Composite Strawberry Switchblade interview
Jill Bryson interviewed 9 June 01
Rose McDowall interviewed 29 Jan 02
Bill Drummond interviewed 26 April 03
David Balfe interviewed 19 May 03
David Motion interviewed 2 Aug 02 & 15 April 03
Robin Millar interviewed 16 Feb 03
Tim Pope interviewed 22 June 06
When did you find out about the Japanese CD reissue of the album? Did they tell you in advance?
ROSE: No. They didn't tell anyone. Someone just told me they saw it and said, was it a bootleg? I saw it and it wasn't a bootleg it was Warner Brothers. I even advised people to buy that one, because it's got more tracks on it.
Have you seen which extra tracks they are? Trees And Flowers extended mix, Since Yesterday extended mix even though the normal version's on there. And yet no Sunday Morning! They're in the vaults and they choose the 12 inch mix of Since Yesterday over Sunday Morning! Who was that person and can I please slap them?
JILL: Clearly they didn't ask us did they? I would certainly have binned all those.
ROSE: I know, it's true. Especially the Japanese singles.
What's that, apart from Ecstasy (Apple Of My Eye)? Did I Can Feel only come out in Japan too?
ROSE: Yeah.
I've always thought those two are really anomalous for Strawberry Switchblade, a real twee departure from the usual melancholic barbed sweetness. Where did they come from?
ROSE: They're nightmares. Ecstasy was basically an advert for something, I can't remember what it was now.
JILL: It was an advert for Subaru [cars]. So they had the tune - we didn't write the tune - and Rose wrote the lyrics to it. I didn't want to do it at all. She wrote the lyrics to it obviously, she'd started taking ecstasy. And I just thought it would be funny to put it on a Japanese advert, but it's a shit record. I so hated that song. I still hate it. It's nothing to do with us as far as I'm concerned. It's got nothing to do with me, I didn't even play on it, I didn't do anything on it. I didn't write the lyrics, I didn't like the lyrics, I hated the song, and it was done for a Japanese car advert - what's the point? Why not let us write something? Why give us a song which is THAT shit? It was another Balfey thing, 'you've got to make money'.
ROSE: 'Apple of My Eye'? Where did that come from? It was nothing to do with me. The song was called Ecstasy, that was part of the joke of it. They don't know what I'm talking about but I know what I'm talking about; some people will know, some people won't know.
It was a nightmare, that period. We did another stupid jingle for Shock Waves hairspray, and that was fucking atrocious as well. We just made a few bad mistakes at the end of our career, basically. Mostly Balfey pushed from behind, dollar signs popping up in his eyes. All that money that we didn't really see from those adverts. You get paid for doing stuff like that.
Of course, why else would you do it?
ROSE: Exactly. And when I saw the advert I just thought [incredulous wince]. It's got these Japanese girls sprawled over the car like in those horrible car magazines where they have a dolly bird. It was like, oh Jesus, another nail in the coffin.
JILL: There was another song after that that we recorded, I think it was a Japanese single ['I Can Feel'] which I had nothing to do with. I just sat in the studio, it was Balfey and Rose who did it but it was released under our name. I was there thinking 'I really hate this, this has got nothing to do with what we started off being'. It was so depressing, so deeply depressing.
ROSE: I Can Feel was a song that was actually properly written as a song. It's a good song, but the production left a lot to be desired I think. That would probably have been on the second Switchblade album, but done completely differently.
JILL: It was nothing to do with me, I didn't sing on it, didn't play on it, didn't even know what it sounded like until I got in there. That was the point where I thought, just leave it.
Who instigated splitting up then?
ROSE: I said to Jill, 'if it's going to continue like this I don't want it to continue at all'. It was one of the Friday group meetings, she came downstairs and I said I'm really not happy with the way things are going and if we can't change it, if it's not going to change then I'd rather we split up, I'd rather we just didn't do it any more cos it's not what we wanted to do. She just said that she agreed, or something like that.
JILL: I just said I don't want to do this anymore because it's really horrible. The next album which we were going to do had got to the point where she was going to do one side and I was going to do the other. What's the point? What IS the point? I didn't want to do that, I wanted to write with her, I wanted to do it WITH HER. I did a few demos after, but I didn't want to do stuff on my own.
Is there much recorded and unreleased?
JILL: I did a few demos, it must've been late 1986. I did it with a friend called Robin Brown, he sang with me. We just sat in a bedroom with a DX7. I'd written the songs and he did some backing vocals and we recorded it on a little 8 track in somebody's front room in Muswell Hill, and he put some other things on to it, keyboards and stuff.
What are you playing on them?
JILL: Just guitar and some really hamfisted keyboards. After that I did a few gigs with a band made up of most of Primal Scream, Robert and Andrew Innes. That happened cos I played Alan McGee [head of Primal Scream's label Creation Records] a demo and he liked it and he said 'do a few gigs and I'll get you a band together'. I had a guy who I was singing with who I don't think they liked very much, a young gay guy, they wanted to be a bit more rock and he was a bit fey, but I liked him. It was a bit of a strange band.
How many gigs did you do?
