LOCOWEB : Fun Lovin' Criminals - Media: All Back to Mine

All Back to Mine

Sean Rowley and Huey Morgan

Aired Channel 4 - 4th October 2000

S - Huey, I've got to say before anything else, your looking - as we say - the dog's bollocks!

H - Well, that's very gracious of you. Velour is a very important fabric for me in the summertime. I try to keep very cool [...] last well in the studio.

H - Right now, what we gonna do is, we're gonna go this way down here to a recording studio. I'd love to have you come over to my house cos I know this is 'go over to yours' and what not -

H - I've got all these Swedish girls stayin with me. It will just be really distracting. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna go down to the recording studio that I do all the records at.

S - Obviously, things are like completely kicking off for you at the UK. We're walking down the streets of New York. Is this something you can do comfortably here?

H - Oh yeah, absolutely. I can comfortably walk through the streets of London. I mean, I'm not like, you know, Robbie Williams or nothin you know.

H - Yeah, as a matter of fact this is kind of a little west from where I grew up. I grew up the east side. But you know, we'll give it a shot - we don't want you getting run over [crossing the road] ... right at the back...

H - But here we are at the Magic shop. [Indicating at passing window] We'll go in there and pick up some French girls later.

H - It has to be Ace Frehley, Back in the New York Groove. [opening the door] After you my friend.

H - We're at the Magic Shop Recording Studios in Soho, Manhattan, New York City, Northern Hemisphere. We're doin' our record. We're just about finished up with it. Getting some rough mixes together. So we can figure out what the hell we're doin' with it.

H - Well that was one of the songs that when you go away. I mean, when I was little I didn't really go away. I went to the Bronx, Staten Island, but not like far. And every time I got back. You know when I was in the marines and I got back. And we go on tour... Its always a good song to hear.

H - You know, I don't know. I haven't been home long enough lately to figure that out. You know. I'm tryin to get myself on a good schedule - wake up and see parts of the day - which is nice y'know.

H - No not really. I mean, y'know. Generally, Manhattans pretty okay. Y'know if you go towards the river, in either direction - North, East, South or West - you tend to run into a bit of trouble. But, y'know.

H - Yeah, but y'know, those people do go somewhere. They don't have a whole lotta money to go the Caribbean so I think they're still around there. Still causing trouble.

S - If there was trouble being caused do you think, back in the day, you were a man who was causing a bit of trouble at the time?

H - Yeah. The song is written from the perspective of someone who is among there - People and one of the things I like about reggae is it addresses rudimental social issues. Y'know, we always talk about, y'know, in a lot of pop music, about boyfriends and girlfriends and what the dynamic is there. But these guys are actually talkin about things that go on, these rude[?]boys, so to speak, y'know. That shit is very real.

S - There's obviously a major influence on you that comes through in the tunes - you've used it in a lot of your tunes - is, for want of a better word, Cult movies.

H - Well, yeah. It's the television derivative that borders on art. Y'know, film was something that I... We were TV babies. So -

H - We would sit in front of the TV and and it was the babysitter. So you try to discern from what was good and bad and a lot of the time, film tends to be a lot of what you remember. Takes a lot more time to make and not so funny as Friends, But.

S - I was gonna say. There's obviously a character that exists there that could easily be portrayed into a movie.

H - Yeah, but y'know, it's not like I can play Henry 8th or any of that. I mean, if I loose this accent I don't know what's gonna happen!

H - Yeah, I don't mind. Y'know I'm, like, a regular person. I like to go to the movies y'know. Lately, if you look at it man... you know that movie, Gladiator?

H - And you know like, to be quite honest and frank, y'know I don't have the best vocabulary in the world, a lot of the male actors out there are, like, pussies. Y'know. And your like, this guys not a fuckin superhero. This guys gonna get his ass kicked in a bar fight. But this Russell Crowe guy...

H - Yeah. But he really is a pain in the ass. You know he bites peoples nose off in fights. Y'know - you heard about this one?

