Hey, kids, welcome to the Phile for a Tuesday. How are you? Can you guess what's going on over at every right-winger's favorite fictional "news" station, Fox? If you guessed a big dish of misinformation baked in racism with a side of dragging the dead, then you are correct!!!! On Friday’s episode of "The Ingraham Mangle"... —I mean "Angle"... host Laura Ingraham, known for dragging the Parkland students and comparing child internment camps to "summer camp," did what she does best: lie, slander, be racist, and insult murder victims. In a segment about the memorial service of late rapper Nipsey Hussle, who was fatally shot on March 31st in South Los Angeles, Ingraham mocked the rapper, playing a clip of his song "FDT" (Fuck Donald Trump). “Now that’s a very creative refrain,” Ingraham says, sarcastically. Her guest, Raymond Arroyo, quips back "very catchy." Ingraham adds that the song's hook “goes on and on.” Yes, they are dragging a murder victim because of a song from 2016. Brave! To add insult to idiocy, Ingraham plays a clip that doesn't show Nipsy Hussle but instead Compton rapper YG (Nipsy Hussle is featured on the song but not in the clip). This is not the first time Fox News has confused one famous black person for another. As many are pointing out on Twitter, Nipsy Hussle, real name Ermias Asghedom, was not only a beloved and prolific rapper, but also an activist committed to helping his community by opening businesses, building community centers and helping kids learn tech and coding. At the time of his death, he was in Los Angeles for a meeting to help stop gang violence. People are, understandably, furious at Fox News for their flagrant disrespect, mixed with their idiotic (and undeniably racist) mistake (the Fox cocktail!). Some are even calling for Ingraham to be fired. But knowing Fox News, they'll probably give her a promotion instead. Fortunately, Ingraham's petty smear campaign is overshadowed by the beloved rapper's legacy. Thousands of people, including Snoop Dogg, Stevie Wonder, and ensens Jhené Aiko, gathered at The Staples Center to mourn his death last Thursday. He was buried the next day at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills cemetery. Donald Glover, aka Childish Gambino, at Coachella gave the late rapper the tribute he deserves: Laura Ingra-who?
Melania Trump, a woman who came to the United States to make her living as a model and got an "Einstein visa" for doing so, would like you to think that she is above photo shoots and magazine covers. Melisandre's spokeswoman released a statement on the ultimate injustice facing the nation: the fact that the First Lady has never appeared on the cover of Vogue, the favorite magazine of plastic surgery offices. Michelle Obama had the honor thrice, gracing the glossy periodical in 2009, 2013, and 2016. Almost makes you want to buy magazines. In a recent interview with Christiane Amanpour, Vogue editor-in-chief and sunglasses connoisseur Anna Wintour was asked how she chooses which women to feature, which included what many interpret as a subtle dig and Donald Trump's third wife: "You have to stand up for what you believe in and you have to take a point of view. We profile women in the magazine that we believe in the stand that they’re taking on issues we support them, we feel that they are leaders." The lack of a Melania mention was perceived as shade by Fox News and the Office of the First Lady, and spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham issued a retort, "To be on the cover of Vogue doesn't define Mrs. Trump, she's been there, done that long before she was first lady. Her role as first lady of the United States and all that she does is much more important than some superficial photo shoot and cover." Lady Trump should show Vogue she really doesn't care with her "I really don't care, do u?" jacket.
You think sex ed for humans is insufficient? Imagine sex ed for horses. An epidemic of equine herpes has broken out in the Southwest, and is proving to be a party pooper. FOX13 reports that the outbreak has broken out in Arizona, and rodeos all across Utah are being canceled for fear of it spreading to their own horses. "It’s hard, we canceled one the night before it was supposed to start, people that already traveled clear across the state to compete had to turn around and go home," a high schooler told the news channel. In 2012, Utah experienced a horse herpes epidemic which resulted in more than 160 horses being put down, and this time around, they're practicing safe sex and keeping the state's animals quarantined. High school rodeo competitor Fallon Siddoway is bummed that his competition was canceled, but cares for the safety of his equine pals. "I'm glad that my horses weren’t in jeopardy of getting it, I’m glad that they canceled it," Siddoway said. "If it happened to my horses I would be really upset, if they didn’t make it through it I don’t know what I would do." You know what they say.... save a horse, ride a cowboy.
