I’ve known Pinch for at least 10 years now, running in the same social circles. He graciously decided to come over to talk about his life and document many of the stories he’s told me in person at the many parties we’ve been to together. Pinch was a founding member of the English Dogs and played drums for the Damned for 20 years. He currently is playing with the all-star band, Spike & The Gimme Gimmes (formerly Me First & The Gimme Gimmes). This conversation happened on 7/21/25.
Part 1 is here
Part 2 is here
Part 3 is here
In Part 4 Pinch talks about Wernt which was a combination of GBH and the English Dogs, playing drums for GBH for one night, writing songs, Lemmy and playing with Lemmy on his album of collaborations, joining Me First & The Gimme Gimmes (now Spike & The Gimme Gimmes), playing half of “Low Rider” with WAR for a night, and answers the often wondered question “What do you do when you have to pee while you’re onstage?”
Audio in the YouTube link. Transcript below it.
Ted: I was reading, I think it’s Ross from GBH… I read his book and he had a lot of great things to say about you. You ended up forming a band with him doing basically GBH and English Dogs outtakes…
Pinch: Yeah.
Ted: Kind of mashing them together. Tell me about that.
Pinch: It was an ex-girlfriend I had at the time that had the idea. She’s like “The English Dogs must have some songs they never recorded and GBH must have some songs they never recorded…” “That’s a great idea!” So I’m straight on the phone. I think Jocko or Ross, I can’t remember. “Did you have anything not make Leather Bristle, Studs and Acne or City Baby Attacked By Rats?” “Oh yeah… we had a few songs that never made it.” “We’ve got some as well that we just never demoed, or we demoed but never made it to any of our releases. What do you think like you know you two, Jocko and Ross, and me and Wakey, we put this thing together? We write new lyrics, we jazz them up a little bit and you know just put a record out?” Because it was a time when I don’t know when it was, ’96, ’97 or something like that… It was that time where punk was really in a weird place. Like GBH had kept going. They added a bit of metal, then they’d taken it off again and it was like, you know, there was big American hardcore influence in the UK, and you know a few kind of pop punk things were coming through. So hardcore punk was in a weird place. But there was still a hardcore punk festival every year called Holidays In The Sun, which was in a place called Morecambe in the northwest of England just below Blackpool. It was a precursor to the Rebellion festival. So we ended up getting together drinking copious amounts of cider and whatever and it was really easy. It was a natural because we all knew each other.
We played with each other in other bands, but never played together before actually. That’s not true… I actually played for GBH in the very, very early years when their drummer was sick when it was our first gig in Germany. We’d been getting on great with them, playing a few gigs as kids in England. We were like “Where you going next?” They’re like “Oh we’re off to Europe like next week.” I’m like “Can we come?” (laughs) They’re like “well we can’t guarantee you any gigs but you know if you show up we’ll try and get you on the bill for a couple”. So we literally took that as like “yeah they’re going to put us on the tour.” We piled five of us into the guitar player John’s Datson 120Y and drove across the channel into Germany. We were like “where’s the first gig?” “Munich” “Alright see you there.” So no address, no nothing. There’s no internet. No nothing! Munich. We got there it’s like wow that’s a pretty big city isn’t it? (laughter) And it was the day before the gig and we’re like “Alright let’s do the old thing where we’ll find a punk rocker and we’ll just ask them.” So we’re fucking driving around for ages. Must have been a completely wrong part of Munich. We didn’t see any punk rockers. We ended up seeing this doggied poster hanging off the wall with GBH on it. Ah! So we looked at that, tore the rest of it off. GBH. Dachau. Like where the fuck is Dachau? So we take this poster to a gas station and we’re like where’s Dachau mate? “oh like some kilometres this way…” and he kind of drew us this map and we roll up to this dingy fucking club. I don’t know how far outside of Munich. The night before. GBH was supposed to be there. They never made it. So the next day they show up and Wilf the drummer was super sick, and he was like “I don’t know whether it’s the water or…” It could be the alcohol, Wilf! So he couldn’t play, so I ended up playing for them that night and we did pretty much all of their songs because I was such a huge GBH fan. I knew the songs. Because we played together. I was a fan of their records. And I was a fan of Wilf’s drumming. He was one of my early influences.
