STYLE
Mark: Define your style – we get vintage AC/DC meets punk meets Zodiac Mindwarp meets The Almighty meets Motorhead meets Steel Panther meets Circus of Power meets MC5 is that enough meets?
TF: I’d love to meet all of them! I think we rip off a lot of bands. I know it, you know it, it’s all been done before. “Do You Wanna RnR” sounds a bit like “Welcome to the Jungle”, “Down On Me” is a little Lenny Kravitz, “All Look The Same” is a bit Quireboys meets “Living After Midnight”. Nothing’s new. I’m a huge Zodiac Mindwarp fan, but I’m also a huge QUEEN fan, so who knows. Everyone brings their influences into the band, our first guitar player; Johnny Douchebag was a massive Ramones fan, so they’re in there. I don’t see the Steel Panther similarity, as they are waaay better players than us!
Mark: When you play it relatively ‘straight’ like on ‘Ain’t too Old (to Rock ‘n’ Roll)’ and ‘It’s Gonna Be Great’ you sound like a band that’s got a real understanding of Rock tell us about that balance with the attention-grabbing tracks and the solid underbelly?
TF: It’s tough. We’ve written some stuff that is great, but just doesn’t fit into the mould of The Deadlies. We had a song called “Sex Sells (but I’d fuck you for free)” which was drifting off into prog rock territory, and we’ve written a song for the new record called “Jennie Don’t Play With Jamie” that I’m still a little unsure whether it’s for us or not. It’s a story song, and I don’t think it is what people would expect from us.
TF: Each guy in the band is not only a writer but a multi-instrumentalist as well. I play guitar, bass, keys and drums, Fudd wrote the “Starfucker” riff and even Hell Boy plays the bagpipes! We each have our own roles in the band, but any band, including us, is a creative force and I like to see the band as an Open Dictatorship where everyone can bring their ideas forward.
TF: I think that every song on the CD is based around a great riff; I don’t differentiate between “It’s Gonna Be Great” or “Starfucker”. Songs like “Ain’t Too Old” was written about me being too old to play in a rock band, simple! We’re not trying to be Shakespeare, if the song sounds a little more serious than the other, it was totally unintentional.
Mark: You chose ‘New York’ (I agree with the sentiment) as a video – what guided that choice?
TF: Necessity more than anything else. There’s a fair amount of amateur videos and shitty live clips of us on YouTube and we knew we needed something that represented the band and looked decent. There’s a great rap scene in Scotland and two of my favourite rappers out here at the moment are WERD and MOG, both have released videos by a guy called Tommy Slack, so I got in touch with him, and he had never done a rock video before, so we just wanted to band off a track to see how things worked out.
TF: There is a whole storyline behind New York City, and it’s a true story! My previous band toured there and it basically broke the band up! But at the end of the day, it’s a two and a half minute rocker that says what it is on the tin!
Although we are writing for the next CD already, we have plans for at least another two videos off of Sexploitation.
THE ALBUM
Mark: You start off ‘Sexploitation’ with the title tracks from your previous EP’s but there’s a particular cover of Def Leppard on the ‘Starfucker’ EP that caused a bit of a stir did people just not get it?
TF: We signed a deal with a record company out of New York. One of these companies that keeps releasing these tribute CDs featuring so and so who once played with Dio, and that bass player from Rough Cutt etc.. They got in touch with us, saying that they were working on a Tribute to Def Leppard and would we be interested in participating on it.
TF: Back in the 80’s I was a bit of a fan of Def Leppard and I still love the Pyromania album, but by the time the 90’s had come around, and I’m not saying anything new here, they had gone shit! So I looked up their singles on Wikipedia and tried to pick the worst song of the lot of them. No matter how you look at it, “Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad” is a crap song! So why not cover that?
TF: This was 2007 and I had just moved to the UK, so Fudd and I went into the studio where he played guitar and bass, I sang and played the drums. Then we sent the track to New York and heard nothing. In maybe 2010 the record company put out a press release saying that they were finally releasing the album and, much to our horror, we were listed as one of the contributors! But we’re now in 2013, almost 2014, and still the record hasn’t seen the light of day.