Kim Kardashian walks into a bar exam. Seriously. In a glossy Vogue profile, her first one solo, the influencer of all influencers announced that she's pivoting from makeup to law. Here's how the magazine introduces the big reveal, "Last summer, she made the unlikely decision... one she knew would be met with an eye roll for the ages... to begin a four-year apprenticeship with a law firm in San Francisco, with the goal of taking the bar in 2022." Kardashian was involved in the release of Alice Marie Johnson, a grandmother who had been in an Alabama prison for a nonviolent drug charge since 1996. Kim's Kardashian-ness got her a meeting with her fellow reality star in the White House, and her powerful plea for justice got President Trump to commute the sentence. That was just the beginning. "The White House called me to advise to help change the system of clemency," she told Vogue, and elaborated on what it was like in the Roosevelt Room Where It Happens. "I’m sitting in the Roosevelt Room with, like, a judge who had sentenced criminals and a lot of really powerful people and I just sat there, like, Oh, shit. I need to know more. I would say what I had to say, about the human side and why this is so unfair. But I had attorneys with me who could back that up with all the facts of the case. It’s never one person who gets things done; it’s always a collective of people, and I’ve always known my role, but I just felt like I wanted to be able to fight for people who have paid their dues to society. I just felt like the system could be so different, and I wanted to fight to fix it, and if I knew more, I could do more." It is an inspiring tale of somebody wanting to use their privilege to learn and do more, and a terrifying indictment of who the President of the United States listens to on issues of criminal justice. But hey, it got Ms. Johnson out of prison, and that's more people than most of us have gotten out of prison in our lifetimes. Kardashian's appetite for criminal justice began the same way many other peoples' did: with the O.J. Simpson trial. Her dad Rob Kardashian was famously a member of O.J. Simpson's defense team, as immortalized by David Schwimmer on FX. "On the weekends they used our home as an office, with Johnnie Cochran and Bob Shapiro," Kim explained. "My dad had a library, and when you pushed on this wall there was this whole hidden closet room, with all of his O.J. evidence books. On weekends I would always snoop and look through. I was really nosy about the forensics." Despite living near Los Angeles, Kardashian's apprenticeship is in San Francisco, and according to Vogue, she traveled there every week since July. She also has a mentorship group with lawyers located closer to home, with whom she logs her "required eighteen hours of weekly supervised study." In California, one does not need to go to law school in order to be a lawyer. They just simply have to pass the bar, and now I've officially run out of excuses. "First year of law school," Kim described, "you have to cover three subjects: criminal law, torts, and contracts. To me, torts is the most confusing, contracts the most boring, and crim law I can do in my sleep. Took my first test, I got a 100. Super easy for me. The reading is what really gets me. It’s so time-consuming. The concepts I grasp in two seconds." Hey, as long as she's willing to put in the work and not Aunt Becky her way to law school, then good for her. Read about the whole intellectual #rebranding over at Vogue.
Listen up, you jaded, cynical people! The universe had something interesting and exciting to offer last week, something previously believed to be unseeable. An international group of astronomers produced the first-ever image of a black hole, a compact area of spacetime with a gravitational pull so overwhelming that nothing can escape it. Albert Einstein, the guy from all those dorm room posters, theorized the existence of black holes, and Wednesday he was proved right. It only took 100 years. The algorithm to produce the image was developed by researcher MIT graduate Katie Bouman, and even if the picture of the massive gap in the galaxy some 6.5 billion times the mass of our (Earth's) sun doesn't move you, Bouman's reaction will. The scientific marvel of this picture of a black hole has the Internet thinking about another b-hole... the butthole. (I am so sorry.)
People like big black holes and they cannot lie. Black holes are within the eye of the beholder. Blackhole is about to get a contributor contract with Fox News. The apocalypse is near, and by near, I mean 55 million light years away. Now that we've seen a picture of a black hole, it can feel free to take us.
If I had a TARDIS I would probably end up in Nevada in 1953 at a nuclear test site just as Nevada, just as the first ever nuclear detonation goes off.
Yeesh. Almost a month ago now Trump showed off some maps of how ISIS was defeated. That wasn't the only thing he showed off.
Really? Can it be true? Haha. Fox News contributor Lawrence Jones III is back at the border in the war zone but not wearing a vest this time. He's wearing something else...
They say you could see some weird sites at Walmart. I didn't believe it until I saw this...
