and stars and stuff like that.
That seems to be a theme of yours.
Or am I just generalizing? Well yeah, no the the lyrics of
driving Saturday the strange domes in the LED us a book when
(28:09):
we leave to try to all those elements that Bowie Yeah I loved
all the sci-fi elements. Even the man who sold the world
is space oddities or there's a lot of science vision going on
Diamond Dogs with 1984. Right.
There's a theme in your work to a certain extent.
You know, like where's Captain? There's also Megacity from the
comic 2000 AD Judge Dredd, I Wasthe first Me Pete, Petrol were
(28:33):
the first non cartoons to be in 2000 AD when we went along took
the record along for them to do an article about first song to
be released about biggest city by anybody or 2000 AD.
So obviously where's Captain Kirk was massive, still is
massive, but do you feel that overshadowed a lot of your other
(28:56):
work or you just embraced that and.
Well, not because the next single was No Room, which is a
AA side with Spock's Missing. I was on the Earth, which is it
was going down so well live. And then I wrote another Star
Trek song for the second album, which was Five Year Mission.
So the first song is Where's Spock?
Spock Goes Missing. And then the second song is
Spock's Missing. And then the third song is Spock
(29:18):
Comes Back, which is virtually the scripts of the first three
films of the Star Trek first films before they were made.
So it's like a trilogy? Yeah, I heard.
I think you wrote that on a bus ride home.
Yeah, we'd done a rehearsal. We used to do weekly rehearsals
because we were working on new material because we had another
job Peel session and a tour coming out.
(29:41):
So we desperately needed new songs.
And we wrote Soldier Soldier literally a week before the John
Peel session. But then we were Mark had this
keyboard song and he had all hiswords that didn't make any sense
really. It was because he he used to
veil his song lyrics into riddles.
OK, but he had one line in it. It went, oh, birdie, it's true.
(30:03):
And I was on the bus after a couple of beers after rehearsal
and I didn't have a pen and paper and I was going, oh, that
is true. And the words were coming in my
head and I was singing them overand over again in my head.
And I've even got a second versecoming in my head.
So I'll get off this bus, come on, get home, get off this bus.
And I ran, ran into the kitchen and wrote down the 1st 2 verses
(30:23):
and the third verse came along while I was writing them down.
So I went back to rehearsal. The next week and then I said,
Mark, I hope you don't mind, butI've written rewritten.
Let's see, let's play it. And so we played it and we just
felt about laughing. We just thought this is great.
And then we had this gig. We had this gig coming up and we
still didn't have a drummer yet.But we'd never turned gigs down.
We just go and go ahead and do it without a drummer because Jim
(30:48):
had a percussive bass style and Mark had a quite a tappy
keyboard style to make up for nodrums.
And by the way, bonkers. The audience went absolutely
bonkers. 1 gig. We played it 8 times at that gig
because because we didn't have along set still yet and so we
just played it again and again until they got sick of it, which
they didn't. We got sick and failed it 8
(31:10):
times. Was it always called?
Where's Captain Kirk? No, the song was called Nobody's
Who. Ow.
It's just that oh Buddy is true that nobody's who but I.
Oh, then you added. I changed the whole song, it's
only the one line I kept. Oh, I'm sorry.
OK. Oh, but it's true.
It's like when you put a seed a grafting a different plant onto
(31:32):
another one. I'm going to talk about one
thing which I know nothing about, but I know you're a big
fan of football. Oh yeah.
And tell me about your love of football, Aston Villa.
And you've made a song for them.Yeah, what happened is I grew up
in Midlands obviously, and my grandfather was a Villa fan
(31:54):
because he actually lived not far from the ground.
And then my dad was a Villa fan and then he all became Villa
fans even though we were moving further away from Villa Park to
Birmingham City Ground. But then I was on Cherry Red and
because he knew I was Villa fan and he was a director at
Wimbledon FC, the original Wimbledon, and he was sponsoring
(32:16):
a stand there, the Cherry Red stand.
And so he was dead keen on football and what they were
doing. They were compiling CD albums of
all the Celtic songs or songs related to Celtic or big clubs
like Rangers, Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur, and they were
going to go and do a Villa 1. So he said have you got a Villa
song? I said, yeah, of course, didn't
have one. And he said, oh, what's it
(32:38):
called? I said it's called The Sun Never
Sets on Aston Villa. You know, grandiose title.
I forgot about it for about a month and then I got a call
saying we're going to need the track in a couple of weeks.
So with the band I was with at the time, we, I said come around
tonight and write this song. And while they I started writing
(33:01):
the song lyrically and they helped me put it into music and
then we had to book a rehearsal recording studio.
It was a small 8 track recordingstudios.
So we bashed it down and I sent it off and they loved it.
And then we changed our owners. So we actually got an American
owner called Andrew and Randy Lerner.
(33:22):
And it was when OK football fanswere starting to have their own
websites. So he got all the Villa fans to
try and run a poll. Which song should the team run
out on to? OK game at home and mine won.
Wow. Yeah, by about 4%.
Yeah, we got about 34% and we run by 4% above it and they
(33:47):
didn't follow up, they didn't gothrough with it.
That would have been a nice little learn though I tell you I
would have got load of PRS money.
Oh, so you never actually the fans chose it, but they didn't
get. It did get rewarded, no?
What was the chant? What was the refrain?
Go, Sir. Woah.
Aston Villa, Gravely Hill, Riviera.
(34:07):
Whole tenders live forever. The sun never sets on Aston
Villa. I say it goes.
Oh. Brilliant, brilliant.
I love that. So do you think that do you
think that's your biggest contribution to music?
Well, to football. So I was being flippant.
(34:31):
I only stopped playing in 2015 because I was the oldest player
on the pitch really. And yeah, so I kept.
What was your position? Everyone was young.
I was a goal scorer of course #9#9 nice.
I played at Wembley as well. As a musician.
Well, what happened was I won a competition to play at Wembley
and it was before. They're going to knock it down
(34:53):
and build the new Wembley. And OK, first of all they said
how old are you? Because I was in my 50s and they
said that. I said yeah, I'll play an 11
aside old gifts team. And so there was 2 winners and
we were put into two different teams.
One team was captained by the producer of the video.
That was going to be the reason why we were playing it.
(35:14):
It was a launch junkie for writers of music, football
magazines like Match of the Day magazine and Sky Sports, Sky
Sports News presenter and a couple of retired footballers.
OK. And we had the worst goalkeeper
because our goalkeeper, each team was meant to have a semi
professional goalkeeper but oursdidn't show up.
So we had the film producer's dad who's never played football
(35:37):
in his life. We weren't allowed to wear
football boots because it was Wembley turf and they didn't
want a load of clowns clogging up the pitch before the last
England game a week later. So I wore Aster turf boots.
We were having all the pressure,but every time they got the ball
they ran down and scored a goal.So it's now 5 nil.
Oh my God, I said quite loudly. I.
Thought you were the gold scorer?
