The Wave Pictures - Snapshots of Happy Moments

You're still quite young, yet you already have many years of artistic career behind you, and it's almost hard to keep count of your countless albums and collaborations. So let's start with a real classic: when and how did you first feel the urge to write music?

I was young when it happened, but I don't remember any feeling of urgency. I just remember a desire to play a new game, which consisted of pretending to be a rock'n'roll musician. I must have been about eight years old when I wrote a song called "Rocking All Around The Clock", quite heavily influenced by Bill Haley's "Rock Around The Clock". My song was pretty literal and not remotely poetic. It went: "It's one o'clock: rock! It's two o'clock: rock!...", and so on, all the way round the clock, and then the chorus went: "We're rocking all around the clock". I remember I loved all the rock'n'roll musicians who occasionally showed up on TV here in England, especially Elvis Presley, and I must have seen Bill Haley too. That's the first song I remember "writing", though I doubt a pen or a piece of paper was actually involved in its creation. I went from pretending to be Spider-Man to pretending to be Bill Haley. Maybe the next day I went right back to Spider-Man. I'm not sure, though, that this "debut" has anything to do with what happened afterwards. I always played guitar and wrote songs, and what happened at a certain point, when I was about sixteen, was that I started writing songs that were recognisably Wave Pictures songs, and then a sense of urgency became part of the process, and I find I still feel that same urgency today.

To trace your story we have to go back to 1998, when in Wymeswold, Leicestershire, you and Franic Rozycki (the Wave Pictures' bassist, ed.), together with drummer Hugh J. Noble, formed Blind Summit, a cover band that played songs by Jonathan Richman and Dire Straits. Can you tell me something about your beginnings? What do you remember from that period?

Hugh Noble was my best friend in the world, and his parents had bought him a cheap drum kit and bass. I mean really cheap, beat-up second-hand stuff. We started playing music and we knew we needed someone to play bass, so Franic joined us, since he was my other best friend. He was first and foremost a friend, and only secondly a bassist. He'd never played bass in his life! But he joined us anyway, and later learned to play bass, and it worked out brilliantly, because I think Franic is the best bassist I've ever played with or heard so far. At the start, though, he had absolutely no idea what he was doing. I remember the times we'd make a huge racket upstairs in my parents' house, and I remember it as a very happy period. We spent a lot of time together, the three of us, listening to music and watching films.

We played covers of songs by lots of other artists, not just the two you mentioned, but also, for instance, Bob Dylan, and we'd do things like Mudhoney's "Touch Me I'm Sick", just noisy riffs that kids that age have fun improvising over. Around that time I also started writing songs. My teenage memories are all tied up with that band and those two guys and the songs that were starting to take shape. It was a very creative and exciting time for me. But ours was a band that anyone else would have found terrible! We entered "battle of the bands" type competitions and played gigs in pubs and so on, but almost nobody liked us. Ours was a band that, over the course of about two years, played live maybe ten or twenty times, and every single show was awful! Once, the owner of a pub we'd just played got up on stage after the gig and said into the microphone, turning to the crowd: "I don't know how you can applaud something like that... it was horrendous!". It was a band that, in some way, was bound to lead to the band that came after it. Hugh left, and Franic and I grew closer and figured out what we really wanted to do, and became The Wave Pictures. Either way, the Blind Summit experience was fun in its own way, for as long as it lasted. Blind Summit did a ten-minute version of the Monkees' "I'm A Believer", packed with long solos, and sometimes we'd all play the solos at the same time... it was an explosion!

At some point Hugh left the group to go and study philosophy at Exeter, and the band changed its name to The Wave Pictures. How did this name come about, and what does it mean?

It's just a name that sounded good, it was the name we'd been looking for. I took it from an art book: Zoe Leonard had done a series of photographs of the sea and titled the show "Wave Pictures". I said to Franic, "What do you think of the name 'The Wave Pictures'?" and he liked it, and so the name stuck. We needed to change our name because Blind Summit couldn't get gigs anywhere! So we had to change the name to get some shows: "No, we're not that awful band called Blind Summit, we're a completely different group called The Wave Pictures, honestly!"

