Supergrass - The Last Hoo Ha

Fri 18th Jun, 2010 in Features

“I think that’s what we all liked about music in the first place – it’s communicating in a language that no one understands properly…”
Mick Quinn (from the Supergrass Is 10 DVD)

As dusk descends on the 17 glorious years of loony shenanigans, dreamscapes of harmonies and wonderfully unidentifiable emotions gifted to us all by genius Oxford outfit Supergrass, we head over to the Motherland to bear witness to their very last UK show, have a wee chat with uber-bassist Mick Quinn and, well, maybe cry like a baby. Oh Supergrass, Mr. Wayne Newton said it best when he said: “Danke schoen, darling, danke schoen!”

It began as just a regular ol’ day at the office. I was (pretending I was) typing emails, wishing I was actually somewhere like Barbados, or still asleep in my bed, or in Alex Turner’s dreamy arms… when suddenly disaster struck. Steve telephoned – and the tone in his voice instantly told me the news I was about to receive was most decidedly bad. “Are you sitting down?” he asked me. Oh shit. “Who died?” I blurted out in wild panic. Then came his devastating answer: “Supergrass.”

Their farewell statement read to me like an obituary: ‘After many years of spreading global bonhomie, releasing a collection of classic singles and six great studio albums, SUPERGRASS announce that they have split due to the 17 year itch….Supergrass will play the following dates…’

As the mass of my foggy confusion began to subside into sad little rain clouds floating all around me, my survival instinct suddenly kicked in. Zing! Four farewell gigs had been mentioned. All occurring in roughly two months time. In the space of a week. In the UK/Europe (a fair distance from Sydney, Australia). I pondered, I thought. And then, egged on by some equally mad compatriots, I decided on one thing: I had no smegging idea how I was going to do it, but by gad, I was going to get to one of those gigs. By hook, by crook, by rocket ship – whatever it took!

Despite my borderline OTT determination from the beginning, I still had to pinch myself when, roughly two months later, I was standing outside the Brixton Academy, the ‘SUPERGRASS’ notice big and bold out the front, waiting to interview Mr. Mick Quinn, bassist in what I consider to be one of the best bands of all time. One of my all-time heroes! Pinch, pinch, pinch! Surely, this was some kind of incredibly cool dream? Had the copious amounts of dodgy plane food I’d consumed done something funny to my cognitive processes?

It certainly felt like it when legendary Foo’s drummer Taylor Hawkins (Taylor Hawkins & The Coattail Riders were playing support) walked out of the production door and proceeded to light up a fag, casually chatting with my partner in crime / photographer Eloise about the smoking ban and the resulting overpowering loo smells now deodorising our pubs. But the most surreal moment came as Mick sidled out through the door, shook hands with us, and asked if we wanted to find a café nearby for our interview. You know, like it was perfectly normal.

We wandered down the brilliantly haphazard Brixton Road and headed into ‘The Rest Is Noise’, a fantastic and roomy yet cosy café/bar filled with Rastafarians, bald blokes, and generally rather inneresting-looking characters.

Whilst sheer disbelief remained a constant (throughout my entire trip, actually), my nervousness quickly evaporated – Mick is an extremely lovely and laid-back bloke. He unwittingly put us all at ease as we sat down to have a chat.

So, how was he feeling on this, their final tour? A bit emotional?
“Yeah! I mean it’s been very busy, so it’s quite difficult to have time to reflect actually on what’s happening, which is strange. But we played the first gig in Glasgow, and I did find myself in the middle of songs thinking quite heavily about what we were doing when we were recording it, and sort of getting quite emotional on stage, and then having to stop thinking about that, ‘cause I’d start hitting bum notes.”

Bum notes, chuh! Quinn couldn’t play a bum note if he tried. His beefy, striding bass lines are somehow simultaneously earthy and celestial – seriously, the guy is so musical it’s almost weird.

Like so many other fans around the world, I wanted to know more about the reasons behind the sad split – but rather than the big doomsday event I had dramatically envisaged, I received a slightly surprising answer.

“There’s a number of factors involved in it – I think primarily it’s the state of the music industry, it’s more and more difficult to do music that’s creative and different and still try to sell music… There’s tensions within the band about trying to keep it going in a commercial direction, so you can pay for the road crew and keep it at that level, or just saying, ‘to hell with all the money’, and just trying to do something really creative.

“Coupled with that we have been going for 17 years and it’s incredibly difficult to do something new within the same format. We’ve struggled for years to try and move beyond Britpop and the perception of Alright and the big singles at the beginning and do something different but also carry our fanbase with us…”

Had the success of lead singer Gaz Coombes’ and drummer Danny Goffey’s ‘side project’ The HotRats been another contributing factor to the demise of Supergrass? “Yeah, I’m sure that didn’t help. I think me and Bob [aka Rob Coombes, keyboardist extraordinaire in the group and Gaz’s big brother] were surprised at the scale of The HotRats initially, [but] we were kinda quite philosophical about it. We thought, you know, it’s fair enough, they can kinda get it out of their systems and it’s good for the band. But I think it did take a bit of momentum out of the band, but that’s again understandable, and not something to worry about too much.”

While news of the band’s split had triggered varied responses, ranging from, Mick told us with a bit of giggle, “I thought you split up ten years ago” to “I’m gonna come round and beat you up”, but he has been “more surprised by the amount of response you know, there are still a lot of people out there who are still sort of into the band, so that’s nice.”

