ROCKY SHADES still delivering the goods.
How can you describe Rocky Shades to those who’ve never heard of his genre-defining party hard, rock hard Glam bangers Wrathchild? (Along with Wildside Riot and now Rocky Shades Wrathchild.) Well, he’s a living British rock legend as well as being friendly, funny, honest and very very chatty. He’s lived a life, and I mean a proper Rock ‘N’ Roll life. L.A’s Sunset Strip owes Rocky Shades a living, a shot and some God darn respect. The early Eighties saw Wrathchild get within a painted fingernail of their ultimate Rock ‘N’ Roll dream. The Donnington Monsters Of Rock Festival, American Tours and a major label desperate to snag “the next big thing”. These glittering prizes were all dangled tantalisingly in front of the band before being snatched away by a mix of timing, fate and, to be blunt, commercial sabotage. These factors all combined to leave Rocky Shades and Co sat in the gutter rather than in the Rainbow. The battle scars are still visibly on show, and the hurt and frustration in Rocky’s voice, at times during our chat is tangible. However, what really shines through from the twenty-minute interview (that lasted just under an hour) was his warmth, openness and sense of humour. So sit down, grab a brew and hang five with one of the original old skool sleazesters. Ladies and gentlemen pray silence for Mr Rocky Shades.
(Please note the interview took place two weeks before our gibbering & glorious leader announced another nationwide lockdown.)
OriginalRock.net. Let’s get it out the way early, how has the COVID-19 pandemic affected you and Rocky Shades Wrathchild?
Rocky Shades. “Well I’m a postman, so it hasn’t affected me workwise I’ve still had to go and do what I do. Band wise we have to adhere to pretty strict safety measures, we’re basically stood one member in each corner of the room, just to rehearse. Gigging wise, it ain’t happening. I went to see my sons band two or three weeks ago, and I also went to see a Motley Crue and Poison tribute: Maximum of ninety people in a big room, you couldn’t move anywhere without a mask, it was table service (for drinks) and as a concert it was, (pauses) it was just a non-runner. People have said to me, we want you to come and play, but under those circumstances, it’s just not enjoyable. I mean the bands aren’t even allowed to leave the stage area it’s like they’ve got the lurgy sort of thing.”
OR. We really are in unchartered territory going to a gig isn’t just about the band on stage it’s also the social aspect…
RS. (Cutting in) “You can’t be selfish about it and what’s happened today is young people think they’re immune from everything, so they can’t be touched (by COVID), but then they’re the ones that are spreading everything. You can’t take that mentality into a concert. I saw at the concert people hugging each other and stuff, sort of oh well, we’re okay. It’s like yeah you might be, but you might pass it on to someone who isn’t.”
OR. So how would Rocky Shades have acted if we’d had this pandemic in 1984?
RS. “(Laughing) Okay…In 1984 I probably wouldn’t have been sober enough to bother about it! I must admit in 1984 I was pretty much out of it twenty-four seven. Having said that I do remember far more than any other band member I’ve had any contact with. I wrote a lot of down, and that did help. I have got one of those type of memories that remembers trivia but doesn’t remember anything important (laughing).”
OR. As someone who’s seen every aspect of the music industry, good bad and ugly throughout your career do you think the music industry and the Arts, in general, will survive COVID-19?
RS. “My honest opinion is the music industry and entertainment in general, films, plays, TV is taking one hell of a hit. I just can’t see it getting back to normal under the circumstances people are expecting to get back to normal, it can’t, it just can’t it’s physically impossible. People say (to me), what’s the difference between how your band was during the early Eighties to how bands are now, I say, one there were places to play, there were places specifically aimed at our kind of thing, not just a Glam thing but Rock, in general, there was specific places to play. Even us (Wrathchild) in the early Eighties, we still weren’t given the opportunity to play the venues that there were in the sixties. There was an abundance of places to play and come the early Seventies when I was young and growing up, I didn’t have the money to go to all the concerts I wanted to go to, but there was that opportunity there (to go to gigs big & small). We’re not going to get that, once this Covid’s done and dusted a lot of these venues won’t exist and venue’s that do scrape through will have such stringent budgets they’re either not going to be able to offer bands decent money or just bite the bullet and accept what they can get. As we well know people want names, names put bums on seats, and if that’s the way it’s going, then the tribute (band) market will increase because that’s a damn sight cheaper than getting the proper bands in but it’s not a good sign for the business at all.”
