Terrorvision: We Are Not Robots interview
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When Terrorvision frontman Tony Wright is asked how it feels for his band to be releasing their first album in 13 years, there’s a note of triumph in his voice when he replies: “How does it feel? It just feels right. Tempus fugit [Latin for ‘time flies’] and all that.”
Classic Rock is talking to Wright over Zoom. Back in the 1990s, the interview might have been conducted around a record company boardroom table, or in a posh hotel or swish bar in a foreign country. In those days Terrorvision were no strangers to selling large quantities of records, travelling all over the world and living something of the high life you might have expected of a commercially successful band.
Having risen to prominence during the anything-goes era of the Seattle explosion, the Yorkshiremen had the best of both worlds: an obtuse, colourful sense of humour, and, crucially, songs with choruses to die for. Their second album, and debut for EMI Records, 1994’s How To Make Friends And Influence People, spawned no less than five UK Top 30 singles, and as the decade ended it took The Offspring’s Pretty Fly (For A White Guy) to deny Terrorvision the No.1 spot with their annoyingly addictive party banger Tequila.
But nothing lasts forever, and by 2001, with chart success dwindling, the group had decided to call it a day. Following a one-off reunion in Scarborough in 2005, two years later they became active once again, eventually released a comeback album, Super Delux, in 2011, and later were part of the Britrock Must Be Destroyed package tour alongside The Wildhearts and Reef. During Classic Rock’s 40-minute conversation with Wright, two important themes surface.
Firstly, an undying belief in the ‘old’ ways of both the music industry and everyday life – the wisdom of learning the ropes as a trade, without reliance on shortcuts, and also that it’s expressed via a blunt, refreshingly self-deprecating Yorkshire wit that’s never too far away.
With the stewardship of EMI long behind them, Terrorvision self-financed their seventh album, We Are Not Robots, released in late September, Townsend Records, the independent label behind for Super Delux, have been re-engaged to take care of manufacture and of course promotion.
“They [Townsend] know that we will re-tweet anything,” Wright declares, “but they also know that social media is not for us.”
In 2024, with the focus now firmly on playlists, streaming and podcasts, the business model of music as we knew it is just about unrecognisable. Have Terrorvision attempted to keep up?
“Have we fuck. Social media is the biggest nightmare for anyone that works with us”, Wright says, grinning, before expressing mirth at a recent post from another, nameless band (“from a similar era to us” is all he will confirm) who also have an album about to be released. “They were sat outside a coffee shop, talking into their phone: ‘Hey everybody, we’re in the studio later and so excited about what’s happening.’ We’re not fools. It’s so obvious that their manager had told them to do that.”
The first video for a track from the new album, for The Night Lemmy Died, was released back in April. It’s a heartfelt yet typically boisterous tribute to the late, great Motörhead leader that one suspects Lemmy would have enjoyed.
“I hope so,” Wright says. “When Lemmy died in 2015, and right afterwards we also lost Bowie and Prince, it felt to me like the world went all wrong because those three people were no longer on it. The planet turned to shit.”
Just like the rest of us, those three huge losses made Wright appreciate life even more.
“Yeah, and also what those people did,” he qualifies. “They practised their instruments and learned their craft. They didn’t become famous by taking part in a TV competition.”
The curious mid-section of The Night Lemmy Died includes a curious couplet: ‘All I ever wanted to do was sing/Now watch the world suffer at this vacuous thing.’
“Well, the people from those shows always insist: ‘All I ever wanted to do was sing’, don’t they?” he observes. “Listen, if all you wanted to do is sing, what’s stopping you? Maybe start out by playing the [Bradford] Queen’s Hall cellar bar, and then move upstairs. But they don’t, do they? There’s a big difference between singing and being famous.”
Terrorvision met the song’s namesake several times, although Wright deadpans: “There are not too many stories you could print. Lemmy nearly got us arrested in lots of countries. We almost went to prison in Eastern Europe because of him. But I will say no more.”
Just like Lemmy, Terrorvision are sworn lifers, even if they have fought challenges to retain that same status. Wright reminisces affectionately about the exciting process of buying records in his youth. “I’d get the bus into town on a Saturday, buy it, listen to it, live in the bloody thing,” he enthuses. But now the process has changed, and not for the better.
“A couple of years ago, when I made a solo record I asked a friend of mine who’d sold millions of records to mix it for me,” he relates. “He called and said: ‘We need to chop out the intro and go straight into the chorus.’ I’m like: ‘What are you on about? The intro sets the scene for the song.’ But he replied: ‘Because of Spotify, people no longer have time to set the scene. They want the hook right away.’ And that’s part of the problem.”
As a band, Terrorvision don’t lack patience. In their last interview with Classic Rock, back in 2019, when asked about the possibility of a new album, Wright stated: “Never say never, but if it does happen it’ll be because we’ve got ten tracks that are killer, not through a sense of obligation.” And sure enough, during numerous rehearsals for the ‘greatest hits’ and album-themed tours or festival appearances, a chain of events began to unfold.
“Muscle memory takes care of playing those old songs, but in the last couple of hours of being together we’d fine-tune this idea or that idea,” he explains. “There was none of the pressure that we always felt back in the day. Back then, you’d make an album and right away the label would want another – just the same as the last one, because it had sold well. Though I always thought that counter-intuitive. With the new stuff, this part would go well with that part, and so on. It’s been organic.”
