Flying in the face of fashion

Mar 14 2005

“We’d known Andy for years; he was in Sergeant who supported us on a couple of tours. He lived just down the road from Steve and their parents were best friends. He used to come and watch us rehearse when he was ten and Steve taught him to play the guitar. He’s always been around us so he found it easy to fit in.

“I was a bit nervous about at first but I hoped he’d fit in because his sister’s married to my brother.

“We gave them the songs we wanted to do on the tour and by the time it came to the first rehearsal it was like they’d been playing them for years. I think we’re better now than ever as live group. I don’t know why we pissed around with piano and organ players on stage before when we always should have had Andy instead!”

How their contribution as writers and singers will shape the band in future remains to be seen but things are already clearly fluid in terms of the OCS sound.

While Everything Comes At The Right Time, a song Fowler admits is his least favourite on the album, opens things with a signature OCS guitar sound, from thereon musical diversity seems to be the key word.

Originally a folksy acoustic number tune with a vague Latin rhythm that dates back to 1993, God’s World has been resurrected (with new lyrics after Steve Cradock accidentally recorded over the original tape) as a distorted bluesy number featuring Carleen Anderson on backing vocals, I Love You tips the hat to Fowler’s mom’s favourite singer, Roy Orbison, while, perhaps the album’s most unexpected track finds drummer Oscar Harrison taking lead vocal for the first time to sing My Time.

“He started playing it on the piano and did a demo at Steve’s house while I was in London,” says Fowler.

“I heard it and said that’s got to go on the album. The thing is Oscar’s so bloody shy. I remember when he joined The Fanatics, we were rehearsing and suddenly this harmony came from nowhere. I looked round and it was Oscar. He’d been in the group for three months and I had no idea he could sing. My next trick is to get him to do it live!”

And then, by way of yet another musical mood, Move Things Over even finds the band getting into late night lounge crooning.

“That actually comes from a song called Oh, The Fascination of You,” reveals Simon.

“It’s an old 30s song I used to sing with my dad when I was learning to play guitar. It has diminished chords which I also stole for the chorus of The Day We Caught The Train.

“You see, it pays to listen to your dad.”

It certainly sheds a new light on the “dadrock” term that’s been slapped on the band, but then there’s quite a few surprises for those who’ve firmly pigeonholed their influences and preferences under the general “mods” heading.

Revealing that the music he’s listened to most over the past ten years has been by Fairport Convention and their interconnected families and that his favourite purchase last year was Richard Thompson’s reissued Henry the Human Fly, folk is clearly playing an increasing role in Fowler’s musical life.

There may yet be a solo folk album in his future but for now those influences are clearly finding their way into the band.

Indeed, with Simon having contributed harmony vocals for Kate Rusby’s Underneath The Stars album, her musical partner, John McCusker, repays the favour by providing violin on This Day Will Last Forever, a rousing folk bar room stomper that I tell him sounds like Chas ‘n’ Dave.

“Excellent,” he laughs. “I’ll take that as a compliment. I love Chas’n’ Dave. In fact Dan Sealey’s dad is Dave Sealey who was in Cosmotheka with his brother Alan who died a few years ago. And his best mate was Chas Hodges.

“I was meant to speak to Chas one night but I was drunk and I thought that if I start then I’ll either invite him on tour or ask him to join the group, because that’s what I’m like.

“But I always wanted to have Chas ‘n’Dave as a support band. Them, a classy stripper, then us.

“No one took me seriously but then, ooh, who goes and gets Chas ‘n’ Dave as support? The Libertines and everyone’s going, ‘oh what an amazing idea’.

“That was my idea, ten years ago!” And who said Ocean Colour Scene weren’t ahead of their time?

* A Hyperactive Workout for the Flying Squad is out on Sanctuary on March 21 and Ocean Colour Scene play Wolverhampton Civic Hall on April 14.