Interview by Ekin Sanaç
This is the original English version of the interview with John Robb on the Membranes published in Bant’s 57th issue.
Which bands were the biggest deal for you when you were growing up? Who did you see on stage perform and wanted to make music of your own and perform it?
I grew up with glam rock in the early seventies. It was time of insane musical possibilities in the middle of grey times in the UK. Whilst the country seemed to be falling apart eh music just went crazy! The soundtrack was Bowie, Trex, Mott The Hoople, Slade and even bands like Mud and the Sweet who get sneered at by critics but had some great moments…add to this the hangover of the Beatles and the Stones and you’ve got some great music to grow up with. I grew up in Blackpool which is a seaside resort in the north of Blackpool 60 miles from Manchester and we felt very cut off from the music scene- music for us seemed to be made by aliens from another planet.
What really made a difference for me was when punk rock burst into our lives- the idea that you could make your own music was revolutionary and it was at that point that my generation rallied and made its own music/art/media- it was the beginning of everything that we know now. Someone at school ha d a copy of the Buzzcocks Spiral Scratch EP which looked home made and that was truly inspirational- we made our own record a year later- the idea that you could make your own record was so thrilling…
Punk changed everything- it changed our music, our politics, and our trousers!
DIY is the key to punk rock and the most revolutionary thing that came out of the movement- the idea that you could create your own art and not to be a passive consumer wa avery powerful stamenet and one that so many people from my generation were inspired by…
Reading about the Membranes, it looks like you started out pure D.I.Y. in terms of instruments as well, with building your own bass guitar and so on. Was it also the first time you started playing the bass as the Membranes?
I had never played an instrument in my life- like most of my generation we were never encouraged to play instruments and the idea of making music was really alien to us- but DIY and punk empowered us and that a powerful feeling- I wanted a violin bass because they look amazing- such a bizarre shape for a bass guitar but there was no way you could buy one on Blackpool so I bought a chunk of wood and spent the summer carving it with a pen knife whilst sat on the street in Blackpool- I had never made anything before but the great thing about punk DIY was that you believed that anything was possible- there no such thing as no- if you wanted to be in a band then you formed a band- if you wanted to have a magazine you made one (we made our own fanzine called Rox) and if you wanted a violin bass you got a piece of wood and made one- somehow the bass sounded amazing- a stupidly heavy bass sound…!
You were the punk rock band who did not sound like a punk rock band. And it still sounds true. Did you have control over how you wanted to sound like when you first started out, like consciously? Or was it an unconscious consequence of your wide range of influences?
We were influenced by so much music- we loved the psychedelic punk of the Stranglers and tat opened a lot of possibilities we loved the clash the pistols and the Buzzcocks the dammed and also post punk as it started to emerge with subway sect, the fall, the Manchester bands, killing joke, public image- we also loved blues, free jazz and so called world music- John peel was important his radio show played such an eclectic amount of music that it turned you onto whole areas of music- we also knew lots of older hippies- in smaller towns all the youth cults were closer than in the cities- so we heard a lot of their music…nights spent on magic mushrooms wallowing in the genius of Can and Hawkwind were important!
We thought we were apunk band but for us the idea of punk rock was to make your own music and even I w eloved a lot of the bands who just copied the punk bands we didn’t want to do that. We wanted to go our own way but still be a punk band, a punk band as we understood it was to be something really original and I think we achieved that!
During the years you were together, looks like you have toured quite all around. What were some of the peaks of the Membranes being on the road? Did the Membranes toured together with some other bands as well?
Touring was very important and we would be the first Death To Trad Rock band to go to many of the towns in the U/Europe and America- people didn’t always understand the music that we were trying to make and the levels of intensity that we would play it at- we were quite far out on a limb but we nearly broke through in the UK- we were mainstream TV programmed the Tube and had several national music paper covers etc- we preceded the American post hardcore scene of Sonic Youth, Big Black etc by a couple of years- we mainly headlined gigs- there were not many other bigger bands that we could play with and we were evry much involved in the underground- we would take out all the new bands from the Death To trad Rock scene with us on tour (all these bands are written about in my Death To trad Rock book)
I have come across to so many interviews with different bands/musicians who mentions the Membranes as a huge influence… It’s always the music + the attitude. What could you say attitude wise the Membranes had different that most other punk rock bands lacked?
That’s nice of those bands to acknowledge us! I guess at one time we were the noisiest and most extreme band of our time and we played music with a level of insanity that was unusual in the UK- our attitude was what we believed punk rock was- we would employ all the punk rock ethics - the idea that the band and the audience were the same community- looking back now I guess we were pretty original and that can inspire people! We also had a lot of energy- an energy that would transfer to people and we would encourage people to make their own music and their own art- we did our fanzine, ‘Rox’ which featured many of the bands as they started- quite often their first piece pf press- the fanzine was quite over the top- a spew of ideas, writing and stupid jokes…(I could send you a jpeg of it if you want) we wanted to turn the music scene over and were quite ambitious even though we had no money. I guess we were a catalyst band- one of those bands that inspired people…
What was recording for “Kiss Ass Godhead” with Steve Albini like? How did you meet him? Was he a fan of your music when you met him? It was his early career. Did you see that coming that he was gonna get this big as he is now?
Steve was already a fan of the membranes he told us that in 1985 he made a trip to the UK and tried to get in touch with a handful of bands and one of them was the membranes but he couldn’t find our number which tells you a lot about life in the pre internet times! We met him in 1987 when Big Black did their first UK tour. I loved the sound of their early records and figured he could do a great job for the membranes- we had made some great sounding records and some that sounded just OK. This was before he was known as a producer…by the time we got in the studio with him to record Kiss Ass Godhead he had worked on a couple of other records like Slint and the Pixies.
It was great working with him- we shared a lot of very similar ideas about music. The first thing we did was four tracks at Steve’s house in the suburbs of Chicago. Our drummer couldn’t make it because he was knocked back by the visa people! So we had to use the Big Black drum machine which was a huge wooden box- I’ve never seen a drum machine like it! the tracks sound great you can hear the door creaking in the room!
We then finshed the album off in Leeds and Steve ame out to do it there- we all splet in this damp cold room in Leeds and went into the studio to to the album by day…he did agreat job even if the studio was falling apart!
Kiss Ass Godhead was when we got the sound perfect and songs of love and fury was pretty good as well— songs of love and fury got the best reviews- even rolling stone made it one of their top ten albums of the year- when I look back at the press we got I cant believe that we didn’t end up being massive but I don’t think our record labels were big enough to make that push and that’s what music is always about…
In all these years, up until the ATP Festival, has there been any times where you wanted to get together and start performing again as the Membranes?
I am so busy that I never thought about it! When we got asked to play ATP it was like a bolt from the blue and I agreed straight away to do the gig and when we started rehearsing it sounded great…I like doing things on the spur of the moment and the membranes paying ATP felt right and it was great to play that kind of music again!
How have your recent gigs been? Both, the ATP, and the Manchester gig you played… How does the crowd react? Do you have old Membranes followers or is it more a mixture of young kids who are into you now?
The crowd was a real mixture..At ATP there were youth there who had never thought of the Membranes and thought we were an amazing new band…there were also lots of old membranes fans there and it got quite emotional! The Manchester warm up gig was great- we only mentioned it on facebook and people came from all over the country to check it out- someone even flew in from Moscow to see it!