Well, I said quite loudly, if there's a penalty, who's going
(35:59):
to take it before kick off and he said I don't think there'll
be a penalty. I said yeah, but if there is
one, who's going to take it? I got right in his space and I
was. And so anyway, there was a
penalty and I'd say I'd score a goal from your brother who was
the last time I saw my brother, eldest brother alive was at
Wembley. So I had a bouquet of flowers
put on his seat where he where Ilast saw him alive at Wembley.
(36:21):
And so anyway, I'm running now up to the gold math ready for
who's going to take the penalty.No one wanted to take it.
No one was had the guts to take it.
They were everyone was bottling it.
But anyway, one of my teammates said.
I said let him take it, he's desperate.
So I said thanks mate. So I I did it.
I scored. Wow, so it's 5/1?
(36:42):
I said the goal lead the long way and because we didn't lose 5
nil, we lost 51. He gave me the ball.
Brilliant. I've got a photo of me with the
ball going in the net and right.It was the greatest and never
get this thousands and thousandsand thousands of footballers
that a professional footballers never played at Wembley, B never
scored a goal at Wembley or C ever, ever played at Wembley.
(37:05):
One last question and then I'll let you go.
All right. I'll give you a choice.
Does that work? Heads or tails?
Yeah. Did you feel like an outsider
during the punk movement, or what was the most chaotic or
memorable moment from those early days?
I did feel that I wasn't recognized.
We were, it's such considered not to be cool.
We were never cool with a rough trade scene.
(37:28):
We were never cool with the music papers.
We were never cool fashionably. And I kind of like that plate.
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(38:31):
slash ads. Quite early on, when you're
making records that got to number one in the Independent
Record label chart, people say start calling you a Rockstar.
I never felt like a Rockstar didn't have enough money to buy
driving lessons, let alone be a Rockstar.
So it has always irked me. But now I do quite like being
called a Rockstar. I don't care you.
(38:53):
Should have gone over that. I've grown into the.
I've grown into the costume. Sorry I lied, one other question
and I will let you go. What about the future?
What do you think the future holds for Spears?
Well, I'm not a really commercial businessman or music
a business musician. It's not nothing.
(39:14):
That's never been the driving force for me.
I'm not Phil Collins. What do you like about Phil
Collins? What's wrong with Phil Collins?
Is is a breadhead tax evading bastard?
And he introduced me to the ideaof a drum machine.
I was watching Blue Peter and he's and on today on Blue Peter,
we have Phil Collins and a drum machine.
That's how I started my band. You keep giving me ideas for
(39:37):
some questions. What would all right, What would
be the juiciest piece of gossip,detail, story that you would
want to publish in your autobiography whenever that
comes out, but couldn't? That's right, I can't tell you.
Who might it being? Who might it be about?
Well, I'll be there. Basically, there's going to be a
lot of redaction in this autobiography.
(39:58):
It's going to be I was in the room with and they were fully
naked. Well OK is it quite a tame
story? I was around a artist friends
house in London and he was the guy who did the tug of war album
(40:19):
cover for Paul McCartney. OK yes and Linda McCartney came
round for a chat with the baby future to be fashion designer.
Yes, I shared a joint with her. But what's really shocked me was
that that she just rang the office and said I need a warm
(40:40):
bottle of milk. 20 minutes, 20 minutes later to knock on the
door, someone turns up with a bottle of baby milk.
Funny, that was a different level of plan it I'm never going
to be in do. You have kids.
Or anything. My daughter's now a mother of
one and one month old baby girl.One year and one year and two
weeks old. Sorry, her birthday was a
(41:01):
fortnight ago. She was one so.
Your granddad. I'm a Grand Spies, yes, that's
right. Sorry, sorry.
I don't like Granddad, I don't like grandpa, I don't like
Gramps. So I've made the T-shirt that
says Grand Spies just to reinforce the fact I'm called
Spears and I'm not called Granddad, I'm called Vivian's
Grants is. How funny do your kids love your
(41:24):
music? Yeah, yeah, both of them.
My son is 23. Are they in music?
He's he didn't come home last night because he was DJ ING.
Ah, OK, there you go. Yeah, he's made the same mistake
as me and his birthday is 3, same day as David Bowie, 8th of
January. There must be, there must be a
(41:47):
reason for that. Did they have Spears in their
names? Well, only in their e-mail.
Spears, daughter. Spears, son.
Villa had a football player called Pablo Angel.
He was a South American and he was a great goal scorer and he
had a son called Geronimo and that was the name I wanted.
(42:09):
But the missus was saying no way.
And I was into the Matrix film quite heavily.
And so she said, how about Neo? OK.
So he's called Neo. Yeah, and not yeah.
And not only that, Neo Spiz, it's it was shorter for when you
have to write the names of your children in their school shirts
and their school, it's only three letters.
(42:31):
And also when Apple used to giveyou free games, kids games with
the computer used to get free game.
So once I'd showed him these guys, I couldn't get him off the
computer. So I went and bought him a
second hand Apple just so we hada computer from three years old.
Neo Computers Neo. Do you give him a a blue or a
(42:53):
red pill? Well, he's he's well into
computer gaming and the I thought you're going to say
pills. Now he's went into everything
OK, tech, technology. He's got an Apple Watch and he's
got laptop and he's the biggest gaming machine.
When you were talking about Aston Villa and the name of your
(43:13):
kids after it, you did John Peel.
Didn't he name one of his kids Liverpool?
No, just all the football team. A winning football team started
for Liverpool. They had a girl's name and then
eleven other blokes names. That was John Peel.
I'll let you go and listen to your show.
Yeah, listen to my own show because I get people texting it
(43:34):
in as it goes out live. See.
Do you like the sound of your own voice?
I do, actually. I didn't when I first started
it. When I heard first heard my
voice on tape, I thought, who the Hell's that?
Right, right. And then I didn't like it.
And then punk happened and then I still wasn't confident about
(43:55):
my voice. I got to Mega City Three.
I think that was when I started to really feel.
Better about it. Love, love singing fully.
I remember one enemy review was said that he wished that
Brionino had died in that taxi accident.
And they wouldn't have been. It wouldn't have been anything
created like spizz oil. Wow, thanks mate.
(44:17):
It's funny because I don't thinkyou get that level of criticism
today in music and music press. Like back then it was you, bands
like yourself and so many bands you would literally live and die
by whatever the music press said.
Yeah, well one of the reviews for the B side of Soldier
Soldier, which was single the week in Enemy, it was give the
(44:39):
flip side a listen as well. Spizzy's cover version of Roxy
Music's Virginia Playing is likea Woolies version.
Woolworths. Wow, crazy.
Anyway. Cheers mate.
Well, Spiz I. And don't forget to visit
(44:59):
thespizenergy.com website for atmerchandise.
Any other plugs? Get the gold vinyl anniversary
issue 45 years of the number one.
The Independent Record label 45 years ago this week was in his
sixth week at #1. What was the song?
Where's Captain Kirk? OK, you didn't mention that.
(45:21):
Brilliant. I hope you're you enjoy your
listening to your show today. I'll take another listen because
I was enjoying it the other day when I was driving around and I
can't wait to hear more of your AI tracks.
