Rob Dickinson
an Interview by Auralgasms - February 27, 2006
After over a decade as frontman of the highly influential rock band Catherine Wheel, Rob Dickinson has gone solo. His
debut CD, Fresh Wine For The Horses, like his former work is both powerful and beautiful. Rob is on the road to present his solo
material as well as a fresh take on some of Catherine Wheel's classics. He was gracious enough to take time out to chat about his
former band, his solo material and such varied topics as car design, 9/11 and troubled youth on methamphetamines.
First of all...Welcome to Detroit! I understand you are quite a car buff and used to be build cars in fact. It must be nice for you to visit the Motor City. What was your first car?
My first car was a 1981 Ford Fiesta. I studied Industrial Design at Coventry University. I didn't complete the course, but got a job at
Lotus based in Norwich. I worked there for about 6 months and realized I couldn't face a career in car design. It's still a hobby for me.
A lot of my friends stayed in the business. A good college friend of mine is now head of design at Lotus. I've got other friends at Ford
who have risen to dizzying heights in the car design business. It's good I can stay in tune with it but not be involved.
Photo Courtesy of
www.jenniferbroussardphotographs.com
Speaking of former professions, I understand you started out as a drummer. Why did that change? Ever have any desire to go back to that?
God no! I like rattling around on the drumkit still. I hated not having any control over my destiny, being at the back of the stage.
I had to put any hopes or ideas I might have of doing music properly in the hands of a singer I didn't trust or songs I didn't believe in.
I realized I was going to have to do it myself.
Catherine Wheel was all about not having a focal point even though I was the singer. The guitars were really the stars in the band when
it started. As my confidence grew as a singer, it gradually altered the balance. You could hear the vocal more and more.
So why did Catherine Wheel break up? Was it just the end or was there a specific reason? Did you know at that time that you would embark on a solo career? What do your former bandmates feel about your solo career?
They like it...they like the record, from what they tell me. We split up because people had stopped paying attention to the band.
We had a hard and fast collection of people that were still into the band, but every band has a natural peak. Creatively we thought
we had started to go downhill. I think we hit that peak with Adam and Eve, the penultimate record. Wishville was very much an
intellectual record. We had to think about it too much. We had also prided ourselves on every record being a development of the last one. We felt we had gone as far as we could. Having to think about it as much as we did, it became less of an organic process.
We just stopped...we felt we had our chance. We always thought we would be a 'big band'. In our minds we were, but our sales didn't really
reflect that. We never consciously split up, we just...stopped.
I think I did consciously know I was going to make a solo record. I didn't have any great desire to do it quickly, though.
Why did you take a 5 year break? Did it take that long to work on the solo record or were you just not ready?
I was working on the record on and off through that period with no deadline. There was no necessity in my mind to get it out quickly.
I was supposed to put it out on Columbia Records, but sailed past their fictitious release date. I managed to release myself from
Columbia which was good. We owed them an ungodly amount of money which luckily I don't any more.
Most of the songs were actually written in 2001-2002. I was living in New York at the time. I loved the town, but it wasn't
particularly conducive to getting things done.
Photo Courtesy of
www.jenniferbroussardphotographs.com
I moved to LA to finish the record in October 2003. The record took a year to record. We were using my demos and had a lot of
technical hurdles to overcome. It was recorded all over the place, but we coalesced it and brought it together in LA.
Every part of the record seemed to take a long time...from writing the songs, to recording the songs. It took 6 months to mix the album.
It was an enormously challenging record to mix for various reasons.
There was no need to rush it though. I thought, its going to come out when it's ready to come out. I stopped looking at the clock.
How would you describe the difference between your solo work and the work of your band? I described it to someone as similar to the
approach Peter Murphy took after Bauhaus or even better, Paul Westerberg after the Replacements. There is definitely
more of a singer songwriter feel.
I struggled very hard NOT to make a singer songwriter record. People seem to describe it that way, but I didn't change my approach.
I initially thought maybe I should change my techniques, but this record is hopefully is just a document of how
I am at this stage in my life. I just treated the songs how the songs demanded. That's what we did in the band really. That's why the
band was sometimes described as range roaming. We could be a rock band or band that played delicately. There's a lot of that on
this record. There's some pretty loud aggressive stuff and some very delicate stuff too. It DOES sound different, but it wasn't
a conscious effort to make it sound different.
Do you realize that Black Metallic is one of the greatest songs ever? It seems like you do since it is in your setlist. How did you
choose the Catherine Wheel songs to play? Were they fan favorites, your favorites, or just the easiest to play live solo acoustic?
Photo Courtesy of
www.jenniferbroussardphotographs.com
The ease of playing wasn't really a factor. Any good song should hold up to being interpreted in a stripped down way.