Hey, this just in... another pic of the black hole.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Oh, man. Alright, from the home office in Port Jefferson, New York, here is...
Top Phive Comments From People Who Voted For Trump And Now Need To Pay More Taxes
5. My husband and I work our asses off and just got our taxes done. FEDERAL WE FUCKING OWN $3,341... this is fucking bullshit! All of us are paying for the self centered asshole Trump paying golf trips and going on rallies! I FUCKING hate Trump! You promise us lower taxes!
4. Trump, I voted for you, I support you but I have 2 questions. 1. Where is my middle class tax cut? I paid more this year than last 2 years. Took 3 days to do my taxes, 2. Where is the post card tax return you promised? Please don't make me switch to the dark side.
3. Thanks, Donald Trump, for the tax change. I lost money I depend on every year! I know you don't care and won't see this, but I voted for you, and I regret it. I needed that money, asshole.
2. I spoke with a plumber today who has his own business just got hit with a 17k tax bill thanks to you since he could not write stuff off. He voted for you the first time but won't in 2020.
And the number one comment from people who voted for Trump and now need to pay more taxes...
1. Tax season aka broke bitch flexxin’ on dat azz season.
If you spot the Mindphuck let me know. So, the other day my son and I were talking about when we used to watch "Sesame Street" together when he was little. Either I was a bad parent or that show has changed since then.
Big Bird is at a moral impasse. Snap her neck and save the world from decades of lies, murder, and corruption, or maintain his public image.
A teenager takes a seat on a bench next to a middle aged man reading a newspaper. After a few minutes the man looks over and stares intentively on the youth's multicolored mohawk. The teenager looks over at the man and says, "What's the matter old man, never done anything interesting in your life?" The man responded with, "I once got drunk and had sex with a parrot, I was just wondering if you were my son."
Today's guest is a British musician. He was the guitarist for the 1980s synth-pop band, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and is the author of Nasher Says Relax – Inside the Band and Beyond the Pleasuredome, the 96th book to be pheatured in the Phile's Book Club. Please welcome to the Phile... Brian Nash.
Me: Hey, Brian, welcome to the Phile. How are you?
Brian: I'm okay.
Me: So, I am sure a lot of people know this, or it's easy to Google, but I have to ask... where did the name Frankie Goes to Hollywood come from?
Brian: When Holly Johnson was in a band rehearsing with a couple of other people and in the rehearsal room was a page from a book. The book was called Rock Dreams by Guy Peellaert who was famous for doing the "Diamond Dogs" sleeve, and in this book there was a mock-up of a Los Angeles newspaper telling about Frank Sinatra going from New York to Hollywood to make movies. The picture was him getting off a plane being surrounded by teenagers and the headline said "Frankie Goes Hollywood."
Me: Ahhh... okay. Your book Nasher Says Relax is the 96th book to be pheatured in the Phile's Book Club. What amazed me was you joining Frankie was you being in the right place at the right time. Is that right?
Brian: Yeah, when I think the way these things happen everything in the music industry has been successful. I think it goes right across the board, everything is about being in the right place at the right time. Where you meet your friends the first time you meet when you first go to a job interview and get a job. I have quite an attitude to life where I just walk this road and whatever happens to me is going to happen. I think everything in music is being in the right place at the right time, not so much myself in occasion, but the band itself. Everything is a series of coincidences. When you look at Trevor Horn recording Yes's "90125" album and every Friday they would sit down in the studio and watch "The Tube" and sees us on "The Tube." That's the first thing he sees. Some time later John Peel did a session with us and he was listening to it. He has these two exposers to Frankie. If he's in a different studio doing a different thing and he's on holiday, god knows where, he doesn't see that that doesn't happen. It's the same kind of thing really. It's all circumstance and I think it's all meant to be.
Me: Your cousin Mark O'Toole was the bass player in Frankie, am I right? Was that how you got to be in the band?
Brian: I was in a band with Ped Gill and Holly and two other people and Ped left and Holly left about three weeks later. In the meantime Ped teams up with Mark O'Toole and it was just the two of them. Then Holly kinda joined them. It kinda flies in the face of Holly's version of that is he was looking around for Liverpool for some great musicians to get involved with. That wasn't really the truth. He decided to sack off the music and go off to art college. Jed joined in with them, then Paul Rutherford joined. They went on tour as a four piece supporting band from Liverpool called Hambi & The Dance. Paul Rutherford was doing backing vocals for Hambi & The Dance. I think I was actually at the gig because I've seen Frankie play about three times before I joined them. Paul jumped up with them and Paul was going all over the music and wanted to join them. Jed wanted basically was in a position where he just had a kid and he was looking for something like a bit of stability going forward between his girlfriend and his son. He left and because I knew everyone who was there apart from Paul really, they asked me to join, That's where it started.