H - I got nothing against gay cinema at all. I'm just sayin, but that's... y'know.

S - Obviously, disco figures. Now disco for most people at a certain age is the age they're going out, they're going to clubs, they're checking out women...

H - I was tryin too. I was getting in every once in a while. When I was starting to get facial hair I was getting in, y'know. Up until then we were doin shit. We'd cut our own hair and tape it to our faces [Laughing]

H - ... Glue it. We'd get the model glue and take a little bit of hair and shit. It looked really funny.

H - Yeah. One of the song's where she's like moaning "Mmmmmmmmmmm, Mmmmmmmmmmm".

S - Was this a patriotic motivation or was it a little bit of 'hang on a minute it's getting a little bit hot round here, I better move out'?

H - A little bit of both, y'know. It definitely seemed more patriotic to me to do that than to go to jail where I could be no help to my country. I just... I wasn't the smartest tool in the shed, y'know. I though I had it figured out but, y'know, one thing led to another and it got figured out for me.

H - Well Yeah. I mean, I don't really like talkin about all that stuff. What I think is that did to me is that it actually grew me up really quickly. I mean, that's one of the things I think a lot of things wrongs with kids today is a lot of testosterone ... there's not really an outlet for it, y'know. I don't think the military's for everyone. I mean, it worked for me - it wasn't fun.

S - I'm leaving the marines. You now take another twist in the tale and you now go and work for a night-club.

H - Yeah. I never wanted to wake up early again in my whole life. And I had done my share, I thought, of waking up at the crack of dawn and running around and being silly. So I wanted to work at night and I didn't really know what the scene was cos I was away for a while, but the Limelight seemed the biggest club around so I got a job as a busboy there. Anyway, so I did that and I just started hearing all this wild fuckin computer music and stuff.

H - Yeah and a lot of the times you didn't really know what you were hearing. But like everything, y'know, you have your dreams, and then you start hearing all this music - the subliminal messages - y'know, to kill your parents and stuff and that started getting to me [Laughing] And, uh, I listened to a lot of the Carpenters after that.

H - It also introduced me to Fast who came with a lot of different influences that kind of makes the band.

H - I met fast when we were working there. We became room mates and we were friends and stuff and I knew he was a musician. He might play a little guitar and one day I say y'know, 'you got a little sampler there why don't you take this Van Halen sample and this Led Zeppelin sample and put them together with a beat and, y'know'. The music you'll hear that I brought to you tonight is very strange shit. It kinda goes all over the place. Y'know, you've gotta be an open minded brother - it's the year 2000, y'know.

S - I wanted to get into, like, real musical heroes for you. Who would you point as the inspiration for picking up a guitar?

H - Uh. I'd say B.B.King. He was the guy who could play one note better than anyone else could cos he just played it with such feeling. Cos that was important -

H - B.B.King was one of those guys that has it all. He's so enigmatic, uh, he's wonderfully gracious. He makes you feel so at ease.

H - Yeah, he was like, 'You real criminals, why you dress so fucked up'. We were like 'Okay!'. He was like [mimic inhale of a joint], 'I'll play with those muther fuckers, fuck it' [high stoned voice].

S - OK. Let dip our toes further into the eclectic waters of your records collections then. Punk was obviously, at your age, something that was happening that your weren't too sure about, but was it something you picked up later?

H - Yeah. when it was going on I liked it - Stiv Bators, Johnny Thunders, Maxus[?] Kansas City

S - OK so that's the New York side, how would you hold it up between New York against UK. There is a whole world of difference between New York punk and UK punk.

H - Yeah but it all comes from the same thing, it comes from anger and frustration. you can do that with a Cockney accent or a Brooklyn accent - its still the same emotion, y'know. Its weird how people kinda, they did it the same, but very different - stylistically very different.

H - I loved all the stuff. y'know Joe Strummers probably the best of the best of the best.

