ACT I SCENE I

A typical London pub. Enter O'Neil, McLaughlin, Gorman and Interviewer.

INTERVIEWER: Do you know any good new bands?

O'NEIL: The charts are the worst they've been for years.

MCLAUGHLIN: There's a group called The Wolfhounds. They've got a record, their first, coming out next month. It's really great.

GORMAN: The Wolfhounds are a guitar band as well.

Exeunt

ACT I SCENE II

The roof of the ICA in The Mall. It is the eve of the royal wedding and the street below is steadily filling up with horn blowing flag-wavers. Enter The Wolfhounds, Manager and Interviewer.

MANAGER: This would be a great place to see the wedding, wouldn't it?

GOLDING: It would be a great place to get shot at by the Police.

Exit Manager

INTERVIEWER: Why did you start in this business?

BOLTON: We done it for fun really. Fun! Fun!

STEBBING: The love of music.

INTERVIEWER: Have you got strong influences?

STEBBING: No, we try not to have any. I think that's the major point we want to make.

GOLDING: We've all got our own influences, every single person in the band.

BOLTON: I think the influences of our music are a cross section of all our tastes.

CALLAHAN: Or lack of it.

STEBBING: Basically I can listen to anything. Absolutely anything.

BOLTON: Won't necessarily enjoy it though.

Paul Clark plays a right-handed guitar left-handed with the strings upsidedown.

INTERVIEWER: How did you learn to play the wrong way round?

CLARK: I just learnt to play the guitar same as everyone else does, I just didn't realise it was upsidedown. There's some things I can do that he (Golding) can't do and there's some things that he can do that I can't do.

GOLDING: It's bloody difficult trying to learn riffs off him. He goes 'play this' and it's all kack-handed.

CALLAHAN: If you think about the fretboard upsidedown you just can't stretch your fingers to some positions. All we've ever learnt though is the basic E A D G and C sort of thing and the rest are just barred Es. Apart from that we just make up our own chords, you know, take a finger off here and put a finger on there. That's what makes it so difficult for us to swap over chords. I can't show him a right-handed chord if he can't get his little finger in the right place.

INTERVIEWER: So how do you put the songs together if it's so difficult?

GOLDING: The best ones just happen when we're rehearsing.

CALLAHAN: Someone starts playing something and someone else joins in and I just try and fit words over it.

GOLDING: If someone comes to a rehearsal and says I've got a song it'll never end up the way that person had envisaged it, it will always be totally different. Normally what happens is I turn up with a song and say this is our song and they say I like that chord and we write a song around that chord.

CALLAHAN: It's not for the sake of being finnicky, it's just that we've all got positive inputs to make it better. I think nowadays we try and make sure an idea doesn't get stretched out, you know, it just goes flat down without too much frivolity around the sides. That's why they only last two or three minutes normally our songs. Some are a bit longer because the idea works longer but we try not to show off and be flash. Everything in a song is there for a reason.

INTERVIEWER: Do your lyrics represent a group point of view?

CALLAHAN: They'll tell me if they think the lyrics are shit. If they think I'm singing it shit or the actual lyric's bad then they'll tell me and I'll usually take their advice and I'll sulk for a while and then change it.

GOLDING: The thing is if I play a guitar piece which he thinks is rubbish then he'll tell me so why shouldn't I tell him if I think his singing's rubbish?

CALLAHAN: It's democratic but not democratic as in 'one man, one vote', it's democratic as in everyone pushes and argues about it.

INTERVIEWER: Do you have a lot of fights?

BOLTON: Not at all I'd say.

CALLAHAN: Nowadays we're fairly tolerant of each other.

BOLTON: We all abuse each other a lot but it's all in a lighthearted manner.

INTERVIEWER: Who produced the EP, Cut The Cake?

CALLAHAN: We produced it ourselves really but we had a lot of help from the engineer.

BOLTON: Well no, I'd say mainly the engineer at the studio done the production, we just put a few touches to it.

CALLAHAN: We tell him what to do though. If we don't like what he does we say no.