The regular version is on this week, yeah.
Yeah, I've got to listen to that.
All right, Spears. Cheers mate.
All righty. Thank you.
Thank you. See.
You, Richard. Bye.
Bye bye, right right. Could play one of my records.
(45:42):
Well, if I had the license to dothat, I could.
But. Oh really?
It's that seriously? Anyway, all right, Spears, take
care. All right.
Cheers mate. I'll leave now.
I'm leaving the room now. Spears has left the room.
My name is Richard Smith and I'myour host.
I'm a filmmaker and art directorand Once Upon a time I was part
(46:03):
of the big 80s. I designed record covers for
Depeche Mode. I danced with Bono, discussed
art with Mick Jagger and drank tea with Susie Sue.
I also grew up during those turbulent times in England in
the late 70s and was driven by the Do It Yourself ethos with
punk. I obsessed over bands like Joy
Division and New Order and went on to work for the album cover
designer Peter Savile. I believe that year, that moment
(46:25):
in 1976 when a bunch of foul mouthed yobs cursed and swore on
national television, changed thefuture of culture forever and is
what brought us to where we are today.
So where do we go from here? Will emerging new technologies
be the catalyst that tears down the walls of mediocrity,
throwing culture and society into chaos and revolution again?
We'll have to wait and see. This has been another episode of
(46:47):
Destroy. Thank you for listening
destroyisaberightbackstudiosproductionlearnmore@berightbackstudios.comand please tune in again for
another episode of Destroy the Influence of Punk podcast.
Wherever you listen or download,be right, be right back.
(47:40):
It's Holy Week in Jerusalem. Crowds welcome Jesus as king.
Rebellion is in the air. Jesus operates outside our
jurisdiction. Rome will descend on us all.
But instead of taking the throne, Jesus turns the tables.
My house should be called the House of Prayer, but you make it
a den of thieves. The world will never be the
(48:02):
same. Now in theaters, The chosen Last
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(48:25):
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(48:47):
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But that's not all. We're not here to just gossip.
We're here to connect with you, the jurors, and share our love
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(49:08):
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(00:45):
everywhere. Acast.com I.
Did say that I wasn't recognized.
We were considered not to be cool.
We would never call with a roughtrade scene.
We would never call with the music papers.
We were never called fashionably.
For much of the 70s, English society was in turmoil.
(01:07):
Unemployment was rising, industry was collapsing and
political tensions were soaring.While movements like Rock
Against Racism clashed with the growing presence of movements
like the National Front on the streets in cities such as
Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool, the decline was
impossible to ignore. Once hubs of manufacturing, they
were now marked by factory closures and dead end prospects.
(01:31):
The mainstream music scene fell out of touch.
Rock had grown bloated and self indulgent, pop had become
nauseatingly trite, and what dominated the charts rarely
reflected the frustration of everyday life.
Through this noise, punk emergedas a necessary rupture.
But for some, punk itself wasn'tenough.
(01:53):
Artists like Susie Sue blurred the lines between fashion and
provocation, while polystyrene of X-ray specs defied
expectations of what a punk front woman could be, and radio
shows like John Peels champion the strange, the new and the
unexpected. In episode 12, we meet someone
inspired by Barry Starman and the desire to perform jumped on
(02:15):
stage in a moment of spontaneityand has remained resistant to
standing still ever since. This is Spitz from London SE1
and you're destined to destroy with your host Richard Smith.
They are Trump rockers. Raw.
Outrageous and crude, the new craze, they tell them.
(02:35):
More into chaos than anything else.
People really don't understand what kids want.
Worthless, nasty now. Hello.
Welcome to Destroy, a podcast about how the punk movement of
1976 or the Cultural Revolution still being felt today.
You have to destroy in order to create.
Destroy is produced by Be Right Back Studios.
(02:57):
Visit berightbackstudios.com/destroy
to learn more. If you're enjoying the show,
visit our website destroypunkpodcast.com to learn
more about every episode, including interview transcripts,
show notes, music videos, curated playlists and more.
Thank you for listening. As a young aspiring musician and
(03:20):
a typical teenage troublemaker, my guest today was a huge
inspiration on my misspent youth.
He's a reverence and semi sardonic perspective on the
world appealed to my adolescent exuberance and naive sense of
empowerment. Throughout the early 80s I saw
him live on multiple occasions dancing and singing to every
ballistic beat. Please welcome to the show the
(03:43):
wonderful Spears. Spears, welcome to the show.
Hello. Hello.
Hello, how are you? I thought I'd become computer
illiterate there for a minute. When I was listening, it was the
Martin Ware show you were on andI was listening to that and I'm
like, fuck, I remember seeing you so many times at the Marquee
and I'm like, my God, I got to get Spizz on.
(04:05):
He was just such a hero of mine.I.
Think, Martin said. It's one of the funniest ones
he's ever done well. That was another reason I wanted
to talk to you. I'm like, I could have someone
on there who's a little more light hearted or surrealist.
So anyway, I'm really psyched that you made time to speak.
I'm really grateful. Thank you.
(04:26):
I didn't have anything else on at this particular time frame.
Well I I saw that your radio show is out today.
I guess you've pre recorded that.
Yeah, I recorded that on Tuesdayand I sent it to the radio
station. I used to go into the studio,
but then COVID happened and we lost the studio.
But I've got so used to working the work where I do now with
more control over what I do and how long.
(04:48):
Have you been doing that? 8 1/2 years.
Wow, how did you get into that? Well, I've done a couple of
guest spots for Gary Crowley when he was on Soho Radio and he
would get DJ friends, including me to step in for two hours for
him and also try to get into radio ages ago with another
friend as his sidekick Paul, Paul Hallam, right Mod DJ.
(05:12):
I'll go to a Christmas party forthe radio station Residence
104.4 FM in London and online@residencefm.com and I0IN
on the The Boss and he actually heard of me.
So a good two way conversation. I said Alcatel radio show.
He said, well, put your idea in an e-mail and he gave me his
card and then I'll have a look at it.
(05:33):
And of course I wake up in the morning with a hangover and go
what the hell? And so this went on for a couple
of Christmases because I did it every Christmas.
And then I came from home, from the 100 Club, left early and I
thought I could catch last orders in my local pub and in
there on a Tuesday. It was dead quiet in September
but he was there with one of hiscolleagues.
(05:53):
So I went and sat and had a chatwith him.
He said what are you doing next week?
What are you doing on Friday, Thursday?
What are you doing on Thursday? I said why?
He said well I've got 6 shows tofill, someone's just pulled out,
what would you do? And I said well I've been
meaning to write my audio autobiography but I'm never
going to get round to it. But I could talk it and then
play some records to illustrate a story of my past.
(06:16):
Like when I talked with Susie and the Banshees and then I
could play a Susie record and when I met Joe Strummer and play
a class record and just fill outthe show like that.
He said, great to see you Thursday.
So after six weeks, it's coming up to Christmas.
I said, what happens now? He said, well, funny enough, can
you do Friday's tea time? I said, yeah, I'll drop every
anything Friday night. It's usually not going out,
(06:37):
going out at 5:30. And then when that season
finished, they were starting to think about moving the premises.