After a relentless rotation of drummers, the Wave Pictures finally settled into their definitive line-up in 2003, with the arrival of Jonny "Huddersfield" Helm. How did your collaboration come about?

He was at university with Franic. For a long time we used a different drummer every time we played. We had a few steady ones, but they all left. Me and Franic scared them all off! Anyway, we had a gig to play and Franic asked around and found this guy, Jonny, and asked him to get behind the drums and join us. I met him on stage, he just walked up and played the drums. That's how it started. For the next gig, Franic asked around again... and found Jonny once more! Later we did some recordings and invited Jonny along for some of them. At first it was always like that, just one thing at a time. Jonny was in another band at the same time too. Eventually it all came together around the Big Move to London. And we asked Jonny to move with us and he said yes. So we all moved to London together, and that's really when the band began.

What are the ingredients of the chemistry that developed between the three of you, allowing the band to gel and hold together over time?

I don't know what we naturally possess that makes it all work, but I know what we do to make it work. It takes a lot of talking and discussing, for me. It takes playing together a lot, for all of us. It's not a finished process, we're still a "work in progress". It never ends, you never stop learning, and that's the beauty of it all.

How would you define your music?

It's a rock'n'roll band that writes its own songs and uses guitar solos.

Your first albums were all self-produced CD-Rs, containing home recordings done "live off the floor" and generally sold at gigs. A very immediate and spontaneous approach, free of overstructuring and constraints, which to some extent can still be found at the core of your more recent output, and which seems to reflect, more broadly, your whole way of conceiving and living music. Is that right? How do you personally relate to music?

Yes, it's important to us and you've described it very well. I'm not drawn to overproduced music, I appreciate a live, direct sound, I like being able to hear all the different musicians. I like spontaneity. I like older music, far more often: Hank Williams, 1960s Bob Dylan, Big Bill Broonzy... I like mistakes, I like John Lee Hooker, who doesn't change chord when the rest of the band does... who basically never changes chord at all! I can't listen to modern recordings purely for pleasure, because they've manufactured all the music that comes out of those recordings. They don't match my taste, I like folk music, I like field recordings, things that sound natural to my ears. And when we play it's the same thing, the music has to show that looseness and that ability to interact with each other. I hate bands these days! They rehearse until they can play a song "perfectly" and then they play it the same way every night, they play the same set every night and play each song in exactly the same way, a replica of some recordings they spent twenty years making. They're NOT musicians, they're performers, they have no love for what they do.

Music is something you live, something you breathe, or at least it is for me, and you have to keep that vitality in everything you do. Even for us it's a struggle: people come up after gigs and say to me, "Why didn't you play this song or that one?" They don't understand that I'm just trying to keep everything alive and interesting for us. I would never sing a song just for the song's sake. I'm a person, not a machine. I don't understand when people started aspiring to be a machine, and that's exactly what performers do to themselves. Everything you hear on commercial radio sounds to me like it was made by a bunch of robots. And bands have done the same thing to themselves, out of fear of trusting their own judgement.

Your first album released on a label was "Sophie", in 2006. From "Sophie" onwards the band's sound became more mature and self-aware. Looking back at that time now, what do you see?

I generally look back fondly. It's my nature. "Sophie" is a very particular, dark little memory for me, a letter arriving from another time. I wish I'd made an album for every month. I really could have, and I'd be happy if I had. "Sophie" is one of hundreds of different albums we could have made. It's the one that happened to us and ended up sticking its head into the record business system a little. It doesn't feel any more meaningful to me than the things that were never released.

How have you changed since then?

It's impossible to say. We don't conceptualize what we do, we don't plan. We focus on what we're doing at any given moment. We've changed, I'm sure of that, but I couldn't say exactly how much. I'm fairly sure we've gotten better!... but not entirely sure.

