This one means a lot to us at Last Stop Sounds as Blitzkrieg had kindly let us persuade them to play one of our own events, great people, great band. DLW takes on the interviewing duties.
BLITZKRIEG (UK Punk Rock) were part of the early punk scene from the late 70's and one of the bands that signed with the record label No Future, which gave birth to bands like Blitz, Peter & The Test Tube Babies and The Partisans - to name a few. We talk to Chris - bassist and current vocalist about the band.
DLW: who formed the band and in what year?
CHRIS: It was about 1979, I was already in Mayhem at that point. Gaz asked me to join another band he was forming. Gaz was in the studio with us (Mayhem) doing some guitar work and he'd been asked to join/form Blitzkrieg.
DLW: Who was in the original line-up and are you still in touch with them?
CHRIS: I wasn't in the original line-up because I was in Mayhem but there were two brothers from Ormskirk who went by the names of Mick Riffone and Phil Din (drums) and Gaz and a guy called To Fowler who played bass. So that was the original line up as far as I can remember.
DLW: Who were your major influences back in the day and did you ever aspire to be like them?
CHRIS: My major influences before punk came along was Black Sabbath, AC/DC and stuff. All the rock stuff really then went punk came along my main influence was The Stranglers - JJ Burnell on bass. When I was 14 years old, I leant to play along to Rattus and he (JJ) was a major influence, I even got a postcard from him from Tokyo when I was 15, they were on tour over there. My mum still has the postcard somewhere as she never throws stuff out, like most mums. I spoke to Burnell a couple of years ago when The Stranglers played Liverpool and he actually remembers sending me the postcard! He even remembers that I was in a band.
DLW: Describe what it was like in early Blitzkrieg days, who was the main songwriter or was it a joint effort?
CHRIS: I've always been quite a prolific song-writer. It was a bit of a joint effort, Riffone wrote the lyrics and me and Gaz were quite productive writing the music.
DLW: You had a track The Future Must Be Ours released on No Futures A Country Fit For Heroes, How did that come about?
CHRIS: I wasn't (officially) in Blitzkrieg when they got the shout to record a demo tape for No Future but by the time the demo recording came about, Gaz asked me to play the bass rather than To. We did two tracks and sent them both off then we were told we we're going to be on A Country Fit For heroes. I then got asked to join full time. Mayhem weren't happy but Blitzkrieg had, by then been officially signed to No Future. I was about 19 at the time and with the promise of a record deal for 2 singles and an album, I left Mayhem and wished them all the best.
DLW: This leads into my next question, so you got the record deal and released your first single "Lest we Forget". After that you changed labels, why was that?
CHRIS: Well this was the start to Blitzkrieg splitting up. As I said, we were signed to do 2 singles and the album and after the first single came out, we were starting demo'ing the album and we'd done about 8 tracks in the studio. Then one day at rehearsals in Southport, Mick (who looked after those sort of things etc) announced that we're no longer with No Future now, we've signed to Illuminated Records which didn't go down too well. There was a bit of a heated rehearsals which left a lot of ill feeling in the band as we weren't consulted about this. Plus, we had had a few changes in drummers which I wasn't too happy with because Phil was a far better drummer. But by then at that time, I was following Discharge (who had just released "Realities Of War" EP) and I became good friends with Dave Ellesmere (drums on WHY EP) and I persuaded him to join Blitzkrieg and we began gigging with Dave. Now, Illuminated Records weren't really a punk label, they had bands like Sex Gang Children etc signed up for them. Now at that point Riffone wanted to go down a more gothy type sound but we were going totally the other way, more hardcore and faster and Riffone didn't like it as it wasn't his thing. Which led to us having a meeting with Vic (surname forgotten) and he basically became our manager. I had written a song called Animals In Lipstick, which became our second EP. In that single was a leaflet from the BUAV and that was me, putting that in and creating the artwork. Riffone wrote the lyrics to it so we went to Peterborough to record it and everything seemed fine apart from Gaz didn't like his guitar sound but the engineer said it would be okay in the final mix but what came out was the worst thing we ever released.