Most of the Catherine Wheel songs were written just on guitar, so hopefully they hold up. I am aware that there are favorites
out there and if those favorites from fans coincide with my favorites, they've generally got a shot.
The trouble with some of them is I don't actually own my own records. I've found myself in LA ready to come on tour, calling up friends
to see if I can borrow their copies to relearn the songs. Hopefully there's a good balance of early stuff and later stuff. I think
there are one or two songs from each record. I'm trying to spread it out and keep people happy.
How conscious are you of the Pink Floyd influence in your music? Obviously, there was the extremely well done cover of Wish You Were
on Like Cats and Dogs. I thought that tracks like Phantom of the America Mother and definitely Here Comes The Fat Controller
had a Floyd-ish sound to them. Don't Change from the new record...everytime I hear that I am waiting for the female vocals
from Great Gig In The Sky to kick in.
If you play two chords mid-tempo, you're going to sound like Pink Floyd. Oscillating between two chords...those guys kind of made
that their own. It's not something I do consciously. I love Pink Floyd and some of the moods their music has set up over
the year. I'm sure that sub-consciously it's rubbed off on some of the things that I do. It's marvelously relaxed, some
of the Floyd stuff in a sense of understatement. I can't deny that some of my stuff does even remind me of that stuff too,
so what the hell.
Is there any meaning to the title Fresh Wine For The Horses? I've heard a theory that Catherine Wheel fans are the horses and your new album is the fresh wine.
Well...maybe something like that. It was a stupid phrase we were saying to each other while recording
the album that made us laugh. It sounded like a celebration of a new start. I wasn't totally sure what it meant.
It's an odd collection of words. I liked the way it sounded, and it fit in with my plan for the album cover.
What was the first song from the new album that let you know you really had something ready for the public to hear?
Oceans was a song...I went back to my parents' house in England after I'd been in New York for a while.
I wrote that in the bedroom where I'd written Black Metallic and a lot of the other Catherine Wheel stuff.
When I wrote that one it kind of set the bar for me. It would have been a wicked waste not to put that one a record.
Towering and Flowering definitely feels like a Catherine Wheel track. Did it start out that way? Were any other tracks Catherine Wheel holdovers?
Towering and Flowering was in fact...it's got the band on it. It's got Brian playing guitar and Neil playing drums.
The Storm does as well, which I think is the most Wheel sounding song on the record. It certainly was an embryonic Wheel song.
I had screwed around with them a little, but they were the bones of songs we'd gotten together on in England for Wishville.
They were recorded and we'd got so far as to demo them in a rough state. For some reason, they didn't make the record.
It's not that they weren't good enough. I'm very happy that the band are playing on the record. I hope that it suggests an organic process of moving on and not leaving stuff behind.
Photo Courtesy of
www.jenniferbroussardphotographs.com
We have a show on Auralgasms Radio called Aural Bliss. We did a countdown of the 50 most blissful songs of 2005 as
voted by the hosts and listeners...My Name Is Love came in at number 2. Not a gold record or anything, but something
to hang your hat on.
Fantastic...it's a bloody good start. I appreciate it, thank you.
How much was the songwriting on this record influenced by you living in New York during 9/11?
Not a huge amount. There was a couple songs that didn't make the record that had their bones in that.
Bad Beauty was certainly a song that was written in that period. Days afterward actually. I think undoubtedly
that song reveals a lot of what I saw going on in the city. You'd have to be told it to realize it, but there are
some references in that song that if you KNOW what I'm talking about, you can identify with it.
Are the songs much more YOU emotionally than the songs written for Catherine Wheel?
No, I handled most of the lyric writing in the band. They were all navel gazing songs. I use the term navel gazing to suggest a
very inward feel. Writing stories from inside yourself. Bruce Springsteen writes great stories...narrative songs.
Something I've never been able to do, but had a great deal of interest in. Songwriting to me is a way of conveying something
I feel passionately, and hopefully getting other people to feel the same way.
So I noticed you were signed to Sanctuary records with Bruce Dickinson. Was that a package deal or did one of you bring the other on board?
The Sanctuary company was built on Iron Maiden. The Sanctuary Management company managed them back in 1979. It's only in the last
4 or 5 years that they started a record label as well. Bruce has been in the family then for much longer than I have.
I signed with them because my manager, who had managed the band for 15 years is also the CEO of the label.
Have you gotten tired of people calling you that guy from Iron Maiden yet?
No, because it doesn't happen that much really. People are interested to know about Cousin Bruce though.
It's an interesting talking point to break the ice at parties.
I was in a club the other night and the DJ played My Name Is Love, so a guy came running up and said is this a new Catherine Wheel
song? How do you get the word out on your new solo work? Not only to Catherine Wheel's fans that aren't aware of it, but
say reaching new fans who weren't familiar with Catherine Wheel?
