Haircut 100: Back on These Shores After Four Decades – My Favourite Interview of the Summer

It is great when artists from whom you have not heard enough over the years reappear on your radar screen, especially when they reveal a vibrant approach to their illustrious past and a zeal for the future. When Haircut 100 bubbled to the top of the charts in 1982 with four global hits, they were everywhere. I succumbed to the infectious sound created by frontman and songwriter Nick Heyward. More than four decades later I had a chance to chat with Nick and fellow founding member Les Nemes as they prepared for their first US tour in over four decades. The tour will feature fellow travelers Howard Jones and ABC (who sold ten million and twenty million albums respectively).

Haircut 100’s debut Pelican West in 1982 sprouted the massive hits “Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl),” “Love Plus One” and “Fantastic Day,” each UK top ten singles. The fourth single, “Nobody’s Fool” vaulted the album to platinum status in the UK, only three months after release. The album spent 11 consecutive weeks in the British top ten and twice reached No. 2.

Recently Nick and Les were delightful raconteurs, our chat that was expected to last a quarter of an hour but stretched far longer. We covered the waterfront, with the most interesting parts being their infectious love of music and their perspectives on the music business then and now.

Nick Heyward: Hi, Brad.

Brad: Hi, guys, how are we.

Nick: Good.

Len Nemes: Good, always good.

Brad: Nice to see you. Nice to meet you. Seeing these three bands together on one bill is such a treat. How did the whole thing come together?

Nick: Hmm! Well, it all started from the 40th anniversary. Didn’t it? Nice. We just thought there was no chance that the band ever getting together or even playing together and meeting up, did we? It was kind of we’d spent the longest time apart. You know, one thing led to another, and then then we’re playing at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, which led to being invited to the BBC. And we’re enjoying every moment of it. It’s just like this is the best thing that could have ever happened. We can’t believe it. It’s just like unexpected, totally unexpected. A second time around thing, isn’t it? It’s actually much better this time around.

Len: We’re older and a bit wiser. You look at things, you realize what’s important. It was like the universe put everything in place, and all we had to do was turn up. It literally all came to us. It’s like brilliant. It’s like the dream come true for us, because we didn’t even have a tour bus last time.

Nick: Being able to be involved in music, you’re a music fan first off, aren’t you? That’s just what you do it for. You’re a fan of music, and then to be blessed with being involved making music.

Len: You saw you saw that multiple generation thing with Duran Duran, didn’t you? When you went to see Duran Duran? There were different generations there.

Nick: Yeah, I mean, I was standing in the audience and there was a dad and his family and the kids were just so enjoying the show together. You know that generation and you know, to be there standing behind them, watching them enjoy it, and they turn around to each other and keep like smiling each time a moment in the music happens. You know, that’s the connection of music. That’s what it does.

[We then talked about how and why folks go about starting a band]

Len: Just get a group of people together and join a band. And when I was teaching that’s what I always told my little students. They were mostly sort of between the age of 9 and 14, and the one thing I told them is, join a band is the best thing you can possibly do, for every single reason join the band.

Brad: I have heard that forming a band is like wanting to be in a gang: you want to be with these blokes, with these guys in in a band. In the case of The Clash I remember them saying, “it’s us against the world, we’re a gang and we’re doing music, too.” But it was also the camaraderie. Is that familiar for you guys as well?

Nick: It is that that that connection that we have, the 3 of us starting in the rehearsal room.

Len: So when you have something like that which works really well, and everyone feeds off each other? Well, that’s the magic. That’s what happens.

Brad: The way you described that is interesting because, I love hearing it from the perspective of you guys who can create music, because I can’t.  My view of making music is wires, it’s pianos and it’s hitting things. I’ve been to Coachella about 10 times, and there’s an increasing number of EDM stages, and as I walk by I see a lot of people enjoying themselves. And who am I to say? Well, that’s just one guy with a computer. It doesn’t fully compute to me, no pun intended. But who am I to say these people aren’t having fun, they are, they are.

Len: It’s possibly also that a lot of young people actually don’t know what they’re missing. And then I don’t know if you’ve seen any of these YouTube videos, where young people are hearing songs from the seventies and the eighties for the first time. And they’re absolutely completely blown away. They can’t believe what they’re hearing. It’s the best thing in the world, isn’t it? And being in a band is the best thing in the world. Forget your Formula One drivers, your football stars, Hollywood actors. There’s nothing as good or as cool as being in a band. I listen to a Tina [Talking Heads] Weymouth bass line, which is 4 notes, and I’m just completely gone. It’s like, give me Tina any day of the week. She didn’t play bass when she joined that band. She only joined the band because she was Chris’s girlfriend, and they needed a bass player. So they went down the shops and they bought a Jaguar Mustang bass and she just plugged in.

Nick: Curiosity is the opposite to depression. You know, if I’ve ever felt like overwhelmed and down it’s because I’ve lost curiosity. They’re the details that you notice when you fall in love with music, they mean everything to you at that moment. You know the stripes on Tina’s bass? For about a fortnight that meant everything to me.

Len: Just have a listen to the bass line on the chorus of “Cities” by Talking Heads, and the way she plays that groove. It just carries the whole song. It just takes it to another level, and it’s like 4 notes or something played in 3 different positions.

[Nick leaves the frame, and comes back with a guitar case. He opens it].

Len: What’s he got? What’s he doing?

Brad: Pulling something out of a guitar case.

Nick: This is the guitar I’m taking to America. There are those stripes!

Nick: You know that that sense of detail in life, the appreciation of those things. And I think that’s why on stage when you look at each other and you know you’re recreating what you recreated in the rehearsals at the beginning. And here you are tonight recreating it, that’s like the dream has come true that you’re getting to make that dream come true every night.

[We then digressed into a discussion about vinyl and favorite years for music and seeing great bands live on stage].

Nick: Now, all the stuff from like years ago, where you go and see someone like Ian Dury when they were really hitting it every night and just to hear the musicianship and those songs, and how creative it was, and but also the performance, because they were such a brilliant band. Echo and The Bunnymen got to their stage because they were so good, and everybody knew they were really good, and that they knew that before they could perform, probably before they went into the studio. There’s so many brilliant artists and brilliant stuff now, and I think ‘but why is it not in the mainstream.’ It’s not in the charts. I’ve got friends who say they don’t hear any good music now, and I say you just have to look harder for it. It is there, it is being made. It’s just not in the charts.

Len: But at the risk of sounding like my dad, listening to Radio One now is so painful I can’t do more than two minutes of it. Because it’s just that old cliche. Everything sounds the same.

[The band’s manager Ken Phillips jumped in to bring the chat to a close].

Brad: Ken, I’m looking over your shoulder, and I see a Bruno Mars poster and that design I believe, is riffing on the James Brown box set right?

Ken Phillips: Probably. So. Yeah, that’s from quite a number of years ago, when he first broke through and he sold out the Staples Center.

Brad: The reason I’m bringing it up is, I took my daughters to see Bruno Mars at the same venue, the Del Mar Fairgrounds, where you guys are going to be playing. Mars played in more of an outdoor setting. It was fantastic, but the venue that you guys are playing is only a year or 2 old. They spent a bazillion dollars on it. And it’s a really cool venue.

Nick: Well, get their early!

Brad: Brilliant! Well, enjoy the tour. I’m so excited to hear how revved up you are about it, and how excited you are.

Sold out at The Sound, check here for any returns.

 

 


Brad Auerbach has been a journalist and editor covering the media, entertainment, travel and technology scene for many years. He has written for Forbes, Time Out London, SPIN, Village Voice, LA Weekly and early in his career won a New York State College Journalism Award.

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