DLW: It did sound a lot different from Lest We Forget.
CHRIS: Yeah, it was fucking awful! Gaz's face when we heard it, he was nearly in tears and I remember him saying 'What the fuck is that?' But Riffone was adamant that it was good. But it was shit, it just wasn't what we wanted it to sound like. It was a classic case of a record company getting hold of it and fucking around with it. So after that, a lot of gigs had a lot of bad feeling and sniping, Riffone was out on his own. Me, Gaz and Dave closed ranks really.
DLW: Was Sexual Phonograph part of Illuminated Records?
CHRIS: Yeah, that's a branch of Illuminated. So, they (Illuminated) put us on this tour with Sex Gang Children and we played Liverpool to help promote our single but it all kicked off, I can't remember exactly what happened. We walked off the tour after one gig much to Riffone's disgust, Liverpool being the first gig of the tour. We then got three dates with Bad Brains which was right up our street.
DLW: Back in the early 80's, did you ever gig with any of your No Future label buddies?
CHRIS: Yeah, quite often, the label sent us out with Peter & The Test Tube babies on a regular basis. I know The Varukers weren't on No Future but we did a lot of stuff with them and One Way System. we also did a fair few gigs with The Insane who released the 'El Salvador' EP.
DLW: Well technically One Way System were a No future affiliated band as they had a track on A Country Fit For Heroes.
CHRIS: Yeah, they had 'Jerusalem' on the EP.
DLW: So moving on slightly, the band split shortly after Animals In Lipstick, had the band just ran it's natural course or were people wanting to break away and do other stuff and what year did the band split?
CHRIS: We split up in 1983. When we got the Bad Brains gigs, we thought this is a good little support slot for us and it could lead onto other things. We did the first show in Manchester and at the end of our set, whilst still on stage, Riffone said 'This is my last song ever with Blitzkrieg because as of tonight, I have now left the band!' We were like 'Fucking Hell!' We looked at each other on stage and went 'What?' So Riffone fucked off with no explanation, he had a big argument with Gaz. Bad Brains asked so what's was going to happen? We decided to carry on as a three-piece with me taking over on lead vocals and bass. After the Bad brains gigs, we took some time out and we never got back together and we pretty much called it a day. Gaz and Dave went on to form The Insane (Dave was in The Insane before he joined Discharge) and I went back to Mayhem, playing guitar rather than bass.
DLW: So in 1991, you reformed....
CHRIS: I had nothing to do with that. I didn't even know they'd done it. I was living in London at the time. Gaz Sumner has since told me it's the worst thing he's ever done in his life and he cringes when he hears the music from that era.
DLW: Fast forward to 2007, the band reformed then as a five-piece and were invited to play the Rebellion festival. Within the new line-up you had Jax Chambers (Girlschool) on guitar. How did she become part of the band and did she have a major input in the writing process?
CHRIS: No, she never got involved in the song-writing (haha) I've always written the songs and a guy called Mick Stokes co-wrote the 'Everything Is Lies' stuff with me. I met Jax at Paul Fox's (Ruts) last ever gig in Shepherds Bush. It was a charity gig. Jax did however write a track later on, "New World Order" which appeared on the 'Fear And Control' EP which was released in 2011.
DLW: Yeah I was at that gig too, Henry Rollins was on lead vocals.
CHRIS: Yeah, that's right. Henry is a good friend of mine, I met him back in 1983, the Black Flag days when I gigged and played with them. When I went to that show, I went to the VIP area upstairs at Rollin's invitation. Well Jax was there. She had previously played on a Vice Squad recording (West One, Shine On Me - Ruts cover) and we got chatting. I didn't know her but I had just put Blitzkrieg back together and we were looking for a lead guitarist and we're in the process of recording a new album and I asked her if she would record some lead (guitar) for us. "Absolutely, I'd love to" Was her reply so we swapped numbers. I texted her the next day thinking this was too good to be true and she'd back out. To my surprise, she agreed to have a jam and drove up from London and went through the set. She agreed to join the band and spent about five years with us.
DLW: Am I right in saying that after JB Dirtstar left, you took over on lead vocal duties?
