Page 44 - Classic Rock (January 2020)

sabotage reached a pinnacle with 1997’s barely
this for weeks, so nervous. You guys are quite
intimidating, and I haven’t been in this room for
fifteen years.’ I just went: ‘Man, don’t worry about T30th anniversary of the band’s formation.
it.’ And it was brilliant.”
The reunion with their wayward bassist soon
shifted from temporary to permanent. Without
him, Renaissance Men would not have happened.
“It just didn’t feel right until Danny came back,”
says CJ. “It’s the sound he makes. No disrespect
to anyone else who’s been in this band, but he
has a tone that nobody else does. It’s his fingers.
They’re like sausages. A bit filthier, though. I
wouldn’t eat them, cos I know where they’ve been.” nothing that had come before them at the same
“We were worried about
him,” says Ginger. “The shape
he was in… he had no leg,
barely any teeth. But he fucking “We’re still an
shone. He did the charity gig aggressive band.
sitting down. But now he plays
standing up, with a prosthetic And me and
leg. He’s often in agony. I can Ginge can jump
tell it in his face, but the crowd
can’t. I’m proud of him, how higher on stage
far he’s come. So proud.”
For Ginger there was extra than most of the
poignancy to McCormack’s kids out there.”
return. The relationship
between the two was non-
CJ
existent for all the time the
bassist was absent. “Our ability to hold a grudge
was fucking Olympic,” says Ginger. “But we got
together again and said: ‘Why the fuck did we fall
out?’ All I could remember was how much history
I’ve got with the guy, the ridiculous things we’ve
been through.”
CJ suggests that the rekindled friendship is
indicative of a deeper shift. “I think Ginger realises
after all these years that he’s got some good
relationships within this band.”
44 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM
CJ and Ginger: never
far from a fall-out…
then a make-up.
he Wildhearts’ resurgence was perfectly
timed. Renaissance Men came out on the
Back then, Ginger was newly fired from rock’n’roll
barflies the Quireboys, while CJ was going
nowhere fast in London sleaze-metal makeweights
the Tattooed Love Boys. Together the pair cooked
up a plan to form a band that existed in the middle
of an unlikely Venn diagram where Metallica, The
Beatles, Cheap Trick and The Clash all intersected.
They lived up to that promise, at least initially.
The Wildhearts sounded like everything and
time, a gigantic detonation of
noise and attitude. Even now,
Earth Vs The Wildhearts (reissued
this year on vinyl for the very
first time) still sounds like
a work of mad genius.
The Wildhearts were
sonic warriors and chemical
dustbins, spiral-eyed devils
stomping where angels feared
to tread. They would drink,
snort and inject everything that
was put in front of them, while
praising the gods of rock’n’roll;
a living, breathing, brawling
myth in action. Sometimes the
pendulum swung too far in the wrong direction.
Or maybe it was the right direction, depending on
what you want from rock’n’roll.
“There was a time when the partying and the
drinking and the drugs took over,” says CJ, who
was fired during the sessions for PHUQ after one
bust-up too many. “But most bands have the
same story.”
They do, but few have The Wildhearts’ capacity
for hitting the self-destruct button. That self-
listenable Endless Nameless, an album which was
essentially the sound of a band on every single
drug ever invented, shouting: “Fuck the world!”
over the noise made by a sheet-metal factory as
it gets sucked into a black hole. It was the first
of many tipping points for The Wildhearts.
Everything they’d built suddenly vanished, and
on the back of it they fell apart for the first, if not
final, time. Naturally, Endless Nameless is Ginger’s
favourite album.
“Fuck it,” he says in response to the question of
whether he would have done anything different at
any point to make life easier and maybe stack the
decks in The Wildhearts’ favour. “We are the way
we are. Getting us to change anything, you might
as well go and look at a fucking brick wall and wish
it wasn’t there.”
“If we’d have taken a different path we’d have
sounded like most other bands in their fifties
sound: dull, quiet, safe, tame,” says CJ. “Renaissance
Men would probably have been a blues album.
We’re still an aggressive band. And me and Ginge
can jump higher on stage than most of the kids
out there.”
o one would have ever put money on The
Wildhearts entering their fourth decade
Nin the disconcertingly healthy state they’re
in, especially not The Wildhearts themselves. But
here we are, on the verge of the 2020s, and this
bunch of middle-aged malcontents, fuck-ups, and
ex-junkies aren’t just back in the ring, they’ve
swung from rock’n’roll casualties to folk heroes.
There’s talk of a book at some point in the
future, recounting the litany of triumphs and
transgressions. Ginger is excited by the prospect.
“I’d read it,” he says. “Mainly cos I can’t remember
most of what happened.”
Then there’s the follow-up to Renaissance Men.
Ginger has already written three songs for it.
“Heavy as fuck and pissed off,” is how he describes
them. This time around, he’s instructed the others
to bring five songs each of their own to the table.
“That’s never happened before, because they’re
historically lazy bastards,” he says. “But I want
everyone singing on the next album, so there’s
going to be different lead vocals.”
Only time will tell if this transpires. Past
history suggests it could all go wrong in the most
spectacular fashion. But right now the members of
The Wildhearts are enjoying being The Wildhearts
more than they have in a long time.
“After thirty years, we’re still making albums
that some people really fucking give a shit about,”
says CJ. “That’s the cherry on the top for me.”
“If it all goes this well and we behave well to each
other, we’ll be doing this until we die,” says Ginger.
“Lemmy was playing bass up until he went, Willie
Nelson’s still out there doing it. I love the idea
of being an old fuck on stage making a massive
racket. And I love the idea of being an old fuck on
stage with these three guys. No one in this band
is going anywhere. Otherwise there’s no point in
doing it.”
It’s tempting to say long may this continue. But
this is The Wildhearts we’re talking about. Only
a fool would take a guess at what the future holds
for them. But whatever it does, it’ll be way crazier KEVIN NIXON
than every other band’s future.