Back in 1980, in the dark and deserted ruins of the once almighty port of Liverpool, a young chap named Mike Badger, upset about the destruction of the North by then prime minister Margaret Thatcher, found time was on his hands, and subsequently, found a band that would only see the charts after his departure. Unlike similar cases though - like Beatles Pete Best, who was famously sacked just before the big breakthrough and subsequently only released novelty albums with questionable titles like ‘Best of the Beatles’ - Badger knew what he was heading for. He had a vision all along.
The La’s, in 1990 a worldwide success thanks to the remixed version of ‘There She Goes‘, started out as an eclectic band with influences pouring in from punk, experimental music and rockabilly. Never one for the easiest and quickest way to success, Badger followed his country and rockabilly roots in 1986 and left the La’s in the hands of Lee Mavers, who, four years later, became famous, a reclusive, hard to work with and, eventually, unable to locate. That is, until his recent reappearance with yet another line up of his one time successful pop band. Badger, on the other hand, never had to cope with unexpected success; he never had any - personal glory aside of course. His second band The Onset pioneered Americana but only found the Germans willing to listen, Mojo Magazine brought him under the attention of the record buying public yet no-one bought his records and only art, the one thing he stumbled on by accident, proved successful.
Music was were it all started though and after a ten year break of recording new music, he‘s back. His excitement about rock ‘n roll unchanged, his punk attitude sharpened and his love for rockabilly revamped, Mike Badger talks country, the origins of rock ’n roll and his comeback on the heels of an American Dream.
‘Liverpool is an incredibly romantic place.’, Badger tells me when I ask about his love for his hometown. ‘Because it was the second city of the empire and then it was brought down to its knees by the Second World War. And it has never fully recovered.‘ A chance meeting with Captain Beefheart was the defining moment that drew Badger to music, he said, but, pretty much like the Captain, he never made it to the charts, became a cult and subsequently took a low profile in the land of music, only to shine on in the much more encouraging art community. The one thing he never left behind, was Merseyside.
Mike Badger: ‘I’ve never known a place like Liverpool. It’s a tough place and has soul, and it’s not English. It’s in England but it’s not English. It’s just as much Irish, Welsh, Scottish that it is English. That more so. Practically Irish, and Welsh. Plus the fact that all these other people came through Liverpool on their way to America, and stayed. The black community, the Chinese community. People have called it a nation within itself. Alan Ginsberg said it was the centre of Universal Consciousness in the sixties.’
‘There’s elements about it which I hate, but that’s everywhere. Liverpool is a very special place. And that’s the subject of my next album. Which is just Mike Badger. It’s not Mike Badger and the Shady Trio. Because I recorded it before the band existed. And it’s called ‘Rogue State‘. It’s a solo album because it was recorded before this band. (Laughs) It’s always with everything I release, it’s always retrospective because I never get the chance to release it and then, when I do get the chance, it seems that so much time passed by before it actually gets to come out. But this is my ninth solo album of self written songs. It just takes time to get things done sometimes.’
AltSounds: You start again with a new band now, the Shady Trio.
Mike Badger: ‘This is the first proper band I’ve had in probably fifteen years. Everything changed when I was selected to play in Texas two years ago, the South by South West festival. They asked me to go and play there. That was great. Then I met these people from Nashville and we ended up doing a tour in England and went back over to America, last year in March. And we played around Texas again, and stayed in Willie Nelson’s condo with his band, it was all a brilliant experience. And I really invigorated everything, because I love American music and the honky-tonk really invigorated me again. The guys I played with were in (Liverpool band) Tramp Attack. Last summer I said, should we go for it and commit ourselves to this ‘practise once a week’ and do a gig once a month, try to build it up and try to get us at festivals? There’s people out there who love this kind of music, who love our music and they deserve more than what they’re getting. So we made a conscious effort, and since that, since we all said we all put our hands in the bucket, let’s do it, I’ve been writing more and more. Because I have a reason to write again. I wrote loads of songs over the last six months, more than probably the six years before that.’
AltSounds: What caused you to start a rockabilly band?
