++ Let’s go back in time. What are your first music memories? Do you remember what your first instrument was? How did you learn to play it? What sort of music did you listen to at home while growing up?
My first music memories were the records I heard at home, usually my Father’s Irish music and the records he played every Sunday afternoon.
As the youngest of five, my older siblings brought many records into the house in their teenage years. This ranged from Two Tone bands, The Jam, The Smiths, The Human League, Dexys to even more Irish music such as Planxty and the Pogues that my brothers and sister also loved !
This led to me picking up the mandolin as my first instrument at 8 years old and largely playing Irish traditional and folk music until my early teens.
There was an Ukrainian lady who played mandolin during mass at the church we went to and she taught me the basics of the mandolin for about 6 months or so.
I progressed playing along by ear to the folk records we had in the house.
At the same time as this, my uncle had bought my sister The Beatles Red and Blue albums on cassette; they probably made the biggest impression on me in terms of forming a lifelong love for melodic guitar pop.
++ Had you been in other bands before The Fantastics? What about the other band members? If so, how did all of these bands sound? Are there any recordings?
In my early teens during 1986 -1988, I learned to play guitar and joined a school band with friends playing covers at social clubs and weddings. Also in that band was Sean who played keyboards at the time, he went on to play bass in The Fantastics.
++ Where were you from originally?
We were all from Derby, in the East midlands.
++ How did you all meet? How was the recruiting process?
Sean I met at school when I was 13 and he was 15 and then he joined the covers band I mentioned before.
I met Justin through an art class at school when I was 14, we had a shared love of music. The school band came to an end when I was 15 and when Justin and I left school in 1990 we both went to college to primarily study art.
Around this time I was mainly playing guitar on some of Sean’s songs and ideas which were based around his synthesisers and sequencer and some of these songs eventually got on some local Fanzines and tapes.
Sean was a few years older than me and Justin and had already been at college for a few years. We all socialised together and went to pubs, clubs and gigs in Derby and Nottingham.
Justin and I were also studying music at college and we were drawn to the music department facilities, they had a basic studio with 4 track cassette portastudios. From here we started to demo formative original material.
We met many like-minded people at college through our art and music courses and that led me to meet Stuart, sharing a room with him on an art trip to Paris. I found out that he could play guitar as well, so through 1991 Stuart, Sean and myself started to get together regularly, playing some songs I had written and with Sean now on bass.
Our drummer at the time was a friend of a friend and although competent, really wasn’t into the same type of music as the rest of us and didn’t really gel with the music we were listening to at the time.
This was mainly American alternative bands such as Dinosaur Jr and Sonic Youth as well as Teenage Fancub and My Bloody Valentine.
On needing a new less fancy and less roto tom obsessed drummer, Justin had started to play drums and joined in with rehearsing and playing with us during autumn of 1991.
Fantastics were born with myself on guitar and lead vocals, Sean on bass and backing vocals, Stuart on guitar and Justin on Drums.
++ I do know that after The Fantastics you were in the amazing Screen Prints. Would you say there are any similarities between the bands or not?
The main similarity would be that even then, as my first proper band and as the main songwriter in Fantastics, I wanted to have melodic pop songs at the core of the sound.
Whilst there are obvious major differences in that the Fantastics were a snapshot of our then love of the loud alternative noise bands of the time, in some of the earliest rehearsals we chose to cover Bananarama’s ‘Robert De Niro’s Waiting’ and were drawn to a classic pop sensibility.
There was certainly an intention to meld the two together in Fantastics. We were aged 17-19 and the energy you have at that age is certainly apparent on tracks that were recorded during our rehearsals.
Screen Prints formed in 1997 after Justin and I moved to Manchester.
After five more years of life experience, our tastes and record collections had expanded, resulting in Screen Prints being a more mature and considered project in relation to sound and arrangements, but still with a pop sensibility at the heart of it.
Justin had also started to write songs, he also sang and played other instruments as well as drums which inevitably added to the Screen Prints sound.
++ How was Derby at the time of The Fantastics? Were there any bands that you liked? Were there any good record stores? Or what about the pubs or venues to go check out up and coming bands? Also were there any bands that you liked?
Derby was then, and probably still is now, a very heavy metal and heavy rock obsessed town. If you weren’t musically into that, you were inherently a bit of an outsider.
That was certainly the case in 1991/1992 but fortunately around that time one of the record stores, Way Ahead, had a new manager who steered it away from metal and heavy rock to more alternative genres, stocking US imports from independent artists and labels and also more UK independent bands.
Other interesting records they stocked were things like Pebbles compilations of 60’s garage punk.
Also at that time another Derby record store BPM, whilst predominantly selling acid house, hip hop and dance music, stocked the likes of Creation and Sarah records which we were also buying and into.
The Dial was a great music venue with many UK and US independent bands playing there, which we regularly went to see.
Also in 1992 the Wherehouse opened which went on to become a relatively successful venue putting Derby further on the touring circuit throughout the 90’s.
We shared gigs with several local bands and I would say our favourite local band at that time would most definitely be The Almanacs who were also college friends.
Paul and Ian were good lads with good songs and Justin also helped them out on drums on a few occasions (as well as several other Derby bands at the time such as Pathfinder and Toolbox).