OR. So do Rocky Shades Wratchild have any plans to record any new material and if so on what platform, record company, crowdfunding?
RS. “At the moment because everything is so unsure…I only really put together Rocky Shades Wrathchild as a vehicle to play Wrathchild classics. They’re things that I actually love and things the public ask us for, everywhere we go. Yes, we have the ability to make new stuff if we want to and yes we’ve had certain record company interest, but it’s a different animal now. At this stage of the game, we can’t even think about records because I know bands that have been doing the Pledge (crowdfunding) thing, you pay upfront, and we’ll give you this later down the line. At the end of the day, you can only sustain that for so long. The way I look at it is when we’re able to play, we’ll get out there play some Wrath’ classics. It was like when Andy Scott first hit the boards; he wanted to go out and play his own material even when The Sweet were doing their chinny chap spells he always wanted to get his own material across. So when he put his own version of The Sweet, version one, he was profiling the stuff he really couldn’t get away with playing when they were “The Sweet”. But obviously, the fans dictate how that’s going and when they’re screaming for ‘Ballroom Blitz, ‘Blockbuster’ or ‘Hellraiser’ etc, you’re going to have to put them in the set, now this is where I’m at the moment. Turn the clock back a little bit, the best band I ever had was Wildside Riot. They were the best bunch of friends the tightest musicians I’ve ever worked with. We threw a few Wrathchild songs into the set, and people suddenly went wild for it and even though our material was really really good, it was the Wrathchild stuff that stood out from everything else. A fellow lead vocalist said to me “I watched you at Hard Rock Hell with Wildside Riot and you was having a fantastic time, and then you started playing the Wrathchild stuff, and you went into a different league. Your face just lit up, and you were home.” And that basically is where I’m at with the Wrathchild stuff. Now I’m lucky in the fact that the band members I’ve got at the moment are virtually what I had with Wildside Riot and they were Wrathchild/Rocky Shades fans anyway. It was their idea it wasn’t my idea, I’m one of these if it comes my way I’ll do it. I’ll guest when someone’s doing a Wrathchild song, and I won’t make a song and dance about it. These guys said, why don’t we just go out and do the Wrathchild stuff and I said, I don’t mind, I’m easy going and if you guys wanna do it then…Rather than it be a dictatorship, which we know some bands can be, I said everyone in the band write down two Wrathchild songs you really want to play and I’ll write down two songs that I really wanna play and then the rest of the set will be the songs we’ve got to play, ‘Stakk Atack’, ‘Trash Queen’, ‘Nuclear Rocket’ and the set we put together, I thought, If I was watching a band do this set I’d be very enthralled!”
OR. I was listening to The Wildside Riot album earlier and it sounds really fresh …
RS. “(Cutting in) The difference between that album and previous albums i’ve been involved with is, even though I’m not a musician in inverted comma’s I’m just the lead vocalist, I don’t play any instruments, but I’ve got a good ear for music. Every single song on that album I had some musical input on plus we self-financed it. I paid most of the money towards that album, so it’s very much a homegrown product. Even though Cargo Records put it out, we financed it and dropped it their laps and said, we can afford to record this, but we can’t afford to distribute it. The only thing I’d say about that album and it’s what everybody says when they’re making excuses for albums, but we had a limited budget and limited time, had we had more time that would have been even better. There’s a lot of things that slipped through the net on that album that should never have got through, lots of little mistakes that you probably wouldn’t even notice as a listener but I notice because I’m a perfectionist. The obvious one is on ‘Candy’s Gone Bad’ when the lead solo just drops out of existence. How that was allowed to get through…Unfortunately, I wasn’t there for the final mixing down, I couldn’t get there, they were doing it in Brighton of all places, so I couldn’t get down there, so I trusted in the people that did, and I was told it all went really well, and It (the record) got back to the record company. When I got the finished product, and I heard that track I literally said, what the f*cking hell’s going on here? Some people have said it sounds like it was meant, NO it sounds like it’s forgotten to be played! (semi laughing) it sounds like someone forgot the volume control. But that’s the only criticism I’ve got of that record, it could have been better, but we’re all proud of it because we did the best with what we had.”
