SPACEHOG

Let Them Be Your Fantasy

(An Interview With Ant Langdon - Taken From Black Velvet Issue 9 - Aug 96)

By Shari Black Velvet

You could say that I'd fantasised about doing an interview with Spacehog ever since meeting and seeing the band live in New York at Christmas (1995). Truly they knocked me dead with their entertaining live show, musicianship and all round personalities. I was determined to get an interview if it was the last thing I did. No luck at Leeds but a month or so later, June 3rd to be exact, in Wolverhampton, prior to the band's final show of a 'long weekend stint', my time came. Fantasy turned to reality...!

Above: Looking 'f**ked'! - Photo By Shari

One of the first things guitarist Antony Langdon said to me when I entered the room was "I'm so f**ked. Have you ever felt completely f**ked?". I take it the tour has been taking it's toll then... We may forget that although the boys, that's brothers Royston and Antony Langdon, Jonny Cragg and Rich Steel, are only here for a handful of dates, they've been touring the USA constantly for the last eight months. "America's been wicked. Really cool. And we've had a lot of success over there so we've been getting to live really large and take it easy and get treated like we deserve really. I've just directed the new video for 'Cruel To Be Kind' so I was really busy doing that. That's going to be the next single; well it's already out in America and doing really well. It's doing really well on rock radio and on modern radio it's just starting to come up. The video's looking really silly!"

Yeah, it's a well known fact that Ant is a silly idiot! And I mean that in the nicest sense! Just take a look at the promo photos; there's one of him in rubber gloves painting the toe-nails of drummer Jonny, another sees Ant in boxing gloves (probably ready for the drummer of D Generation, since Ant told me he'd made some remarks about the band in a U.S. interview and the drummer hadn't taken too kindly to them!). On stage, the loquacious one has a habit of bum-wiggling and tongue-waggling. He's very silly, but that's probably what makes him so appealing and why just about every radio, T.V. or magazine DJ, VJ or journo wants to talk to him right now.

Ant offers to show us the video in the van. Yeah, the plush thing's got a VCR system inside. He looks out of the window but sadly the van's not there. No, it's not been stolen, the road manager has driven off to see his missus, so he promises to show us later. (As it happened, we never got time, unfortunately, so had to miss out - bummer!)

Ant returns to the subject of the tour. "...So all in all, it's going really well. But we're f**ked, really f**ked. I don't know if you've ever felt that feeling that you get so f**ked that you don't know where you are, what you're doing. We've been touring pretty much for eight months now, non-stop, very little time off."

And the tour doesn't stop here. Following this Wolverhampton date, the gang were flying out of Birmingham for a day in Amsterdam, and then on to Paris, Milan, Barcelona, Madrid and then back to New York.

So it's not just in America and now England where things are taking off for the four Leeds lads. Ant adds: "The album's doing really well in Spain, it's doing pretty well in Germany. They used 'In The Meantime' on a commercial for an aeroplane company in Sweden. It was a really cool commercial; I thought it was going to be a nightmare but it was really cool. It was excellent actually, really funny. This guy ends up losing everything. It's like a minute long commercial so the single's become pretty big in Sweden. It went Gold in Canada and we're about 100,000 records off going Gold in America. All in all, we can't complain really for a new band that nobody's heard of before."

So how do they feel to be finally breaking it in their home country? I ask. "Well, I don't think we really are." he voices. "Truth is, I don't think we're really breaking it. I think we've got quite a long way to go. We're gonna come back in September and do a proper tour of England. Maybe open for somebody."

"I'd like to but I don't know who or which way to go. We're kind of friends with Sugargrass so there was talk of doing a tour with them. We're bigger than them in America so they can come over and support us in America, and we'll come over and support them here. We'll see what happens though. Also, we know Skunk Anansie. They supported us in America. I like them a lot. And Graham, our road manager at the moment from Wolverhampton, he used to be their road manager. There's all kinds of things, it's just a case of what to do really."