Mike Badger:ItÂ’s not strictly rockabilly, although rockabilly is obviously an element which I always loved and wanted to play. I have played in other bands and there has always been some elements of rockabilly. I like rhythmical music and I like rock n roll, I like country music, but rockabilly has both. ItÂ’s basically Celtic music from America which has been sold back to us. ItÂ’s been pasteurised in America and come back (laughs). So I see it as a part of my culture, as being a Liverpool man and living in a Celtic city as well.Â’
‘But I love rockabilly music. There’s always been a roots element into what I do as well. Rockabilly roots are so important to me because the way I see it is it contains all the DNA of everything that happened subsequently, since it started. This doesn’t mean that I’m retrospective, that doesn’t mean that I’m not progressive in my thinking towards contemporary music. I just think that it’s been lost in modern day commercial corporate bullshit.’
‘The thing is, we try and make music like America, in Liverpool, and because we are from Liverpool it has its own identity stamped on it anyway. It’s like the Mersey beat and the British invasion that happened in America in the sixties - all the Americans tried to make music like in Britain. They couldn’t and it changed. I love this two-ing and fro-ing across the Atlantic, it’s very healthy and it goes right back hundreds of years, from the first settlers, the Scottish and the Irish, they took their folk music over to America.’
AltSounds: Your angle is more ‘roots’ than anything else...
Mike Badger: Yeah, for me. Some people play the blues, I’m more rockabilly. I like blues music, but I like the more rockabilly blues. Maybe Chuck Berry, or Bo Diddley. Washboard Sam does a song called ‘Diggin’ My Potatoes’ and that is pure black rockabilly. ‘Down the Bottom‘, by Howlin’ Wolf is pure black rockabilly. ‘Down Home Special’ by Bo Diddley is pure black rockabilly. If it’s hard and rhythmical, that’s what gets my blood flowing. But my favourite rockabilly guys are Johnny Burnette Rock n Roll Trio, Charlie Feathers, who is the king of rockabilly, in my view. He’s the undisputed king of rockabilly. Elvis of course. I like all of Elvis’s stuff, apart from the sixties, when he got rubbed into doing movie after movie.’
‘Another thing that perched me a little bit about the history of American music is, it’s all black and white. It’s all like this - traditional European folk music went over to America and then mixed with the liberated slaves and made rock n roll. It’s just not that simple. Because there’s a huge, essential silent ingredient in all of this and that’s the Native people of America, who, culturally, affected immensely just as much as white music or black music the origin of rock n roll. Maybe more. Because of the shamanic traditions were still very close to the surface. Don’t forget most of the tribes in the north of America were more or less intact up until about 1860 and then they brought in manifest destiny and you know…genocide.’
‘But who would you want to name, who are the greats in American music? Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie, Johnny Cash, Muddy Waters, Jimi Hendrix…it just goes on and on, and all of them had full blooded Indian grandparents, and that’s no coincidence to me, it makes them American. Not just black American or white American, it makes them American. And that’s why rock n roll happened. I think that was the detonator, the shamanic, the traditions were so close to the surface still. It’s in the DNA, the performance, the dancing, the folk stories. It’s just there, it’s under the surface. You cannot eradicate overnight something that has been cultivated for over a thousand years. Like our own Druidic tradition here in Europe - it still exists - respect for trees and nature - and the Bard still exists in songwriters.’
‘I love Hank Williams as well. I think he is in many ways one of the main fathers of rock n roll. We have a song called ‘Thank Hank’, which we will be playing from now, and it’s all about Hank Williams. The life that he led, and died when he was 29 after recording 500 songs… and he was semi literate. He was all hard, but there was a pivotal moment for me when my friend, in the eighties, played me ‘I’m so Lonesome I Could Cry’ by Hank Williams. And he sang ‘The moon just went behind the clouds to hide its face and cry’ and I thought ‘Oh my God that’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard in my life. It’s like William Blake or something…poetic. Again, humour in his songs, heartache in his songs, stories, narrative in a lot of country music. Chuck Berry of course, I think he’s a black country singer. I love the narratives in his songs. His words are absolutely sensational. He’s a great story teller. And that’s what I love doing. It’s another Celtic thing…I think about the stories, and it’s going back to folk, that’s all it really is…stories and people.’