Your latest albums were recorded at Simon Trout's Soup Studio. What do you particularly appreciate about that studio?

What I mainly appreciate about that studio is Simon. He's a talented man. A good friend. And the studio is also affordable and accessible.

Some of your songs turn up in alternate versions across multiple albums, sometimes belonging to different projects you're involved in. It's really interesting to watch you at work breaking down and rebuilding your own songs. How do you approach that process?

Without as many second thoughts as your question suggests. To me a song is a song - it exists independently of its performance and its recording. A lot of people nowadays, when they say "song", actually mean "recording" or "performance". The two things get completely bound together through certain actions. There's no song that's distinct from one exact, specific recording or performance. That's where you run into bands who play the exact same things every single night. That's easy-listening music, to me. It doesn't fit my approach to things. I believe a song is a song. Its performance, its recording - that stuff comes afterwards. The Wave Pictures always play "the song". There are a few arrangements and things we always do the same way, but there are small variations too. It's much closer to how folk musicians work. We don't completely take songs apart the way jazz musicians do - we don't have the skills or the inclination for that, even though I love the attitude of jazz musicians. It's more like what folk musicians do, or what rock musicians did before the '80s. It's how Bob Dylan or Neil Young used to be. They'd play a song in lots of different ways. So sometimes we do redo a song in a new recording session, because we want people to hear it who might not have had the chance to hear the old version, and also because on that particular day we simply feel like playing it.

You've had a prolific ongoing collaboration with Herman Düne, which has produced many projects and records, and an equally vital and intense partnership ties you to Darren Hayman, frontman of Hefner, who actually turns up on your latest album too. In light of these and other collaborations, where would you place yourself within the current musical landscape?

I'm baffled and bewildered by music today. It's all crap. Wherever we go there's some new garbage band playing, or some new garbage DJ filling the air. If I turn on the radio, or watch a music channel on TV, it's all garbage. That's how it seems to me, at least. The overall quality is very low. Heart and soul have been sold off, and now we're left with a copy of something that once had heart and soul: a simulacrum, an image of an image, but not the image itself.

In any case, The Wave Pictures have been really lucky, and we've had the chance to make friends with some talented, funny and genuine musicians: Stanley Brinks, Herman Düne, Darren Hayman, Jeff Lewis, The WoWz, Howard Hughes and Adam Cotton, Turner Cody, The Fishermen Three, Freschard. Whenever we can, we play with these people, and it's always rewarding and fun to do so.

Your lyrics are absolutely brilliant and never trite, able to "blend the sublime and the ridiculous" without ever losing style. How do they come about? Where do you generally find inspiration?

Writing draws inspiration from itself. It's a fun thing to do, keeping the writing going. All sorts of things can flow into it - you throw down a whole bunch of ideas, as many as you feel like throwing down, and then afterwards all you need is a bit of revising. Sometimes I write a song in a single sitting, and those tend to be more specific songs, ones that don't need any revision. All the songs on my solo album were made that way. Other songs, on the other hand, take a longer time to arrive. But there's more than one way to get a song, and as you go on you keep learning more and more different ways. I don't need to wait around for inspiration to strike. I don't really believe in inspiration. It's more a matter of asking yourself whether what you truly want at a given moment is to write a song. If I want to write a song, I can just do it. It's more a matter of work and practice than inspiration.

Your songs contain several references to Italy (places, situations, characters...) and you even dedicated an album title to an Italian city ("The Airplanes At Brescia", ed.). What's your relationship with our country? What do you think of the Italian music scene? Is there any band or artist you particularly appreciate?

I don't know anything about the Italian music scene. I don't know any Italian bands. And I don't even know your country all that well, but I'd love to visit it more thoroughly.

The Wave Pictures' latest album, "Susan Rode The Cyclone", has recently come out in Germany, Spain and Italy in a limited-edition LP pressing. Why those particular countries?