So we had a lot on his plate. And he said just carry on now.
It's just like a radio show witha variety of stuff.
And what I got to last week did.I see you do new releases, you
(06:58):
do, interviews you do. I do decide interviews on on on
my phone and then edit them in. Obviously now I'm on the radio
for so long I get people sendingme their records MP3 and if I
like it I'll play it. As simple as that.
Like John Peel I. Was going to say you're the new
John Peel. Yeah.
Do you know that his whole radioarchive is online?
(07:19):
I only stepped into a couple of them, but I would religiously
listen to them all the time. It was just like something I
did. And then I, I had a tape
recorder next to my radio. And if a song came on, like do
do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Oh, I like that.
Yeah, well, I, I got, I got on the Job Peel show in 1978 as
Spizz Oil and that opened the door for us to get on Rough
(07:40):
Trade and then we've got the record out.
We could do the Susie tour. So I went from playing in a pub,
being on the radio and on stage at Hammersmith Odeon in 10
months. You were on John Peel like 5
times or something? I've done 4 John Peel sessions
and at one point I did more sessions in David Bowie or the
Jam. That's amazing.
There's something about your music, though.
(08:02):
There is an element of politics in what you sing about to a
certain extent. What was I listening to, 1989?
I'm like, is he so obsessed with1989?
And then you sort of marked off all these different things in
the lyrics. Yeah.
Was there a political angle to any I?
Was always, I was always mindfulof the history of the world and
(08:24):
it's potential. A news junkie as well.
Amnesia. The B side of Where's Captain
Kirk? Where's Captain Kirk's a jolly
song, but he's actually got schizophrenia involved in it and
then they've got amnesia. This is all about 1984.
Listen, Winston, you don't have to suffer.
Confess the thoughts you're heldagainst, Big Brother, things
like that. Right.
(08:44):
So I've always been mindful of totalitarianism, which just
seems to me authoritarian ugly head again.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
I don't know, in 19, not even 1984 or all over again.
It's actually sort of reality. Oh yeah.
All well. So you now performing as or one
of your monikers is Spiz Orwell?That's my Instagram handle.
(09:06):
Someone had already taken Spiz energy so I thought, well
because it's largely A photographic platform.
My song City of Eyes is all about espionage, surveillance,
stalking, spying, government e-mail, spying.
Spiz, Orwell and huge fan of thebook 1984 Introduced to me by
Bowie through Diamond Dogs album.
(09:29):
OK. The whole album is based on the
book. One of the tracks is called
1984. I read that you were a huge
Bowie fan. I know you saw, or rather I
should say he was a big influence and it was what Star
Man or something I think you sawon top of.
Well, like most people in the punk scene, they were either
influenced or duly influenced byRoxy Music first album and Ziggy
(09:53):
Stardust album and a star man was lifted from that.
And I, I love this on the hearing it on the radio without
seeing David Bowie. And then after we got back from
our holiday, got the telly up, they did have TV's in the
chalets on holiday in Bournemouth.
And so went to see Top of the Pops.
And there he was in the Mick Ronson and the redhead Bowie and
(10:13):
his red hair pointing down the lens with his finger and wow.
And my parents also going, what the Hell's that?
I'm going, Oh yeah. So then I got a ticket to go and
see him play live. I started buying all the albums
and backtracking with the albumsand my first proper going out to
a rock concert with flashing lights and loud speakers was
(10:34):
David Bowie and the Spiders fromMars.
Birmingham Town Hall, 1973, June22nd, 2nd 3rd row seat 33 seats.
Row C33. But more importantly, who did
you go with? I've been on my own.
That was my first night out in Birmingham on my own.
How old were you? 14.
(10:55):
Wow, I think my first gig was atthe Marquee.
It was, I was meant to see the Undertones but they cancelled
and I saw lurkers who were completely different band.
I was probably about 14 or 15 back then.
So you're from Birmingham originally, but you, your
parents moved out to Solihull, is that?
Right, I was born in Solihull and my parents, oh sorry.
(11:16):
My dad wanted to move further and further away from
Birmingham. So when I became a late teenager
I wanted the city. So I had to go into the city.
And then my first trip to Londonwas to see David Bowie for the
Station to Station 1976 tour andI thought yeah, I want to live
here. So that was 16/17/17 and then I
was playing as always. My second ever show was actually
(11:39):
after A Gate Crashed, the Birmingham Punk Festival on
August the 29th 1977. The DJ was managing the band.
I borrowed the guitar off to go down and do what you did here in
London and so I went down to London.
I was appalling but someone thought I was funny.
It was a Booker for booking the Vortex, which was the punk club
(11:59):
that came out of the ashes of the Roxy.
Yeah, yeah. What compelled you to just jump
up on stage and do that? What was Well, I just wanted to
be a superstar. I've seen Bowie live, and I
tried learning guitar at home and I didn't sound any good.
And then when I saw The Clash a month before this punk festival
in July 1977, I thought, yeah, Iwant some of this.
(12:20):
When I was doing our college course and I knew the
hairdressing girlfriends of the two guys in the punk band called
Model Mania, and I got to know them and I said, look at this
punk festival, kind of borrow a guitar.
And just I blagged my way on. And then they realized like I
had no material. I just made it all up, made it
all up on the spot. So I suppose audacious and awful
(12:43):
in Elizabeth equal measure. I'm guessing like for a lot of
kids, Barry was the role model for dressing up, for acting, for
being a performer. Was that true for you?
Was that what you drew from that?
Well, I want to be an actor fromabout the age of 9 because I
thought you could kiss girls and, and they were acting, so
(13:05):
that means you didn't have to chat them up because it was in
the script. So I thought it'd be a great way
to be able to kiss girls. And then when I saw Bowie, well,
that changed everything, you know, I thought, wow, this is
fantastic. And then when I saw The Clash,
they also were very dramaticallydressed with a quite stylish
look about them. And I like their stung and their
(13:26):
political strand in their music as well.
So that's it, that was it. Check the acting away.
I will come and go be a pop star.
You can act in a different way. You can get on stage and sing
songs about Captain Kirk and some of the but.
We are a more a performance band.
We're not like a band that just stands there, scowls and shouts
to sing melodies. I remember that.
(13:47):
I don't know why, but I had thisreally vivid picture of you
performing at the Marquee and itjust being like most concerts
there. It was just chaos.
It's so, so small and like you were right there with the band
and you could even go backstage because there was a little door
around the back of the bar, I think sort of.
Yeah, that's right. Something I didn't know about
you was that you trained as a graphic designer and you wanted
(14:10):
to do record covers. Obviously one of the ways you're
going to meet musicians is to goto art school.
Because of all my music paper interviews I'd read from Bowie
to Ray Davies, the Kinks, the John Lennon, they all went to
art school, right? So I thought that's the first
way you go to meet musicians again in a band.
But when I got there, I wanted to do design, record sleeves.
