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i n t e r v i e w 1 |
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from Carbon 14 magazine, issue #29, April 2007 - By Falling James |
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The name is Bond, Beki Bond, although you might know her better as her punk rock alter ego, Beki Bondage. The teen Beki found herself performing onstage with Vice Squad in 1979 in her hometown of Bristol, with few female precedents to fall back on besides Suzi Quatro, the Runaways and X-Ray Spex. The first wave of British punk was over, and it had already been a year since the Sex Pistols crashed and burned in America. The scene was turning increasingly hardcore, fast, violent and almost exclusively male . . . and yet here was Beki B., howling foreboding scenarios of death and destruction like the end-of-the-world epic “Last Rockers” and a sinister version of David Bowie’s “Saviour Machine” with a distinctively powerful voice that moved from scarifying and searingly guttural to melodically pure and even heroically rabble-rousing. At a time when the homoerotic rugby entanglements of the new suburban frat-jock punks were chasing most women from punk’s previously coed, pogo-friendly pit, Beki was calling everyone back into the circle with headbanging rants of self-affirmation like “Stand Strong, Stand Proud” and the funny-but-chilling imprecation “Rock ’n’ Roll Massacre,” where she whistled quite cheekily in the graveyard of her classic-rock idols. I love how she – along with other tough-but-tender gals like Wendy O. Williams and Chrissie Hynde – speaks up for supposedly unfeeling creatures and that she recorded one of punk’s earliest animal-rights songs, the 1981 anti-corporate-waste-and-cruelty broadside “Humane.” And she does all of this without wimping out or watering down her subject matter. As a transvestite, I also adore how she showed a weakness for freaks on her swinging 1998 glam-rock ode to London drag queens, “Westend Stars,” and I like how she’s expanded her punk range to encompass digressions into metal, pop, psychedelic trippiness and reggae. As she mentions later, she’s always had something of a Xena thing going on (even before there was a Warrior Princess). Vice Squad sounds as aggressive as the music you’d expect Xena to make (if you can ignore, for the sake of this metaphor, the reality of Lucy Lawless’ real-life attempts at a more-mainstream music career). Ms. Bondage looks tough and powerful and she could probably kick your ass, but she’s also such a charismatically gorgeous Amazon-superheroine-pinup type that punks of all genders tag along and follow her around at shows and desperately cling to her like star-struck little groupies. After Vice Squad’s stomping set at Safari Sam’s in east Hollywood last October, Beki swaggered out of the club followed by half the crowd, then jumped on the back of a waiting punk biker woman’s motorcycle and tore off down Sunset Boulevard looking like a veritable biker-gang goddess messiah while we all swooned helplessly in awe in the parking lot until she rode back triumphantly a half hour later from who-knows-where. Her femme fans tend to not only dress in her iconic style (mean black boots, fishnets, spikes, studs, tattoos and a black jacket), but many of them have stopped listening to their parents and world leaders and have already gone out and started their own rebellious bands. Next time you trip over some panhandling punkette runaway in the gutter on Hollywood Boulevard, chances are the words “Vice Squad” will be scrawled somewhere on her ripped denim jacket.
Beki left the original version of Vice Squad in the early ’80s, although the rest of the group carried on under that name for a couple years with Lia, an unconvincing replacement. Beki, meanwhile, experimented a little with a new project, Ligotage, before rocking it up again with Beki & the Bombshells. It was in the Bombshells that she met guitarist Paul Rooney, who helped her resuscitate Vice Squad in 1998 with the excellent, relentlessly heavy punk/metal album Get a Life.
Did Vice Squad end up playing last year at the British Invasion festival in San Bernardino or did the riot break out before you could go on? Was everyone in the band safe from harm? I read that several neo-Nazis reportedly tried to stir up trouble but instead one of them was stabbed. Then the police came in and reportedly began randomly beating everyone in sight, angering punks who then vandalized nearby fast-food emporiums. What really happened?
BEKI: The riot broke out just as we were about to go on. We were just putting the guitars on stage when it all kicked off, so we didn’t get to play. It was a LONG way to travel to end up not playing, but at least none of us was hurt, which is more than can be said for some people. We heard various conflicting stories about what started all the trouble and what happened in the aftermath. Obviously, there was some damage to property, but that’s probably a reaction from those who saw people, including children, damaged by tear gas and random violence.
Vice Squad seems to hit these shores so rarely, maybe once every five years or so, and now this. Any chance you’ll come back to this hellhole, whether that’s Los Angeles specifically or America in general?