With three original members remaining on board – Wright, guitarist Mark Yates and bassist Leigh Marklew, who are joined by keyboard and trumpet player Milton Evans and drummer Chris Bussey – internal bonds within the band remain strong.
“We’ve all remained friends,” the singer stresses. “Each of us live busy lives; nobody is Elton John. But over the last thirteen years we’ve changed as people and new inspirations came along. Good, bad or ugly, they all count.”
From the outside, at least, Terrorvision’s humour seems to remain unaltered. They remain daft as brushes, happily. But in late middle age, have their personalities mellowed?
“Personally, if anything I’ve become more angsty,” Wright responds unexpectedly. “We had done really well for ourselves and I got a comfortable life. And then I ended up with nowt. I feel cheated in a way. But I wouldn’t change things, because I might have been too comfortable. I could have sat on the couch, four stone heavier, with feet up and living an easy existence.
“I had to work hard to get my life back together and pay my rent,” he continues. “But slowly we’ve built ourselves back up to a point where I know I’m going to have my tea tonight. Some people did really well out of my hard work – quite a few people, in fact – but I’m kinda glad it happened. It made me realise that I like being angsty. And what I got out of the experience was more songs.”
He’s not kidding. If there’s one thing that We Are Not Robots is blessed with, it’s tunes. With a cover featuring one of those infuriating CAPTCHA windows endured just about every time we try to interact with the World Wide Web (“How many aardvarks can you see in these photographs?”), Terrorvision’s own example features nine images from in and around the group’s base of Bradford, including the fabled pubs The Frog & Toad and The Wheatsheaf, and the aforementioned Queens Hall. As usual, the group were moved to write about a number of different subjects.
“To me, with the pushes and pulls of the stories it tells, this album is like an alternative version of Grease – The Movie,” Wright proposes with a twinkling smile. “It’s like Danny and Sandy, only with a bit of stubble – getting a drink habit or something like that.”
Baby Blue, for example, is about “a particular era, like when Frank Sinatra first heard Motörhead and probably said: ‘This is rubbish.’ It’s Greta Garbo and Marilyn Monroe. Film noir. The era is fading due to the drugs they’ve taken, but that doesn’t matter. It’s about being a star every single night. Whether or not someone deserves that accolade, they get knocked down and must pick themselves up again.”
Wright collapses into a fit of giggles when Classic Rock dares to suggest that Baby Blue sounds a wee bit like David Essex’s 1975 chart-topper Hold Me Close.
“Yeah maybe, but not on purpose,” he replies. “Actually, I think I had a neckerchief on when I recorded it.”
The idea for Bleeker Street – in real life the iconic Greenwich Village location of the legendary and much-missed CBGB nightclub – had bounced around since the band recorded in New York back in the day. Bringing it to life, they fused a rough idea from Mark Yates with an old country song remembered by Wright. “It’s about a young band that sets out to play music but ends up self-destructing.
“We actually played at CBGB,” Wright reveals, as an aside. “What an amazing place. I must have stared at the graffiti in the dressing room for four hours, trying to find Iggy Pop, Debbie Harry or Joey Ramone.”
If Daydream seems to comment on the austerity crisis, actually it doesn’t. “It’s about the world when we were growing up, really, living hand-tomouth in bedsits. It’s a walking narration of the fear of being evicted, with a seventies soul chorus.”
At first glance, another of the album’s songs, Magic, with its lyric of: ‘When people say: “I know what you’d like”, I don’t like it’, appears to be a celebration of contrariness, Wright confirms that, but it goes deeper than that.
“I’ve always been contrary, I’m my own worst enemy,” he admits. “The chorus, about a musician who just happens to have their best ideas when the radio is on, is a bit of a joke. We were probably listening to David Essex when we wrote it.”
It could be argued that Terrorvision’s well-honed image as cartoonish scamps does them a disservice. In the 2009 interview with Classic Rock, Wright had summed up the group’s biggest problem with: “We did like to enjoy ourselves, but the bad part of that is that if you look happy then people don’t take you seriously.” And yet Didn’t Bleed Red, from their 1996 album Regular Urban Survivors, was about the shutting down of borders because people are not the same as you. Elsewhere, the band were right about the plight of whales and dolphins.
“I’m glad that you said that,” he says delightedly. “Didn’t Bleed Red foresaw the rise of Priti Patel [former Conservative home secretary, known for right-wing beliefs]. Stop The Bus [from How To Make Friends] was about people moving other people along. Then there was Don’t Shoot My Dog [from 1993 debut Formaldehyde]. All of these songs are about the world we live in.”
So did Terrorvision make a rod for their own back with a novelty song like Tequila?
“It’s probably true,” he muses. “But if someone tells us: ‘You’re a rock band, you can’t do a pop record like that’, it’s exactly what we’re gonna do. When people tell us what we can and cannot do, that pisses me off.”
At the grand old age of 56, what motivates Tony Wright to continue the real struggle of pushing Terrorvision onwards?
“For me, joy,” he replies simply. “I see a band playing and it makes me want to get up on stage for two reasons. One is excitement; my nerve endings tickle all over. The other is thinking: ‘I can do better than that.’ We’ve still got songs to write.
“The reality is that if you want to sing, you’ve got to get a job. That’s how it is,” he concludes. “On a Saturday night I’m famous. I stand on a stage and it lasts for two hours. But come Monday I’m back at work.
“We don’t play gigs to show off,” he adds, warming to the theme. “We do it to join in with the crowd, and to get that buzz back from them as they sing the words. It’s as good as, if not better than, any other feeling I know.”
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