Whiskey Business

"Shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather..."

This, dear readers, is quite some privilege. It’s the afternoon of Wednesday October 7 and in a mid-sized rehearsal room in Hackney, your Hot Press correspondent is witnessing a musical collaboration that’s unlikely ever to happen again.
Well, in actual fact it’ll happen in front of a live audience tomorrow night, in a gig that will be shot by Channel 4 for broadcast over the coming weeks, but right now, just a few feet away from the couch I’m sitting on, Brett Anderson (formerly of Suede), Carl Barat (formerly of The Libertines) and Jon McClure (from Reverend & The Makers) are still divvying up the verses and working out the vocal parts of a stunningly inventive cover version of Velvet Underground’s ‘Venus In Furs’.
Immediately to my left, a female string trio comprised of two violinists and one cellist are producing those screechy-fingernail sounds that make ‘Venus’ such a classic and unique track. The beautiful Rosie Vanier – whose band Rosie & The Goldbug are being hotly touted as the band of 2010 – is playing keyboards and singing.
Meanwhile, the New Silver Cornet Band – a group of seasoned Nashville-based session musicians – are providing the impeccable musical backing. How seasoned? Their number includes percussionist and country music DJ Billy Block, guitarist David Hood from Muscle Shoal Sound (who’s also played on some Stones’ records), band founder Jon Tiven (who produced Frank Black’s Nashville albums) and bassist Wayne Carson (most famous for writing ‘Always On My Mind’ for Elvis). It’d be something of a massive understatement to say that there’s a hell of a lot of talent in the room.
However, there doesn’t seem to be any ego clashes. Although Anderson chose the VU song, he’s happy enough to allow his fellow pop stars to decide what verses they want to sing. “Jon, do you want to open?” he asks. “How about you, Carl? Okay then, I’ll take the first verse.”
The rehearsals are for this year’s Birthday JD Set, held to coincide with Jack’s Birthday, which will be happening tomorrow night in the Village Underground. Previous participants in this annual bash – frequently held in the wonderful surroundings of the Jack Daniel's Lynchburg distillery, which I’ve had the privilege of visiting – have included Patti Smith, Hugh Cornwell, Frank Black, Tim Wheeler, Roisin Murphy and Guy Garvey.
From what I’ve witnessed of the rehearsals, this year’s model is shaping up to be quite some gig. Anderson will mostly be playing old Suede material (‘Trash’, ‘Wild Ones’, ‘Killing Of A Flashboy’), but there’ll be a couple of solo numbers (‘Back To You’, ‘To The Winter’); Barat has opted for a combination of Libertines and Dirty Pretty Things tunes (‘What Katie Did’, ‘Truth Begins’) and some eclectic covers (Mr. Hudson’s ‘Too Late, Too Late’, Belle and Sebastian’s ‘Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying’, Noisettes’ ‘Wild Young Hearts’); McClure meanwhile is doing three Reverend & The Makers tracks (including hit single ‘Heavyweight Champion’) and covers of Count Five, Love and Lennon tracks.
When they’re all finally happy with ‘Venus In Furs’, Barat and Anderson depart, while McClure asks the band to run through Lennon’s ‘I Found Out’ a few more times. The musicians happily oblige. McClure’s a pretty big guy – with a voice to match – and, although suffering from a flu, he gives it his all, bellowing the lyrics and really rocking it up.
After four or five stonking takes, the Sheffield musician declares himself happy. “That were fuckin’ brilliant, lads,” he says. “I’m fucking ‘aving that now!”