Ahhhh, but not enough people, in my opinion! From the first time that ever I did see the Alright video, I knew that this was a band that I’d been searching for my whole life. Musically brilliant, clever, nuts, funny, wonderful; fucking great in every way. Gaz, Mick, Danny, and later Rob, rendering me speechless. Wahoooo! Instead of taking themselves all-too-seriously, finally here were a band whose unbridled partiality for having a laugh was equaled only by their undeniable musicianship and prodigious songwriting skills. Shieeet, they had to be aliens or something, surely!

Upon purchase of everything they’d ever released, I was completely ecstatic to find my suspicions confirmed – Supergrass were that extraordinarily rare and wondrous thing: a perfect band. The exquisite chord changes and harmonies they put together are nothing short of sonic spells – a sure testament to the magic they have all said in the past they feel whenever they play together. Their music can take you to another world. Life On Other Planets, not only an album title but a deep meaning

The gig at Brixton was just another testament to this magic. They showcased their back catalogue in reverse order, with great video footage chronicling the making of each record. It was an extremely moving homage, lump in the throat kinda stuff, the crowd cheering and reminiscing along with these introductions – it was almost like a real-life version of their Supergrass Is 10 DVD.

They started with a rollicking Diamond Hoo Ha set, moved into a slower more acoustic set with Road To Rouen, an up tempo Life On Other Planets, a beautiful and mixed set of the Supergrass album, a darker and very kicking set for In It For The Money, and ended with a fast-paced buckets-of-fun I Should Coco. I was hugging strangers, singing and shouting along, we were all along for the magic carpet ride flying alongside stars, moons, and planets.

Highlights included Moving (the crowd went m-e-n-t-a-l), Tales Of Endurance and my absolute favourite Late In The Day. Best moment ever was in the last set during Lenny (when only the original three members were left on stage) – Gaz and Mick went right up to Danny’s drum kit to rock out – the looks shared between them all were absolutely fucking heartwarmingly lovely.

Let’s time travel back a little to our big noisy café. While I found out plenty of interesting tidbits from our chat (Mick was most starstruck when meeting David Bowie; his best rock’n’roll moment was drinking the plane dry on a flight to Brazil with The Cure’s Robert Smith; oh, and Danny sings lead vocals on one track on each album – in fact they all seem to switch about all the time!) I really wanted to know a few final things before our time was up.

Firstly, what’s next for them all? The HotRats have indeed been active of late (recently performing music from The Virgin Suicides with Air in Paris), and it’s also been announced that Danny will temporarily be sitting at the skins for Doherty’s Babyshambles.

And Mick? He’s been busy with his own new three piece, dB Band made up of himself on guitar & vox, ‘Fab’ (aka Paul Wilson) on bass (“an old school friend” of Mick’s, and a “good sparring partner to play with”), and young Aussie drummer Mickey Dirt-Smith (“he’s just very hungry and very energetic, a bit like Danny years ago, but different to Danny, you know, he’s got his own style”).

Mick himself goes by the stage name ‘Barry’ in the group – “Barry is just a nick name I’ve had for years. I thought I’d use it as a stage name for the dB Band as my friends yell “All right Barry!” at me during gigs and it makes me laugh.” And what are Barry’s hopes for the band? “We’re not trying to make any money out of it, or make it too big, we’re just enjoying it and just trying to find unusual things to play… hopefully we’ll get a bit of European festival stuff out of it, ‘cos that’s probably the thing I’ll miss the most is the travelling around the world, and seeing different places.” Fingers crossed Mikey brings them home for some Down Under touring – early noise emanating from this rocking combo indeed promise more of the same sonic delight!

Lastly, all this talk of the future and the past had made me wonder – how did Mick want Supergrass to be remembered? “Ah – fondly? Um, I dunno, I think we’ve got a good body of work, we’ve made some nice records… so that’s what we’ve left behind. When I was growing up… we’d go out and find old 60s and 70s records and the very fact that there was no press about them, we didn’t read the interviews, and we didn’t have our perception altered, ‘cos people don’t come across particularly well in interviews, they’re much better with their music, and you’d just have these records that you were left with. That’s hopefully what will happen with us, people will find these records and listen to them, without everything else, and just form their own opinions about what the music’s about and enjoy it for what it is, and that’s the best way to get remembered.

“But, you know, I think In It For The Money is probably my favourite record. That was a struggle and a joy to make that record, but I put a lot of myself into (it) and whenever I put it back on I can hear that – and that’s good enough to leave behind, and a lot of people don’t get to leave that behind, so I’m happy enough with that.”

I began to realise he was absolutely right – the split of the band did not mean the end. Supergrass will always live on through their utterly brilliant body of work – there is so much for music fans, new and old, to discover, if you only keep looking! The dreams, beauty and good times woven by their tunes are far from over – plus, I’m still holding out for the reunion. Hey, if it’s good enough for the Spice Girls, why not?

After my rocket ship had returned me to Sydney, I found this quote from Danny, claiming he was behind the band’s name
“Although the others will dispute it, it was me. We were Theodore Supergrass. And the idea was the band would be a little black character, and we wouldn’t ever have to do interviews. We’d get the questions in advance, script the answers and then animate Theodore Supergrass answering them. But, it cost too much money.”

Woah! Hold the phone! Could it be that Supergrass were even more ahead of their time than we all realised? I emailed Mick asking if it was possible Supergrass have been the very first animated superstar band, a la Gorillaz?

His response: “Danny came up with the Theodore bit but it was Gaz’s older brother Eddy who came up with Supergrass. No idea where he got it from but we liked the sound of it and started using it straight away. I don’t remember the animated person idea but maybe Damon read that interview all those years ago and now owes us lots of money. It’s a thought.”

Damon, if you’re reading this, we’re onto you mate.

Photo credit:Eloise Campbell