Ted: And he’s one of those guys you would watch?
Pinch: Oh hell, yeah! Specifically Wilf. Classic example of not overplaying. Just completely in the pocket. Just fantastic feel. Really relaxed to look at. Really unphased character, you know what I mean? Not a crazy nut job showing off or doing anything weird. Anyway, so yeah, I had played for GBH.
Ted: So going back to forming the band with Ross? What was that band I couldn’t find any of it online? And I can’t remember the name of it offhand.
Pinch: It was called the Wernt. W-E-R-N-T.
Ted: And I can’t find anything online about it. You recorded an album.
Pinch: Yeah we did an album right off the bat called “Wrecking Temples”, which was more about… the title was like, you know pubs in the UK and venues were shutting. To us they were temples of music, and with all these venues and everywhere shutting down and the scene kind of dying, we felt like you know these temples were getting like wrecked. So you know, we thought it was quite smart anyway.
So we ended up like writing a bunch of different lyrics to these you know these old songs. I wrote most of the lyrics again. Ross wrote some of them. I think Wakey might have wrote a couple. Yeah, he did actually. And we put this record out that was 1980, 1981 transferred freshly into 1990- whatever it was four five six or something. I don’t know, maybe even later. So it hit the scene like “Oh fuck! Have you heard that Wernt record?” and we just like rose through the ranks immediately doing big-ish headlining gigs, great festival slots, and it was just rising so rapidly. We did another single almost immediately. A four track EP, six track EP, I can’t remember, whatever, called the “Barking Spider” EP and the barking spider is basically your asshole. We were very crass people. So we did that to back it up, and people were like “oh this is the thing… this is oh fuck! Have you seen the Wernt?” We were of course insane live. Wakey was madder than ever. He would literally like grow a bag of onions at home until they were almost mush, and the shit is seeping out of the bag, and then just swing it round his head and toss it into the crowd. But of course the bag splatters in the crowd now it’s just fucking rotten onion mush getting all over the fucking place. But it was an incredible sight to see, I must imagine. And we were really good, you know? We were all good musicians, by then we’re all super tight fucking new as shit and we rose so fast that Colin basically started arranging GBH gigs to counter the Wernt gigs. And ultimately, I think gave them an ultimatum: “Look lads, it’s us or them. You know you can’t do both of them.” So the Wernt started for a while doing what the Gimmes do, to come full circle, the Gimmes get people as of when they’re available. So the Wernt started doing that. We had Richie Glover from Dub War on bass. Instead of Ross, we had Gavin King who now plays in Conflict and Fields of Nephilim on guitar. We had Spike, my old mate, doing drums occasionally. Ross from GBH would drum occasionally, because I was in… I think I was… was I in The Damned at the time? I might have been in The Damned, so it must have been late ’90s. It must have been after 1999, I guess. So yeah, it was a rotating lineup, but ultimately it was put to bed because of everybody else’s commitments and GBH’s willingness to keep on being GBH. And God bless them and thankful that they did
Ted: Yeah, Ross said great things about you in his book. I don’t know if you read it or not but…
Pinch: I did read it and some of it is complete fiction. Which is quite hilarious. (laughter) But you know Ross is an unusual character.
Ted: That’s what he says himself. At the end of the book he says he’s like on the spectrum and goes “oh I’m retarded, so now I have an excuse to be stupid.”
