Interview: Nasty Suicide & Alvin Gibbs, Cheap And Nasty

Those seasoned rock n' rollers CHEAP AND NASTY hit the UK tour trail once again this summer with the ALMIGHTY, before joining them on the bill for Cumbria Rock 91. The roving  Rottweiler Mark "lend us 10 quid and I'll buy you a drink later" Liddell joins the band in rehearsal for their upcoming tour.

Nasty and Gibbs

ALIVE N' KICKING

The venue, a North London rehearsal studio tucked away amongst industrial units and warehouses that proliferate the area. A real eyesore, but at least there's no distractions as Cheap and Nasty get down to the nitty-gritty of preparing for their forthcoming touring schedule.

I make the mistake of arriving 10 minutes early as "Mind Across the Ocean" reverberates through the walls. Well, they're not going to hear the doorbell ring! I wait for them to play out then dive for the buzzer. A minute later the door creaks open and I'm greeted by guitarist/ singer and original founder member Nasty Suicide. And in case you didn't already know, ex-guitarist with cult heroes HANOI ROCKS.

Nasty ushers me through to their large rehearsal room. The rest of the band are sprawled over the sofa, so Nasty and myself prop ourselves up on the side of the stage. Nasty looks tired and tells me that he's nursing a sore throat. He explains that he doesn't normally suffer from this ailment and admits to being vaguely mystified by his condition, but then adds:

"We had a gas leak here earlier. It could be that too."

Yeah, let's go out with a bang. Really rock n; roll! Anyway, nasty, gas leaks aside, are you happy with the band production on your debut album Beautiful Disaster? After all it is hard to be objective about it isn't it in your position.

"We'll see when we compare it to the next one. We just felt that it was a good idea to get the first album like a band production. Sometimes I feel that if a band goes for the first time into the studio with a producer, you have to give space to the producer. Otherwise there's no point in paying him to come down there, and he gets frustrated if you don't let him do his job. So we felt, we are going to do one like this and see how we get on. It's like with any album, you can go on forever doing it and bettering it but that costs money."

No doubt important when you're not working on, say, a BON JOVI type budget. However, financial considerations and practicalities aside, Nasty prefers to look for something positive in the situation.

"It's a learning experience. You learn from working with a producer and you can learn from just working on your own, creating your own thing. We are fairly new to each other. With this line up we've been together a year now, and it's been just over six months since we first got in the studio together. It's a good way to get the band really working together."

Some people have described the album as having a "murky production" and a "lethargic delivery." I wouldn't go as far as the nastier criticisms but it's only really the up-tempo tracks, like "Queen Bee" and "Body Electric" that really sparkle.

Although there's no really bad songs here, bearing in mind that some of these guys have co-written songs recently with GUNS N' ROSES (Timo Kaltio got a credit for "Right Next Door to Hell"), but the more reflective songs do get a touch too maudlin at times. However, they put up a strong, spirited defence. Take articulate, easy-going bassist Alvin Gibbs, who's now joined us:

"Nowadays it's kind of rock by numbers. First of all they get the big hairstyle, and then they work out some music, which is basically just a blueprint. There's a lot of that going on. That's why I find it very difficult to go out and watch bands these days. It's predictable. I think that what we're doing is substantial, and that's why people feel a little bit uncomfortable with it, because they think they have us pinned down as something we're not. You know like [adopts manic parody voice] 'the glam rock. hard-livin', hard-drinkin' rock n' roll dudes!!'"

Do you think it might have something to do with your past achievements overshadowing you?

Nasty: "It doesn't worry us. We rise above it. We are professionals! Everybody gets stick anyway. Doesn't matter what you do, you always get some kind of hassle."

Lyrically there seems to be a consistent theme running through a lot of your songs, for example, "Break for the Border." You know, breaking out, escaping from someone, something. A modern day desperado, if you like.

Nasty: "Oh yes, I've been like that all my life, and that's probably why. Most of the songs are about running away from something and breaking out. I guess it's because that stuff is still in me. It has to get out! Hopefully on the next album the theme will be different."

Nasty also co-wrote one song on the album called "Retribution" with none other than Reggie Kray one half of the infamous Kray twins - whilst visiting him in jail.

Nasty: "I went down with a friend of mine who's writing a book about them. I just went down for the hell of it. I was talking to him, he's really into music, all the new bands etc. He writes a lot of poems, but he writes them with, like, song lyrics in mind. But they need melody to them. So he said that's something he'd like to have, a band maybe write a song around his lyrics."