OR. let’s go back the early Eighties because you had a Glam Rock image crossed with a bit of Judas Priest. It made me realise that Glam Rock isn’t just Sunset Strip and Motley Crue so how was it for you in the early Eighties?
RS. “Motley Crue are only classed as a Glam Rock band because someone’s put them in that pigeon hole. When you understand how this evolution took place, you get a better notion of where the terms actually come from. Bear in mind the whole of Wrathchild grew up around Glam, we were teenagers when that was happening, and that was our bag, we loved all that. Towards the late Seventies early Eighties Glam had died on its feet, and Punk had done as much as it could. There was a need for something else, and I know there’s a lot of bands out there who claim to have invented this genre, but if you’re sensible about it, it’s just evolution. I’m a big Judas Priest fan, so I like Metal, I like standard classic Metal. I like Classic Rock full stop but Judas Priest and that Classic Metal (sound), you can hear it in a lot of Sleaze bands. A lot of the early Sleaze bands, yes they’ve fluffed it up a bit to make it sound a bit more pink fluffy slippers, but the essential riffs are there. Chugging, crunching it all began with bands like Judas Priest. We, Wrathchild, had all come from bands, with a kind of look. Yeah, it was all wrong because there was no internet in those days so anything new that you wore, you made yourself. Some of my early-stage gear (laughing) is shocking. I’m the first to admit that but at least it was different. We wanted to be different. People look at us now and say, oh Glam bands like Wrathchild…Nobody gave a toss about us back in the day nobody even knew what Glam Metal was, they didn’t understand the concept. We wanted to fuse a Glam look with Heavy Metal, and I didn’t quite achieve it with Wrathchild because I wanted two guitars because that’s the only way you can get that heavy sound. Unfortunately, I ended up with two guitarists who’d only work with themselves. The original Phil Vokins and my main man Lance (Rocket) they would not have another guitarist in so basically, overdub like crazy on records but sound very empty guitar-wise live. Bear in mind, these wonderful pedals they’ve got now that make one guitarist sound like twelve, they weren’t even invented back then. We as a band said…We a took a notion from The Sweet said, The Sweet said, we’re playing some really shit music, this was way before ‘Blockbuster’ this is ‘Lollipop Man’, ‘Genie’ and ‘Spotlight’ when they were on the B-sides of The Pipkins that sort of stuff. They said they wanted to be known as a Rock band, but they wanted people to remember them. A lot of Rock bands people don’t even know who’s in the band because they just can’t picture characters. So as Wrathchild we said, what could we possibly do that will get us noticed, and basically every little nuance we added to the band, and it was all in our characters nothing was preconceived. This is what makes me laugh about some of the manufactured bands. Nothing about Wrathchild was preconceived; it just evolved like a creature on its own and it just got wilder and wilder. As each little component of outrage became more complacent, we turned the volume up on the outrage. In the finish, we ended up with a band that was extremely dangerous. Everybody says you were just like Motley Crue, No we weren’t! We were far more dangerous than Motley Crue. Our stage gear, our stage sets…you could get hurt at our shows. Okay, it sounds a bit imbecilic to laugh about it now but at the time that was one of its strengths and the fact that nobody knew what was going to happen next.”
OR. The Seventies and Eighties were a lot more tribalistic, and you could be attacked for the wrong haircut, T-shirt or football team, people were not as open as they are now.