(14:31):
I thought because I was always drawing and I was better at
drawing than playing guitar. I went to college and then I did
actually. And but punk happened while I
was at college. So that's where the crossover
came. And then I got to design me and
earn sleeves. So you when you started out,
were you a one man band? Was it just you?
Well, yeah, basically I've got on my own with the guitar.
(14:52):
And then I did the London show and then I did the local
university again with the same band borrowing their gear.
And then I had to pass my old schoolmate Pete had to get his
terrible job packing tools and afew railway stops away from
where I live. And Pete had just moved into his
bedsit and he's got a car and I've got his giggly London.
(15:15):
And I said, look, hey Pete then he's got a guitar so he wrote 4
songs in his bedsit. And then we thought, well hang
on to yourself is a perfect punkformula.
Verse, chorus, verse, chorus. And we did because Patti Smith
had done Hey Joe, we thought we could do that and get away with
that. So we did that.
We did about 6 or 7 songs at theVortex.
(15:35):
And again, people thought we were so strange that we kept
getting more bookings. So then I was then calling
himself Speed 77 and Pete was called himself Pete Plectrum.
That's right. But then I I didn't want to be
called 77 in 78. I saw his program on the North
Sea oil developments of the new oil rig oil fields.
The first oil rig were the largest man made objects ever
(15:57):
removed across the Earth's surface.
Right Spizoil and for design it was a symmetrical there's two ZS
Spizoil is symmetry and great for design and I persuaded Pete
to change his name to Pete Petrol and then we were off we
were a duo you never looked backand then and after the after the
Susie tour we fell out a bit buthe did come back in Spiz energy
(16:20):
because oil produces energy that's how I changed the name
for I didn't even want people tocome and see Spizoil when it's
not Spizoil anymore right so these name changes were
originally just logical transformations became
obsessional you'd. Said that, you have a massive
list. You have I don't know how many
thousands, maybe hundreds. But basically every word you can
put next to the word spiz. I made a list after list.
(16:43):
So you go through the dictionaryand it's just like, I'm just
gonna read off what's on my screen.
Spiz records Biz Display Spiz optimized spiz video, spiz
timestamp well of. Course, my radio show is called
Spiz FM. When I go out, I've got
Spizology. I go out of Spizology through
the acoustic show so that peopledon't go see.
They think they're going to see Spiz Energy, the full band.
(17:03):
They're going to see Spizology, which is just me and Luke are my
guitarist. Something that I was curious
about was who still calls you Kenneth?
Does your? I don't talk.
I don't talk to those people. I don't know if your parents are
still alive, but they used to ring you up.
Kenneth, what are you doing? When are you going to get a real
job? The reason why I don't like
being called Kenneth or anyone to use my real name is because
(17:25):
my mother had a brother called Kenneth and my father had a
brother called Kenneth and they were both shot down in World War
Two. I was named after them.
So I didn't want any of my silliness to be contaminating
the memory of air. So I call myself space.
That's it. That's who I am.
Talking about growing up, were you into a lot of the bands that
were coming out of Birmingham like Black Sabbath and fans like
(17:49):
that or The Beat or Duran Duran that?
Were you into that scene? No, but Pete Petrol loved Black
Sabbath, and when you hear the live recordings of Spizz Oil, it
turned up to 10. It's chugging, chugging.
And the other thing, what was remarkable about our early gigs
with the Banshees was the Sandman was a bit of a volume
freak. So we just filled the PA with
(18:10):
me, my voice and Pete's guitar and we were like a concrete wall
of sound, a sledgehammer, and I was screaming as instead of a
guitar solo, I would scream at really high pitched screams and
it just freaked people out. You toured with The Human
League, is that right? Is that?
What happened was on that Screamtour, the Susie Tour, the
(18:31):
primary support was Nico from the Velvet Undergrounds.
Oh, yes, yes. But she was going down so badly
because she was just sitting near an organ, pissed out of her
brain amongst other things, and all her 17 year old kids wanted
to do is Pogo to Hong Kong Garden.
So after a few shows they had toremove her from the tour, drop
(18:52):
her. So Osby's Oil moved up the bill
to be second on appeal and they thought, well who are we going
to get? We're just getting some of these
new bands emerging. And Ganga Ford did a can full of
shows. Cabaret Voltaire did a couple of
shows. Oh, wow.
Human League got the lion's share of the remaining shows.
So I got to hang out with MartinWare, got on well, famously with
(19:13):
him. And then years later, when they
were Heaven 17 and we were living in the same area in
London, Yeah, and hanging out and having laughs and, right,
getting smashed. They had a hit with temptation.
And then Glenn had had a problemwith his knee, so he couldn't
move. He was a bit unable to move
around. Ian Craig Marsh was stuck behind
his sins, and so was Martin. So they just hired me just to
run around the stage with the guitar.
(19:35):
So I did about 7 TV shows in Europe.
I watched one of those on YouTube and you look so out of
place somehow it's like. Wham and Andrew Ridgeley.
I couldn't play half the notes. I just made it look like I
could. Were you a fan of Human League?
Funny little story for you is that I was standing at the back
(19:56):
with Steve 7 and we were watching The Human League and he
said, well Spears, what do you think of these?
I said. I'd say this is quite, quite
good. I don't think it'll catch on so
much. Are you?
The early human league stuff though was really good, like
being boiled and. They also had fun songs as well.
You know, Empire State. Yeah, yeah.
(20:17):
Again, lyrically, what they weresinging about was, so, I don't
know. It was very inspiring.
It wasn't. The latest songs were good.
What was it called? The famous one.
Don't you want me, baby? From the Dare album.
That stuff was good, but like compared to some of the early
stuff I mean. Reproduction and travel
travelogue is great. Travelogue.
(20:38):
Yeah, yeah, that's the one I'm thinking of.
So many bands were pioneers of electronic sound.
Martin Ware's job, before he goton stage with the synthesizer,
was computer programming. When computers read cards with
punches, hole punches in. There wasn't even any floppy
disks in. I know you guys, when you're on
(20:58):
his show with him, you both talked about typography, which I
thought was kind of funny. I'd love to get him on and talk
about typography. Hi there.
Sorry for the interruption, but if you're enjoying the show,
please leave a review or a comment for the latest news and
updates. Make sure to also follow us on
Instagram at Destroy Punk Podcast.
Thank you. And now back to the show.
(21:19):
I love that you are doing all this stuff with AI.
Talk to me about that a little. Bit Oh well, Pete Petrol is in
New Zealand and he sent me this song that he'd done on AI and it
literally takes about four seconds.
So you can either copy and paste, hold lyrics or just a few
words and they'll make it all upthemselves.
(21:39):
So I did, I did. I was a little bit, I was a bit
drunk at night when I was doing this.
So then a week later I went backto it and this time I put in the
words to one of my songs and it came back with outrageous.
And I searched on the the app asall its users like Instagram.
And then people put their tracksin folders and also make their
(22:03):
own playlists of other stuff they like.
And lo and behold, someone's done a bloody reggae version of
Where's Captain Quote word for word.
I play it on this week's radio show.
It's coming up this afternoon. The one that I heard that you
played, I can't remember the name of the song.