It's a problem actually. Doing a tour like this is great. I think the only way I can make people aware of this is through the Internet.
The Internet is an enormously useful marketing tool. Doing shows like this, I'm just doing whatever I can to make people aware of it.
I'm very surprised by the longevity of the Catherine Wheel stuff and to see familiar faces in the audience.
They remember the old songs which is great, and they also are accepting of the new stuff.
What has this experience been like? Not only touring as a solo act but TRULY solo, just you and a guitar.
Have you been well received, and how do you like playing for a more intimate crowd?
Photo by Auralgasms
It's great but a bit scary. I've said how I didn't want to make a Singer Songwriter record. I think it's a really big sounding record,
yet here I am with an acoustic guitar around my neck. It's something I have to get used to doing. We've presented these songs 3
different ways in the last 4 months. I did a tour in the Northeast before Christmas with a 3 piece acoustic trio.
Over Christmas we had a full Electric band playing...we did a couple of shows in LA reproducing the songs much closer to
how they are on the record. These shows I am doing now are the most stripped down they can possibly be. I'm just proud
of the fact that songs still work.
The band were known as being a ‘shoegazing band, or a feedback band. I think we just wrote a lot of good songs.
Hopefully this builds on that a little bit and suggests that the band was multifaceted to a degree.
What have been your favorite cities to play in? Do you have more of a following in certain areas?
I played in Chicago a couple of nights ago, which was great...almost sold out too. Then we played in Cleveland and there were barely
100 people there. It doesn't really matter how few people are in the audience because the people that do come tend to be reasonably
rabid about the old stuff and enthusiastic about the new stuff too. LA, San Francisco, San Diego...the West Coast had been very
good for the band and has been good for me.
I also remember the great shows we did at St. Andrews Hall here in Detroit.
Do you find you have as much of a presence in the US and opposed to UK? Britpop bands that are huge in the UK have sometimes
struggled to even make a ripple here.
The record has barely been released in England. Catherine Wheel was actually far better known in American than in England
at the time we finished. We started off doing very well in England and Europe. We spent so much time touring America I
think that affected our fortunes in Europe a little bit. That probably is true today of my stuff. I do plan to play in
England though, we'll see how it goes.
We talked to Mark Gardener of Ride recently, who is going through some of the same things as you. I also think Ride was similar
to Catherine Wheel.
Absolutely...great band! I think I might be doing a show with him actually. I did a show with him and Adam Franklin of Swervedriver
in San Diego
Photo by Auralgasms
What about getting your gear stolen? Any ill will towards that one?
No...but it's Portland, I should have known better. I was sitting at home a few weeks ago and watching a documentary about
Portland being the meth capital of America.
We actually got the guitar back. They're working on finding who took it. We've got a friend in the Portland Police department
who is on a bit of a mission.
It was stolen 45 minutes before the gig, and I had to borrow a guitar from the guy opening up for me. But they also stole
the pedals and a guy from the record company had his computer and camera stolen.
No grudge held against Portland though. It was just a bunch of fools not knowing what they were doing.
What are your future plans? Would your next CD be stripped down or more of a full band effort?
I've never gone into making a record thinking it should be stripped down or heavy or whatever. I've already written some new songs
and they will get the treatment they need. I'm not playing anything brand new live. They are still embryonic, but I've got some ideas...
I can't approach a record like that. I can only approach a record by the quality of the songs. If the songs suggest a certain
presentation, that's generally what they will get. The studio is also such a creative place to be. Sometimes I've been criticized
for putting too much on these songs, but they get what they need.
Since you seem on good terms, and a couple of songs on the new album were worked on with your former bandmates...any chance of working
with Catherine Wheel again?
I hope so, yeah. We never said never. We had all just had enough. We did our last show opening up for Smashing Pumpkins in London
in November 2000. We felt like we had nowhere else to go. All we needed was a reason to make another record.
We're all on really good terms. We're still friends and we respect each other musically. If there was a reason to
get together and make another record I think we would.
Would that be any detriment to your solo career?
Photo by Auralgasms
No, I don't think it would. I think the idea for me is if I can draw some attention to the back catalogue through my own stuff
and continue to do my own stuff as well as make another record, who knows? The rest of the guys are busy with their own stuff,
still making music.
The band was such a glorious, ego free zone. Everyone was very happy with their roles in the band. The band really did
just stop. As time dragged on we realized we probably weren't going to make another record quickly. I ended up making this
record. I think I'll definitely make another solo record. It's great to see that the music does stand the test of time.
I'm a believer that not all great music has to be discovered at the time it was made. There shouldn't be a stopwatch on the
success of a record. Music should be like buried treasure, where it can be discovered at a later date and still have a burgeoning life.
I certainly wouldn't rule out the possibility...you'll have to ask the others...they may say never. (laughs)