RS. “The thing that destroyed Wrathchild was an incident that happened in a cult place. We played a Welsh place called Tonypandy Naval Club, and there were three types of people in that venue, I found out since. At the time Rocky Shades being Rocky Shades, speak first take consequences afterwards. There was the Glammies, the also-ran Hippies drugs-are-more-important-than-anything-else people, and there were the bikers. So what does Shades do, Shades decides to wind the bikers up and ends up with a big split in the side of his head needing four stitches. That was the clincher that made me think; this has got out of control now, people are against us because of the badge we’re carrying. It’s not that they don’t like the music, we saw them moving to the music, we saw their girlfriends dancing to the music, it’s not they don’t like us as people they don’t know us as people, it’s that, you look different, we don’t like you.”
OR. But my girlfriend does…
RS. “(laughing) Yeah…There was a lot of that.”
OR. When I think back to the early Eighties, I think a lot of people knew of Wrathchild without knowing Wrathchild or just how close you came to being, the next big thing. When you look back on that time is it still a source of great frustration or a case of.
RS. (Cutting in) You wouldn’t even believe what a source of frustration it is! I have since found out that in 1984 Wrathchild should have opened the Monster Of Rock instead of Motley Crue. I’m a big Van Halen fan, Van Halen’s my main band, and we’d have been backstage rubbing shoulders with Diamond Dave. Basically, Donnington showed The Monsters Of Rock series of venues around the world, literally launched Crue and sent them on their way and them more known than they already were, they were just an American band at that point. Now in ‘84, we could say that Wrathchild were bigger than W.A.S.P and we were far bigger than Crue. (Big sigh) It wasn’t just a dispute with our record label. It’s the fact that our record label stopped (another) major record label from taking us on. Had we had that major label backing, as you say, we could have been the next big thing. I think we’d have been a cross between Sigue Sigue Sputnik and Motley Crue, to be honest.”
OR. This is when the Monster Of Rock was not nine stages over four days two hundred plus acts, this was one stage, one day and six or seven bands. I mean the opening slot was a HUGE thing for the up and coming bands. (Previous openers from the UK and European MOR festivals include The Black Crowes, Motley Crue, Anvil, Diamond Head, Twisted Sister, Magnum, Warlock, Cinderella, Helloween and The Quireboys.)
RS. “Somebody turned that down on our behalf, and we never found out who it was. It was obviously some kind of angst from the record label because of the shit that was going down. I actually put a message out that if I found out who it was, I’d kill them. I wasn’t joking. We found out through the legal people, so it wasn’t hearsay. We found out when we did some digging during the (Wrathchild name) trademark war that I had with a couple of band members later in life. As we were digging, we discovered we should have opened Donnington ‘84…and that was the only I ever went to!! I never went to any more, cause I always said, I’m not going to MOR unless I’m playing it and that was the end of that one! (laughing). (Dead serious) I spoke to the record company boss Paul Burge, Heavy Metal Records, and he confirmed that somebody cancelled it but wouldn’t say who it was. I think he went a bit pale-faced when I said, if I find out who it is I’ll kill them…They virtually ruined my life.”
OR. Bringing the tone up and away from the pain of MOR and record label disputes what was or is your favourite memory from the first time around?
RS. “Favourite moment was the very first time we put up our full stage show. The battle car, the barbed wire, all the cannons and standing back, looking at it and thinking, fucking hell that’s awesome. There was only about five venues that could take the full stage show, in the UK, which absolutely stupid. Because we did so few gigs, with the battle car, I think towards the end of our tenure we had a party at the farm we used to rehearse at, and I think we just put loads of explosives under the car and blew the thing up. It went out with a big, we should have filmed it (laughing) we didn’t film it! We didn’t think of stuff like that back then.”
OR. The one thing that always jumps out at me is after leaving Wrathchild you joined (Punk legends) Discharge. How did that come about?
