Your band name is fairly unusual, how did it come about?
Pretty much out of the ether! We picked it out ‘cos we liked ‘The Go-Gos’, but in our youth­ful inno­cence, we didn’t know about the other ‘Go-Gos’. We just switched the o’s for a’s and it kinda stuck. It’s a pretty stu­pid name for a band admit­tedly, but then so is ‘The Beatles’

What are your roots how did the band kick off, and evolve into what it is today?
Well we’re from all over the place… Somer­set, Stafford, Sao Paulo and Tokyo, so it’s a mir­acle that this happened at all. We’ve all played in shit loads of dif­fer­ent bands prior to this, and some­how stumbled upon each other 4 years ago. Our paths would cross at vari­ous shows and then I ran an ad look­ing for musi­cians. These guys walked in and it was like…‘Have we met?’. We just star­ted gig­ging straight away, first in Hol­land, open­ing for a Nir­vana trib­ute band. We figured that if we sucked, we’d suck in Hol­land, so our friends wouldn’t laugh at us. We wrote and toured and wrote and toured again, bat­tling all the way, fight­ing tooth and nail for every single break we’ve had. Look­ing back, it’s clear that we are a very dif­fer­ent band today than we were in the begin­ning. The exper­i­ence has toughened us as indi­vidu­als and gal­van­ised us as a unit.

Pre­sum­ably your Tokyo link is why you’re so big in Japan?
Well, I wouldn’t say we were all that big in Japan, but it’s nice to hear! We played 4 shows over there, open­ing for the Wild­hearts back in 2001. It was an amaz­ing exper­i­ence and they really took to us. We’ve been try­ing to get back and play shows in sup­port of the album, but our label made it more or less impossible for that to happen.

So, who are your main influ­ences… when you’re sit­ting there with a pen and pad, whose writ­ing inspires you?
It depends on what I’m doing. If it’s lyr­ics, which it largely has been for me over the last few weeks, then I’ll listen to stuff like Patti Smith, Chris Cor­nell, Bowie, Steely Dan, Joni Mitchell… loads of stuff. In simple terms of bands that I love, I’d go for the likes of Alice in Chains, STP, Jane’s Addic­tion, The Beatles, Nuno… just any­thing that is real and hon­est and passionate.

So who did you ori­gin­ally get your music taste from?
I guess it was my par­ents. They would always listen to the Beatles, Toto, Joni Mitchell, Tears for Fears, Steely Dan… some of it was dodgy, I know, but hey. The cool thing was that from the earli­est age they’d let me listen to whatever i wanted. I still remem­ber my mother queueing up to buy Appet­ite for Destruc­tion for me, after I was refused due to the ‘par­ental advis­ory’ sticker!

That’s pretty cool. So, of the people you quoted as influ­ences, I wouldn’t have said you soun­ded much like any of them. What do you think it is that gives your music its ori­gin­al­ity?
That’s an inter­est­ing ques­tion. I really do have very eclectic taste, and the other guys in the band are equally ‘out there’ with their record col­lec­tions. It’s just like one big bizarre melt­ing pot. The key ele­ment though, is the song. I don’t care if it’s played on a fuck­ing tuba or an elec­tric gui­tar, if it’s a great song and it has integ­rity, I’ll dig it. (does a tuba have integ­rity??) I always try to think (to use a cliché) out­side the box when I write. I always like to sur­prise myself and I try to have to cour­age to do some­thing unex­pec­ted and dif­fer­ent each time. There can be a huge amount of pres­sure placed on an artist to con­form to his or her genre’s strict guidelines, and it’s total bull­shit. The only way this world is going to keep mov­ing for­ward is by the power of new ideas. I don’t think the album got any­thing like the sup­port it deserved from the label. The sad real­ity is simply that not enough people were exposed to the record, so its impact was sig­ni­fic­antly reduced. I was happy with the work we did on it. It sounds big and clear and punchy. Russ did a great job, but it’s in the past to me now. We aren’t the same band any more, the shit we’ve gone through just to sur­vive has changed us and our music.

It’s a shame how it’s so often the case that great bands get skipped over because they’re not main­stream. Did you find the trans­ition from unsigned to signed dif­fi­cult, and were you wor­ried about how the record label would treat you?
I’ve been deal­ing with record com­pan­ies since I was 15, and I’ve been burnt before, so it’s fair to say I was cyn­ical going into the deal with Sanc­tu­ary. We’d achieved so much on our own without any label sup­port that it almost begged the ques­tion ‘why?’. All of a sud­den you sense your artistic con­trol and free­dom being extin­guished and your music becomes noth­ing more than more num­bers in the monthly accounts. The busi­ness has no heart or soul, it’s just one big equa­tion, and if your num­bers don’t add up, you’re fucked. It’s such a shame because it robs people, bands and punters alike, of poten­tially life chan­ging musical experiences.

A lot of bands say that the best thing about mak­ing music is the tour­ing. True?
It’s cer­tainly the most hon­est thing about music. You can’t beat get­ting out a play­ing in front of people. It’s so power­ful, as any­one who’s ever stood on a stage and delivered a mes­sage will attest.

Cuban cigars are a pretty acquired taste. Where and when did you acquire it?
I’ve been into cigars for a few years. I can’t remem­ber exactly where or when I first smoked one, but I can remem­ber the cigar! It was a Monte­cristo no. 2. Ask any cigar guy and he’ll tell you that’s quite a cigar for someone’s first smoke. I just got hooked, but I have to keep a handle on the habit… being both a singer and skint!

And do you drink? If so, what’s the cra­zi­est thing you’ve ever done while drunk?
Yeah we all like to drink. The cra­zi­est (maybe stu­pid­est) thing I’ve per­son­ally ever done was get drunk, strip naked save for my gui­tar and 4 inch plat­forms and run around the freez­ing cold streets of Shibuya, Tokyo at 3 in the morn­ing. I’ll never know how I didn’t get arres­ted for that.

Do you have a celebrity crush? And who is it?
My girl­friend will be laugh­ing right now. I do have a bit of a thing for Char­lotte Church, sad but true. She’s just so dirty isn’t she?

I’m allowed to pub­lish repor­ted speech, right?! Can you plug a new or small band, prefer­ably someone our read­er­ship won’t have heard of, that you respect?
Totally. Your read­ers need to check out a band called New Breed. They’re from the Mid­lands and they have some cool shit going on. They’re a bunch of lun­at­ics, but they’ve got some great songs and they can play! I don’t know their web­site address, but I’m sure can find it on Google. They do fuck­ing everything them­selves, with no help from ‘the man’ at all. I really respect a band who does that, because it takes some ser­i­ous doing.

Well, thanks for your time, it’s been good chat­ting to you.
Pleasure’s all mine. Thanks for your time. Hey, with rhymes like that I should be a songwrite…oh.