At lunchtime the next day in the exclusive Shoreditch House members club, Anderson, Barat and McClure engaged in a series of round table interviews with the international music press. Impeccably dressed and not looking a day older than when he first burst onto the indie scene in the early 1990s, Anderson spoke highly of the New Silver Cornet Band.
“It’s quite interesting because they’re very different sorts of musicians to the people I’ve used before. The first song we rehearsed, the guy was playing pedal steel guitar with a very country sort of feel, so obviously the kind of music I’ve made before is quite a long way away from that. But I think that’s the point of the exercise. It’s about fusion, taking musicians from one field and combining them with musicians from another field, and hopefully what comes out the middle is interesting.
“You’ve gotta approach these things with the right attitude. It’d be stupid of me to tell them to sort of play it more like the record, because it’s not supposed to be like the record.”
When asked if he found the prospect of playing with such veteran musicians daunting, he replied: “No, it’s not daunting. I’ve performed these songs so many times that doing them in a different way is interesting and breathes life into them.”
Relaxed and chatty, Anderson waxed lyrical about his forthcoming new solo album, the fact that he can walk around London without being hassled, and how he no longer cares about what people think of him (“I used to think I had to wear a disguise just to go to the shops, but I’m basically past caring who sees me these days”).
Hot Press reminded him of his famous quote about being “a bisexual man who’s never had a homosexual experience,” and asked had that changed?
“Well, the whole point of that quote was I was trying to define and talk about myself in that kind of blurred way,” Anderson replied. “I was trying to blur the genders. In the early 1990s there was a lot of ecstasy around and I think ecstasy was quite influential in the early ‘90’s in the sense that I think people stopped sexualising people and started treating them as human beings, because it’s quite an emotional drug.
“I’m not in any way advocating its use or anything boring like that, I’m just trying to explain. Me and my friends took a lot of ecstasy in the early ‘90s. I saw myself as a human being rather than a sexual being. Unfortunately the media doesn’t have the ability to see things in tones of grey. It has to be black or white. Unfortunately again, my quote, which was an attempt for me to blur those definitions, ended up with me being pigeonholed in the media.”
The outspoken and politically radical McClure also had a beef with the media regarding his recent comments about the late Jade Goody. “When you read about me, you often read that I’m a loudmouth or a nutter or summat,” he protested. “I’m not any of them fucking things, man. When I see something that’s bullshit, I’ll say it. I’ll give you an example of that: there were a big story in the Mirror or somewhere saying ‘John McClure is a cold-hearted bastard who doesn’t care about Jade Goody’ blah-de-blah-de-blah.
“The truth of what I said is this – and if this is a controversial statement then please correct me. I said, ‘It’s very sad and tragic that Jade Goody died and if, as a result of her having cancer, more girls are having smear tests then that’s also very good because cervical cancer is a very serious issue. But given the fact that she had absolutely no talent and was a racist, do you think – especially as Israel was dropping phosphorous on little kids in schools in Gaza – that the amount of media coverage she got was grossly fucking disproportionate?’ And suddenly that gets twisted to ‘John McClure is glad Jade Goody’s dead!’ That’s how wrong this country is, man!”
Not to be outdone, a seriously hungover Carl Barat had his own media mistreatment story. “The Libertines got put on the cover of the NME before we’d even released anything, so it was like hype, hype, hype. We actually said we didn’t wanna be on the cover of the NME and they said, ‘Well it’s our newspaper so we’re putting you on anyway!’ So that was really scary – a baptism of fire.”
A nervous-seeming type, Barat laughingly admitted that he was initially intimidated by the New Silver Cornet Band, but broke the ice with them by pointing out that they “don’t have a cornet between them!”
Although he’s made some forays into the acting world recently (“I’ll be appearing in a play next year, but I’m not allowed to talk about it just yet”), Barat stated that his main focus remained on music: “I’m making a new record, that’s my main thing. I know everybody says this, but it’s a real new departure for me, because I’m doing things I haven’t done before. I’ve got about five or six songs that I’m really happy with.
“I’ve been working with a few different people recently. I did a thing with Neil Hannon in Ireland. I went over to Dublin for a couple of days. It’s great learning how other people do things – a little like playing with the old boys this morning. Just watching how people write things.”
Slightly deaf in one ear following a botched operation, he looked on the bright side: “I think it helps me to sing in tune actually. But being half-deaf is still a bit rubbish!”

A few hours later in the cavernous Village Underground, the JD Birthday Set kicks off on schedule in front of an invited audience of 500 people. McClure is up first. As the Channel 4 cameras swoop and dive, he knocks the audience dead with a stunning ‘Heavyweight Champion’, a great opening round. ‘I Found Out’ wasn’t quite as punchy as during the rehearsals but it still rocked.
Given his depth of experience it’s probably not surprising that Brett Anderson’s set is the most consistently impressive, the floppily fringed pop star coming on strong and injecting real emotion into ‘Wild Ones’ in particular.
There are some odd moments during Barat’s set, and I’m amused to see him singing the lyrics to ‘Too Late, Too Late’ from a lyric sheet but he makes a fiercely squalling rock’n’roll kind of noise – it’ll be fascinating to see how that sounds on television!. The undoubted highpoint of the evening’s entertainment, however, comes when the three musicians collaborate on a superb re-working of the VU classic, ‘Venus In Furs’.
All told then, it’s a good gig that’ll undoubtedly look great and sound even better when it’s been mixed down for TV. Before we all go gently into the good night, though, there’s time for a brief happy birthday to Mr. Jack Daniel himself. See you in Lynchburg some time...

The full interviews will be available to view on online at www.thejdset.co.uk.