Terrorvision: 'I always think songs write themselves'
But this time the gap has been even longer, with 13 years elapsing between their 2011 outing Super Delux and their new collection, We Are Not Robots. Singer Tony Wright, however, is unconcerned about making any particular statement with this record. “I don’t think we write songs to try and make a statement; I think when we have enough songs that make a statement we put an album together,” he says. “There’s no pressure from a record label saying you need a new album every 18 months, so it’s like having the ability to make your first and second album again and again rather than going onto the awkward third.”
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Hide AdHe feels there are “plenty of bands out there that only make records because they’ve got record deals, and a lot of them sound like whatever’s trendy at the moment”. In a career that’s lasted over three decades, Terrorvision have never been one of those bands, he argues.
“Personally, I always think songs write themselves, they just happen to tap you on the shoulder and say, do you want to sing this?” he says philosophically, recalling that the dozen songs on We Are Not Robots were assembled in spare moments in rehearsals for tours. “I think you’ll notice, we announced we’re going back out on tour and putting an album out and Oasis have panicked,” he adds wryly. “We can’t compete with them, really; they were the Status Quo of the 90s.”
The album’s opening tracks, Electrocuted and The Night Lemmy Died, pay homage to hard rock band Mötorhead. Elsewhere, Terrorvision show their poppier side with Opposites while Daydream and Shine On lean into classic rock. Wright believes they’ve always been a broad church musically.
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Hide Ad“When we got together to start with, you’d have Shutty (Ian Shuttleworth) and he’d be into AC/DC and Mötorhead, then you’d have Mark (Yates) who’d be into Mötorhead and the New York Dolls, then you’d have Leigh (Marklew) who’d be into the New York Dolls but also into Cheap Trick and Kiss, and then you’d have me, who liked a bit of Cheap Trick maybe and I liked Elton John, so we all came from these different angles and that’s what we brought together. It’s quite hard writing a song when you bring in a hard rock Kiss riff but then someone’s like, if you put a bit of Bowie in there it’d be better. You write something you’re passionate about and then for the good of all it’s taken apart and put back together again.”
He remembers that back in the 90s they might have been a “long-haired, loud rock band with punk sensibilities” but they’d happily watch gigs by Portishead or Happy Mondays. “You’d see people all over that just had different backgrounds,” he says. “The Prodigy were great for that – to me, The Prodigy were the next Led Zeppelin. They didn’t sound anything like Led Zeppelin but that was the point.
“We always utilised whatever we had at our hands,” he adds. “And if you don’t because you’re hung up that someone might say ‘You’re not a rocker, you’re not a punk’, there is no rules, I can do what I like, so that’s probably where it comes from. The more people say ‘you can’t do that’, the more we’re going to do it.
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Hide Ad“I have a mate who’s in our of our peers, a contemporary of Terrorvision, quite a successful rock band and I was out with him and I play a lot of acoustic stuff (solo) – I like Elton John, I like Neil Young – and he said, ‘I wish I could do that but I’m too punk’. We’re both 56 and I said, you’re too punk? He said, ‘Yeah, I need loud guitars’ We, Neil Young’s not punk, then? He is because he’s not held by the confinement of genre. So to say that you are too punk means that you’re in line with someone like Susan Boyle rather than someone who truly was punk like George Melly.”
Wright says he recalls people being disappointed when he did his band Laika Dog that didn’t sound like Terrorvision. “But what was the point?” he says. “If I wanted to sound like Terrorvision, I’d do a gig with Terrorvision. I’m not going to go out and get a load of different members and try to sound like Terrorvision, it would be ridiculous.
“We’re always celebrating the thing that was the reason why we were stood at the wrong end of the playground when we were nine, that was what we carried through our musical career. The same attitude – don’t tell me what I am and what I’m not, what I can do and what I can’t.”
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Hide AdHe admits his tastes have changed as he’d got older. “I might listen to more folk music,” he says. “I’m not on classical yet, but it might just (be the next step). I’m never interested in hearing a band that sounds like another band, I’m more interested in the organ grinder rather than the monkey. There are good bands out there now – The Virgin Marys are a cracking two-piece who write brilliant songs, they’re amazing. So yeah, I’ll see bands that are doing what we set out to do in the 90s and they’re doing it now.
“There are a lot of people who just do music for a job and then there’s some people like Terrorvision who are lucky to play music because we did and we ended up doing it for a job. We didn’t get a record deal because we looked good.”
Wright is looking forward to Terrorvision’s autumn tour. “It’s good because it’s bringing out an album that no-one’s heard yet, like when we first started, we were going and playing to people that just went to gigs because there were a lot more clubs to play in the late 80s and the 90s, there was more culture everywhere, especially in Bradford. You could do a tour of Bradford (then) and we’ve lost a lot of that which is a shame.
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Hide Ad“So when I look at the list and I see somewhere like The Lemon Tree in Aberdeen and I think we played there in 1992, I can remember because it was so hot the ceiling was wet it poured onto you but you could stand at the front of the stage and pull the wiring because it was so low, it was rock ’n’ roll and if you can’t do that you shouldn’t be doing any of it. Those that get it know exactly what it’s about, those people who don’t get it are going to be horrified.”
We Are Not Robots is out now. Terrorvision play at Project House, Leeds on Tuesday September 24. https://www.terrorvisionofficial.com/