Paul gave me a cassette with a collection of Almanacs songs on one side and a collection of I think his dad’s Postcard label singles on the other, as well as some Pre-Forever Changes Love tracks. That tape was a firm favourite for several years to come. I also recall they covered Wings ‘Band on the Run” which in grunge obsessed 1992 was certainly brave and something we could relate to!
Another Derby band we also really liked were The Deskimoes fronted by Nick Glyn-Davies and who I think like The Almanacs, got to release tracks on the ubiquitous cassette compilation tape with a fanzine from around that time. Nick still plays with his band Paytron Saint.
++ How was the creative process for you? Where did you usually practice?
Looking back, my memories are that the creative process for the Fantastics songs came from me writing them at home and then bringing them to the rehearsals pretty much fully formed as in intro/verse/chorus etc. and then each member of the band then suggesting and adding their own parts.
At the time I recall that I was really getting into the Beach Boys and The Byrds. Sean was great at naturally getting the harmonies and Justin and Stuart were also fans of that sound. Sometimes I’d already have a demo done on the four track at college and then would share that with the others.
Initially we practised at Sean’s flat which was in the centre of Derby, we would practise acoustically to keep the noise levels down, and then go to the Blue Note afterwards – a great club where lots of other Derby bands went to!
Once Justin had joined, we moved to rehearsing in the Arches as Justin had his drum kit permanently set up there.
++ What’s the story behind the band’s name?
At first we had the name The Fantastic Four – There were re-runs of the cartoon at that time on TV and also there was a band called Captain America that we liked.
Justin may have had a few old comics of Fantastic Four too though I don’t think the rest of us were particularly fans of Marvel or comics!
There was also a pop art element to it as well and it was all very tongue in cheek – we often did things such as coming on to a track by Slayer as intro music at some gigs.
We eventually changed our name to Fantastics (probably fear of getting sued if we hit the big time!) and did most of our gigs with that name.
++ Also you have this cool logo using the Fanta imagery. Is this new? Or was this used back in the day? Who came up with it?
I think that added to the pop art vibe we were going for.
Sean was solely responsible for this at the time and so I asked him :
“That Fanta logo was originally used in the early 90s.
I was in a supermarket and noticed the Fanta orange bottle, and realised the first 5 letters of the band’s name were already done for me, all I had to do was fill in the rest!
At the time there was no such thing as photoshop or illustrator, so I had the label enlarged on a colour photocopier (which were relatively new and very expensive at the time) at a local copy shop called Derby Canon Colour Copy Centre or D4C.
I then traced the letters, cut and pasted (physically with scissors and Prit stick)and also used dry letter transfer sheets called Letraset for the rest of the text.
I’ve since redone the logo in illustrator, but was not nearly as much fun!
We also had a set of t-shirts done with the logo, again printed by D4C.”
++ Who would you say were influences in the sound of the band?
On listening to the Arches rehearsal tape for the first time in many years , it was very apparent to me that we had a few core contemporary influences at the time.
Firstly the overall wall of loud open chord strummed guitar was our version of Dinosaur Jr, Neil Young’s Weld LP and God Knows it’s True era Teenage Fanclub.
Secondly the songs, harmonies and structures came from a time when I was getting totally engrossed in ‘64 – ‘65 Beatles and Beach Boys; in particular I can hear a big ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ LP influence on those songs. Definitely channelling that feel anyway.
I was also really getting into Phil Spector and his girl groups around then but not the paranoid obsessive behaviour and guns!
By mid 1992 we were getting into different bands as you do at that age, but for me I also recall listening a lot to Big Star Third album as I had picked up a second hand vinyl copy in Way Ahead records. I hadn’t realised that the on trend Big Star records at that time were the two first ones.
Third is still one of my favourite records to this day and can certainly hear the influence of some of its more melodic moments in those Fantastics songs.
We also all enjoyed Matthew Sweet’s Girlfriend LP that year and covered a song from it at the last few Fantastics gigs.
Yes, that’s right. It’s a shame we never properly recorded our songs in a studio or even on a 4 track.
The Arches EP is essentially a rehearsal at the Arches one night where Sean had the idea of taping our set at the time live to his cassette deck.
He brought down a little line mixer and a few cheap microphones and we just tried to get a reasonable balance of all the instruments after running through the first few songs.
This was made very challenging given how loud we played and not hearing each other without headphones or monitors.
There were other songs on the tape but they were just us having fun and running through covers of Neil Young, The Vaselines and My Bloody Valentine when Sean had popped out to pick up his girlfriend ! Thankfully they’ll never see the light of day.
In terms of more Fantastics songs than those released on the Arches EP, I think we had by the time we played our last gig another 5 songs (Chequered Shirt, Beat Girl, Mick Johnson – named after the Brookside character, Always Wonder and Baby I Don’t Go There).
It was in Sean’s possession thought lost many years ago. On Sean locating it, he transferred it to CD and sent copies to us all.
During the lockdown in the early part of 2021, I thought I’d have a go at cleaning it up and trying to rebalance it as best I could using some techniques I’d discovered through doing the Screen Prints stuff.