BEKI: We’re hoping to be touring the USA again this autumn. Our new album will be released on SOS records in the U.S., so we’ll be touring to promote the new album and to play to our most appreciative American audience!!
Has Vice Squad released anything since 2003’s Rich and Famous? And are longtime drummer Tony Piper and bassist Michael Giaquinto still involved?
BEKI: Yes, we have a new album called Defiant, which will be released August 22 [2006] in the States. Tony and Michael (a.k.a. Mildred) are still aboard the Ship of Fools!!! [Since this interview, Tony left the band and has been replaced by drummer Kev Taylor.]
Is it ironic that Rich and Famous came out on a major-label like EMI, considering that the early lineup of Vice Squad were on EMI and used to play the Sex Pistols’ song “EMI”?
BEKI: I think it’s more ironic that a certain U.K. “punk” label has released songs I wrote and which I own the copyright on without my permission!! The owner of said label lives in a big house in the country having made lots of money. I prefer to work with a company which admits it’s there to make money but has a reputation to live up (or down!!) to so won’t steal our songs and lets us have some control over what is and is not released. I have a pretty good idea who sold the pretend punk label my songs, and not surprisingly it’s someone who doesn’t play anymore. EMI were actually the only label who wanted Rich and Famous -- no other U.K. label was interested. EMI were never that bad, we just loved to hate them at the time. We have been ripped off far more by indie labels, ex-managers, etc.
Vice Squad has covered at least two Sex Pistols tunes, “EMI” and “Belsen Was a Gas.” Did ever you get any reaction from the Pistols? And how much of an influence were the Pistols on you?
BEKI: The Pistols had split up by the time we covered those songs and we didn’t get any reaction from them. We were kids, so we thought the Pistols were great fun, and I always wondered why the U.K. tabloids made such a huge fuss about a bit of swearing on national TV when there was (and still is) so much injustice, violence and poverty in the world. It dawned on me then that some people are more interested in preserving their veneer of respectability than living in the real world. I loved the fact that the Pistols had a go at the British monarchy. I’ve never seen anything regal or noble (or even human) in blood “sports,” though I’m pretty sure the Pistols had a go just to be controversial. It has to be said that Steve Jones had a humungous guitar sound -- you can’t beat a Gibson Les Paul!
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Is Rich and Famous’ “Dead Doll” about Johnny Thunders?
BEKI: No, but I can see why you’d think that. It’s actually about punk and goth boys who hang around London’s Camden Town experimenting with drugs and eyeliner.
You sang the sarcastic chorus “the war machine rumbles on” (from “You Can’t Buy Back the Dead,” which first appeared on Get a Life) back in 1998 before the invasion of Iraq. What inspired the lyric at that time, and what do you make of George Bush and Tony Blair’s current savior machinations?
BEKI: There’s always a war going on somewhere in the world, so it’s a subject which is usually lurking in my subconscious somewhere and often comes out when I’m writing lyrics. That lyric is actually part of a poem that just came out one day, and a lot of it seemed to fit, so it came quite easily. As for Tony Blair and George Bush, they are perfect examples of how absolute power corrupts absolutely. Both say they are Christian yet are a million miles from the teachings of Christ. However, it has to be said that prime ministers and presidents don’t really run countries, it’s the global elite, huge multinational corporations, which really run things, and unfortunately however much integrity a politician has when she or he gets into office, the multinationals are still there wielding enormous power and influence.
What inspired the apocalyptic scenario in “Last Rockers”?
BEKI: My doom-laden adolescent mind!!!!
I tend to believe that it’s practically sacrilegious when a rock & roll band remakes one of its early recordings. The most polished, well-intentioned or technologically improved remake seldom recaptures the magic of the original version, even if that original was just a crude 4-track recording. It’s difficult to improve on that original inspiration, and yet the new Vice Squad has successfully re-recorded several favorites by the early lineup like “Latex Love” and “Last Rockers” on recent albums. (The one exception might be the remake of “Stand Strong, Stand Proud” from 2000’s Lo-Fi Life, which rocks out but isn’t as purely exhilarating as the faster-paced original version.) What made you decide to tempt fate by revisiting these songs, not to mention re-recording and/or reissuing some of the more recent tracks like “Street Cred” and “The Great Fire of London”?