‘I’ve always had narrative in my songs. I can’t do it any other way. It’s just the way it happens for me. I cut my teeth with punk when I was a teenager. There was a sense of duty at that time to sing about what’s important. And not to just throw away casual things. You have a duty to try to put things right, to try to voice your opinion about things. That’s an element which is in my songs as well, that’s embedded in me.’
AltSounds: Was there a deliberate decision to record in this style?
Mike Badger: I just always do what comes naturally to me. IÂ’ve done albums in different styles. IÂ’ve done acoustic albums, IÂ’ve done electrical based songs, but it always comes back to rockabilly for me. Rockabilly, for me, it just hitÂ’s the mark, hits the spot, I think thereÂ’s a fundamental truth in it for me personally.Â’
‘I saw the Stray Cats in (Liverpool club) Eric’s early on, back in the 1980‘s, they were fantastic. That was an influence on me. ‘Runaway Boys‘, their first single, I loved that because it was like punk rockabilly. And I can remember, one day in about ‘81/‘82 I found an old leather jacket of my dad’s, I got some brylcream, I pushed my hair back and I can remember just thinking …‘home‘. ‘I’ve arrived‘. It was like that. This is who I am.‘ He laughs. ‘It sounds incredibly pretentious.’
‘There’s something about it though. It’s up to you whether it’s just the fifties style and you just want to dress up like the fifties. That’s one thing. But I like to think that I’m not just doing that, I’m actually being progressive and taking it somewhere else. We don’t do any cover versions in our songs. We write all our own music, maybe throw a Johnny Cash song in. I see it as taking it forward. I think that’s important, as an artist. Instead of just being stuck in the past, having your feet set in the concrete.’
AltSounds: But itÂ’s not all strictly rockabilly on your EP - itÂ’s the style, itÂ’s the band youÂ’re in now?
Mike Badger: It’s obviously an element in it, even ‘I Love My Love‘ - which is a pop song - is almost Mexican ..it’s like Tex Mex. There’s still an American influence in that song even though it is…you know…not rockabilly. But ‘What You Done to Me‘ is quite humorous, but that’s got rockabilly in it. ‘Shake it Up’ is pure rockabilly and ‘Ten Commandments of Rock’ is rock n roll, I suppose. But then, when we played ’For Who I Am’ - Billy Butler played it on the radio - and he said it sounds like Eddie Cochran. Even though he was the last person in my mind I’m trying to think of, it comes out like that. It’s like ‘Three Steps to Heaven’ or something, which is locked in somewhere into my childhood. ‘Everybody’s Drinking’ is, I suppose, it’s almost got a soul element in it. It’s about people trying to just, they need to distance themselves from reality, getting drunk.’
‘On the EP, it’s all a performance, recorded live, everything, even the voice. And that’s the way they used to do it. It’s like another thing about rockabilly music. Again, it’s a fundamental thing. What? You want to record the drums? And then record the bass? And then record the guitar? And then record the voices? Why don’t you just play it? It’s music. And that’s what resonates with people. That’s why they dig the EP. It slaps around the face. It’s live. It’s recorded live. It’s a performance. It’s a crystallised performance. Which is there forever. If we would re-record it, it would sound completely different. It’s a moment in time.’
‘We recorded six songs in one evening and mixed them. And I’m completely happy with them. That EP was recorded in six hours. It’s the way bands used to record in the sixties as well. Before everyone disappeared upon their own arses. You have to be good enough to play it though. You have to practise. You can’t just do that without knowing what you‘re doing. The guys that I play with, that’s why they’re so special, they can do that. Playing real music. That’s what I want to do, and always will do. And if people take notice - great - once I can do it, I’ll do it. If it’s two people, if there’s no people…’
AltSounds: For the last couple of years you have been releasing previously unreleased material. ’Break Loose’ shows the darker, punk side of the La’s, ‘Lo-fi Acoustic Excursions’ and ‘Lo Fi Electric Excursions’ contains mainly La’s and Onset material, and of course there is the country music focussed ‘Country Side‘.
