Interview: Mick Ransome, Tattooed Love Boys

WHERE THERE'S A WILL...

The last time I saw the TATTOOED LOVE BOYS play live was at the Marquee, when their debut album Bleeding Hearts and Needle Marks came out. And what a night it was. I ended up joining in on backing vocals during the encore of KISS's Rock 'n' Roll all Night Party Everyday, along with the rest of the nutters who had invaded the stage.

Since then, the Tatts have been pretty quiet due to several upheavals. The obvious frustration of all this has left drummer/ main instigator behind the band, Mick Ransome, a lot wiser and more determined (the line-up being finished with Gary Mielle on vocals, Chris Danby on rhythm guitar, Nick Singleton, lead guitar, and Dean Marshall bashing the bass).

So, over a pint or two of Guinness in a North London pub, accompanied by every rock classic you can imagine blasting from the jukebox, I got the lowdown on the slowdown before the wheels started to move again for their new No Time for Nursery Rhymes album.



You've been out of it for three years. Ha, that sounds good. Fucking hell, what a way to start a conversation. How many pints have I had? But Mick immediately jumps on the obvious joke in my first statement.

"Yeah, I've been out of it for three years, man, and I'm just starting to get my head back together, ha ha. We haven't done a gig for two years, and it's three years almost exactly when this album comes out to when the last one did. The first year the album came out, everything was happening, and then it just ground to a halt. We had loads of problems, management problems, line-up problems, studio problems, drug problems, alcohol problems. We've had everything. I mean, we went into the studio to write and rehearse this album at the start of 1990 and here we are at the end of 91 and it's just out, so we were in and out of the studios for 18 months."

But how did you keep your focus over all that time? I struggle to be heard over old Percy Plant and the ZEPPY's screaming out above our heads.

"It's a straight choice .Do you give up or do you keep going? As far as I'm concerned, this is the best band I've ever been in. It's exactly the band I wanted to be in. It's my band. There was no choice. So it was a case of heads down against the wind and keep going. To me, the album we're putting out now, is just how I envisaged the band to be and now there are four people who feel the same way as I do. There's no infighting going on, which we've had a lot of before."

Even though there've been some bad bus stops in the band, it's always been Mick and Gary who have held the infrastructure together.

"It's always been me and Gary right from the beginning."

Mick actually found Nick, Chris and Dean right under his nose (that is, after meeting the masses). In fact, Nick had auditioned for them before.

"Funny thing was, he applied to join when CJ (the former guitarist) left. I don't know what happened, because as far as I was aware, we auditioned everyone that applied, and for some reason he got overlooked. And it's ironic that we could have probably sorted it out fucking two years ago," he smiles. "We had a few people apply for that and we auditioned in the studio. We were mad in the studio. Considering the cost, we auditioned guitarists on recording time at, like, 50 quid an hour. We did photo sessions in the studio at 50 quid an hour. It was fucking mad."

Chris, it turns out, was playing bass for another band and was a friend of Nick's. One night, while around at Nick's, he picked up a guitar and started to jam along to one of the tracks appearing on the Tatt's album. Nick then suggested a trial run at a rehearsal and it worked.



When it comes to Dean, who's apparently a nutcase, he wanted to be in the band for ages and at one point went around telling people that he was, which caused the guys to originally "blow him out." Then one night when they were struggling in the studio, Mick called him up to see if he would help out on some tracks and he turned out to be perfect.

Has the fact that you've had such bad experiences maybe taken some of the magic away for you?

"The trouble is you get to the point where you almost don't trust anyone and it's kind of a sad way to be really. There's got to be, just by the law of averages, a certain percentage of people out there who are 100% trustworthy. But you end up mistrusting everyone because of the people that have fucked you over. As much as most people would like to say they're only in it for the music, you can't be. You've got to have a certain amount of business suss about you or you'll get shit on the whole time."

As far as the British rock market is concerned, what, to your mind, do you think the Tatts represent?

"I'd like to think that we're the British GUNS N' ROSES, but without the egos," he laughs. "I don't know, perhaps that's being pretentious, but all I ever wanted it to be was a rock n' roll band with songs that you could sing along to, no samples. Everything you see is what you get. All the harmonies on stage are real, which you'd probably be able to tell at times, ha ha."

Mick could be slammed for coming out with such a strong ideal about how he sees the band, but to have as much belief in what you are doing is a quality in itself. When the album was being recorded, they didn't want to do anything that they couldn't do live.

"There's odd touches, like there's piano on one track and strings on another, but they're basically there to enhance the recorded versions. Things that you're not going to notice live. Although, live, we are going to use people to play the piano. Hopefully for London and places like that we're going to use Qualcast Mutilator out of LAWNMOWER DEATH, who is actually a musically trained pianist. That would be such a complete contrast to have someone like him."

As old Axl is whistling away in the background (by the way, it's your round, Mick), we turn back to the subject of translating it to vinyl. Do you think that you capture the live feel at all?

"Yeah, definitely," comes his reply with an affirmative nod of his head. "I think this time, with using Kit Woolven (MAGNUM, UFO) to mix it. He knew what we were about. I mean, I was in there all the time while we were mixing it. That's one thing I try to do. I try to be there whatever it is, whether it's recording video or anything, and even if it's not a hands-on thing, I can put my opinion. I mean Kit would tell you this if he was sitting here now. We argued all the way through the mix, but in a constructive way. We didn't go outside and beat the shit out of each other. We argued about points. Sometimes he won, sometimes I won, and sometimes we compromised. But I think that's a healthy way to work."

Peter Grant
Riff Raff
January 1992

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