Me: I have to show a picture of Frankie from back then to remind people...
Me: Were you in other bands before?
Brian: Yeah, I've been in bands and obviously I knew Mark because he was me cousin, I've known him since I was a kid. I've been in bands with Holly and Ped before so they knew me. It wasn't like I was someone who didn't know anybody. I was capable doing what they were doing. When bands start like that it's never about ability, it's about who we get along with and if we look the part. I think that still applies today.
Me: A lot of my readers from the states might not know what "The Tube" is. I used to love that show when I lived in England from '84 to '87. Explain what it was. It had a big part for the band, Brian.
Brian: "The Tube" was a cool program for everyone that was into music. It was kind of like the first new music program in the U.K. They had live music and the people behind the board who did the mixing for that were great so the bands they had on there always sounded good.
Me: So, how your video first get to be on "The Tube"? It was before you guys were really known, right?
Brian: Our manager sent the legendary Hope & Anchor video off to "The Tube" and it's sitting on someone's desk and there's a guy there who says this is a band from Liverpool, and "The Tube" in a couple of months time was going to Liverpool to do a piece about Echo & The Bunnymen and about the Liverpool music scene, post punk scene, the guy who produces the show picks up the video and asked who are these guys? Lets see what these dudes are like. He throws them into the machine and goes we have to have these on. We had two girls wearing next to nothing, so again that was another amazing coincidence. People who knew anything about music would watch "The Tube" on a Friday evening. "The Tube" always taken credit for us and rightly so.
Me: In '83 when "Relax" first was released as a single how did it do?
Brian: When it was first released as a single it came in I think at 55... and "The Tube" put us on and it gone down to 54. Because they had us on before they took us up to the studio in Newcastle and we did a live vocal over the backing track and that was the thing that too it from there to 36, which then we got "Top of the Pops." It went from 36 to 6 on the back of that.
Me: The first song I heard from you guys was "Two Tribes" in April of '84 when we went to England for a few weeks as we were gonna move back there. I missed out when "Relax" first came out. Okay, so I can't believe what you said about Trevor Horn in the book. I believe it, but I can't believe it. Tell the Phile readers what happened.
Brian: When you explain things to people that are not in the music industry when they go down to Woolworth's with a few pounds to buy a record they think it's going into our pockets, but the truth of it we didn't make money until we recoup our investments. Really the first 100,000 we have to pay back out of our 6%, so for every single we sell 6 pence goes against the 100,000. It got to the stage where we were quite fortunate that when we signed the publishing deal the advance we got was something like a 100 pounds each. I think we got like 500 quid between us. I think the record advance was similar, it was absolutely laughable. More so it got out of hand recording the second album. When he rang up like 1.2 million pounds worth of recording costs.
Me: After the "Liverpool" album came out Frankie broke up... what happened?
Brian: It was obvious the band wasn't going any further with this. He took us on like a vanity project and said he's going to do an all orchestral version, we're gonna get some guy to come in and he's gonna charge 40 grand to do the score and then we are gonna get a 120 piece orchestra, so we did a 12 inch mix that costs us 80 to 90 grand. Even if we sold a million we are not gonna get our money back. We didn't make any money from record sales until the greatest hits album came out which was 5 years after the band split up. Even then because it's a greatest hits and it's not classed as new material we went on a quarter of the royalty rate. So our 8% in England, and 6% in the rest of the world clocked to 1 and a half percent and 2%, it was just an appalling bad deal. What's worse is all through the time since the band had split up and we went in and said to them this is a joke, man, we're getting absolutely fleeced. Not once did he sit down in a room with us, he put his family in front of us when we had disputes with them. He even sent his 21-year-old kid to represent him at a layers meeting, The kid came in on a skateboard. He's not a guy nice, that Trevor, one day my path will cross with him. He'll get what he had coming from me for a very long time. I want to call him out for being an absolute shithouse. He's a shithouse and he wouldn't front up. I'll tell him he's an absolute disgrace. Mr. Nice Guy Trevor, Trevor doesn't do business, that's was thrown at us all the time. Trevor is not a business man, of course he's not. If you're not a business man you don't end up running your own label and having your own studio. Don't be hiding behind the label he's an artist and he doesn't want to get involved with business. He knew exactly where all the pennies were going. It could of been so much better, and we deserved to been treated so much better than we were before.