Reggie Kray: Nasty Suicide meets Nasty Murder?

The title track of the album Beautiful Disaster also has an interesting story to tell, doesn't it?

Alvin goes into some detail, but basically it's about the tragedy of a 1920 silent movie starlet by the name of Louise Brooks. Her lifestyle didn't really fit in with the way big producers perceived the way a woman should behave in her position.

Alvin: "She'd go out and drink too much, she had loads of lovers, and she wasn't worried about who knew about it. So basically they put the blocks on her and stopped her from filming again. So she struggled for a lot of years and eventually moved to New York where she did some theatre. From there she ended up a recluse and then an alcoholic."

The Greta Garbo "I want to be alone" syndrome?

"Yeah except she had no choice! But there was a British playwright called Kenneth Tynan who went out to New York, after seeing her films, to track her down to interview her. They fell in love and they had this long-standing affair. He was once asked what he thought about Louise Brooks and he said, 'Oh she's a beautiful disaster.' It's just a wonderful paradox and such a cool title. So Timo [Kaltio], the other guitarist had a little bit of music which he thought was a chorus. But I told him it wasn't. It was a verse! It was far too long to be a chorus! And I said, 'No, but I've got a chorus!' I didn't want it to be cornball. It could be about anybody in that situation. It came out quite nicely."

The original line-up of Cheap and Nasty first formed in Los Angeles in 1989. They couldn't be based there because Nasty was deported due to various "passport irregularities."

If given the choice would you still want to be based there?

Nasty: "The business there is probably in a better shape. It's somehow easier, more fluent in the States. Because the States is a big country, the companies seem to have a lot of money. But, then again, there's pros and cons with it all. In the States you tend to jump on the same bandwagon and it starts changing you. I know a lot of people who've moved from here to the States and when they've been based there for a year they actually start sounding like an American band. They suddenly get the bandanas on their heads and the spandex trousers. There's nothing wrong with that if that's what you want to do!"

Alvin's response is less evasive.

"I lived there for five years and I fought against it every day. LA is an extreme city, anyway. It's no place to live, and that's the truth of it! I am glad I did it, but you can't go for a walk unless you want to poison yourself or get run over. There's parts of the city you can never go to."

It seems then that Alvin and Nasty are more mature and a little mellower these days. Self-destruction doesn't look like an option. Both of them are now married and share a mutual interest in the martial arts. But the point of it is non aggressive as Alvin explains:

"You're fighting yourself in the end. You're not fighting anybody else. The whole battle is internalised, as opposed to externalised. To me that's the ultimate! The purpose of martial arts is to come to know yourself and to be able to understand yourself and therefore to lose that fear."

"Nasty: fear becomes like a threat itself."

A lot of people seem to turn to drugs and drink to try and escape their problems, and many musicians have easy access to them. So the temptations are always there.

Nasty: "A hell of a lot of musicians and artists in general are really scared people. The obvious way to cure that seems to be to pick up a drink and it comes out in various forms of aggression."

Nasty is very frank about his own problems in the past:

"It didn't occur to me that any of that was becoming a problem. I didn't really give a fuck then! When people thought I was unpleasant I was proud of it. I thought I was a 'beautiful disaster.; I think that a hell of a lot of fellow musicians think they're the same. If people were laughing, I thought I was being funny. I didn't realise they were laughing at me, not with me."

Alvin: "If people don't change then they stagnate. It's a perennial adolescence. There is nothing more ugly than a 45-year-old guy that's still clinging on to the dream he had when he was 19."

Nasty: "I think in music you can use your experience to an advantage."

It was that refusal to change that prevented Alvin from joining up with Andy McCoy who played with him in IGGY POP's band.

Alvin: "Andy's problem was an unwillingness to change, as he always wanted to be in control."

That doesn't appear to be a problem with Cheap and Nasty. After all, the song-writing is spread pretty evenly throughout the band. Alvin agrees and adds:

"If you are working with good people, as I am, it balances it all out. They won't allow you to be a control freak!"

Cheap and Nasty may have their detractors, but they have the right attitude, proven individual talent, and the adaptability to survive and just possibly thrive. The 'post-mortem' is premature!

Mark Liddell

Riff Raff

July 1991

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