Pinch: And people remember things differently. Look how I couldn’t remember what period of time that that whole band, which was a really enjoyable experience, couldn’t remember which period of my life it is! It’s hard when you look back at your life and think well what’s the fucking timeline? I mean have you ever sat down and just gone all right I was born in 1965. Let me put together ’66,’67, ’68… I ain’t got a fucking hope in hell of putting together everything from every year. Nowadays you can just Google shit and pull up your your digital photographs that have digital timestamps. Great! One of my oldest friends, Charlie Joy, he recently digitized a bunch of scanned a bunch of his old pictures. He was that guy who would go to shows carrying the carrier bag with the really nice tape recorder with a couple of fancy microphones, and a really nice old camera, and he put them all online for me to look at. And it brought back some amazing memories, and some really terrible memories One of them was where we played the show outside of Amsterdam with One Way System, this is early English Dogs in the very early ’80s where it was nothing bigger than kind of a porter cabin. And it was just packed with nazi skinheads that had a beef with some of the other guys that were there, and it just went off so bad we literally had to barricade ourselves in the dressing room and these kids came screaming covered in blood. We let them in the dressing room, barricaded the door up and these fucking skinheads had like knuckle dusters with knives on the end of them and they’re fucking stabbing through the door. There were these high windows that you couldn’t climb through fortunately, but you know, those went through, and we were fucking beating them back with mike stands and it was fucking horrible. There was a police station right across the street and the police never came. At all. And he had a photo of the trashed dressing room. The blood on the walls. Some of the fascist graffiti that they’d written on there. It was fucking horrific, dude. So they’re the things that you don’t want to remember, but then he also had some just great early crowd scenes from punk gigs where where it was just a bunch of mates in a village hall that would share a van together and travel and go and support their local band. It was amazing to see, but even then talking to him I’m like “well you ain’t got any dates on these.” So I’m like well let’s try and put together a timeline. When do you think the years are? And even doing that, when you’ve got the photographic evidence in front of you, was that 1980? Was that ’81? Was it ’82? I ain’t got fucking no clue
Ted: I got I got tons of photos I don’t know what the dates are.
Pinch: Yeah it’s crazy.
Ted: Lemmy! Want to talk about Lemmy? When’s the first time you met him and what was that like?
Pinch: Blimey, probably propping up a bar somewhere in London.
Ted: Really?
Pinch: Yeah. He never used to hide. He was always just an amazingly out there character who didn’t give a fuck about telling people funny hilarious dry bad-humoured jokes. But his jokes were very corny, as well. Very much “dad joke” standard. And if he read a joke in the newspaper, that was it. He would quote it to everybody that he fucking met. But I’m not gonna pretend for one minute I knew Lemmy very well. Like I’ve got some friends that knew him very, very well. But I was in the fortunate position where I’ve not only met him a lot of times, hung out with him quite a lot of times on a tour situation, you know where fortunately The Damned and Motorhead had a great history together, so he would invite us on Motorhead tours. I don’t know how many we did. Two, three? Something like that, but really really great times. Then somebody was putting a project together where Lemmy was… it might have been Lemmy that was putting it together, where he wanted to cover, as in “sing on”, a song of each band that he liked and then each band would submit music and he would write lyrics so it would be a total collaboration between Lemmy and whichever band. So we submitted two or three songs that me and Captain had written. And he was like “all right, we’re gonna do ‘Neat Neat Neat’ as that’s a fucking cool bass song, right you know and I’ll duet with Vanian on the vocals.” We sent him three songs, and of course he picked the fastest one, you know.
When you write a song, you have this idea of how it’s gonna be. Because I’ve been a lyricist all my life like in all of the bands I’ve been in. I’ve constantly been submitting lyrics, and writing lyrics to music and sometimes writing music to lyrics. Starting with a lyric, and building in with a melody, and building it from that. But with this, he took this song that I had a really… you know “well it’s gonna go like this”… you know, when he sings on it, “it’s gonna go like this”. When I heard what he did in the studio to it, (in Lemmy’s voice) “I’ve got it. Yeah I’ve got the lyrics. Here we go all right, all right.” and the track rolls, you know we recorded the track, and he’s there singing and what he sung was COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from what I imagined, but absolutely 100% Lemmy! He sung in the opposite space to where I thought he was gonna fill with vocals! When you think back on it, it was obvious: When he heard that, he could hear himself singing in that slot, in that verse, and then having these words in these phrasings for the chorus. So it was a really amazing experience!