H - They could play their fuckin instruments. They were writing proper songs. Its not that I didn't like the Sex Pistols and things like that, but these guys were like writing proper songs but they were still doing it keeping this emotion with them.

H - Yeah Rock and Roll but very pissed off and angry rock and roll. 'I'm so bored with the USA'? I love that song

H - Uh. Heavy Metal, man those are very weird things y'know there was some really good stuff - Black Sabbath of course, Led Zeppelin, but...

H - Yeah, well it all went down really, really, quickly. There's a thing that guys like to do from California. They like to hang out with girls and not fuck em. alright. you know I don't know what that's about either, but the deal is they hang out with girls that just wanna be your friend. So what do you do? You hang out with your friend who is a girl all they do is they play with the hair. so you start playing with your fuckin hair right. So the only guys that can do that is the guys in bands cos they don't have fuckin jobs right. If you got a job your at work, right, you can't hang out with this girl all day just to be your friend. If you have a band you can do that. Hang out all day 'hey you seen that movie out yet, yeah, yeah your hairs real beautiful. Next thing you know, fuckin Poisson. You know you got these guys out there. Y'know that's were they all came from. 'hey can I try on those pants' 'oh, okay'. y'know.

H - Yeah I loved the way he played guitar he really didn't give a fuck and he came up with some wild shit and he did it every chance he can. He was like, didididididi. I thought that was great, man, he was laughing all the way.

S - Hip hop was, and obviously, novelty rap was a part of where you were coming from as well. Was that mainly your thing or were any of the others involved.

H - Well you know fast, y'know, I turned fast onto Led Zeppelin so I mean alot of things I don't know or he doesn't know we kind of turn each other on to. but he's now extensively into the hip hop. he goes to the beat street in Brooklyn all the time.

H - Why is it all about me. What about you [laughing]? Well, y'know when I was growing up there was the early hip hop stuff like uh, Melle Mel, and Just-Ice, and Dana Dane, uh, Eric B and Rakim and stuff like that. All that stuff was like what we were listening to when we were growing up and it was always like the fun stuff.

H - Yeah absolutely. When you were young and the summers around, your around twelve or something like that and the girls, you start noticing that the girls are wearing shorts and you don't know what to do. And this things going this way and your going this way. And then you hear this fuckin song and it just takes a little picture for you.

H - And that's kinda what happens. It always reminds me of happy times. You know and like now what hip hops about... its professional wrestling now frankly, but. It doesn't have those happy times. Y'know, everything kinds... the undertones involved are dark rather than...

H - Yeah and lot of times it was regurgitation of samples and stuff like that. It's pretty bad.

H - Yeah, he's the most sampled man in the world. Everyone should just send him five dollars. Everybody.

H - It should reach him - just send it care of James Brown, PCB headquarters, Atlanta, Georgia.

S - Who, so, if we were gonna listen to a hip hop artist from your collection who would you...

S - You've obviously got a bit of a thing where by you don't take any prejudice on board with music. You judge it as it is.

H - You can't. Its people at its best isn't it. its we're all tryin to do the best that we can from inside and you can tell if your doing it right.

S - Cause, obviously with the success your having in the UK., I know that we're guilty of judging everything by the packaging the attitude and everything, a lot of things fall by the wayside.

H - You think Bachman-Turner Overdrive can get a record contract now a days. No way. Three fat guys from Canada, get the fuck outta here, with beards - they'd never get a distributor. But they're great. Westlife. That's what were stuck with. Westlife, Five, all the boy bands.

H - I was like 26 when I got a record deal. I mean, I was already an old man, y'know that's cool. But these young kids. That's how it falls for them. Britney Spears. y'know how fine she looks lately. That shit's gonna go, bro. She's gonna run into some dude from blimp 182 with the radio tattoo on his stomach. the two of them are gonna fall in love, go out to Vegas, she's gonna get on the fuckin horn y'know, it's gonna be awful.