The lyrics were sort of something about the world and it
(22:23):
turned it into this real rock ballad.
Death of the Free Band or We Want the World I.
Think it was that yeah. And it.
Yeah, it like it could be a Eurovision Song Contest.
It just made me laugh though, and I don't know whether any
other band could really pull that off.
Do you think you'll continue to do that stuff or is it just more
for? Sure, you're gonna have to find
a sample of my voice to make it worth doing it as a official
(22:45):
Spizz Energy product, but I did fleetingly cross my mind.
I'll do the whole album. If you were to start your band
again today, yeah, How would youdo it differently?
Would you do anything differently?
Well, I'm sort of glad I I did it when I did, because if I'd
have had a mobile phone in 1977,I kind of knows what mischief I
(23:06):
could have got up to. Which is why you won't hear My
Autobiography Fully Dead Up do. You want to hear all the
details? I can't.
There's too much I won't. There's too much I want to put
in to make it. You know what's an old no holds
barred? If anything, anything else
unless we were too watered down and anything pull on is going to
(23:28):
get me homeless and friendless. So is there anything you regret?
Not really. The only regret is I didn't do
it. More naughtiness.
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(23:50):
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(24:15):
What kind of collaborations, musical collaborations have you
done or do you want to do? Like whether if Barry was still
alive, let's say. Well, I got 22 records mixed by
Tony Visconti. Oh, did you?
That's big kudos. Yeah.
Yeah, because I met him in 1980 when I was in the film Breaking
(24:36):
Glass as a bit part player. But he was the MD, so we had to
oversee that we were playing ourinstruments well enough to look
like we were musicians, not actors.
I ended up playing drums in Hazel O'Connor's first band in
the film. So now I used to bump into Tony
and Soho occasionally and so he'd Remember Me.
And then he started working, doing these Bowie, revisiting,
(25:00):
touring. So I went along.
So we were just talking in the VIP after show bar and I said,
I've got a song about Denmark St.
We're talking about Denmark St. And he said he sent me over the
demo. I, we hadn't even recorded it
yet. I don't just written it on the
on the way home after the club had closed in Denmark St. the 12
bar club. And so me and Luca fleshed it
(25:22):
out and then we made, we start recorded it and sent him over
the files because now it's COVIDand he mixed it in New York and
then sent it back to us. And it's, it said that he did it
for because he liked the principle of it.
He did it for the mates rates. And then he said, well, look,
another thing we've done is we got to do this Bowie convention.
(25:43):
And we learned Valentine's Day to be, you know, different from
everybody else doing Rebel, Rebel, Jean Jeanie, Life on
Mars. We did a song that was under the
radar a bit, Valentine's Day. And so.
Oh yeah. Yeah.
It's the only song that is the original was produced and mixed
by Tony Visconti and he's done the cover version, which many
(26:04):
people regard it as a very few of Bowie songs that have been
done by cover versions that are better than the original.
But the only reason why we thinkthat is is because it was when
Bowie was beginning to start to be ill and he never got to tour
it. So he only ever he only ever
studio album track, so he never toured.
(26:25):
So we managed to toughen it up, see playing it live and gave it
a bit more edge and we extended it a little bit.
And when I did Bowie Convention last year, I was the house band
learnt my version right. I should say Luca Comacini's
arrangement my my guitarist and they say they preferred it and
(26:45):
they're going to do it that version from now on.
Wow, that's a pat on the back, that is.
The last album was phenomenal. Yeah, no, it took me a year to
watch any of those videos. Oh.
Really. Yeah, when he died, he died on
my birthday. The news broke on my birthday
and I went to the pub when he died and because I'd already
arranged it for anybody who could be passing by to come to
(27:06):
the pub. And by then it was also a
Monday. So there was no one in the pub
apart from me and my friends. And the barman put on one of
them pub computers where they just lifted off the Internet and
it was just wall to wall Bowie. Right there was an exhibition
here of Bowie and it was just mind blowing and so moving.
(27:28):
It was after he died. Is it?
Was it the V and A1? It could be the same, I forget
the name of it. Yeah, I, well, I went to it on
the last day when it was in the V and a in after he'd been there
for about 6 months and I managedto get in and I, I literally I
was welling up, but when I got to the last room.
Every time I hear so many of thetracks from Black Star.
Look up here. I'm in heaven.
(27:49):
Got things I can't see. I've got scars that can't be
seen. Yes, it's just wrenched.
Yes, totally it does. Barry was obviously very
obsessed with the future and stars and stuff like that.
That seems to be a theme of yours.
Or am I just generalizing? Well yeah, no the the lyrics of
driving Saturday the strange domes in the LED us a book when
(28:09):
we leave to try to all those elements that Bowie Yeah I loved
all the sci-fi elements. Even the man who sold the world
is space oddities or there's a lot of science vision going on
Diamond Dogs with 1984. Right.
There's a theme in your work to a certain extent.
You know, like where's Captain? There's also Megacity from the
comic 2000 AD Judge Dredd, I Wasthe first Me Pete, Petrol were
(28:33):
the first non cartoons to be in 2000 AD when we went along took
the record along for them to do an article about first song to
be released about biggest city by anybody or 2000 AD.
So obviously where's Captain Kirk was massive, still is
massive, but do you feel that overshadowed a lot of your other
(28:56):
work or you just embraced that and.
Well, not because the next single was No Room, which is a
AA side with Spock's Missing. I was on the Earth, which is it
was going down so well live. And then I wrote another Star
Trek song for the second album, which was Five Year Mission.
So the first song is Where's Spock?
Spock Goes Missing. And then the second song is
Spock's Missing. And then the third song is Spock
(29:18):
Comes Back, which is virtually the scripts of the first three
films of the Star Trek first films before they were made.
So it's like a trilogy? Yeah, I heard.
I think you wrote that on a bus ride home.
Yeah, we'd done a rehearsal. We used to do weekly rehearsals
because we were working on new material because we had another
job Peel session and a tour coming out.
(29:41):
So we desperately needed new songs.
And we wrote Soldier Soldier literally a week before the John
Peel session. But then we were Mark had this
keyboard song and he had all hiswords that didn't make any sense
really. It was because he he used to
veil his song lyrics into riddles.
OK, but he had one line in it. It went, oh, birdie, it's true.
(30:03):
And I was on the bus after a couple of beers after rehearsal
and I didn't have a pen and paper and I was going, oh, that
is true. And the words were coming in my
head and I was singing them overand over again in my head.
And I've even got a second versecoming in my head.
So I'll get off this bus, come on, get home, get off this bus.
And I ran, ran into the kitchen and wrote down the 1st 2 verses
(30:23):
and the third verse came along while I was writing them down.
So I went back to rehearsal. The next week and then I said,
Mark, I hope you don't mind, butI've written rewritten.
Let's see, let's play it. And so we played it and we just
felt about laughing. We just thought this is great.
And then we had this gig. We had this gig coming up and we
still didn't have a drummer yet.But we'd never turned gigs down.
We just go and go ahead and do it without a drummer because Jim
(30:48):
had a percussive bass style and Mark had a quite a tappy
keyboard style to make up for nodrums.