We did it in London. And I’m like alright Lem, what time should we get there? (in Lemmy’s voice) “you get down there at noon and set your shit up and I’ll roll in and we’ll be ready to go.” Right, oh great. So we get down there at noon. He fucking eventually rolls in about seven o’clock at night, of course. “Alright let’s do this fucking ‘Neat Neat Neat’…” He goes in the room (mimics the bass line)… does a bass solo in the middle of it. “How was that?” Well it was fucking great, wasn’t it! “Well let’s just do one more.” does it again (mimics the bass line), bass solo in the middle of it. “How was that?” Fucking great! “Alright, well I’m off to a nightclub. I’ll see you guys in the morning.” (laughs)
We get back to the studio the next day. Open up a newspaper. There’s Lemmy and two glamorous Page 3 models exiting a nightclub at like 5:30 in the morning. String Fellows night club which was a famous old nightclub in Soho, you know, wearing his white cowboy boots with these big boobed blonde head girls on each arm. And of course he doesn’t roll in the studio again till seven o’clock that night. He’s like “Oh we’re gonna do the other one now.” And then that’s where he’s sung that one. It’s called “Gravy Train” and it is, as yet, still unreleased.
Ted: This was all for his solo album, right?
Pinch: It wasn’t a solo album. It’s for an album of (collaberations). There was us. Dave Grohl did some songs. Reverend Horton Heat. Joan Jett.
Ted: All with Lemmy?
Pinch: All of them, where he did one of their songs and then they wrote us co-wrote a song together with the band’s music and his his vocals and lyrics. And this German band called Skew Siskin. He used to record and rehearse, I think in their studio when he was in Germany. They were really good friends. Anyway so they did a couple of songs as well. And I guess their engineer guy mixed it all. I’ve met him since and I’m like “What the fuck happened to that album?” He’s like oh it’s got so many different publishers and record labels and agents and managers. It was just like a logistical nightmare that nobody could agree on. So it’s just in limbo. He’s like “It’s finished! It sounds fucking amazing! Your tracks are fucking amazing!” I’m like oh God I really want to hear it! So I got to hear it, but I don’t own a copy of it. Yeah I’ve heard it and it’s fucking great.
Ted: Do you think it’ll ever come out?
Pinch: He told me it’s gonna come out.
Ted: It has to.
Pinch: It would be a tragedy if it doesn’t come out.
Ted: and that’s not his solo album…
Pinch: Well it’s not a solo album. It’s a Lemmy and friends project. It’s all the bands he got on particularly well with and struck up friendships with. And I don’t know whether he was influenced by any of them, but he loved them, and he took the time out to do that thing. So fucking good on him!
Ted: You’re a drummer. It’s kind of weird for a drummer to be writing songs, but I guess Lars does it. You come up with lyrics. Do you come up melodies and stuff like that too? And when you’re coming up with lyrics do you come up with how to sing the lyrics in the melody of the song or is it just the words?
Pinch: I do it in a few different ways and one of the ways that I’ve written songs before was a… 2014? So this is now English Dogs Part 4… I just got back in touch with Gizz. We kind of put it all under the bridge, and he’s like “Mate you know we’re getting loads of interest and you know what do you think?” and I was like ah fuck it, you know we’ve all got our own lives and we’re all adults… Do you got any riffs? Do you think we could do something? So he sent me a couple of things. I’m like oh it’s kind of good. It’s pretty good, good riffs and stuff. I said well the last thing we did, really, this English Dogs, was that ‘Where Legends Began’ album which had no direction, no leash, no limiter, no filter. It was just us puking our teenage music onto tape with nobody reigning us in. We’re older and wiser. I’d like to do something that would underline the English Dogs career, that I could record, as the best of the punk/metal English Dogs. And if it’s the last thing we ever did, I could just proudly draw a line under it and say “That’s it!”
