Interview: David Gleeson, Screaming Jets

Fuck Rock N' Roll

In comparison to its predecessor SCREAMING JETS' new LP Tear on Thought sports a much punkier attitude. It's funny because in Australia it's not deemed as 'full on' All For One.

"The last one had the big 'C' word on it." says David Gleeson, down the line from Oz.

There may not be any swearing on the new record, but the music contained must have riled a few of the natives. How did they take to a track such as Hard Drugs for example?

"It's one of those songs that uses the word drugs in the context of being the drug of your choice. It's not condoning drugs at all."

Helping Hand is a total distraction from the 'full on' approach, being more linked to lounge music in its intro.

"Paul [Woseen], the bass player, wrote that after his mom died. We all live together so Paul felt alienated. It's one subject that's difficult to talk about, but when he wrote that it just blew us away."

In its favour All For One featured a wealth of potential chart singles, something which is missing from Tear.

"Yeah, that's something that came from seeing bands like METALLICA. They don't write singles but the radio picks up on tracks as they go along."

Has changing UK labels caused any problems?

"We didn't know whether they'd be into it but so far they've been really positive."

Unfortunately other sources in their homeland haven't been quite as supportive, as the recent GUNS N' ROSES shows in Sydney reveal. David explains...

"Everyone in the hierarchy here hates the Screaming Jets. Guns N' Roses played here recently with SKID ROW. It was deemed the biggest show in the Southern hemisphere, but we didn't get on it cos we've offended too many of the wrong people in Australia."

Although the following is not to be taken as an anti GN'R shot, David has nothing but admiration for Skid's main man Sebastian Bach.

"He's a fucking good guy, and..." he says in frustration, "he's always surrounded by fuckin' chicks. Someday I wanna be a rock star."

Keep making records as good as Tear of Thought and someday you will, Dave. Someday you will!

Joe Mackett
Riff Raff
May 1993

Revenge...?

Riff Raff was a legendary rock magazine based in London in the late 1980s and 1990s. Edited by the ultimate music biz insider, Mark Crampton, and employing such talents as Mark Blake, Jerry Ewing, Mike Harris, Paul Smith, Chris Collingwood, Alan McCrorie, Simon Robinson, Lyn Guy, Anna Marx, Nick Douglas, Marion Garden, Peter "Grunty" Grant, Joe "The Crow" Mackett, Billy "The Kluck" Kulke, and, lastest and mostest, the incredible Liddell Brothers, Mark (a.k.a. "El Perro") and Colin (a.k.a. "Der Fly"). Unfortunately, Riff Raff was just too R n' R for its own good. A genuine working class rock mag, written, edited, and translated into 16 European languages in a drug-N-Jack-D-fuelled haze, often on the back of motorbikes, with spell checking by our staff of attentive rock bimbos (chosen purely for their blondeness and big knockers), it soon fell behind more trainspotterly, nerdish, and politically correct publications like Q, Kerrang, Mojo, Metal Hammer, and Horse & Hound. This website is an archive and kind of shrine dedicated to the writing of its greatest writers, some of whom, luckily for the Rock Kosmos, still continue to write about music. This is the REVENGE of Riff Raff...Rock on!