Interview with John Robb (2/3) By Steve Rudd

(1/3) (2/3) (3/3)

We had to calm down their security forces a couple of time as they piled into the crowd and caused a load of grief, the kids and punks are great over there, they have so much energy and optimism, Russia is changing fast and sometimes the old guard are getting bit uncomfortable with it. Being on the road you meet a lot of people - it's a great way to get to know a city, hang out all night, rush round the museums, check out the stone circles, try and grab everything, cram it into your head, meet everybody, see everything and play the gig as well...

Do you think that the UK music presses take enough notice of you and your music? (I personally think that Goldblade is one of the most under-rated bands in the country and I really wish that the NME and Q - and all the other magazines of that calibre- should guys far more column inches than they currently do. What say you?) We got press attention when we started but the system is about new bands and mega bands - no-one else gets a look in, it's not just our problem, also most media is run by indie music lovers so you will always get told The Strokes are the most important band in the world when they can't even get a quarter as many people as let's say System Of A Down, it's a weird lopsided view of what goes on.

On the other hand everything carries with or without the music press - bands like The Levellers and New Model Army or The Stranglers hardly struggle for people going to see them despite being ignored by the media ... NME is about new bands ... post-Strokes bands who come from New York and we don't really fit in with that ... I know some of the people there and I think the editor has done a good job turning the paper round ... I think we should get more press space because we have something good to say and we have had our influence over several bands who are big these days.

Given that the title of your latest album is Rebel Songs, does it transpire that you guys are all rebels at heart with genuine punk spirit gushing through the veins? Of course! We also understand the inherent contradictions in being a rock n roll rebel, it's a all part of a selfish greedy culture aimed at flogging booze to kids but we hold onto some sort of idealism and at any opportunity we sneer at corporate culture, the way they have sucked the soul out of contemporary life, the way that councils will spend a fortune bleating on about fly posting whilst not giving a fuck about let's say Manchester having one of the most traffic polluted city centres in Europe, the way that they run the city centres for rich outsiders in yuppie flats and no one else, the way that Tony Blair sold out Labour.

We were on the anti war marches, we wrote a song on the new album (war) Not In My Name about it, rich overpaid lazy cynical old music journos sat on their flabby arses writing for Sunday supplements may sneer at this kind of idealism but sod them. When you aren't song witing, recording or touring with Goldblade you are an acclaimed writer. How do you find the time to juggle both your music career and your spurts of writing? I get up and get on with it. I like writing and I like rocking, it's all one and the same, it's all about expression. There is no time to waste. I'd rather do this creative stuff than sit in the pub.

Your expansive retrospective about the nineties was a non-fiction masterpiece that exhilaratingly covered all manner of topics that were culturally important through the decade what on earth first made you think; Yeah, I'd like to write about what both myself and other people I know experienced through the nineties?

Thanks for your kind words. People kept saying that the Nineties was a decade where nothing happened and I could have sworn there was a lot going down in the decade so I wrote it all down and made it into a book. So much went on that I could hardly fit it into the book, could have done with a book twice as big, I was quite fascinated by all the contradictory pop cultures all running at he same time. It's not as easy to define as the Sixties and the Seventies and for me that makes it better, the same sort of thing has continued now: there is no easily definable pop zeitgeist moment any more and I like that. Whatever music scene you want is out there and is rudely healthy.

Continued ...next page

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