TF: When we were ready to put out the “Starfucker” EP we just went ahead and stuck it on there. Def Leppard are certainly not an influence on the band, although I have met Joe Elliot and he is an awesome bloke, but I wanted to get it out there as, even though we were trying to polish a turd, I think we did a good job on it!
We got the shit reviews on it because we sent it to prissy melodic rock websites, of course they were going to slag it off. We just pissed all over their Winger/White Lion/Nelson fire! Once again, fuck them if they can’t take a joke. There’s a lot worse covers out there than ours!
Mark: You demonstrate remarkable subtlety at times like on the anti-ballad ‘Obligatory Love Song’ is there a soft centre to the Deadly Romantics, or just a deep vein of cynicism about the whole eighties power ballad equates radio play equation?
TF: “Obligatory Love Song” is basically just what it says. The second song on side two of every record from every hard rock act was always a ballad. As I have said before, we are all writers in this band, and I have released several records under my own name, and they were full of sloppy Michael Bolton meets Richard Marx shit. The original intro to “Do You Wanna Rock And Roll” was a Meatloaf type duet thing between me and a great Canadian Blues singer named Ginger St. James, but I knew, at the end of the day, we would never get away with opening the record with it.
TF: The lyric idea basically came from “Song For Whoever” by The Beautiful South but adding more of “This Thunderfuck bloke is a total wanker” to the mix. I fucking love 80’s power ballads, if I could actually sing, I would start a cover band doing nothing but. But as my vocals “suck more balls than a ball sucking machine", “Obligatory Love Song” was the best I could do.
Mark: The juxtaposition with the song ‘Porn Star’ is inspired and you tackle some of the real issues of that particular job – it must have taken some dedicated research?
TF: I know a couple of chicks who are in that game and I’ve been on a couple of sets with them, although thankfully I was never an actor, but the whole porn game is a fucking jaded industry. For the chicks it is all about who can gag on the biggest cock and whose asshole can gape the widest, and for the guys it’s all about cumming on command! It ain’t fucking pretty. If you are looking for fortune and fame, there are better ways to get it!
Mark: ‘Scream My Name’ is the song that reminds me most of Zodiac Mindwarp are they a particular influence?
TF: I am a massive fan of Zodiac. We have opened up for them a couple of times. The first time I met Zed he was a bit of a dick, but after that he was pretty cool. Cobalt is a really cool guy and an awesome guitar player; I don’t think he ever gets the credit he deserves. They were always seen as a bit of a joke band, but Tattooed Beat Messiah has to be one of the best rock albums of the 80s. I saw them open the Zodiac Mindwarp/ Guns’n’Roses/ Iron Maiden show in Toronto in 1989 and the whole vibe was awesome! The first EP “High Priest of Love” and the first two albums are great! They went a little downhill after that, “Fucked By Rock” is a solid record, but they have suffered like so many bands from shitty management, shitty record companies and shitty distribution. I don’t think anyone else in the band would call them an influence, but lyrically, I would be a dick to say that they weren’t.
Mark: The swing version of ‘Fucked by Rock and Roll’ is fun have you been approached by the ghost of Dean Martin about covering that one?
TF: Next
Mark: And the question I have to ask with both “Rock and Roll” and “Rock ‘n’ Roll” in your song titles there’s surely a real danger of confusion there, especially for the younger fans?
TF: What are you, the fucking Grammar Nazi?
Mark: Which tracks from the album go down best live?
TF: The sing-a-long ones. Do You Wanna Rock and Roll, Fucked By Rock and Roll, Scream My Name, those sort of ones. As I have said, we’re about entertainment, and it’s always good to get the crowd singing, and who doesn’t want to yell out “Fuck” every now and again? I keep wanting to drop Pornstar from the set as it’s a bitch to sing, but the band love playing it and won’t let me. The audience seems to have a good headbang to shit like that on, Starfucker and New York City.
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