And by the way, bonkers. The audience went absolutely
bonkers. 1 gig. We played it 8 times at that gig
because because we didn't have along set still yet and so we
just played it again and again until they got sick of it, which
they didn't. We got sick and failed it 8
(31:10):
times. Was it always called?
Where's Captain Kirk? No, the song was called Nobody's
Who. Ow.
It's just that oh Buddy is true that nobody's who but I.
Oh, then you added. I changed the whole song, it's
only the one line I kept. Oh, I'm sorry.
OK. Oh, but it's true.
It's like when you put a seed a grafting a different plant onto
(31:32):
another one. I'm going to talk about one
thing which I know nothing about, but I know you're a big
fan of football. Oh yeah.
And tell me about your love of football, Aston Villa.
And you've made a song for them.Yeah, what happened is I grew up
in Midlands obviously, and my grandfather was a Villa fan
(31:54):
because he actually lived not far from the ground.
And then my dad was a Villa fan and then he all became Villa
fans even though we were moving further away from Villa Park to
Birmingham City Ground. But then I was on Cherry Red and
because he knew I was Villa fan and he was a director at
Wimbledon FC, the original Wimbledon, and he was sponsoring
(32:16):
a stand there, the Cherry Red stand.
And so he was dead keen on football and what they were
doing. They were compiling CD albums of
all the Celtic songs or songs related to Celtic or big clubs
like Rangers, Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur, and they were
going to go and do a Villa 1. So he said have you got a Villa
song? I said, yeah, of course, didn't
have one. And he said, oh, what's it
(32:38):
called? I said it's called The Sun Never
Sets on Aston Villa. You know, grandiose title.
I forgot about it for about a month and then I got a call
saying we're going to need the track in a couple of weeks.
So with the band I was with at the time, we, I said come around
tonight and write this song. And while they I started writing
(33:01):
the song lyrically and they helped me put it into music and
then we had to book a rehearsal recording studio.
It was a small 8 track recordingstudios.
So we bashed it down and I sent it off and they loved it.
And then we changed our owners. So we actually got an American
owner called Andrew and Randy Lerner.
(33:22):
And it was when OK football fanswere starting to have their own
websites. So he got all the Villa fans to
try and run a poll. Which song should the team run
out on to? OK game at home and mine won.
Wow. Yeah, by about 4%.
Yeah, we got about 34% and we run by 4% above it and they
(33:47):
didn't follow up, they didn't gothrough with it.
That would have been a nice little learn though I tell you I
would have got load of PRS money.
Oh, so you never actually the fans chose it, but they didn't
get. It did get rewarded, no?
What was the chant? What was the refrain?
Go, Sir. Woah.
Aston Villa, Gravely Hill, Riviera.
(34:07):
Whole tenders live forever. The sun never sets on Aston
Villa. I say it goes.
Oh. Brilliant, brilliant.
I love that. So do you think that do you
think that's your biggest contribution to music?
Well, to football. So I was being flippant.
(34:31):
I only stopped playing in 2015 because I was the oldest player
on the pitch really. And yeah, so I kept.
What was your position? Everyone was young.
I was a goal scorer of course #9#9 nice.
I played at Wembley as well. As a musician.
Well, what happened was I won a competition to play at Wembley
and it was before. They're going to knock it down
(34:53):
and build the new Wembley. And OK, first of all they said
how old are you? Because I was in my 50s and they
said that. I said yeah, I'll play an 11
aside old gifts team. And so there was 2 winners and
we were put into two different teams.
One team was captained by the producer of the video.
That was going to be the reason why we were playing it.
(35:14):
It was a launch junkie for writers of music, football
magazines like Match of the Day magazine and Sky Sports, Sky
Sports News presenter and a couple of retired footballers.
OK. And we had the worst goalkeeper
because our goalkeeper, each team was meant to have a semi
professional goalkeeper but oursdidn't show up.
So we had the film producer's dad who's never played football
(35:37):
in his life. We weren't allowed to wear
football boots because it was Wembley turf and they didn't
want a load of clowns clogging up the pitch before the last
England game a week later. So I wore Aster turf boots.
We were having all the pressure,but every time they got the ball
they ran down and scored a goal.So it's now 5 nil.
Oh my God, I said quite loudly. I.
Thought you were the gold scorer?
Well, I said quite loudly, if there's a penalty, who's going
(35:59):
to take it before kick off and he said I don't think there'll
be a penalty. I said yeah, but if there is
one, who's going to take it? I got right in his space and I
was. And so anyway, there was a
penalty and I'd say I'd score a goal from your brother who was
the last time I saw my brother, eldest brother alive was at
Wembley. So I had a bouquet of flowers
put on his seat where he where Ilast saw him alive at Wembley.
(36:21):
And so anyway, I'm running now up to the gold math ready for
who's going to take the penalty.No one wanted to take it.
No one was had the guts to take it.
They were everyone was bottling it.
But anyway, one of my teammates said.
I said let him take it, he's desperate.
So I said thanks mate. So I I did it.
I scored. Wow, so it's 5/1?
(36:42):
I said the goal lead the long way and because we didn't lose 5
nil, we lost 51. He gave me the ball.
Brilliant. I've got a photo of me with the
ball going in the net and right.It was the greatest and never
get this thousands and thousandsand thousands of footballers
that a professional footballers never played at Wembley, B never
scored a goal at Wembley or C ever, ever played at Wembley.
(37:05):
One last question and then I'll let you go.
All right. I'll give you a choice.
Does that work? Heads or tails?
Yeah. Did you feel like an outsider
during the punk movement, or what was the most chaotic or
memorable moment from those early days?
I did feel that I wasn't recognized.
We were, it's such considered not to be cool.
We were never cool with a rough trade scene.
(37:28):
We were never cool with the music papers.
We were never cool fashionably. And I kind of like that plate.
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(38:31):
slash ads. Quite early on, when you're
making records that got to number one in the Independent
Record label chart, people say start calling you a Rockstar.
I never felt like a Rockstar didn't have enough money to buy
driving lessons, let alone be a Rockstar.
So it has always irked me. But now I do quite like being
called a Rockstar. I don't care you.
(38:53):
Should have gone over that. I've grown into the.
I've grown into the costume. Sorry I lied, one other question
and I will let you go. What about the future?
What do you think the future holds for Spears?
Well, I'm not a really commercial businessman or music
a business musician. It's not nothing.
(39:14):
That's never been the driving force for me.
I'm not Phil Collins. What do you like about Phil
Collins? What's wrong with Phil Collins?
Is is a breadhead tax evading bastard?
And he introduced me to the ideaof a drum machine.
I was watching Blue Peter and he's and on today on Blue Peter,
we have Phil Collins and a drum machine.
That's how I started my band. You keep giving me ideas for
(39:37):
some questions. What would all right, What would
be the juiciest piece of gossip,detail, story that you would
want to publish in your autobiography whenever that
comes out, but couldn't? That's right, I can't tell you.
Who might it being? Who might it be about?
Well, I'll be there. Basically, there's going to be a
lot of redaction in this autobiography.
