Adverts - One Chord Wonders

Among the protagonists of '77 punk, Tim Smith was the one who most embodied the figure of the songwriter and the poet: against every stereotype, with the passion of a twenty-year-old, he wrote music and lyrics to express his inner world, giving us some of the most intense pages of those years: "One Chord Wonders", "Bored Teenagers", "Gary Gilmore's Eyes", "On The Roof", "Bombsite Boy", "No Time To Be 21". "TV" Smith, together with his girlfriend Gaye, formed the Adverts in 1976, and less than three years later the band had reached the end of the road: in the "no future" generation, the Adverts were the most incandescent shooting star of punk-rock.

It's hard to say which rock genre his music belongs to: just as in the Adverts days, his output is marked by a strong independence of spirit and a very personal stamp, especially in the song lyrics. These are the qualities that made the historic "Crossing The Red Sea With The Adverts" (1978) so powerful, one of the most extraordinary and underrated albums in the history of rock.

What did "punk" mean to you and Gaye? How did you feel like you belonged to it, back then?

In 1976, when we started playing with the Adverts, we didn't even think of ourselves as "punk". "Punk" was a term that had been adopted for the New York scene and for the bands playing at CBGB's. Still, we felt we were part of a movement, even if it didn't have a name yet; we soon started using the term "punk" ourselves too, but only because nobody came up with a better name for what was happening: some young people were tired of mainstream music and decided it was better to do it themselves. We wanted to bring honesty and energy back into rock music. It didn't matter if the music industry wasn't interested in us: we'd have done it anyway.

You formed the Adverts after seeing the Sex Pistols on stage. Yet the Adverts soon developed a distinctive style and a particular worldview. Unlike the "no feelings" stance, you sang about your own feelings, about being "bored teenagers looking for love". Was that an alternative way of being "punk"? Or did being "punk" back then simply mean independence of spirit?

What makes the first wave of punk-rock extraordinary is that no band copied the Sex Pistols, and there were no rules about what your look or your sound should be. All the early bands - Clash, Damned, Buzzcocks, Adverts - were completely different from one another in the style of their music, in their lyrics, in the way they dressed and presented themselves to the audience: that's what made the early months of punk something so incredibly exciting.

I think your lyrics are among the most extraordinary of those years: you were able not only to express yourself, and something of that era, but also something universal about being young. What was your relationship with lyrics? Where did the inspiration come from?

The inspiration came from watching how the outside world was going and how my inner world was going. I've always loved words, and I started writing poems when I was at school. When I was still a kid, I got my first guitar and discovered that music could give words an even greater impact: I dropped poetry and devoted myself to songwriting. Lyrics have always been very important to me - they're the main reason I wrote some of those songs.

I'd like to ask you about a few songs from "Crossing The Red Sea", starting with "One Chord Wonders": in that song you talked about being misunderstood by the audience. Were you referring to the punk audience too, or only to the music establishment and the general public?

"One Chord Wonders" was mostly about my experience with my previous band, the Sleaze, which I played in when I still lived in the south-east of England, a few years before moving to London to form the Adverts. Back then, I was performing in front of a crowd that only wanted to hear hard-rock or pop bands... but I was already writing my own songs, influenced by Iggy Pop, the New York Dolls and David Bowie, so there was no way we could meet in the middle. It was different once I started playing with the Adverts at the Roxy: there, most of the audience was on our same wavelength and understood what we were doing. The music establishment, though, still didn't get it: our first reviews in the music press were terrible; they only criticized us because, in their view, we didn't play well enough. They didn't understand that punk was about ideas and energy, and that being a good musician or not didn't matter.

“Bombsite Boy”. What did the “bombsite” represent? What did you mean by it?

I wanted to express the idea that it's important to find a place where you can be independent from established values. We all need somewhere to rediscover ourselves, even if that place is “on a roof” (“On The Roof”) or a “bombsite”. I was trying to speak in romantic terms about unusual, uncomfortable places, because those are the most important ones: they're the only places society can't find you or control you, the places where you can discover who you really are.

One of the most recurring themes in your lyrics (“No Time To Be 21”, “Quickstep”, “We Who Wait”…) was the urgency of living, of youth slipping away fast. Were you expressing something very personal, or something more general, shared by the atmosphere of that time?

As I see it, the first rule of songwriting is that you have to be honest and talk about things that truly belong to you: I was trying to capture the feeling of reaching the end of my youth, becoming an adult. When you write honestly about yourself, you then discover that what you're expressing is shared by other people. Life is the same journey for everyone…

“Gary Gilmore’s Eyes”: I won't ask you to tell me its genesis again, since you've surely talked about it many times before (readers can find information in the monograph). What strikes me as unusual about the song is its “uncanny” atmosphere. Although there are no explicit literary references (and I consider that a strength), it reminds me of some Romantic “visionaries” like E.T.A. Hoffmann, Mary Shelley or Edgar Allan Poe, but with a modern sensibility. “Eyes” are also a very powerful symbol, one that Freud himself took up in psychoanalysis…

Actually, I conceived “Gary Gilmore’s Eyes” as a sort of modern gothic story, so I suppose there was a connection with what you're describing. That song was an exception in the Adverts' repertoire: it was the only one with narrative elements, and the only one based - albeit loosely - on a real news event. I wanted to highlight the theme of how we perceive the world, but at the same time I also liked the idea of drawing inspiration from stories like “The Hands Of Orlac” or “The Tell-Tale Heart” (Edgar Allan Poe).