Me: I love the Grace Jones song "Slave to the Rhythm." That was offered to you guys once, right?
Brian: This is the thing, they went into the studio to do this single with Grace Jones, Trevor sees a title in his head and they ended up spending so much money and fucking around they have to turn it into an album, they have so many versions of it, they had to get their money back. Regards to everyone who was signed to ZTT, I don't think there was a single band that everybody had disagreements with them.
Me: You guys took ZTT, and Trevor to court. How did that go?
Brian: Yeah, it was first time the artist was able to be released from their contact, and not been given their catalogue. The judge said this contract was enforceable going forward. Being that we can't make any new material under this contact, yet they released a dozen albums. We're still being bound by that same thing. Every time we've gone in and sat down with them they don't want to know, it was unfortunate and an oversight on their part, that they neglected to take the merchandising rights in the contact. When we went in and see them we said what about if we do a 50/50 on the merchandise we think that's fair, I nearly grabbed the guy by the scruff of his neck.
Me: Okay, I have to admit, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who thought this, but I thought back in the day the whole band was gay, and that was before being gay really meant nothing. It was a whole different world back then. But it was pretty much just Holly and Paul who were gay. What did you think of the band being known as a "gay" band?
Brian: I think whether it was a "gay" band or a heavy metal band with spandex trousers I would of taken any band as a career. The way I was brought up I never had any prejudice against gay people. The thing for us that was quite interesting was the whole S&M thing, when people said it was all S&M gay gear, when really the way we looked at it, when it came to do with S&M and gay bondage it was all to do about Mad Max. Mad Max 2 was just an enormous influence on us, that's what we wanted to dress like. Now maybe Holly and Paul thought a different way but that's what we thought. Maybe that's what they told us to make us feel better and get us dressed like that. Mad Max was just a great influence... when two tribes go to war, that was a line that we lifted from Mad Max. When we did our early gigs our intro music was the theme tune to Mad Max 2. Working for the black gas, I think that was in the narration to Mad Max 2.
Me: Did you play a lot of gay shows though?
Brian: I think like myself and a lot of the younger people that bought our records a lot of the gayness was kinda lost on them. I don't remember playing gigs, when we toured America, I don't remember looking at the audience thinking there's a lot of gay guys here. The people who first came to see us were Anglophiles, people who followed British music from the states. Of course the people we played with on the American tour I guess they were a little bit more enlightened like when we played in places like Kansas or something or Nebraska, or anywhere in the Bible Belt.
Me: Were Paul and Holly a couple? Did they lead separate lives and didn't bother anyone?
Brian: Oh, they were never a couple, they just known each other. They both hung out on the same scene. I don't think they were anybody's type either.
Me: I think Paul had the easiest job ever. Just background singing and dancing. What was his role?
Brian: I don't want to get into putting Holly down, in case you interview him one day, but you have seen any of his recent performances that are out there he's not the greatest thing to look at on stage. I think Paul's role, and it became more so as the band went on was to be more like a cheerleader, to be someone who was running around. Holly couldn't do that as much as he had to sing as well, but he's just Paul.
Me: What does he do nowadays?
Brian: According to Facebook he's currently in Thailand sitting on a beach.
Me: I want to interview him. Okay, I want to talk about the bands first album, "Welcome to the Pleasuredome." That title track is so crazy, and over produced and has so many things going on. I kinda like it. There's not a lot of guitar on that album, Brian, do you play on that album? Hahaha.
Brian: When you talk about that album I'm someone who gets lost in the Trevor Horn shadow, the stuff that sounds like real instruments is us.
Me: One of my favorite tracks on the album is Bruce Springsteen's 'Born to Run." Man, what a great version. Did you like that song? That's a great guitar on that song.
Brian: That was Holly's idea, he said we should do it because it's an American song. None of us had even heard the tune. We said we don't want to listen to it, just give us the sheet music. So, we got the sheet music and we went in there and played how we thought it should be played, which was like 100 miles per hour. I agree, I think it's a great version.
Me: I wonder if Bruce ever heard your version... do you know?