JILL: I think we did about three or four, we did University of London Union and Hammersmith Palais where I was supporting somebody.
Were you still doing Strawberry Switchblade songs?
JILL: No.
Just new stuff?
JILL: Yes. And I enjoyed it but, you know, not that much. I'd rather have done it with somebody else, with Rose if she'd been OK, if she hadn't gone off the rails. I'd rather it was more fun.
She actually tried to continue after I'd split the band up. She got this girl from Glasgow and they played a couple of gigs as Strawberry Switchblade. I had asked her not to.
ROSE: I did a couple of Strawberry Switchblade gigs, but it wasn't with someone instead of her, it was me with two of Primal Scream, Lawrence from Felt, two of the Weather Prophets. It was kind of a wee bit like a Creation supergroup!
One was the best gig I've ever done. I took a tab of acid before I went on stage, which I would never recommend to anybody, and I would never have thought that I would've done it myself. First gig after Strawberry Switchblade have split up, so what does Rose do? Something completely fucking off the wall!
Before I went into the venue it was a full moon that night, and I thought, oh COOL. It was in Brighton, and there was the full moon reflecting off the ocean, it was just gorgeous. I went into the venue and I was really nervous, and I took this acid. I went out on stage and I swear I don't know HOW I remembered the songs! I think it was because of the moon, because I looked at the back of the hall and there was a spotlight, and I was thinking WOW! COOL! The moon's come to my gig! What an honour! Because I was so elated about the moon being there, I wasn't thinking about the songs, I just played them naturally. It got reviewed as being the best pop band ever!
A lot of the songs were new songs, they weren't old Strawberry Switchblade songs like Jill and I would've done. It was me moving on and still keeping the name, basically. Cos it was my name in the beginning, cos I got it from James Kirk. But Jill didn't like me to use it because it was associated with both of us, and so I ended up not using it. Although I should've still used it if I was going to keep doing that sort of stuff. I thought it was silly to fight over it. I know people associated it with Jill and I, but things change and people change and bands change, and sometimes bands keep the same name but the people in the band are different.
JILL: I thought you've got to be kind of sad if you're hanging on to this Strawberry Switchblade thing. That's it, you know, we've split up, do your own thing. You're capable of doing your own thing, you're capable, you're not stupid, you can write your own songs, do that. Don't try to hang on to something else that's been and gone and isn't anything like you any more.
I was saying 'you can do what you like, you're your own person and you can do anything, Rose'. As you said, the drive she'd got was phenomenal, and if she wanted to do something she'd do it. She didn't need me, she didn't need the name. That left a bit of a nasty taste in my mouth. It's a shame cos I still like the records but I didn't want to do anything with her, I don't want to get in touch with her again. I just wanted to get on with my life, I got married and had a kid and I do my artwork.
What is it you're doing?
JILL: I'm working in glass at the moment, doing stained glass panels and painting and sculpturing. And I'm enjoying that, it's something I feel I can do. It's something I did and put on hold, cos the minute I finished art school that was us off.
Have you seen Rose recently?
JILL: I saw her a couple of years ago. We'd got some money, there was a cheque written to the band and we don't have a band bank account so we couldn't cash it - it turned out it was easy to sort it out so we'd get separate cheques. That's the only time I've seen her in a long time. It was weird because she was very very friendly. She wanted to be friends. She was very open and very nice.
Have you heard any of the stuff she's done since?
JILL: She sent me a copy of her CD which I thought was quite nice, but I didn't listen to it much. I thought her voice sounds nice, but there's too many things tied up with it, too many images of having things thrown at me! [laughs] I do have some happy memories of recording the album and some not so happy. I wanted to be part of a partnership, not be fighting with somebody the whole time. That does seem to be what happens unfortunately, it's not unique is it?
Looking back now at the songs and the work, are you generally happy with it?
JILL: Yes. I loved it at the time and I still love it now. There are parts of it that I think are fantastic. I don't listen to it that much, but at the time I loved it, really really happy with it.
What are your favourites?
JILL: I love Being Cold. The guy who arranged the strings was appalled when I played the melodica over it, absolutely appalled. He was like, 'you can't do this, it's not even in tune', and I was, 'that's the way it is', and I love that, I love the fact there's a melodica over these lush strings, a huge string section. 'No you can't put that on', 'Yes I can, it's my bloody record and I'm going to put it on! It's our record and we'll do what we like'. We'd decided we'd do that; you can't completely erase everything quirky from it. I like that, I like Deep Water and I like Go Away, I think that's good. There's not many that I don't like on it, I was pleased with it.
Is there anything on there you don't like?
JILL: A little bit, with the production and some of the, er, over-enthusiastic programming, I don't really think it's very us, I think sometimes it obscures the songs, but generally I quite like it. You've got to make a decision about some things sometime and generally I think it's OK, I think it stands the test of time. I like Trees And Flowers, I really like Sunday Morning, they have a kind of charm to them that the album doesn't have. And I often listen to the [Radio One] sessions. I quite like listening to them cos they're much much more naïve, there's something quite nice about it.
Is the outside world still interested in Strawberry Switchblade at all, do you think?
JILL: I wouldn't have thought so really, no.