BEKI: Actually, we were sort of conned into it! When PHD [Plastic Head Distribution] agreed to release Get a Life, they included a clause in the contract stating that that we had to give them a second album, and they insisted that it had to be mainly re-recorded old songs, so we were contractually obliged to do it. They said that it sold less than Get a Life, so they should have let us do another album of new songs. I don’t like the Lo-Fi Life version of “Stand Strong” either; we put it on because Sudden Death wanted a couple of old songs as well. There are only 2 albums I’m happy with, and they are Rich and Famous and Defiant. I think of Rich as our perverse pop-punk album, and Defiant as our no-punches-pulled-kick-in-the-bollocks album.
Vice Squad were one of the first bands to mix punk rock and heavy metal, and got a lot of criticism for it at the time. Nowadays such concerns seem trivial when one realizes how similar the two styles have always been and how much they’ve shaped each other in the past three decades. Was it a conscious decision to mix metal influences into songs like “Maid to Measure”?
BEKI: I could barely play guitar when I wrote “Maid to Measure,” so I’m pleased you think it sounds metal. To me, it just sounds like noize, which is what I intended!!! I think all my lyrics are well and truly punk rock, which for me defines our genre, but I like metal and so does Paul. Punk rock was my first love, but I don’t see punk as a confining thing, so I always thought the jibes about us being metal (no doubt started by a certain disgruntled ex-musician who hasn’t played ANY type of music for years) were pathetic. I know of so-called “punk” musicians who stand for absolutely nothing, some have day jobs which involve ripping people off, etc., and they play punk for “a laugh.” I think “metal” bands like Clawfinger and System of a Down have more in common with real punk rock than bands who just wear the bondage trousers but don’t stand for anything. I love guitar-based music and see the bands and fans as a minority who need to stick together rather than getting the hump over someone putting a minor seven chord in a punk song, because if we don’t stick together, the majority of right-wing, bigoted, money-grabbing non-rockers will have even more power.
Speaking of clashing cultures, what inspired the hilarious anti-raver anthem “Take Too Many E’s,” from Get a Life? I think it’s one of your catchiest songs, but I’ve never heard you perform it in L.A. Do you ever play it live?
BEKI: The people who used to live downstairs from us were middle class spoiled brats who thought only they could make noise and that punk rock scum like us shouldn’t be allowed to record our album above them, in spite of the fact that we make noise for a living whereas they only listened to their boring, predictable four-to-the-floor dance tunes for recreation (whilst out of their heads on E’s). I expect their tiny brains have rotted by now . . . The song was just a laugh, so we don’t play it live, but we could give it a go.
Can you explain to us clueless Yanks what Bristol was like when you were growing up, and how that city’s punk and cultural scene compared to, say, London? And what was it like fronting Vice Squad at age 15? Was that your first band or musical experience?
BEKI: There wasn’t a huge punk scene in Bristol by the time I got into it, as lots of people who were originally involved in it for fashion had moved on to being New Romantics, mods, etc. There was a pub called the Crown where a lot of second-generation punks used to hang out, it was one of the few places that would serve us. I always found London more exciting. It’s a much bigger city so [it] had a much bigger punk scene. I actually had a band in junior school, but we couldn’t play so [we] just sang. Fronting V.S. as a young girl was exciting, but I also got a lot of abuse. I was expected to stay at the front of the stage and get covered in gob while the rest of the band hid near the back. I put up with all the crap because I was so into punk, but I don’t think I’d endure that sort of thing willingly again. I adored the sound of electric guitars from about age 2, when I used to sit in front of Top of the Pops with my dad’s guitar case open in front of me, strumming the guitar inside, so I was hooked on music from a very early age. |
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Are Vice Squad now based in London?
BEKI: Yes, Mild’s been here for years, and Tone is a born-and-bred South Londoner, and Paul and me have lived here for over 20 years.
When Beki left Vice Squad in early 1983, the rest of the band continued unsuccessfully for several years with another singer. I’m assuming that the original lineup’s breakup was less than amicable. How did you react when that band tried to carry on without you? Do you have any dealings today with the early members? And was it difficult to get the rights to use the Vice Squad name once you reconstituted the band with Paul in 1998?