RS. “I’ll tell you how it come about, these things are really really freaky. The band, when I finally got to meet them, I didn’t know any of the members of Discharge at all, I knew of the band because I loved Punk, believe it or not. I didn’t want it to leak into my own music, but I loved the attitude, and I loved what it stood for. The lead singer that they had, they were halfway through an American tour, and they had a bit of a run-in with him, and they were pulled off the road. They were on Clay Records at the time, and George Clay said to the band, have you got any thoughts about who you want to sing for you were in shit street unless we get a singer in. One of the band members said, we want someone like that Rocky Shades. George Clay being an opportunist, said, why have someone like him, why not have him. They said, how do you get in touch with him? George said well, he’s not a hard man to find. So basically they followed the trail of breadcrumbs or sequins that I leave. I got this phone call, and I thought it was a wind-up. They were talking about needing a vocalist for the American tour and bear in mind Wrathchild were halfway through a legal wrangle at the time, because when I joined Discharge Wrathchild wasn’t over. Wrathchild was just still, stuck in the mud, it wasn’t going anywhere, and it looked like, gradually, the life was being sucked out of it, and the finances were being sucked out of it. I started going to some rehearsals. The one thing I don’t like is when I bring something to the table on a band, if it’s not happening I don’t want to waste any more time. Now I loved Discharge, and I would say with my hand on my heart that they are still the tightest band I have ever worked with in my entire life. That band was so intense and so spot on, they were absolutely awesome. I’ve never been in a rehearsal situation where the drummers hands are bleeding, just from rehearsing. Gary’s fingers were just bleeding, and I said, don’t you think you’re playing that a bit hard? He just looked at me as if to say, no, what’s your problem, (laughing), so that’s how it came about.”
OR. I have to ask have you thought of writing a book or are you going to write a book?
RS. “Oh, I’m four chapters into a book. The only problem with writing a book is that I’ve got a very low attention span. I’ve got all the stories in there, I’ve got all stuff written down that I need, but I’d much rather get on my PlayStation 4 and do some racing (laughing.)”
OR. Please write the book!
RS. “I’ve actually called the book ‘Being Shades’, and it’s all about why I am and what I am, as I understand it. In brackets ‘Memoirs Of A Pantomime Fool’. I’ll tell you where that quote comes from, I read a book a long while ago by an author called Seb Hunter and I think it was called ‘Hell Bent For Leather’. It’s not about Priest, and he described Wrathchild ‘four-chord pantomime fools’, and I thought, that’s absolutely brilliant, I’m having that!”
OR. So what do the next twelve months hold in store, pray God there’s a vaccine, for Rocky Shades and Rocky Shades Wrathchild?
RS. “It does depend on COVID, but the next twelve workable months, at the moment we’re rehearsing. Unfortunately, we were doing really well we’d got the Wrathchild sound too pat. We’d done the two Hard Rock Hell shows, and things were going really really well, but our drummer had some personal problems and had to deselect himself from the squad. So we’re currently trying to work a new drummer in, and that’s really difficult because the guy we’re working in is an outsider and the rest of the band are very close. It’s that we don’t want him in or can’t let him in it’s just the existing members of the band came from Wildside Riot. You could say we’re a gang, we know how each other thinks, so this guy’s trying to break into a different ballpark.”
OR. Like the first day at school?
RS. “Worse than the first day at school, it’s like the first day of school after a month’s elapsed. So you’re walking into a set classroom. You know what it reminds me of when I did The Blues Brothers (tribute show) we had to do an engagement in Ibiza, but we couldn’t get over there when the rest of the bands started, we had an agreement that we’d come over a month late, and they went for that because we were so good. When we walked into that camp of musicians, it was like we’d been beamed in from another planet. Everybody knew each other, and everyone was content, everybody knew their place in the hierarchy, in walked these two guys and it just disrupted everything. But me being me, it didn’t take me long to settle in (laughing)!”
Before we end the interview, I reiterate to Rocky just how important his autobiography would be and the stories he can and does tell with such clarity and humour, he cuts in.
