Interview: Tommy Vance

THIS IS ROCK N' ROLL RADIO

For some reason in this country we have a system that won't allow a national rock radio station because a stuffy old bunch of politicians reckon that Rock is Pop and there is enough of that clogging up the airwaves already. What a load of bollocks!

The only national heavy metal rock that we can tune into is supplied by Radio One, who have reserved two hours at the end of Friday night when us mere mortals can get a fix. The host of the Friday Rock Show really doesn't need any introduction. Tommy Vance has got to be the owner of probably the most thread-bare pair of vocal cords in the business.

His radio career first started when he trained for a year in Vancouver, Canada, and then America in Washington state.

"It was so long ago, I can't fucking remember. Emmm...1960 something or other."

In those days, he'd work at one radio station from six to midnight doing news and news analysis. Then he'd drive 30 miles and do the breakfast show on another station.

"Then I'd service a slot machine route back to the other station. I used to go round in circles."

His workload from that day to this hasn't really changed an awful lot. Besides past credits on Radio Caroline, Capital Radio's reggae show, and BFBS, British Forces Broadcast Service, he now works at GLR, Greater London Radio, here in our wonderful capital city, as well as doing commercial voiceovers and Radio One.

To most people's mind, he would be considered famous, something that Tommy dismisses altogether.

"I always shy away from that, I don't want to be bloody famous. I'd like to be respected. I'd like to be considered worthy of listening to. I don't like the idea, the concept of fame. To me, it smacks of a very shallow attitude toward what you're doing. I don't want to be fucking famous. I just want to be there. And I'm lucky I've been 'there' for a hell of a long time."

When I first approached him with the notion of doing this interview, whilst standing at the bar during the GUNS N' ROSES Festival this year, he said that it's not really his favourite pastime. But after several phone calls, we met up at GLR and grabbed half an hour for a chat in the basement studio before he went on air.

Any kind of uniformed dress awareness doesn't figure too highly in his life. In fact, he says that:

"I dress like an American."

With Hawaiian shirt, loafers and slacks, he reclines in the swivel chair with his back to the console and draws up his roll-up, which he had hidden from the view of the camera during the photo session because he doesn't want to be seen to endorse such a habit as smoking. Also, the shades that he wore for the shoot were his idea of taking the piss out of himself.

With so many years of broadcasting experience behind him, I wondered whether or not he still got that initial buzz before he went on air?

"It's not a buzz, it's a fear. I was in Germany this weekend and I heard a program that I recorded two weeks ago for the British Forces Broadcasting Service, whom I've worked for virtually all my life, longer in fact than I've worked for Radio One. And I was quite pleased with it. That in itself surprises me because I generally am hypercritical of everything I do. I'm fundamentally a mass of insecurities as regards to my performance, so I don't feel a buzz at all. I feel fucking scared. I might not look it, but if I'm honest to myself, I am."

But broadcasting isn't where he's made his living. That has been born out of going into business with a guy who's the greatest living recording engineer and another man who's the greatest voiceover. These namely being Robert Western, who used to work with Tommy at Capital Radio and who also worked for Radio Luxembourg, and David Tate, a trained actor.

They set up their business about 11 years ago. It's a company that's allied to the advertising industry, producing voiceovers for untold consumer goods.

"We do countless things that you would hear all the time. They now have seven digital state of the art recording studios. There's no sinecure in doing what I do. I have worked on three-month contracts for the BBC since 1967. I've never had a contract longer than three months. There's no security in that. I could be out of fashion tomorrow, and I recognise that. My old granny said to me once [assuming a HINGE AND BRACKET style caricature:] 'You've got to end up earning a piece of the action, you know.' And that from a woman who was 69 was quite a hip remark. So I achieved that years ago. In actual fact, it was a very good manoeuvre because what it did do is it took a burden off my shoulders. That burden being, if I didn't work again for the rest of my life, it wouldn't matter because I wouldn't starve, which is a very nice position to be in. I'm very lucky."

You may think, why work in radio? Well, radio to Tommy is his hobby more than anything.

"There's no bloody money in radio. I mean, my plumber gets more an hour than I do. And I'm not joking. I've worked it out. I probably earn £10 an hour doing radio. If you amortise the amount of hours I put into it. Some weeks on the Friday Rock Show, I'll put in 15 hours, which suits me. I'm not complaining because I like doing it."