CHRIS: Yeah, JB was very young, a great front man, he didn't take it seriously though. So when JB didn't turn up for a London gig on New Years eve I took over on bass and vocals mainly. A mate of mine played bass for a couple of gigs (his band had just split up) and I just did lead vocals. It was an easy transition. I will say however that I've always been a very reluctant vocalist but I've done it out of necessity more than anything else. Plus I write the lyrics and I know better than anyone how I want them to be sung.
DLW: 2011 saw the release of the Fear And Control EP which was recorded in Belgium at Riverstudios, how did you find that experience compared to recording in the UK?
CHRIS: The beer's stronger (haha). Simple as that!
DLW: Okay next question then. It was after this time that you became very ill (good to see you're okay now) that must have been a worrying time for you but did your illness have any impact on your writing?
CHRIS: Not initially no and we've spoke about this before mate, you know what I was going through. I was going off the rails with the drink etc and my mental health. We were getting offered gigs and I couldn't be arsed dealing with the organising of them. I missed gigs as I'd go on one and no-one could find me and they were getting sick of me, I was half-pissed on stage and I'd just walk off. I just didn't wanna play. So I gave it up but Gaz Sumner came to me and basically gave me a kick up the arse and I was also concentrating on getting better. So as I was getting better, Gaz asked if I'd ever thought of doing something again, me and him, which set the wheels in motion again for me. I picked up the bass, I had some tunes but he decided then he didn't want to do anything but by this time, I'd gotten the bug again. I had a point to prove as well to a lot of people but more to myself. There's a saying 'A boxer is only remembered by his last fight'. I didn't want to be remembered as being knocked out in my last fight!
DLW: So what you went through didn't really have an impact on what you wrote about?
CHRIS: A couple on Blind Faith, a song called 'Change It' which is quite obvious, it's about changing your life. I penned all of Blind Faith and about 80% of the music. Mike contributed some too. It was pretty much all me, Mike is a great lad but I don't think he really knew what I wanted to get across.
DLW: Blind Faith has a very Motorhead influence to it, is this deliberate or did it just naturally progress like that?
CHRIS: Peter Jones from Paranoid Visions said that it sounds like Discharge meets speeded up Motorhead. It never meant to sound like Motorhead, even though I like Motorhead, I listen to them quite a bit. Also the drummer Tom Dring, who played on it, is in a grind-core band and he produced the album and he's producing the new album too. The new album and "Blind Faith" were recorded at Vagrant Studios. So maybe the production has come out that way because of his influence. We got JJ in from Discharge to record a track on it but it's meant to sound like Blitzkrieg but everything we've recorded has sounded different. I don't think Blitzkrieg have got a 'sound' as such due to recording in so many different studios. Fish from The Skeptix produced some of our stuff too. Fish is a great lad as he was one of the few lads who kept in touch with me when I was going through my bad time.
DLW: You're now down to a three-piece, how are you finding that or is it just business as usual?
CHRIS: It's just business as usual since we've reformed initially but we played Belfast a few years ago and we took Gaz Sumner with us. We lost Gaz after the Discharge Xmas gig so it was back down to three-piece again. I've no plans to change it at the moment as it works.
DLW: Obviously, this pandemic has hit, so you're writing new stuff for the album. So once we get back to normality, what is in store for the future of Blitzkrieg?
CHRIS: Yeah, the new album is more or less recorded. I've been recording my bass, sending them to Tom (drums), he's been whacking drums down, sending them back to me, I would then put the vocals down and it would get sent over to Gus. It's a ten track album and (at the time of writing) the bass, drums are all done, I've done most of the vocals so Gus is coming over from Belgium, obviously observing social distancing to spend four days in the studio to record his guitar tracks. So it should be out in about August and there is a guest appearance from John Cook (Napalm Death) to lay down some lead guitar on one of the tracks and he has delivered. He has thrown some mental lead down on one of the tracks...... We did have some gigs but obviously we're gonna have to re-arrange them.
DLW: Excellent, well that's it buddy. Good to hear from you.
CHRIS: You too mate, take care.
Words: DLW, Photos: RBY