Let me ask you another “literary” question… I noticed you just used the word “romantic”: do you think the punk movement, and the Adverts in particular, embodied a new form of “Romanticism”? I mean… the early punks were against the rules, but the early Romantics were also against the rules, against models and the “ancients”. In both cases, it was a movement of young people wanting to break with the past, who often also died young. The way I see it, a song like “No Time To Be 21” could have been written by a Romantic poet, had he lived in the Seventies… What do you think?

To be honest, I never thought I had any particular connection to Romanticism, even though most of the songs did express an emotional approach to the world rather than an empirical one. I suppose there was also a kind of “idealism”: the belief that, despite life's hardships, in the end we can make it through and maybe even become better people. Maybe I really was a romantic without knowing it! But if you want to know which poets I read as a young man, rather than poets like Keats or Byron, I preferred T.S. Eliot, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Wilfred Owen, Bukowski, and some of the Beat poets like Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti. One thing's for sure, though: when the New Romantic movement took hold after punk, I hated it with all my heart!

Speaking of which… In “Safety In Numbers” you spoke critically about the “new wave” of English bands. Did you see so-called new wave as something that stripped punk of its spontaneity?

I found it curious that they decided to call “new wave” what used to be called “punk”. It seemed like a decision made by the music industry, since the word “punk” was too “dangerous”. But the whole point was that it was supposed to be! It was supposed to be combative and overturn the rules of the music industry. A song like “Safety In Numbers” was a sort of warning to the audience: I wanted people to remember what mattered about punk, instead of buying into the “new wave” version that the media and the music industry were trying to sell them.

Which bands helped shape the musical roots of the Adverts?

Like a lot of other members of punk bands back then, I listened to Iggy, New York Dolls, Bowie, Roxy Music, Velvet Underground. I grew up with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who and plenty of others. I think I learned something about songwriting from all of them, but by the time I formed the Adverts I'd more or less found my own personal style, and I don't think those bands had much influence on how we played. Back then, we put the band together because we wanted to bring our own music to life.

Did you write the music for all the songs? How did the arrangements come together?

Let's say I wrote almost everything: the lyrics, the melodies and the song structures. I remember showing Gaye what I wanted for the bassline, then working with Howard on the guitar, and he'd add his own lead line. We rehearsed as a trio for a long time; then we found a drummer who contributed his own arrangements, since I didn't know the first thing about drums.

Were there any bands directly influenced by the Adverts, or bands in which you've recognized something of your own sound?

I don't think I've ever really recognized the Adverts' style in any other band, but in recent years quite a few people have told me they were influenced by us: lots of punk bands, obviously, but also musicians who are quite different from one another, like the Stone Roses or Henry Rollins, who told me they were fans of ours. 

I'd also like to talk a bit about Gaye. Her contribution to the punk/dark style was important, but also to the role of women in rock. Today, plenty of girls play in bands, and her look is still widely copied. But maybe this contribution isn't always recognized… what do you think?

Gaye gets a lot of appreciation and respect from people who know who she is and understand what her contribution was. Even though she stopped playing thirty years ago, she's still an icon for what she did in the Adverts, and if she goes to a punk gig now, people ask her for autographs and photos. Wherever I go around the world to play, people always ask me about Gaye.  

Who were her role models back then? I know she was a huge Iggy Pop fan…

Iggy was definitely one of her heroes, but I don't think you can compare Gaye and Iggy: each had their own style and their own kind of charisma. Punk was an era of "no more heroes," so even if you liked other musicians, you didn't try to imitate them. It was about finding your own way of expressing yourself, not emulating someone else. 

Did she stop playing immediately after the band broke up? If so, why?

Yes, she never picked up a bass again. She only started playing because she loved music and liked the idea of being in a band. Reality turned out to be very different from what she'd imagined: it was hard, exhausting work, with endless travelling, and often you couldn't eat or sleep properly… and then there was having to put up with abuse from critics, and sometimes from the audience too. She never liked being seen as a sex symbol, or being discriminated against just because she was a girl… but unfortunately that kept happening. Worse still, after two years as a band we had no money and could barely scrape a living. When the Adverts split up, Gaye decided it was better to go back to simply being a music fan rather than a musician.   

Do you have any regrets about the Adverts era and how things turned out?

I don't think so. Still, it's a shame she couldn't stop the Adverts from splitting up: the band had internal tensions, there were line-up changes, the audience didn't take to our second album, and our label shut the door on us… it was time to leave the stage. Afterwards, it took me ten years to try to get back into the music world. Those were very hard times, but the experience of carrying on when nobody seemed interested gave me a great strength and independence that led me to who I am today, so I have no regrets.

It's good to know that "do it yourself" is still possible without any support from the music industry: the DIY ethic was important in punk, and today the internet has made it even more feasible than it was back when punk exploded. In 2008 it's genuinely possible to be a musician without having anything to do with the commercial side of the music industry.  

Last April you went back to the Roxy to play "Crossing The Red Sea With The Adverts", thirty years on from your first shows there. How did it go? What did you feel?

It was a really exciting night. Interest in the Adverts seems to keep growing, so I wanted to celebrate the 30th anniversary this way, showing the audience how those songs sound live. The Adverts have never reformed and never will: that event was the closest thing to it, thanks to a group of musicians who had real love and enthusiasm for "Crossing The Red Sea". There was still something of the genuine spirit of '77 in the air that night.

(16/03/2008)

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