Mike Badger: ‘I love that sketchbook kind of stuff - different textures, different times. I still think those albums can be played as an album. Like, my last album was ‘Mike Badger’s Country Side’ which is a collection of songs from that era, from all the particularly country stuff. I was trying to get it into that market place where people who like country music and folk roots music can actually buy it.’ ‘But‘, he laughs, ‘it wasn’t country enough for the country magazines because…you know… it’s not. I mean, some of the kind of overtly produced stuff from Nashville hasn’t got the right to call itself country music, it’s pop music and I despise that just as much as I do commercial overproduced music on the radio.’
AltSounds: Johnny Cash once said about the modern country scene ‘I’m not sure that’s country any more.’ You feel that as well?
Mike Badger: Yeah, definitely. It’s funny. What is country music? ‘Country and North Western‘, that’s what Mojo magazine called me. They put ‘Ashtrays and Tables and Barstools’ on number 4 on their play list a while back. It was on their album. Still don’t sell any fucking records (laughs).
Mike Badger: Oh yeah but I always, thankfully, I have always had that - music lovers. ItÂ’s another reason why I keep on going. I know people like what I do, but not enough people get to hear it. ThatÂ’s my problem.
AltSounds: Do you feel youÂ’ve been fighting that for years?
Mike Badger: I fight it everyday. Because I love making music and the band - Ian Laney on drums, Barry Southern on guitar and Chris Marshall on double bass - are incredible. I feel honoured to play with those guys. We really bonded over in Texas last year. I know the feel with which they make the music, it’s just perfect for me. Everything they do. I don’t tell them what to do. I give them some ideas, maybe talk them out of this line, but they get it. They just do it and it’s right. It’s very exciting for me to have a band. The last band I was in broke up probably in the mid nineties. And I had put an awful lot of energy and time into that. We hadn’t signed a major deal. I used to think, we had this great write ups, people who love us at the gigs but we couldn’t get arrested. We were doing well, you know. But I look back now (on the late 80’s & early 90‘s) and I see the Stone Roses and the ecstasy and all that was happening - and we were playing Hank Williams (laughs).’
‘I know I do have a pedigree with this music. Because we’ve done it for such a long time. The Onset, which I was in after the La’s, were one of the first real proper alternative country bands in the country, who did their own material and we were singing about something.’
‘Maybe it’s time, maybe my time has come around. I like to think so, I don’t want to do it for nothing. The more people get the chance to hear everything and enjoy it that’s obviously what I want.’
AltSounds: Do you want to be part of the mainstream? Do you really think you should fight to be part of the mainstream?
Mike Badger: You should fight to be who you are and if other people dig it, cool. These people who are breaking through continuously, there is no substance, itÂ’s style of content. ItÂ’s production over songs. ItÂ’s horrible. ItÂ’s not art. It is not creative. I hate style over content. Content first and then style. But I donÂ’t see any substance, it doesnÂ’t resonate with me.
AltSounds: ThatÂ’s what IÂ’m saying. Why would you want to be part of that?
Mike Badger: I donÂ’t want to be part of that. But I want my music to be mainstream. Because I want people to hear it. The truth of the matter is, production is taking such a hold in popular music, that if the Beatles would come along (now) they probably wouldnÂ’t play the records because there are not produced enough. Their music is not highly produced. And yet George Martin produced that stuff. It is really, fundamentally they way music should sound. ItÂ’s a producer, helping to encapsulate what those musicians make. ThatÂ’s all there is. Now the producer has become part of the musicians.Â’
‘Do I want to be mainstream? Yeah, I want to be mainstream. It doesn’t mean that I am ever going to try to be covertly commercial, or trying to change my sound, but I think people only get to hear what they get told there. And it’s never been worse. It’s as bad now as it’s ever ever ever been. And people had got to go root out to find the music that they like which is great. But you know, the internet has changed everything, it’s almost like a glut of music, there’s so much now whereas, there wasn’t a great deal… there’s more now than ever so it’s quite hard to find. But yeah I’d love my stuff being played on the radio. Nothing I love to hear more than my songs on the radio. I’ve got a living to make. I’ve got a family, I’ve got a car to run and a dog to feed, mortgage to pay. Obviously. For years…I have to do it with my artwork. That’s what I do.’