Spacehog have supported the Red Hot Chili Peppers in America. I asked what it was like to tour with them and did they go down well with the Chili fans. Ant replies "That was amazing, like 10,000 people a night. And they were just the sweetest guys. I went gambling with Anthony and he was just awesome. I love those guys. Yeah, we went down well. I thought we wouldn't but we did, we really did. Surprisingly well. The Toadies were out with us. Y'know The Toadies? And they really didn't go down well at all. But we were the opening band and then The Toadies and then the Chilis. The Toadies have sold a lot of records but they didn't go down too well."

I move on to talking about the album. Resident Alien is probably about the best debut I've heard by a band ever (that's if you don't count Manic Street Preachers 'Generation Terrorists!). The two most wonderful songs on the album go by the names 'Space Is The Place' and 'Spacehog', both lively, funny, boptastic tunes that I feel I have to play at least twenty times a day to survive!

I ask if they aim to continue the Space theme. Personally I think they should. "I'm going to move on" Ant says, much to my disappointment. "I think it was the period we were going through.... feeling alien-like, and being called an alien in the eyes of immigration when moving to America, and also just because Space acts as a great metaphor for anything really, a pondering otherness, something separate from normality. Lots of musicians have considered Space as a place to run to or fantasize about or imagine."

Since these two were the sole two written by Ant on the CD - besides a collaboration with his brother ('To Be A Millionaire....Was It Likely?'), and Royston, in fact, wrote the majority of the album, I question whether Ant will be writing more for the next album, and how his and Royston's songwriting differs. "I've written quite a few more songs" he answers. "The thing is that a lot of my stuff is a lot more silly than my brothers. I'm not as accomplished a songwriter and a musician as he is, so I'm not as proficient, but that's a good thing because that's what Rock 'N' Roll is about for me. But on the other hand, because a lot of our sound is very 70's, a lot of that; bands like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, were all accomplished musicians, even Bowie. So I think my brother comes from that perspective where as I'm more of a pop kind of guy. I just like things that are really accessible. Also I say what I mean, he speaks in metaphors, he speaks in tongues."

The good thing about Spacehog is they don't fall into any one category. There's a splash of pop here, a dab of indie there, a smudgeon of 70's glam... Almost anyone it seems, could get into them - which is no doubt why all this success has transpired in America and will shortly here be heading their way. I ask if that was ever the objective. "No. That's why it happened. Because we didn't have an objective. Jonny was coming into the picture with tapes of Jungle music, but in a way it was cool because we brought in some synthesizer sounds that Jonny was into, and Rich was coming from the band Ghost Dance, a gothic band. It all happened so quickly. We were lucky in that sense that we never had to wonder if people would like us or not. We just assumed that everyone would like us. We never thought for a second that they wouldn't, and just did what we wanted to do."

I had to ask about how Royston feels about being compared to Axl Rose. "I think he likes it." Ant honestly replies. "Axl Rose's wicked!"

Since Ant and the boys have lived in the U.S.A. for a couple of years, what would he say is the main difference between England and America, musically and in general? He believes that America is more rock orientated where as England is based in pop music. "Rock music in England at the moment is pretty underground. It still has a hardcore following. It's like your magazine is about Rock music but a lot of it is not mainstream. It's not Britpop, is it? America always has a huge mainstream Rock music following."

I'm curious to know if living in America and New York in particular, has changed him at all. "Yeah, very much so" he ponderingly replies, yet not really expanding for once. He informs me that he loves it over there, especially the weather. It's 95 degrees in New York at the moment apparently, "And 98 degree humidity - almost unbearable". So would they ever consider moving back to England for good, or is that a silly question I wonder. "Me and my brother talked about buying a house in England and then never living there. Just let it grow over and then rediscover it when we get older. Personally I think I'll probably rediscover England when I'm older but right now America's too much fun. It's too dowdy here, it's too restrictive. I find it so anyway. In America you can really do what you want. You can shed your skin in America. You can re-invent yourself easier than you can here. They're cynical about people who do that here. America is fantasy...it's all about fantasy"

Ah, fantasy. I like fantasy. Yeah, let Spacehog be your fantasy... Your ultimate fantasy...