(39:58):
It's going to be I was in the room with and they were fully
naked. Well OK is it quite a tame
story? I was around a artist friends
house in London and he was the guy who did the tug of war album
(40:19):
cover for Paul McCartney. OK yes and Linda McCartney came
round for a chat with the baby future to be fashion designer.
Yes, I shared a joint with her. But what's really shocked me was
that that she just rang the office and said I need a warm
(40:40):
bottle of milk. 20 minutes, 20 minutes later to knock on the
door, someone turns up with a bottle of baby milk.
Funny, that was a different level of plan it I'm never going
to be in do. You have kids.
Or anything. My daughter's now a mother of
one and one month old baby girl.One year and one year and two
weeks old. Sorry, her birthday was a
(41:01):
fortnight ago. She was one so.
Your granddad. I'm a Grand Spies, yes, that's
right. Sorry, sorry.
I don't like Granddad, I don't like grandpa, I don't like
Gramps. So I've made the T-shirt that
says Grand Spies just to reinforce the fact I'm called
Spears and I'm not called Granddad, I'm called Vivian's
Grants is. How funny do your kids love your
(41:24):
music? Yeah, yeah, both of them.
My son is 23. Are they in music?
He's he didn't come home last night because he was DJ ING.
Ah, OK, there you go. Yeah, he's made the same mistake
as me and his birthday is 3, same day as David Bowie, 8th of
January. There must be, there must be a
(41:47):
reason for that. Did they have Spears in their
names? Well, only in their e-mail.
Spears, daughter. Spears, son.
Villa had a football player called Pablo Angel.
He was a South American and he was a great goal scorer and he
had a son called Geronimo and that was the name I wanted.
(42:09):
But the missus was saying no way.
And I was into the Matrix film quite heavily.
And so she said, how about Neo? OK.
So he's called Neo. Yeah, and not yeah.
And not only that, Neo Spiz, it's it was shorter for when you
have to write the names of your children in their school shirts
and their school, it's only three letters.
(42:31):
And also when Apple used to giveyou free games, kids games with
the computer used to get free game.
So once I'd showed him these guys, I couldn't get him off the
computer. So I went and bought him a
second hand Apple just so we hada computer from three years old.
Neo Computers Neo. Do you give him a a blue or a
(42:53):
red pill? Well, he's he's well into
computer gaming and the I thought you're going to say
pills. Now he's went into everything
OK, tech, technology. He's got an Apple Watch and he's
got laptop and he's the biggest gaming machine.
When you were talking about Aston Villa and the name of your
(43:13):
kids after it, you did John Peel.
Didn't he name one of his kids Liverpool?
No, just all the football team. A winning football team started
for Liverpool. They had a girl's name and then
eleven other blokes names. That was John Peel.
I'll let you go and listen to your show.
Yeah, listen to my own show because I get people texting it
(43:34):
in as it goes out live. See.
Do you like the sound of your own voice?
I do, actually. I didn't when I first started
it. When I heard first heard my
voice on tape, I thought, who the Hell's that?
Right, right. And then I didn't like it.
And then punk happened and then I still wasn't confident about
(43:55):
my voice. I got to Mega City Three.
I think that was when I started to really feel.
Better about it. Love, love singing fully.
I remember one enemy review was said that he wished that
Brionino had died in that taxi accident.
And they wouldn't have been. It wouldn't have been anything
created like spizz oil. Wow, thanks mate.
(44:17):
It's funny because I don't thinkyou get that level of criticism
today in music and music press. Like back then it was you, bands
like yourself and so many bands you would literally live and die
by whatever the music press said.
Yeah, well one of the reviews for the B side of Soldier
Soldier, which was single the week in Enemy, it was give the
(44:39):
flip side a listen as well. Spizzy's cover version of Roxy
Music's Virginia Playing is likea Woolies version.
Woolworths. Wow, crazy.
Anyway. Cheers mate.
Well, Spiz I. And don't forget to visit
(44:59):
thespizenergy.com website for atmerchandise.
Any other plugs? Get the gold vinyl anniversary
issue 45 years of the number one.
The Independent Record label 45 years ago this week was in his
sixth week at #1. What was the song?
Where's Captain Kirk? OK, you didn't mention that.
(45:21):
Brilliant. I hope you're you enjoy your
listening to your show today. I'll take another listen because
I was enjoying it the other day when I was driving around and I
can't wait to hear more of your AI tracks.
The regular version is on this week, yeah.
Yeah, I've got to listen to that.
All right, Spears. Cheers mate.
All righty. Thank you.
Thank you. See.
You, Richard. Bye.
Bye bye, right right. Could play one of my records.
(45:42):
Well, if I had the license to dothat, I could.
But. Oh really?
It's that seriously? Anyway, all right, Spears, take
care. All right.
Cheers mate. I'll leave now.
I'm leaving the room now. Spears has left the room.
My name is Richard Smith and I'myour host.
I'm a filmmaker and art directorand Once Upon a time I was part
(46:03):
of the big 80s. I designed record covers for
Depeche Mode. I danced with Bono, discussed
art with Mick Jagger and drank tea with Susie Sue.
I also grew up during those turbulent times in England in
the late 70s and was driven by the Do It Yourself ethos with
punk. I obsessed over bands like Joy
Division and New Order and went on to work for the album cover
designer Peter Savile. I believe that year, that moment
(46:25):
in 1976 when a bunch of foul mouthed yobs cursed and swore on
national television, changed thefuture of culture forever and is
what brought us to where we are today.
So where do we go from here? Will emerging new technologies
be the catalyst that tears down the walls of mediocrity,
throwing culture and society into chaos and revolution again?
We'll have to wait and see. This has been another episode of
(46:47):
Destroy. Thank you for listening
destroyisaberightbackstudiosproductionlearnmore@berightbackstudios.comand please tune in again for
another episode of Destroy the Influence of Punk podcast.
Wherever you listen or download,be right, be right back.
(47:40):
It's Holy Week in Jerusalem. Crowds welcome Jesus as king.
Rebellion is in the air. Jesus operates outside our
jurisdiction. Rome will descend on us all.
But instead of taking the throne, Jesus turns the tables.
My house should be called the House of Prayer, but you make it
a den of thieves. The world will never be the
(48:02):
same. Now in theaters, The chosen Last
Supper. Get your tickets now.
Acast powers the world's best podcasts.
Here's a show that we recommend.Welcome back to two judgy girls.
I'm Mary from the Bay and I'm Courtney from LATJG is the
(48:25):
podcast where we spill all the tea on your favorite reality TV
shows, celebrity gossip, and everything in between.
We're here to bring you our unfiltered opinions, hilarious
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the trash TV you could want. We break down the drama, dissect
the latest scandals, and share our thoughts on everything from
the jaw-dropping moments to the embarrassing antics.
But that's not all. We're not here to just gossip.
We're here to connect with you, the jurors, and share our love
of all things pop culture. Whether we're dishing on the
latest celebrity breakups, discussing our favorite guilty
(49:08):
pleasure movies, or sharing embarrassing stories from our
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