BEKI: It was a less than friendly split, and the managers were furious because I didn’t want them managing me anymore, so they threatened all sorts of legal stuff. One of them even went as far as stealing my Phonographic Performance royalties, so we didn’t part on good terms. He then joined the band as lead guitarist. I could hardly object to them carrying on without me as it was me who left them, but I was pissed off that they used the name and have been told they tried to pass the other singer off as me in the States. Actually, I thought she was a good singer, probably better than I was at the time because she was quite a lot older than me. But I knew she wasn’t punk and wouldn’t last long in the band. The old drummer phoned me about 8 years ago to tell me that a video was being released of our early gigs. When I said I didn’t want it going out, he said I had no choice, so I thought “No change there, then!” I was never properly asked to rejoin the old band, although it was hinted at by the guy who used to run Riot City records, who happens to be the old drummer’s brother-in-law. It would never have worked if I had because they had stopped playing over a decade earlier and had job and/or family commitments, whereas I kept on playing live, writing and recording and dedicated all my time to music. I thought of the Vice Squad name and I own it and never had any intention of passing the new band off as the original lineup, as it wouldn’t have been fair to either band. For good or bad, I am the person most associated with Vice Squad, and I’m the one who has had to live with the consequences.
After Vice Squad, Beki fronted Ligotage in the mid-’80s and then Beki & the Bombshells, which included Paul Rooney. Can you compare Ligotage and the Bombshells, and are any of their old recordings available?
BEKI: EMI asked if I wanted to release the Ligotage demos and EP, but I said no as I didn’t think there was enough good material to make an album. The Crime and Passion EP was good, but generally the whole Ligotage thing was a waste of time, as I was too concerned about being mates with the band rather than taking control and whipping them into shape (ooh, err, missus!!). Bombshells was a much longer-lasting band, and it’s where I learned about the music business and taught myself to sing. There’s nothing like years of canceled gigs, broken-down transit vans, defecating drummers, whinging bassists, stroppy guitarists, drug abuse, excessive alcohol consumption, dodgy deals, etc. etc., to sort the Rockers from the Rockless. Paul and me started off with an old 4-track Fostex on bread crates in my front room, and progressed on to 8- and 16-track and then on to computers. Every penny we earned went back into the band, but it was very, very hard to keep things going. At one point, Ginger from the Wildhearts was our rhythm guitarist, but we had a lot of lineup changes as you always get band members who aren’t really into it and who leave when they realise that you aren’t going to make them a rock star overnight. We had a gig where we had to get a member of the audience up to play bass because our bass player at the time phoned the venue to say that he was in casualty because of an asthma attack. I knew it was bullshit because I suffered from really bad asthma myself at the time (not the most convenient affliction for a singer!), but we managed to do the gig without him anyway. This sort of thing happened quite regularly, so I’m amazed that we managed to keep going all those years. But we did have a laugh and used to get up to all sorts of stuff, so it wasn’t all bad.
How did you two meet? Were the Bombshells your first band together?
BEKI: Paul came to the audition for the Bombshells. He didn’t play all that well at the audition as the manager had thoughtfully provided several crates of lager and Paul had been drinking his way through it while waiting to play!! We already knew he was a very good tunesmith as we’d heard his demo, and we already had an excellent lead player, so he joined as my writing partner.
Paul, what other bands have you been in? And who are your guitar and songwriting heroes?
PAUL: I was in several bands when I was growing up in Leeds in the north of England. I had one band called Virgin, which was a sort of glam rock & roll band where we all wore white clothes and makeup, which looked a bit strange as 3 of the members had moustaches!!!! We used to use pyrotechnics and often managed to blow fuses at the venue or set fire to the stage or ourselves. My guitar hero is Steve Stevens. I think he has a great image and plays like a demon, and more recently John 5 from Marilyn Manson’s band. When you first see John 5, you might think he’s just a goth waster (a “Dead Doll”?), but if you listen to his solo album, you’ll hear he is an out-of-this-world player who can play absolutely any style. As with Steve Stevens, that’s something that I’ve always admired: real star guitarists. As for songwriters, it’s the Beatles, the Buzzcocks, the Cure, Stranglers, Beach Boys, KISS (for their simplicity and big choruses) and Rancid. We ended up working with Lars from Rancid quite recently. He came round our house and I engineered a demo session for him on our home studio.
Does Paul generally write the music and Beki the words, or do you two mix it up? I notice that Beki plays more guitar onstage and on recent albums. How long have you been playing guitar, and how has that affected your songwriting?
BEKI: I’ve been playing guitar for about 8 years and steamed into writing tunes as soon as I could strum a few chords. Paul sometimes thinks of song titles, which is very helpful when I’m stumped for subject matter, and he occasionally contributes a line of a lyric, but most of the words are mine. He is a far superior guitarist to me (bastard!) and knows more about augmented flat third double inversions, so he tends to write the more polished-sounding tunes. If the tune sounds like an aural punch in the throat, then it’s probably me that wrote it, as I don’t do subtle!!! However, I can write very catchy pop-punk songs and have a new one for the next album called “Oh Honey,” which you’d think was a nice lust/love song until you realise what the object of lust actually is.