We didn't choose them, they chose us! And we're really pleased to have put out "Susan Rode The Cyclone" on vinyl through record labels in those three countries.

The album shows a certain continuity with the band's recent work, and "Susan Rode The Cyclone" clearly shares with it a choral quality in the songs and careful attention to arrangements. Here, though, the music seems to go more "straight to the point", to be more "impactful" compared, for instance, to the previous "If You Leave It Alone". Do you agree with that reading? What do you think are this album's main distinguishing features?

I love "Susan Rode The Cyclone" a great deal. I'm so pleased with how it turned out and so proud of the band's work. Just the other day, listening to it, I was thinking it's a wonderful collection of songs, put together in a wonderful sequence. It covers a good range of the different styles we like to try our hand at, whereas maybe the two albums before it were each one-sided in their own way. I don't think "Susan Rode The Cyclone" is better than the other albums we've made, but I do find it a bit more representative of The Wave Pictures. I have to take my hat off to everyone who took part in making this album. I listened to it again the other day for the first time in a while and I was thrilled by it!

It's really wonderful to see how much of this album comes purely from the three of us playing together. It's a really nice feeling to have. There are fewer overdubs than on the previous two albums. It's a really good album, if you ask me!

Yes, that's exactly how I feel about it too. Honestly, I'm really pleased! I think everyone did a great job. I thought the vinyl looked great and sounded great too.

You're currently touring Europe to promote the album. How's the tour going? Are you enjoying yourselves?

Absolutely, yes!

Your live shows keep drawing bigger crowds of devoted fans. How do you experience the relationship with the audience when you're on stage?

The relationship with the audience varies. It's always interesting, though. I like trying to connect with the crowd, but it's not always possible. Sometimes the audience pisses me off! Other times I really enjoy it. It varies from show to show, from place to place. It varies a lot. The band is just one of the various parts - there are all these different elements that contribute to a night.

Released alongside “Susan Rode The Cyclone” was your first solo album, “Happy For A While“. A work that lets us (re)discover an acoustic David Tattersall, certainly less known to most. How did this album come about? Do you think it might be representative of a more “intimate” side of you?

I wrote the songs in a short space of time, specifically for that album, and recorded them in Berlin with Stanley Brinks and Clemence Freschard. I was really in the right mood to do something like that. That album has a sweet, melancholy feel to it, which I like. But I remember when we recorded it, it was a party! I remember Stanley playing his saxophone, we were making a huge racket and improvising with him on electric guitar. I'm happy with that album. It's absolutely not a “Wave Pictures” album, it's me with my own songs.

Your solo debut came out pretty quietly… how come?

Of course I'd love for everything I've done to be heard by everyone, but it's not up to me to decide what people should focus on and what they shouldn't. That's down to the labels. I make the records and decide how to make them, and I decide what to play live at shows. But apart from that, it's not up to me. You just have to keep going and keep doing your own thing. Hopefully, over time, these things will find their place, but it would be very sad for me to have to stop making music just to have enough time to promote everything equally. I'm not sure I have the right attitude, but I try not to worry at all about what happens to the recordings once I've made them.

Both “Susan Rode The Cyclone” and “Happy For A While” were released only on vinyl (except for the German pressings of “Susan Rode The Cyclone”, which include both LP and CD). Why such a “niche” choice?

Vinyl rules!

To finish, I'll draw on a quote. The Scottish writer Allan K. Chalmers said: “The great essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love and something to hope for”. So, paraphrasing that, I'll ask you: what are “the small essentials” for being “Happy For A While”?

I like smoking and drinking beer. I like sipping cups of tea throughout the day. I like having a good book on hand, usually a crime thriller. I like reading a bit of philosophy and also a bit of poetry. My favourite writer is Charles Bukowski. I like going to the swimming pool and playing darts. Travelling is nice too.

(22/05/2010)

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