Rock and Pop: Interview - The Twang Frontman Phil Etheridge
Published: 29 September, 2011
by ROISIN GADELRAB
Phil Etheridge has downed tools.
The frontman of The Twang is ripping out the insides of a Birmingham office block for a friend and has roped in his drummer.
“I’m just praying he doesn’t break his arm,” he says.
It’s not as if the band are about to embark on a UK tour in a matter of days...or are they?
“Don’t get me wrong, the band is what we do, it’s a full-time thing.
But you can always manage to fit in a couple of days and earn some extra beer money, keep the wolf from the door,” says Phil, who later divulges his favourite TV show is Grand Designs and admits that he still gets excited when Homes Under the Hammer uses The Twang’s music to accompany dilapidated pre-makeover properties.
The band, who play Camden Town’s Electric Ballroom on October 5, had a noble aim for this tour, which hasn’t quite worked out as planned.
Phil says: “The whole point was to do weekends. We managed to get it sorted and then the two gigs that are not on weekends are London and Birmingham.”
He continues, bursting with pride that he’s now father to 18-month-old Indigo.
“It’s definitely made me feel older,” says Phil. “There’s times when it’s hard, when you feel guilty, you go out doing what you do and then you get in and you’re thinking, ‘you know, it’s different, you’ve got a responsibility’.
“I’ve never loved anything like her.
“It was her birthday while I was away (on the Shaun Ryder tour) so I got Shaun to sign this record for her. One day she’ll realise just how cool that is.”
Phil reveals The Twang bass player Jon Watkin, who has also recently become a father, won’t be touring. While he’s on “unpaid” paternity leave, Baz from the Fratellis will stand in.
Phil still denies the band’s lad-rock image fuelled by a history of reports about an incident with a samurai sword and friendships with Danny Dyer and Stephen Graham.
“I don’t like any of them so-called bands,” he says. “I know we’re classed as one of them, I’m not stupid, but I don’t go listening to them and buy my Berghaus and pretend I’m Gallagher.
“I was wearing Berghaus before I’d even heard of Oasis. All our lads round our way, it’s what you went thieving in, it wasn’t a Gallagher item.”
He recalls the band’s first London gig at Barfly.
“Our management kept us away for ages, so when we did finally come it was madness, just A&R, the whole gig was just chin stroking 40-year-old men going, ‘oh, shall we sign them?’ Not being big-headed, but they all put offers in the next day.
“That was the time of our lives, we all quit our jobs. We remember even now them couple of weeks when we went down London for the first time and the pints were £4.”
Another memorable Camden visit was for the NME pub golf crawl, which betrayed the band’s hard-partying competitive streak.
Phil says: “I took our drummer thinking he’s going to smash this because he’s an animal in the drink department and I don’t know how we didn’t win.
I’m sure it was fixed, someone like Hadouken! won.
No way did they beat The Twang. We were still going, we even got the train back to Birmingham and got ourselves in the Radisson hotel to parade the town as if we were kings. That was about four in the morning – we won.”
They release their third album next year and Phil’s pretty happy with the result, although it hasn’t got a name yet.
He says: “Our manager says we’re a bit rubbish about deciding stuff, we haven’t even got artwork ideas or anything yet.”
The best advice he has received from a fellow musician was from James’s Tim Booth some time ago.
“We were massive James fans,” says Phil. “Tim Booth, people say he’s a bit weird, but I think he’s lovely man.”
Booth reminded them that James’s second album was panned.
“Then they wrote Sit Down and everything changed for them. Whatever people say, you keep asking yourself, is it a hit, might it be a hit? It just kind of reiterated you’re never dead and buried.
“When I wrote Either Way I didn’t think it was a hit. I’m not saying it was, but it was a top 10 single for us and kind of changed our lives. All I’m saying is you are one song away, you’ve just got to write that killer song.
“Obviously you can’t just write one killer song and have a shit album because you’re gonna be rubbish, but you’ve just got to write that song that connects with people and then they’ll discover the back catalogue.”
He adds: “To our fans I know that first record means a lot to them. I’m not going to come and write another Neighbour, I wrote that when I was 22 and didn’t have a care at all in the world.
“We promised ourselves as soon as we feel that it’s fake and stop feeling what we’re doing we’ll definitely knock it on the head and sadly I’ll be back on the tools telling everyone I used to be in a band.
“We’re not a big band by any stretch of the imagination, we know that, but we seem to have this real hardcore loyal fanbase that keep coming to see us, so we think there’s still a place for us.”