BOLTON: Well you've got to admit he sets up most of it pretty much as we want anyway.

CALLAHAN: He don't just begrudgingly do what we tell him, he tries hard to do it which is good. Nigel Palmer his name is.

GOLDING: Chopper. Nigel 'Chopper' Palmer.

CALLAHAN: No not Chopper, not Chopper. No we left Chopper out on the next record sleeve.

BOLTON: No, you shouldn't have done because he's into that, you know.

GOLDING: You should see this bloke, he's got little glasses and we said 'what's your name? We want to put it on the record sleeve' and he goes 'well it's Nigel Palmer but could you put Chopper in brackets?'

CALLAHAN: 'It's not 'cause of the size of his penis or nothing, it's the way he cuts up tape. Everyone thinks it's his penis so they don't like it on the back of the record covers. All these right on types think he might as well be called Nigel 'Plonker' Palmer.

They all laugh.

INTERVIEWER: Do you think being on an 'Indie' label is going to hold you back?

GOLDING: No because that's the main thing about the Pink label, they haven't got that attitude at all. They want a major distribution deal as much as everyone else does.

The traffic and crowd noise is rapidly increasing in volume.

INTERVIEWER: Tell me all about your instruments?

CALLAHAN: What, you mean what brand names and all that crap? Fucking 'ell!

GOLDING: Yeah, go for it.

STEBBING: I've got a Rogers 1965 jazz drum kit. Why? Because they don't make 'em like that anymore. They're made a lot better, built to last and they're very cheap because everyone wants mega drums. It's all to do with the penis, Freud would say.

CALLAHAN: Everyone wants substitute penises whatever instrument they play.

INTERVIEWER: Have you developed your own... style?

STEBBING: No, not yet. I'm not good enough. I listen to a lot of jazz and the jazz influence is creeping in. I certainly endeavour not to be a rock drummer.

BOLTON: I think your style changes adequately depending on what song it is.

CALLAHAN: If he plays too rocky we all have a go at him.

BOLTON: Some of the songs are supposed to be rocky.

CALLAHAN: But not too rocky. We're not talking Foreigner, right.

I've got a yellow Ibanez with a tremolo arm which is busted but it's got a good sound, it stays in tune for most of the set, and I've got a Woolworths guitar that cost thirty five quid brand new. All the strings are tuned to the same note as well so it's a sort of natural flanger instead of an imitation one. It sounds a lot rawer and better for it as well. The top three strings are tuned to the top E and the bottom three strings are tuned to the bottom E. It's a shitty old guitar. It was all covered in paint and stuff and I put a load of stickers all over it.

STEBBING: It's one of them balsa wood ones.

CALLAHAN: It's really light. You could head-butt it and it wouldn't hurt you too much.

BOLTON: It's got all lumps of wood nailed to it holding the controls in place.

CALLAHAN: You've got to ask these lot about their guitars. They don't know fuck all about guitars but they'll make something up for it. He's the bass player, you've got to go round to him first. He can't play it but he uses it.

BOLTON: I don't play it. I just make noises with it really. It's a jazz, Fender. It could do with a new set of strings though.

The Wolfhounds erupt in disbelief.

GOLDING: You only bought a new set two weeks ago, you're joking.

BOLTON: Yeah, they're already fucked though.

CLARK: What do you do, fire arrows with it?

GOLDING: It's a really nice bass though. Talking as two failed bass players we must admit it is the nicest bass we've ever played. I've got an Ibanez Blazer which cost me £20 secondhand. It's very nice indeed. What's your one called?

CLARK: A Squier Fender Strat.

CALLAHAN: You've got one of them Tokai Telecaster things haven't you.

CLARK: A Tokai Telecaster copy.

CALLAHAN: But the bass strings are really shit aren't they?

CLARK: It sounds good through a practice amplifier.

CALLAHAN: Yeah, we used a cheap Woolies practice amp on our last record but no one will know about that because it sounds so raw and rough. People have paid hundreds of pounds for that guitar sound. You got that for nothing that amp didn't you? Tell him the story about how you got your guitars and amps.