Brian: I'd love to know if Bruce looked at his publishing statements one day and gone who's this Frankie guy? I'd love to know what Bruce thought of it because every Bruce Springsteen fan I met absolutely hates it. A mate of mine is a huge Springsteen fan and I always wind him about it. He always comes back with we all should be ashamed of it. Glad you like it though, Jason.
Me: I do. In the book you said you don't like the song "Maximum Joy" from "Liverpool." I have to agree with you. Haha. What didn't you like about it?
Brian: Basically we were in Ibiza recording and I was up before anyone else and the engineer was in there and I was just messing about with some echo peddle and a bass drum on a drum machine. The most disappointing thing about the "Liverpool" album was we went to Holland to record it, we spent two full weeks or recording, and when we came back the tunes sounded great, it was a bit more rocky and a bit more attitude, but also leant themselves to being played live more. We didn't want to be taken these machines, which basically placed the eight part sequence of "Relax." From time to time it would fuck up and go astray. Anything that took the lines technology out of the live situation was going to be great for us. A lot of stuff that we recorded in Holland, like "Maximum Joy," which we thought was great, quite heavy and quite rocky, I am not sure why Holly didn't like it very much, or whether he didn't like the direction of the music, but a lot of it changed. "Maximum Joy" was one of those tracks that when we came back from Holland just didn't sound anything like what we came out of Holland with.
Me: When I first heard "Warriors of the Wasteland" from the "Liverpool" album you played it live on some show, and another song from that album. It was the first time the song was heard publicly. That song seemed to rock a little more than the other songs. Was that the point? You guys wanted to rock a little more? I love that song by the way.
Brian: You're kinda half there. You look at artists like Coldplay and Ed Sheeran for example, I've got a lot of time for Coldplay, the first three albums had some fantastic tunes on it. These are songs to be played in small clubs or theatres, if they were lucky. The same thing with Ed Sheeran, when he first wrote his songs like "The A Team" and "Lego House," he was playing for fifty people at a couple of clubs. Say Coldplay played "Charlie Brown" in front of 80,000 people and the place goes absolutely nuts they knew those were the kinda gigs that they were going to be doing. It kinda drags the songwriting where we think it's going to sound fucking amazing. The same thing kinda happened with Ed Sheeran as well, he's gone down the hippy-hop don't stop, it's all gone about a bit funky, and I think that was the thing with "Liverpool." We wanted to get out and tour and of course we had all that bullshit saying that we can't play, and of course ZTT never accounted any of that. It fueled them to make them look better than they were actually were. These people can't play, I never recalled anyone saying that about any other album.
Me: Did it bother you people thought you guys didn't play the instruments?
Brian: To be honest it hurts. I never claimed to be the greatest guitar player but I'll tell you what, Mark O'Toole and Peter Gill as the rhythm section... I like someone stand besides Mark when he plays "Two Tribes" and say he can't play. This was a kid who was about 20-years-old when he was doing this. I think it's hugely disrespectful. Here we are now some thirty years later and people are still asking me about it. I'm entitled to be a little bit pissed off about it. It was a long time ago and I know what I'm good as a musician and I know what I'm good at as a songwriter. I've got nothing to prove to anyone.
Me: It's cool you have a cool solo career as Nasher, Brian. I like those albums. You must be proud of those albums, am I right?
Brian: I was very honoured to work with people like Steve Lipson and Trevor Horn who told me and showed me that going into the studio to record my songs is not making a record. This is the thing I try to pass on to kids, I got to pick these people up in the first four bars and by the end of that song I have to leave them in a quivering mess with their knickers around their ankles. That's a different thing than going in and recording my songs.
Me: In the book you say Holly separates from you guys at the end. What happened?
Brian: It was essentially a fall out with what we call Arsegate at Wembley Arena. It was I think when we were recording the "Liverpool" album there was a confrontation where I think his boyfriend Wolfgang wasn't well, his mind wasn't on the job. He'd only do office hours so we start at 11:00 in the morning and he'd go by 5. He wasn't doing the hours that we were doing. We sat down and had a meeting with him and he'd seen it as we were sacking him but really we wanted him back in the gang. This is all de respect to Wolfgang, he is still the man Holly loved all his life. When Wolfgang came into the scene, he took the lead of our gang. That happened very early on, it was like the first American tour. Holly just became a different person. I don't mean that in a critical way. He was just being a selfish git, we wondered why he could't see it from our point of view.