PAUL: I try to come up with a good riff to start with, and things generally flow from that. If inspiration doesn’t strike with a riff, then I just put a drumbeat down and work from a groove.
Paul, you’ve produced the band’s most recent CDs. What was your philosophy in toughening up Vice Squad’s sound on record, and were there any concerns in attempting to remake the early hits? And what’s with your producing nom de plume “Henry Saussinger”?
PAUL: We had a lot of problems trying to get the sound we were after on very limited recording equipment, and the turning point came when we bought an Apple Mac and new recording software. I had to teach myself how to use Logic (Apple’s recording software) from scratch. This was after having taught myself how to record on a PC. We had nothing but trouble with the PC, it was constantly crashing and much of my time was spent fighting to get it to work, which is totally unproductive when you have ideas you need to record NOW. Because I have always been into the melodic end of punk, we were heading in that direction for the new album and ended up scrapping a lot of it because Beki wanted something far more in-your-face. People tend to think it’s bound to be the male in a female/male songwriting partnership who wants everything to sound aggressive, but in our case, it’s the female!! I think it’s great that we have different influences as it enables us to be more diverse. I didn’t have many concerns about re-recording the old songs as it was about capturing the spirit in which they were written, and Beki is probably more “spirited” now than she was when she originally co-wrote them. I have a lot of silly names; “Henry Saussinger” is just one. On Get a Life, Beki credited me as “Merlin Moulinex,” and on the new album [Defiant] I’m “Bob Lords” because Beki insists that all great producers are called Bob!!! |
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In past interviews, you’ve sometimes said that you regrets the limitations of the nickname Beki Bondage, and yet you’ve also taken on sex and fetish-themed subjects in your lyrics, including “Latex Love” and the more recent “Plain Jane.” How do you deal with the contradictions and expectations with a name like Beki Bondage? And is it true that the name originates with teasing from fellow classmates?
BEKI: The name was given to me at school after the first wave of British punk. One of my classmates found a bondage mag in one of the teacher’s cases, and we liked the fetching outfits and images of a man on a chain in a swimming pool!!! We gave each other punk nicknames, and mine was “Bondage.” I ended up hating the name after I left the old band because it was used to trivialise my music and put me down. No-one was going to take a name like that seriously in the era of Bon Jovi etc., possibly because it was the fashion to sneer at all things punk. It was pretty amusing to see all the magazines who’d slagged off punk and promoted perms and insincere love songs jump on the punk bandwagon once Green Day and The Offspring broke through. I didn’t see the name as having limitations when we did the Social Chaos tour of the States in 1999. There were hundreds of girl punks who were really into us and certainly didn’t see me as some fetish object, in fact they saw me from the angle I had originally seen -- the dominatrix image, i.e., a female with the courage to stand up for herself in a male-dominated scene. I think I always had more of a Xena, Warrior Princess look than typical dominatrix. “Plain Jane” is actually about a transsexual dominatrix I once knew. The lyric came to me as soon as Paul played the riff. I’m still going to write songs about sex whether I like the name or not as we are all sexual beings one way or another (preferably in a showroom-full-of-Les-Paul-guitars-and-Triple-Rectifier-amps-smeared-in-lemon-oil way, if it’s up to me!)
What was it like when you performed with the Tubes, and how did that come about?
BEKI: I was asked by their tour manager if I’d sing “Don’t Touch Me There” at Shepherds Bush Empire in London. Then he asked if I’d do the whole tour. I said fine as long as I wasn’t required to wear any strange costumes. He said no problem. I only did two shows with them because it turned out that they DID want me to wear strange clothes and be a sort of floozy character, but overall it was a good experience and the Tubes are all very talented musicians.
Who are some of the newer bands in Britain you’d recommend?
BEKI: Refuse-All and dBd spring to mind right now.
You’ve inspired many U.S. bands over the years. Who are the American punk bands you like?
BEKI: The obvious ones are Iggy & the Stooges and the Ramones, but we didn’t inspire them as they were going long before us. I also like Sloppy Seconds and all-girl band So Unloved. There are loads more. Most of the American bands we’ve shared stages with have been really good.
Many of the early riot-grrl bands seemed directly influenced by Beki’s leftist lyrics and singing style, although Vice Squad rarely gets credited for inspiring them. Have any of those performers thanked you, and what did you make of that movement?