CLARK: I had a Woolworths guitar as well and amp that was given to me by this nutty German woman upstairs in the flat. She gave it to me for nothing because it was her son's and he hit her one day so she gave away all his possessions. He came back the next day and he had nothing.

BOLTON: We could really use some decent amplifiers though.

CALLAHAN: Sponsors!

BOLTON: We've got some really dodgy equipment. It seems to work but it just sounds really naff.

CALLAHAN: We don't have that much hassle with amplification. I mean, my one's OK. The reverb's busted I know but it's alright.

BOLTON: Your one sounds pretty dodgy, I'd say.

CALLAHAN: That cost me £90 you bastard.

GOLDING: I use an HH PA amp on stage.

BOLTON: I use a Laney bass amp and an HH cabinet.

STEBBING: No you don't. That's my brother's one. You don't use it at all.

BOLTON: Yes I do. I use it just about every time we play.

CALLAHAN: He uses Monkey Biz. bashers on his drumkit, which he nicks.

STEBBING: Sshh. Shut up, they can read this.

Laughter all round. The cacophony from the street below is becoming a distraction.

INTERVIEWER: Do you use effects pedals?

GOLDING: I've got a mashed up Pearl OD 05 I think it's called. All the wiring came out and when I rewired it I rewired it wrong and it just feeds back all the time. It's a really nice sound. I think I might send it off to Pearl and see if they want to manufacture it.

BOLTON: I think effects pedals or overuse of, well, any effects tend to make your music bland because you end up using the sound rather than your playing ability.

CLARK: Innovation comes from the person, not from the effects or amplifiers.

GOLDING: When we done the thing at Radio One 1 used a Roland JC60 amp. That was nice.

CALLAHAN: He's been saving all this up for years!

BOLTON: These people are so fussy about their guitar sounds it's just the fact that they don't know anything about how to achieve it and they take the piss out of me because I do.

CALLAHAN: This is the man who knows how to achieve it but doesn't do it. This bloke's supposed to know everything about electronics, he used to work at Plessey's and all that, and he strolls up to a guitar amp and gets the most shit sound you've ever heard in your life.

BOLTON: Yeah but I usually set up the sound that you describe to me.

GOLDING: The thing is we both know the sounds we want but we haven't heard 'em yet.

BOLTON: I think all our songs deserve different sorts of sounds, you know, so I like equipment that can give you a range of sounds rather than just one.

CALLAHAN: To tell the truth he probably thinks more about his hair dye than he does his bass playing.

CALLAHAN: I give this band so much entertainment via the colour of my hair. They just couldn't do without me.

CALLAHAN: He came in with purple hair once and we all started singing Purple Rain. (Laughter)

GOLDING (singing) : Purple Hair, Purple Hair.

BOLTON: I didn't have to stand there and take it but I must admit I was mildly amused. I thought they could have done better. For a start they didn't know how to fucking play it.

INTERVIEWER (to Stebbing): Don't you get pissed off with all this guitar talk?

STEBBING: Me? No not really.

BOLTON: You can get pissed off with music talk though, especially from this man here (Callahan), you never hear anything else in this man's conversation apart from the odd very trendy book which he happens to mention.

CALLAHAN: It's trendy after I mention it.

The all round laughter is drowned out by the crescendo of horns from the festivities down on the street and the interview is forced to a close.

Exeunt

Act I Scene III

Inside the ICA later that evening. Enter all the cast plus an audience of hundreds.

CALLAHAN (singing): The corpse deflates to the ground. Buzzards circle round. A drunk man dribbles and the dust it settles on another hazy day on the lazy A ranch...

PHOTOGRAPHER: Pretty good isn't it?

INTERVIEWER: Yeah, fantastic.

CALLAHAN (still singing): ... The skull leers from an outcrop. Blazing white, bleached, crack in the top... the drunk lies down hat tilted over his eyes, his wounds licked by flies...

Ciaran McLaughlin, leaning against the wall at the back of the hall, looks content. Andy Golding spends the entire set bent double over his guitar and the audience... we love it.