Leaving Factory

London, 1980.  'Nobody's Perfect' has just been released (35 years later and we're preparing for its reissue in the 'Parabolically Yours' set).  Grinding Halt fanzine sat down for a chat with Steve, Mike, Adrian and Alec ahead of their Fulham Greyhound gig.

THE DISTRACTIONS

Meet The Distractions – Steve Perrin, guitar and vocals. Pip Nicholls, bass and vocals. Mike Finney, vocals. Adrian Wright, guitar, keyboards and vocals. Alec Sidebottom, drums and vocals. At least this talented group are starting to gain a reputation for their catchy, straightforward pop. Shortly after the release of their debut L.P. ‘Nobody’s Perfect’, I went up to London to see them play, and beforehand held an interview which was more of a chat, but I’ve cut out the long discussions on politics, Joy Division, Menace, Tubeway Army and telephone answering machines, and I think the residue makes interesting reading…

Grinding Halt:  When did you start?

Adrian:  We played our first live gig on the 14^th of July 1977, but we’d been going out for a bit before.

GH:  How long before you got your first record out?

Alec:  January ’79 – we recorded it in October ’78.

Mike:  That was the E.P.

GH:  How pleased were you with it?

Adrian:  At the time we were really pleased with it, but the more we listened to it…

Steve:  We did it in one night you see, so it was a bit of a rush job. I think it’s always like that – you look back afterwards and think, well there was a lot more we could have done with it.

Adrian:  People were always saying we don’t sound like that anymore, but that’s because we haven’t just got back from working all day so we’re not completely knackered like we were when we did the E.P. Also, of course, we’ve learnt to play our instruments rather better than we could then!

GH:  What about ‘Time Goes By So Slow’?

Steve:  That was the second single – it was on Factory.

GH:  Why did you leave Factory?

Adrian:  They didn’t have a lot of money to put up.

Mike:  They did offer us an album but by then we’d already signed to Island.

[to be continued]