I met with Ian “Knox” Carnochan, a founding member and The Vibrators’ lead singer/guitarist, to talk about the band, the punk scene, his affinity for art and the possible end of the world.
How would you describe your sound?
Knox: We’re a band from 1976 when punk sort of started. We’re always tagged as a punk band that’s sort of old-school and we seem to be very well regarded most of the time, so that’s alright. A lot of it’s punk and some of it’s what I call sort of intense rock, but I think that all fits into the same thing.
Have the changes in your lineup had a lasting impact on your sound?
Knox: I suppose they’ve all sort of contributed. When we do the recording and stuff and the way it’s played, it’s probably modeled it. It’s so in the background, you’re not aware of it. It’s like noticing your mother’s gotten older in the last 10 years. To you she looks the same and then you see a photograph of her 10 years ago and go, “Oh, my God!”
Your lyrics vary from songs about girls to more serious issues such as war and politics. Where do you draw the inspiration and is there a theme that you prefer?
Knox: I write about pretty well everything I suppose. I like songs that have sort of black humor stuff in the words. Sometimes the songs sort of write themselves, like “Troops of Tomorrow.” That was an idea that came off one of my friends who said we should write more meaningful songs. That was actually quite successful. Once you’ve got the title and you can put it to music, it just sort of writes itself basically. When I’m in a writing mood, I write down funny things people say to get ideas from that. Sometimes when I watch other bands, they’ll do something and I go, “That’s a good idea for a song.” One of my friends, I was helping him make some demos of this song and he was calling it “Factory Girls” or something, and I said, “Why don’t you do it about office girls, because there isn’t a song about that?” He said it’s got to be about factory girls, but the Rolling Stones have already done all that. So, I thought, “Well, I’ll write a song about office girls then.” So often it’s as simple as that.
Knox: I think just the fact that we kept going, I guess. If we hadn’t kept going, we wouldn’t have been forgotten but we’d be more legendary than obscure. We do 100 to 120 gigs a year, so we’re always touring around and I think people genuinely like to see you playing that music. I mean, there were people [at the show] last night, a couple guys, and they were just standing there and you could tell they just absolutely loved the band and the music and it was a fantastic night for them.
Where’s your favorite place to play?
Knox: I quite liked LA actually. I like bigger cities really, but sometimes in a little tiny village they go mad and you like that as well. As long as it’s got a real nice atmosphere. You know, when you play big festivals, sometimes you have to play to several thousand people and there’s a big gap between you and them, which I’m sort of uncomfortable with. I like to have people right at the front of the stage, even if they don’t really like the band. I’m more used to that sort of environment, I think. It’s more personal.
How has the punk scene changed since you first became a band?
Knox: When we first played, it was sort of when punk became punk. It was quite dangerous. Everywhere you went was sort of a war zone; you never knew what was going to happen. And generally nothing happened, but you’d look out at the audience and go, “My God, there’s some nasty people out there!” But often they were alright and liked the music. Also, because it was new, you had the press thing. You had people coming to see you because of that and they were really into you, but that’s sort of gone now. You still get press now, but it’s not that same kind of initial thing. It’s more gradual now. It’s pretty much evened out. I think the crowds who come to see us now, particularly when we headline, generally are our fans, whereas in the old days some were our fans and there would also be people there just out of interest, just checking out what was happening. When we started there were mainly lots of bands playing covers. They weren’t cover bands, but they played all different sorts of stuff out of the Top 10 or R&B hits, the old R&B, sort of blues stuff.
How have the venues changed? I know that when you started, you regularly played at a pub.
Knox: Yeah, that was where you played, in bars in England. You could pretty well get away with playing anything in there. I don’t think people realized what a liberal environment it was. I think that’s where I think the music often comes from, that sort of environment and playing live. We used to do residencies, so we’d be playing places every Friday or something and as long as we didn’t do anything terrible, we could pretty much do what we wanted.
Knox: I like oil paint, that’s my favorite medium, but the last year I mainly painted in acrylic because I paint on tour a bit. When I’m at home, I can basically paint on anything, but I don’t have time because I’m so busy. On the road, I’ve been doing loads of stuff on A4 in a sketch pad. I draw it out and then I just sort of color it in. When I was up in Canada a couple months ago, I was actually painting in the van. It’s easy enough to draw in the van; even though it’s bumping around, that’s not too bad. You can correct it. The painting I was doing was acrylic, just one color at a time. I was doing this futurist looking painting, so you have to color these little bits. It’s really high concentration stuff because the bus is lurching around and you’ve got this little bit of water. It’s just too much effort. But I like doing a half hour here and there and gradually you build up a body of work. I really like doing it. If I had more time, I’d do a lot more of it, but I often start stuff and I haven’t got it finished. I’ve probably got 300 paintings lined up and thousands of drawings. People don’t realize how much I’ve done over the years.
Have you always been interested in art?
Knox: I was always quite interested in it. When I was in school, when I was about 17, the headmaster suddenly said to me one day, “You’re quite good at art. Why don’t you do art?” So I went to art school. I’m quite grateful to him for even noticing that and suggesting that, otherwise I probably would have gone to university and done mathematics or something. When I went to art school, I was in a band. Everyone was playing guitar, so I got a keyboard and suddenly I was in three bands because they all wanted a keyboard guy. I couldn’t really play but it looked good.
Have you ever created art for your band, such as promo pictures or album covers?
Knox: Yeah, but funny enough, a couple of times people have gone, “Who did that terrible painting for the cover?” and I said, “Oh, that was me.” One time the guy actually said, “That’s the worst cover I’ve ever seen. Who the hell painted that?” and I said I did. It was a guy from a record company and he didn’t really know what to say. He said, “Well, perhaps it’s not that bad then.” I deliberately painted a bad cover because I thought that was kind of a thing, like the Ramones used to have sort of jokey paintings. It was for Energize. I think when we re-release it, we’ll have a new cover.
Knox: Probably the first two albums. We’ve got a greatest hits album out and I think Hunting for You is quite good. Actually, Energize is a very good album. That was out about ’99. The last album is a cover album, sort of ’77 covers. So I think the first album, Pure Mania, and Energize and maybe the greatest hits. I think the covers one is quite nice, but it’s not typical of us. It’s just us ruining other people’s songs instead of our own.
Is there anything else you’d like to say?
Knox: You haven’t asked if I think we’ll be around in 30 years time.
Do you think you’ll be around in 30 years time?
Knox: I don’t think we will because computers will have taken over and killed us all, you see, because we’ll be an enormous threat to them. Technology is increasing at an exponential rate. Last century there was 100 years of technological advance. This century there will be the equivalent of 20,000 years. People don’t realize how fast it’s going. You only have to look at the iPod thing that looks like backward alien engineering. It’s a very big thing with me, computer takeover, but my girlfriend very cleverly worked out that if we don’t have free will then we are robots, too, so we have nothing to fear from these other robots!
Read the full interview on Pseudononymous Webzine
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