RS. “I’ll tell you what pisses me off about the stories, it’s not just me that tells the stories. I was talking to Beki Bondage before all this COVID started, we went to see Vice Squad because I know her and husband really well. We’re chatting after the show, and she said, how much of this stuff that you tell is embellished and how much is suppressed? I said, nothing’s embellished, everything is just the way it was, if it sounds wild then that’s what it was. She turned round to me and said, we’ve been telling our favourite story about Rocky Shades the world over. The one where some guy reaches out to shake your hand and pulls you over the barbed wire, and you accidentally nail him to the floor with your stage gear. Now funny enough I was telling this story once at the Dressed To Kill’s guitarist’s wedding reception and in walks this guy! My all-time favourite story and the guy walks into the bar, you know how people back up stories no-one ever believes them until a piece of evidence is shown, you see a picture or someone else talks about it. So I called him over, and I said, hey gang meet my best story. He’s still got the mark on his hand where the hole was!”
OR. You can’t make these things up, and the world is full of Rock star books about top hotels, rehab and models…
RS. (Cutting in) “I’m not bothered with all that nonsense. All that side of it, everybody can read it in everybody’s biography. My book will be centred on the most craziest things that were got up to on the road, and there was plenty. They don’t involve shagging and doing unspeakable things. I read the Zodiac Mindwarp autobiography (‘Fucked By Rock’).”
OR. That’s a horrendous book, funny but f*cking hell, when I was reading it I was thinking this is not right!
RS. The thing is, that sort of thing did go on. I do actually believe the stuff that’s written because I witnessed that kind of stuff, but that’s not what I wanna talk(/write) about. A lot of (Rock) books they take two stances, they either go too chronological and encyclopedic which takes away the joy of it all. My book actually starts off saying, if you want all that chronological discography bollocks go and look at Wikipedia, Wikipedia’s not even right, but you know if you want that sort of crap go and look there. My book is going to be how I remember the stories. Just recently me and the drummer from Wrathchild, we made friends, after all these years because he was partly responsible for the trademark wars as well. We’re chatting away, and I say to him, what is your most vivid memory about our band? He has a think and says, we were fucking mental! I said that’s what I remember. (laughing) You can’t buy it, can you, you can’t buy it. The Motley Crue (Book) ‘The Dirt’ half of that’s made up anyway. I’ve spoken to the people responsible for those stories, and even Ozzy Osbourne says, that’s not how it happened. How he’d actually remember, God knows because I met him once and he was out of his bloody tree.
I’m gonna do it (write the book). My biggest problem is the size of the book, it’s gonna be huge. I once did an interview with a Belgian Internet Radio station, and they sent me some questions and said just answer them how you will because some bands barely say anything. They sent me nineteen questions, and they got nineteen pages back! They had to release the whole interview as a serial (laughing)! Brilliant!
A couple of years ago, there was supposed to be a documentary about Rocky Shades. I think it was going to be called ‘What are you afraid of? It’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll’. If you go on the internet, there’s still a site dedicated to it. A couple of guys approached me and said, we want to do a documentary all about Rocky Shades, the British version of Glam, that sort of thing. So we took these guys on the road with us, I gave them something like twelve hours of worth of interview footage, just me alone. Loads of other people were interviewed, including Malcolm Dome and loads of others. One of these guys immigrated to New Zealand, and the project died with him. But The two trailers they put out are available on the internet (Youtube link below!), and they are absolutely brilliant. The ex-bass player from Wrathchild he was quite nasty one day, he said I’d come out with all this shit, and nothing ever happened he was making out I’d made this thing (the film) up. We actually had lots of people interviewed. I had family members, band members, close friends I even had one guy who reckoned I was his best friend as a teenager, I couldn’t even remember him! He knew everywhere we’d been all the houses we’d listened to records in, but I couldn’t remember who the fuck he was! He couldn’t have been a stalker because he knew places, you’d have had to have been there like a girls bedroom and which records we’d listen to there, and it was like turning the clock back.”
Rocky Shades, Rock God, gent and postman.
For more Rocky Shades Wrathchild information
https://www.facebook.com/RockyShadesWrathchild/