H - No, but that's the price you pay. She grew up in Louisiana, her mother put her on star search or something like that. You know I'm lucky y'know, I went through some shit y'know and I made it through. I don't know if these kids have the tools to make it through. Y'know, I feel kinda bad, you see Christina Aguilera, and all the other girls... that girl Billie. That girl Billie, tsh, any minute now y'know bro. You know what I mean. Any minute now. We could hold our breath and something will happen. Their song young and their so full of life and their so naive and their gonna get jacked. And its not that someone's gonna hurt them or anything like that. but they're gonna do something so silly and fuck their whole shit up. Y'know thats kinda sad - I feel bad for them. But y'know, Britney Spears she's good lookin, she's good lookin...

H - [Singing] "Oops I did it again, I played with your heart." I know the lyrics bro.

S - I think there's a thing with people that are passionate about music there's usually a band knocking around that they go 'I just detest this' and its part of the joy of loving music is having something to really hate.

H - I think everybody has it, everybody figures that Blur suck too. I mean that's what I always thought and everybody I know says that too [deadpan]. That's the band that everybody hates. y'know, [shaking head and pulling face]. No, I'm playing., I like Blur. Damon's gonna be like, 'I'm gonna fuck him up, I'm gonna catch him and I'm gonna fuck him up'. His mates like, 'I don't know I saw him fight one time'[...] 'well, we'll both fuck him up then.'. No, I like Blur. I'm playing, y'know.

S - Now if were sitting here talking about your record collection, I'd imagine there's one artist that we can not avoid talking about. This worship of the church of Barry White.

H - Absolutely, yeah. I saw him maybe ten years ago on the street. He was walking with like two beautiful women, he had this like long white like rain coat, mac thing on. And he was just rolling down the street. And everybody was just like... Like, everybody just stopped, hot dog vendor and cabbies, everyone was [whisper] 'Barry white'.

S - Cause obviously the hit came from you guys which was just a fantastic record that paid genius tribute

H - I'm glad it got taken that way too, cos alot of people thought that, 'why you dragging Barry White into your shit'. Y'know, and it was like, no, no, no, Barry White's nice a clean and up on the hill - we're just talkin about how, y'know, he got it all together for us when we were little. An he took it that way too which was great. He wrote about it in his book which I...

S - Yeah, I've checked that there's a quote that runs that where he [..talking over each other]

H - "...Out there, an outfit from New York City" Oh. Anything from Barry White. Can't go wrong. "That quittin just ain't my stick." Ow.

H - The girl knows too, if that songs goes on. Right then and there she'll like, stupid it ain't going that way. Or 'you want me to keep my shoes on'?

H - All the songs are about like his girl, which is pretty good, his not going on about their thong his talkin about their heart.

S - Huey, we're coming to the end. I just wanted to pull up, we're gone through it you've been a bad boy you've been a marine. There was even a story knocking round that you were going to be a fireman

H - Yeah well I tried to be a fireman then I got a record contract to do the record and all that.

S - So you've been a pop star. These are all jobs you could put under a banner of 'I wanna pull girls'.

H - Fireman really work well. My girlfriends just, vvvmmm, walks away when there's fireman in the supermarket or something. I'm like 'I'm gonna be over by the frozen foods' and she's like gone and I'm like oh, fireman. And you can smell them like too, with the smoke [inhaling] ahhhh. [talking over each other]

S - But is this the thing cause you talk to a lot of musicians and its like why did you get involved in it, and that's always one of the reasons that's up there.

H - Yeah? Uh, everything I do I do reactionary, to stay out of trouble, pretty much, y'know. I was a bad boy because I didn't wanna get beat up so I had to be worse than the guys around me, y'know. I went to the marines, I wanted to life so I had to be the best marine I could be, y'know. I wanted to get off the streets and not get in trouble and Fast was a pretty good musician and I figured I'd latch onto his talent, y'know. Uh. [laugh]

Given the general laid back attitude of the interview,
some errors in this transcript are quite probably!

Thanks to Kat for going through this and helping out on a few of the questionables!