When it comes to his role as DJ, his attitude is that he's a middleman, the guy who finds music that he thinks should be shared with people who take time to listen to his shows. But he never really entertains the possibility of being seen as the rock DJ at the top of the tree, as it were.

On average, most people working within this industry are frustrated tennis racket bashing closet rock stars, Tommy being no exception.

"I'm a frustrated musician, a frustrated singer, very much so. I'd love to be up there. I want to be there. I want to be ROBERT PLANT. If I looked like him and I could sing like him, I bloody well would be. I'd like to be Lars Ulrich. I'd like to be Midnight out of CRIMSON GLORY. Fucking right, I'd like to be them. I'm jealous of them."

He laughs at his admission of his own lack of musical ability.

"But I don't have the talent in that area. What I do have is I have this broadcasting voice and to reiterate a phrase, I'm just a larynx on legs. It's more skill than talent. If you're talking broadcasting talent, you've got to talk people like Kenny Everett, Steve Wright, emmm...Adrian Just, the way he compiles his programs, Simon Bates for the way he does that letter business. I tried to do that once, and I broke down every time I read a letter. I had a nervous attack -- ha ha! I'm more a person of skill than of talent."

As I'm sure you have no problem in gathering by now, Tommy doesn't take himself all that seriously, an aspect that he thinks of more as a defence mechanism.

"Mainly because I'm an exceptionally shy individual. Mind you, if you ask anyone around here, they think I'm an arsehole because I'm fucking shouting all the time (that's around here at GLR.). But that's only because I want them to be better, and I want them to be the greatest team. I'm fundamentally very shy. I really am. And again, it's something I didn't realize. I mean, I knew it when I was a kid. I knew it when I was in my 20s. I lost sight of it when I was in my 30s. And now, fuck, I'm not telling you how old I am..."

His dry sense of humour scores another point on the old laugh-o-meter.

"But I mean, now I realize it because you look back on your life, you look back on various phases of the development of your personality. And I'm still fundamentally what I was when I was a child. And that was horrendously shy. I was really a bloody wallflower."

A thoughtful tone softens that ubiquitous abyssal voice. Presenting on other BBC shows, such as Top of the Pops, which he did for two years, and also the Sunday Top 40, which I remember listening to as a kid sitting on the floor with my finger on the pause button of my brother's tape machine that I'd appropriated for the purpose of entrapping my fave tunes, made some people wonder, 'what sort of an animal is he?' because of the specialist tag that goes along with presenting a rock show.

"I didn't get hounded out of the rock fraternity (for doing those other shows). I didn't because I'm still a firm believer that the people who like Rock music are very discerning customers. They're not totally image orientated, they're music lovers as Alan Freeman calls them. I mean, they go through a phase when they're young rockers, when they might like thrash or whatever, but rockers tend to mature into people who have a far more Catholic taste than others, a much broader love of music than people who got into Disco or House."

Also in his CV, you will find that he's made appearances at a plethora of rock festivals, Donington and Knebworth, to name but a few, as compere. This job he sees as pure thrill-seeking.

"Especially those early Doningtons. It was just a very weird deal."

He lets out a mirthful snigger.

"You're up there in front of 75,000 people, and they're all going, 'Wanker, arsehole.' There's a jingle that we have that we recorded at Donington, which is 75,000 people singing in unison, 'Tommy is a wanker.' It's brilliant. It's on a 24-hour track tape."

Don't you feel hurt by that?

"Not in the least. The difference is the moment you come off stage, it's hello, mate. How are you? I have never been hit, assaulted, ridiculed or whatever by other rock fans. But while you're on stage, you're a target."

A literal realization that was brought home to him on one occasion when he had his glasses knocked off by some idiot throwing a rock at him.

"I thought I'd lost my eye, but I still continued shouting."

Tommy's other favourite pastimes include trying to blow the speakers in the studios of the BBC. I mean, I've actually sat in on a few Friday Rock Shows, and well, my ears were ringing by the end of the night.

"They've got great speakers in there now, and I just can't blow them up, but I try every week. I just like blowing speakers. Maybe like an arsonist likes to set fire to buildings, me, I like to blow the speakers up."

"I'm a very strange disc jock because I don't want to talk. I'd rather just listen to the bloody music. I got a job working in jukeboxes once, and the only reason I gravitated towards getting that job was I didn't have to pay because I could hit the free play button and have another listen. When it's all said and done, I'm a music fanatic with a strong broadcasting voice. That's all I am."

Peter Grant

Pix: Jeff Davy

Riff Raff
January 1992.

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