BEKI: While the riot grrl thing was happening, I was struggling to scrape a living from music in order to feed myself, so it didn’t have a huge impact on me. I thought it was great that women were getting out there and playing, but it was just something that was occasionally mentioned in the music press here in the U.K. It was girls getting out of line, after all, so it wasn’t really encouraged!! The girl musicians we’ve worked with in the States often tell me I’ve had an influence on them, so I always say sorry for encouraging them aboard the Ship of Fools!
I’m also curious whether you’ve ever heard any of the early female-fronted American punk groups like the Avengers, 45 Grave, X, the Bags and Red Scare in the late ’70s/early ’80s and what you may have thought of them. And, for that matter, what do you think of newer bands who are acknowledged Vice Squad fans like Piss Ant in Los Angeles and the New York Rel-X?
BEKI: I’ve probably heard all those bands, The Avengers being the one I’ve heard most. I thought they rocked. We played a lot of gigs with the New York Rel-X. I think these bands are great, though it is a bit weird (in a good way) playing with bands who are influenced by your own music and/or image. I think the musicians who made a fortune in the ’60s and ’70s take it as their due that other bands will be influenced by them, but people like me who remained underground (and skint!!) find it very flattering but a bit hard to take in.
There weren’t many women musicians in the British hardcore scene during the second-wave days with G.B.H. et al. in the early ’80s. Was it difficult being one of the few women performers in what was often a violent subculture?
BEKI: Yes, it was very hard. I only endured it because I loved punk so much. The worst thing about it then was the gobbing; you’d catch all sorts of germs from other people’s filthy habits. I’ve never seen the logic in gobbing on your own people. If you have to gob, gob on vacant-minded, spoiled-rich pop stars. The violence was pretty mindless, that’s what happens when a load of adolescents give vent to their beer-fueled testosterone. I don’t see any point in attacking your own either! A lot of the scene nowadays is still pretty macho inasmuch as you get treated differently if you’re a female. Even if you’re more intelligent and talented than your male counterparts, you’re still judged on what you look like. In that situation all you can do is judge back. I’ve heard some terrible bits of sexism and racism from highly regarded punk icons, but I try to laugh it off as I believe everyone learns their lesson in the end. Whether it’s the easy way or the hard way is entirely up to them.
Beki, you were one of the first punk rockers to stand up for animal rights. I’m curious whether those attitudes have changed over the years. Are you still vegetarian? Do you think animal-rights awareness has improved? Have you always been vegetarian, and, if not, what inspired the change?
BEKI: I am still a veggie, so is Paul. I think the animal-rights movement has become a lot bigger than it was when I first became involved. It’s a lot easier to be a vegetarian now, but there are probably even more reasons not to eat meat now, BSE for example. I was brought up to eat meat but went veggie about age 16. I have to say it’s the best decision I ever made. My attitude has not changed except that I am more convinced than ever that animals suffer in the same way as humans do and even more convinced that animal abuse is a cause of appalling human suffering; e.g., starvation in the Third World is directly linked to the meat industry, as the human population cannot be sustained when vast quantities of grain are fed to animals which are then killed for meat. I also believe medical research is being held back by its dependence on vivisection, and the mind boggles when you think of the medicines we have missed out on because the vivisection victims died and therefore the drugs never made it to human trials. Conversely, recently in the U.K. three people nearly died when they underwent drug trials for a drug which had been tested on animals and deemed safe. You cannot reliably apply scientific data gleaned from one species to another. As usual, the vested interests of the rich and powerful are put before the suffering of humans and other animals. People need to realise this for their own sake as much as for the animals.
Your 2000 solo album, Cold Turkey, gave some idea of your non-punk influences and musical range, with hard-rock versions of hits by T. Rex, Otis Redding, Gene Vincent and Jimi Hendrix. What other performers and songs have influenced you and would be likely to appear if you ever made a sequel all-covers CD?
BEKI: I thought that album stank, and it’s aptly named because it is indeed a right turkey. The record company decided that I had to do songs by dead artists, so I didn’t get to do the songs I really wanted to. As usual, they said I could do a second album of my own songs if I did the covers album. Surprise, surprise, the record company went bust before I got to do the second album!!! I would have covered Motorhead, Sam Cooke, Levy Stubbs, Slade, Little Richard and Led Zeppelin, as well as Janis Joplin and AC/DC, and I’d love love to cover “Complete Control” by the Clash as it’s still one of my all-time favourites.
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