Me: When he left did you know that was gonna be it for the band?
Brian: We thought we'd get another singer, we'd get another deal. We thought we were the Rolling Stones, we thought we were going to do this shit until we were 70. Of course that's not going to happen.
Me: When was the last time you saw Holly?
Brian: I bumped into him a couple of times. I was at a gig, I went to see the Lightning Seeds and we were both backstage I kinda hid out of the way because I didn't want to make him feel awkward. In January last year I went to the National Portrait Gallery and Martyn Ware from Heaven 17 was curating and Peter Coyle from the Lotus Eaters was there, and I haven't seen him in about 30 years. I went to see him and I was leaving against the wall in this gallery Holly walked past me and didn't see me. On the way out I thought I'm not gonna send the rest of me life walking around and avoiding this fellow, so I went up and spoke to him and said happy new year, I hope he is alright, blah blah blah.
Me: Good job. If Holly would of stayed in the band do you think the band would of stayed together?
Brian: I don't know. I think when we went and did the tour for the "Liverpool" album I think we all knew this was the end of it. It wasn't like a feeling I couldn't put my finger on. It was becoming harder and harder and I don't think he was really into the sounds of the record. Yet the lyrics he wrote were light years ahead on "Pleasuredome."
Me: I just remembered "Pleasuredome" had another cover... "San Jose." What do you think of that cover?
Brian: If I never heard that fucking song in my life again it'll be fucking too soon. It's absolutely horrible. I hated every single note and bar of it. Why did we do that fucking song? Did I miss a meeting?
Me: Hahahahaha. Do you have a favorite Frankie song?
Brian: I don't know really, it's like asking which one of my kids is a favourite kid? I would have to say "Power of Love" really because it's the one that I think will get played on the day I die. More so than "Relax" and "Two Tribes." I love hearing it in random situations, one that happened to me recently. I was in my local super market at Christmas time of course when they were playing all the Christmas tunes and I'm pushing my trolley one way up the aisle, coming the opposite way is a young woman I guess probably in her late 20s, eaten European, possibly Polish with a baby probably about 2-year-old sitting in the trolley. The "Power of Love" is playing and as I pass her in the aisle she's singing it to her daughter. I'm thinking this woman is not old enough to be born really when the song came out, so that was quite cool.
Me: With you solo shows do you play any Frankie songs?
Brian: Yeah, "Power of Love" and "Maximum Joy." I haven't played any Frankie songs live for years, "Two Tribes" done acoustically is not bringing the house down. If I do "Power of Love" I get to do the Robbie Williams "Angels" minute where everyone sings it and everyone loves it.
Me: "Power of Love" wasn't really known over here apparently. What was it like when you first came to America?
Brian: I don't know if it comes across in the book but the first time we came to the states to that club tour it was just amazing. We had success and people know who we were in our own country. We thought everyone is going to be gunning for us, to be rubbish live, so we have to go and tour where nobody knows us. We took our whole production into these little clubs which was ridiculous. Americans get a lot of bad press. I think a lot of Americans could teach the British people customer service.
Me: So, who is your musical influence?
Brian: Rickie Lee Jones. She is my God. I went to see her half a dozen times. She's just premier league, she's astonishing. Her singing and her unphrasing are unreal. I'd love to do a duet with her, but we'll see. Have you interviewed her?
Me: No, not yet. So, do you live in Liverpool now?
Brian: No, I live in London, but will be moving back to Liverpool in about 18-months.
Me: Ahhh. Okay, I love your solo music. It's so different than the Frankie stuff. The last album "432-1: Open the Vein" is fantastic. What can you tell us about it?
Brian: For all intensive purposes it's a concept album.
Me: Brian, thanks so much for being on the Phile. It was so cool to have you here. Please come back again.
Brian: Jason, it's my pleasure. You're a great interviewer! You are the best, mate! Visit me in England!!!
That about does it for this entry of the Phile. I don't know about you but that was one of the best interviews I have done. Thanks to my guest Brian Nash. The Phile will be back this Friday on Good Friday with the one and only... ELVIS COSTELLO! Spread the word, not the turd. Don't let snakes and alligators bite you. Bye, love you, bye. Happy birthday, dad. Rock on.
I don't want you, cook my bread, I don't want you, make my bed, I don't want your money too, I just want to make love to you. - Willie Dixon
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