WAVES Issue 2
An Interview with Roddy Lorimer

"I started playing music when I was at school. What happened was - I was sitting in a maths class one day, when in came a boy who asked for Alex Dicks and Joe Hislop to go to band practice. I thought “well hello-you get a period of mathematics to go to band practice”. So I went down and signed up. That is the Gods honest truth. That’s how I started playing. As soon as I started to play I loved it. So there you go - from small acorns etc.

"I got involved with The Waterboys through Anto really. Anto and I had been playing in a band called Impulse. Funnily enough, this new record ‘The Secret Life’ is on Chrysalis, and Mike Andrews who works for the Chrysalis products department, was the lead singer of Impulse. At the same time, Anthony and I had a horn section with the awful name The Rhinocerous Horns. We used to do sessions. At that time we were both playing with Bruce Foxton, who'd been the bass player of The Jam. That was back when Anto was called Anthony or Ant. Then he said he was leaving to join The Waterboys. I suppose that was 1982-3. Soon afterwards I got the call to come down to Redshop Studios to do some recording with The Waterboys. Redshop Studios was in Islington and has always had a special place in my heart as a recording studio, because it was where The Waterboys first albums were done. Jim Preen the engineer there, has been a very very close friend of mine in all the years ever since.

"The Waterboys were special I suppose because they were people who believed in what they were doing. The early 80's was a time when it seemed image was more important than substance. I suppose for The Waterboys it was substance before image. That’s an incredible thing!

"I would have loved to have played on Red Army Blues, ‘cause that song always, for some reason, had a special place in my heart. I always feel it’s rather humerous that the song Trumpets never had any trumpets on it. Many people have asked me why not - but I’m not really in a position to answer that one.

"I don’t think you could have bettered the albums which were released. The other tracks were different. They had their own ‘Secret Life’ I suppose. I don’t think those tracks had a part in the other albums. The albums had a running order and a feel to them, that was important.

"Yes, the Golders Green Hippodrome session (BBC Radio November 1985) was very special. If I remember right, we’d just come back from touring America. The band had been playing a lot together, and I think we were sounding as good as The Waterboys ever sounded. From my point of view that was probably the very best of The Waterboys. I don’t know whether it was by design or by accident, but when we got to the Hippodrome, there was no drums and no bass there. Now whether Mike had told them not to turn up until later - I don’t know - but he wanted to start with ‘Don’t Bang The Drum’. Now with no drums and no bass that was going to be pretty wacky. But that was the way Mike wanted it. He positioned us all in different places. He put Steve Wickham on the stage of the Hippodrome. He put Anthony in the royal box, to the left of the stage, as you look at it from the audience, and he put me in he royal box to right of the stage. Mike got to the very back of the theatre, which was a good distance away from us - ‘cause it’s a proper theatre, the Hippodrome, even though it’s used as a radio recordings place. That was it. We jammed ‘Don’t Bang The Drum’. I had never done the trumpet intro to ‘Don’t Bang The Drum,’ other than on the recording - it was an improvised thing. I had an idea of how it went but you can’t copy yourself exactly - you shouldn’t be able to anyway. Because it’s an emotional thing to do an improvised solo. So you can never recreate an emotion exactly. Mike's singing is astounding on all of that session - but for me, ‘Don’t Bang The Drum’ was the special one. It just had everything. I don’t think when we were recording it... well I just had no idea how fantastically good it was. Two or three years after I first heard it on a German EP and I was floored, and to this day it still remains to me one of the greatest live things, if not the greatest, that I’ve ever been involved in, that ever went on record. It was pretty special. It was a special time, special music and special people.

"My main thing in music has been being a member of The Kick Horns. There was never any question of me joining The Waterboys and becoming a full member because I was already a member of The Kick Horns. We’ve been playing together for eleven years now. It was always a situation were I would have to ask the Kick Horns - the other two guys, my partners - whether they would allow me the time to tour with The Waterboys. Which they always did. Eventually in late 1990 we all did a tour with the Waterboys. We joined the tour in Wales. That was the first time the Kick Horns could join them, cause we’d been touring with someone else at the time. Then we went off for five or six weeks to North America with the band. There are many funny things I remember about that.

"After the American tour we came back for the tour of Ireland. That was a bit tricky for me, because I had a little boy - Alex - who was about one year old at the time. The tour would have meant me being away for Christmas and The New Year and his 1st birthday. I said no I can’t do that, cause I can’t leave my wife and my little boy. Mike said “can we not do something else - isn’t there some way to get you here ?” We ended up bringing my wife Kate over with a nanny, and it was great. We had a wonderful time. The thing was, we in the band were driving about Ireland in a rickety old bus. My wife Kate, my little one year old and the nanny were being driven about in a limo. So it was fantastic, the band would turn up at the gig in the rickety old bus, and my wife, my nipper and the nanny were taken to the door by a chauffeur driven limo.

"There was a very special moment for both me and my nipper Alex. That was the gig in Cork. It was on my sons very first birthday. Mike came on to the stage, and started the show with a walkman in his hand. He placed the walkman down at the front of the stage, and he said, “this is a very special day for a very special person - I’d like you all to sing Happy Birthday to Alex Lorimer on his 1st birthday. Mike started them off - he had the walkman recording, and 2,000 people in Cork sang Happy Birthday dear Alex. Alex still has that tape - what a special thing to have for your first birthday. Isn’t that fantastic!

"Another peculiar incident was me doing backing vocals with The Waterboys and not getting credited. Another string to my bow ! On the recording of ‘The Whole Of The Moon,’ I spent three days in the studio with just Mike, an engineer and myself. Mike thought that later in the song he would like some high harmony vocals, and I said “Yeah, I’ll have a go”. So I went through it with Mike and did all this [sings in high voice] high harmony. I thought he’d get someone else in to do it again. It was months later when I was listening to it and I thought, “wait a minute! I know these awful sounds coming from the back - it’s me!” Shocking - I didn’t even get a credit for it.

"There was a funny story surrounding the video for ‘The Whole Of The Moon’. Just previous to that, I’d been working with Pete Townsend on an album and a film called White City. On the film we’d done some live singing and guitar playing, with the band prerecorded on a backing track. This hadn’t been done before. It’s technically very very difficult to do, because of the editing, to capture a live performance on top of a backing tape. Mike wanted to sing live on video for ‘The Whole Of The Moon’. I told him that the producer who worked on White City with Pete Townsend, had worked out this new procedure. Mike thought it sounded wonderful. Just by coincidence two days later I was in Soho, when I bumped into the producer of that film. He said “I saw you with The Waterboys the other night at the Town and Country Club. God! What a great band. I’d love to do a video of them.” I thought “hello-this is just fate”. So I said “I tell you what, give me your phone number, and I’ll get someone to call you”. And that’s how the video got made.

"I’m sure now with the advances in technology, it could be done easily, but then it was real cutting edge stuff.

"My other work - well Eric Clapton has done a wonderful live blues album live in the recording studio called ‘From the Cradle’. It has some fantastic blues musicians ; Muddy Water’s harp player, one of the greatest drummers ever, Jim Keltner and Eric Clapton himself. I’m very pleased with it. It was a wonderful thing to be involved with. We’ve been playing live with Eric for the last one and a half years, but this is the first time we’ve recorded with him.

"In recent years I’ve toured with The Who and recorded with The Rolling Stones. I’ve done a lot of work with independent bands like Blur, Suede and The Stereo MC’s. All with the Kick Horns. I’m still enjoying myself really, and obviously I’m still playing with Anto, as and when we get a chance in his band The Blue Stars."