AltSounds: ThatÂ’s how you make your money?
Mike Badger: ‘Yeah, nobody makes money from music. I’ve feel like I’ve achieved so much more with my artwork than with my music.’
AltSounds: DidnÂ’t you have any success with the Onset at all?
Mike Badger: ‘Personal triumphs - every week! Commercially…no! People knew us more in Germany than here. We used to go over and play in Germany. The opening line of ‘Barstools and Tables and Ashtrays‘ on the ‘Country Side’ album is - ‘I sang to the barmaid because nobody else was around’ and that’s true. With the Onset we turned up at (night club) the Pink Parrot and there was nobody there. There was no one there. But we played our set.’ He laughs. ‘It doesn’t get any worse than that. We still played. Anyone after that was good (laughs).’
‘As I said, the climate was just wrong at that time. I was ahead at the time in being backwards (laughs). And when I say lots of success I mean people used to turn up and know the words to our songs and it didn’t happen in Liverpool. I wouldn't say that the Onset were totally unsuccessful - we scored many personal goals. It is just that if you don't have the backing of a major label your achievements are obviously going to be curtailed.’
AltSounds: What makes you think that Germany is such a different scene?
Mike Badger: ‘Because the infrastructure which they had there allowed us to go there. Because it was arts council funded. There were venues and arts centres which we played. People would come to see us because we were from Liverpool. Whereas in this country they don’t give a shit where you’re from. They‘d come to see us because we were from Liverpool. And, you know, ripped the place up, for the most part. People would come up to us and go…you don’t understand the feeling you get from you Scousers. There’s an identity there we don’t get from anything else. That was very special. So it’s more of an infrastructure really. We would go over there, we would get paid, get accommodation, we get drinks, we get treated like artists and then we come back to Liverpool and they treat you like a piece of shit. Its treats its artists terribly this country, terribly. For the most part unsigned bands are treated like shit by the major labels and venues. We are complaisant in this country towards our artists because we are so good at doing rock n roll here, because it's common it's not valued. But maybe that’s why the art is so good. Why the music is so good.’
AltSounds: You want to put a lot of energy in your new band?
Mike Badger: ‘Yes, and I go down fighting. You must honour in life, whatever you do, whatever your particular conviction is, you must honour it. I’m a really big believer in that. Because life is not a rehearsal. You have an obligation to yourself, to do what comes naturally to you.’
‘I’m looking forward to taking it into the 21st century. My hands are tied and that’s as far as I can take it forward. Because if it doesn’t get played on the radio there’s no point in music. I’ve been played on the radio lots and lots of time, but never really a national, more as a cult figure. But I have respect. There are people who appreciate what I’m doing. That keeps me going. I’m not banging my head against the wall, I’m not kidding myself that I don‘t have anything to offer. I do have something to offer and if I ever doubt my own ability to do what I do, all you have to do is put daytime radio on for ten minutes and you know you’re not kidding yourself. Just because you don’t reach over to a wider audience. That’s what’s controlled by the puppeteers down in London and in the corporations. It’s like oil and water. I’m water, they’re oil. The two just don’t mix. They don’t mix. This revolution, we have to start like all proper revolutions do, from the ground up, not from the ceiling down.’
‘But there’s a big rockabilly scene in Liverpool in the eighties and I think it’s coming back now as well. Because I think there’s a lot of people who are fed up with homogenised, sanitized pure pop music. It will come back again - Liverpool, it will be the city it once was but things are cyclical, things change in cycles, and you have to wait for the wheel to come round.’ He smiles. ‘Like my music.’
Mike Badger and the Shady TrioÂ’s debut EP is available via MikeÂ’s website - Mike Badger | Art and Music from Liverpool
His new solo album ‘Rogue State’ will be released later this year.
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