“It’s Christmas. As much as it doesn’t sound it, this is a good old fashioned play off song, lyrically and musically. Kirsty / Pogues, Bing and Bowie, now Kim and Lawnmower. It’s a beautiful thing.”
Kim Wilde, the most successful female UK artist of the 80s, has joined forces with thrash metal legends Lawnmower Deth to release a special anti-Christmas single: ‘F U Kristmas’, out now via Wildeflower Records. The single is a Punk and Thrash-Metal crossover number with thrashing riffs and hardcore vocals. An un-pretentious cut, over which Kim’s pop queen vocals stand bold, as though she had always sung over heavy guitar-laden rock. Lawnmower Deth vocalist Pete Lee gave us the lowdown on working with Kim Wilde and how the collaboration came together.
So the first question that obviously is on everyone’s mind when hearing about this unique collaboration between two different worlds is what is it like to work with Kim Wylde?
“Everybody wants to know what it was like working with Kim“, answers Pete. “People come up to me and say are you the guy who sang with Kim Wilde? She is an iconic 80s legend and so it’s not surprising it peaks peoples interest. Particularly when you couple it up with noisy punk metallers. But was is it actually like working with them? It’s everything you want it to be – professional / fun / laughing too much / friends / fun / wine / fun / amazing / fun / great experience / proper job / fun / did we mention fun? But if you want me to sum it up succinctly, she’s a damn good sport and we love her in a very non creepy stalker kind of way.”
“For us it has been a really interesting process“, Pete says on the collaboration. “Once Kim and I had drunk beer and decided we were going to do this Steve (LMD guitarist) wrote the track, but naturally back then it was sounding very very different. Once we had a back bone in place I wrote the lyrics. It’s the first time for us we have worked in a collaborative way so it was a whole new thing. Steve recorded the track at home on his home studio and now of course this can be circulated without anyone leaving the house. Things basically spent 6 months travelling between Steve, myself, Kim and Ricky, the chorus became the verse, the verse the chorus, a hook was added and so on. The final step was actually getting together to record the vocals at Rickys studio and before you know it, we have a finished track. And very pleased we are with it too.”
On what they wanted to achieve with the song, the end game was simply to create a great song and have a good time. “Do I want commercial success, chart positions, and so on? Of course. You can’t help but hope for those things, but what Lawnmower always want is the same thing, a bloody good story. We don’t go gigging to promote albums these days, we go because we like (or at least tolerate) each other and want to spend time together having fun, we are still music fans and want the same thing as everyone else in the crowd. So the point is, I can go to my grave saying yeah, I recorded a song with Kim Wilde, we had tremendous fun, and we made her swear on it.”
When asked on the anticipation of getting this out to the fans, Pete says it’s been torturous to say the least after such a lengthy time from recording to release time. “We started work on this on January 20th which is when the idea was formed. Since then we have probably heard the song a million times. So waiting for it to get released to the fans has been about 11 months. And therefore it’s been torturous. When you have to hate Christmas for a song, 11 months is a very long time to have Christmas trust me.”
Kim will also bring her ‘The Wilde Wild Xmas Show’ to Manchester’s O2 Ritz for a special one-off date on 22nd December – with support from fellow 80s female icons Toyah and Carol Decker (T’pau). Joining them, Lawnmower Deth are also set to inject the party with their unique brand of heavy-as-hell rock. So how will this collaboration play out live?
“That is going to be a really interesting one“, comments Pete. “We’ve not done it live yet. But we are on Dec 22nd when Kim does her Really Wilde Christmas Show in Manchester. We’re special guesting and no guess that this will be part of the set. We know how it’s going to work, it’s just not been tried yet. We have played live together before as Kim joined us on stage at Download Festival in 2016 and it worked out fantastically. I would love to tell you that our voices blended perfectly and it was a beautiful moment but in truth she is a pro, has great pipes, sounded fantastic, and I Dad danced around her quite a bit. Well that’s quite a beautiful thing in it’s own way.” But Lawnmower Deth still feel a little jittery about the upcoming show as Pete points out. “You can expect a very nervous punk metal band. We’ve done some pretty big shows in the past 10 years since we got back together. We’ve also done quite a few small ones too. But this is different to any other show we’ve ever done and is an entirely different audience. We will be us, we don’t change for anyone, nor are we capable of doing so, nor does Kim want us to, but I think we may make a few people cry.”
Picking out a setlist was fairly easy Pete says, Kim Wilde herself having the job of selecting it for the band but on their own shows it’s a different matter of course. “When we headline our own shows it’s more difficult given we have 4 albums to pull from. The problem is a disproportionate amount of our songs are under a minute long, and many under ten seconds long, so it’s not uncommon to play a 40 song set. Picking it isn’t difficult, finding a font big enough for me to read that many songs off a set list is way more challenging.” Pete goes on to say there will be other cover songs as they see it with a few other notable inclusions. “Well to us it’s a cover, and the one that we we’re famous for. To Kim it’s probably ‘please not that one again’. But we will be playing ‘Kids In America’ of course, it’s the thing that started this whole journey. She recorded it in ’81, we recorded it in ’90. Our version is her favorite version, we’ve known that for a long time, so inevitably at some point we thought we might get the stars to align and may get to meet and say hello. We didn’t expect to meet, drink wine, do a few shows, and record songs together. Ridiculous. And I love it!”
On performing with Kim Wilde at Download Festival in 2016, Pete says it was amazing. “The band loved it, the crowd literally went Wild(e) for it and for certain is one of my favourite shows we have ever done. I’m a firm believer in the word experience, it’s why I do this.” Pete continues when asked what his favorite song to perform with Kim was, “We won’t be doing this at Manchester but when we did Download Festival together she wanted to play ‘Egg Sandwich’ which we did. This is a 10 second grindcore song. For those of you wanting to know how deep my lyrics are it’s the recipe to make an…..egg sandwich! Watching the faces of 10,000 people see Kim Wilde play grindcore, and do it well, was a spectacle I shall take to the grave. So awesome!”
For anyone who has by now heard the new song ‘F U Kristmas’, it’s fairly obvious that it alludes to being anti-christmas. But not in some nasty, tasteless atypical ‘Grinch’ style way but in a fun loving rocking fashion that only this kind of music can put out. But is Pete Lee himself really opposed to the traditions of Christmas and the whole commercialism of the event or even the holiday nature of the season? “Oh that’s easy. I actually love Christmas“, he exclaims but also pulls the rug under Kim by giving away a little secret. “So does Kim. And by love it I mean spending hours outside decking my house in lights, 3 trees, in the house, jumpers, egg nog and the whole trip. So the most annoying aspect of this Christmas is pretending to hate it. Don’t tell Kim, she’s going to kill me. What I meant was bag humbug, Ebeneezer was misunderstood.”
On that note we end things with his take on heavy metal and what holiday it would most be connected to, if not Christmas. “I went to a Samhain pagan fire festival in Edinburgh in November. That was pretty damn metal. It was like Slipknot had come to town with hundreds of people dressed up burning stuff. Even better than that it’s Scotland and so you could get decent single malt to drink whilst watching fire. Whiskey plus fire = metal. I literally have the opening riff of Forged In Fire going through my head as I’m typing this, and that is a none more metal riff. Da da da daaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, da da da daaaaaaaaaaaaa………………..“.
‘F U Kristmas’ is out now via Wildeflower Records. Catch Lawnmower Deth with Kim Wilde at the O2 Ritz in manchester on December 22nd. More info here.