I’ve put it to bed. It’s out on my system. So we just done a 2012 coast-to-coast American headlining tour doing the ‘Forward Into Battle’ album. We were the headliner. Casualties, Havoc, and Toxic Holocaust were the rest of the lineup and it was so great. It was absolutely what we always wanted as a punk/metal collaboration. There was an out-and-out thrash band, a punk metal band, and out-and-out punk band, and us. With fuck knows what we were. But we were doing that ‘Forward Into Battle’ album. It was a chance for people to see something that they thought they would never ever get to see. I’ll never forget our first gig. It was in Cambridge, Massachusetts at the Middle East. It was fucking amazing! People were just losing their shit! And afterwards talking to us at the merch desk and just shooting the shit like “Oh my God! I thought we’d never get to fucking see this!” They knew all the words. They were fucking stage diving. There was pits it was like “Oh! OH! People actually know who we are and they remember it!”. So anyway the tour was fantastic. It was really really groundbreaking for us. It sold out all over the place which was huge for us. It was a great impetus to you know when when Gizz came on, “Do you think we should follow it up?” So I was like alright, let’s do this thing that if we never do anything else, it’s going to underline our career. So we focused on… and I’m like I know what I need it to be. None of the fucking five minute guitar solos. None of the fucking 20 different time changes. It’s going to be a fucking series of… It’s going to be like ‘To The Ends Of The Earth’, but a bit more metal. It’s going to be punk first and foremost, with metal very very heavy thrash tinges, but none of the songs are going to be epics. Of course we ended up with a fucking seven minute song on it. Just the fucking last one. But for the most part it was a series of short snippets. I was just so inspired. I had a friend come and arm my drum kit for record with Pro Tools in this rehearsal studio in El Cajon on North Second, that Norm from Guitar Center used to own. So I would go there, very early mornings, so I knew there was no other bands going to be rehearsing. And I’d do like a little workout in there and then get onto the drums and I could hear it in my head and I was basically recording drum parts with fills, that I would put together in three minute sections. I’m like all right so the intro would be like this, and playing it all to click track, and it was just the drums but I had the music in my head, not necessarily the notes, but what I wanted it to feel like.
So I ended up recording, I don’t know, 10 songs like this? Where I would send the completely finished drum track to Gizz. I’m like I know you’re going to get what I’m on about. Here’s the fucking drums to the song that you haven’t written yet. The next day he would write me back like, “Oh mate I was so inspired! Listen to this!” And you know we were file sharing by that time, and so we could hear things in real time, and it was exactly what I envisioned it to be! Because the rhythms, the tempos, everything… the picking… everything was there already. So then when he would send me back the tunes, I was like “Yeah that’s it!” and then I would get onto the lyrics and then I would send the fucking lyrics to Ade Bailey, and your question about do you work out the rhythms and the cadence? Yes. I absolutely do and I’m a bit of a fucking dick about it because anything that Ade wanted to do that was outside of how I saw it be, I’m like “No no! Do it again! No. Do it again!” Because Ade, bless him, he’s a great fucking voice, great attitude, but his timing is… should we say a little suspect? You know, he wanders the jazz kind of timing thing occasionally and because you know this fucking music was very like… you know… it was like I played to clicks I want it to feel really locked in and powerful. And the rhythms that I was using for the vocal cadence on that, I chose a very different style of of how I was writing my lyrics.
A lot of people do you know, I don’t know what it’s called, where every fucking line rhymes at the end. I wanted to stay away from that. So I would have a rhyming word ,maybe the third word of each line and then the ends of the lines just finished as they finished, saying what I wanted to say. And it was kind of an unusual way of writing lyrics, but because your brain had heard in two lines words that rhymed with each other, it didn’t sound unnatural. And I enabled the stories to be told much better than doing… I’m sorry James Hetfield, but dude, at some point you obviously went to a thesaurus and went give me 20 words of six syllables that all end in “ly”… You know, and yeah, I mean he’s written some of the greatest fucking lyrics of all time…
Ted: For Whom The Bells Toll
Pinch: Bell Tolls… but you know…obviously he’s like Bruce Dickinson and he’ll get inspiration from books and movies, and we all do, but I just wanted it to be a completely different vocal style and I thought I was really successful in that. So yeah, I’ve written songs in my head just with drums and then other stuff like when I wrote for The Damned, I would develop a vocal melody, and from the vocal melody I would fit in words, and then from that, develop actual lyrics for what I wanted to say. There’s a song called “Look Left” on ‘Evil Spirits’ album by The Damned. I just had this music, this whole epic thing going through my head, and I couldn’t get it out and I developed the lyrics and ended up writing it, and weirdly on the the writing sessions, for ‘Evil Spirits’, it was at my friend John Priestley’s studio and I would go in there early before the rest of the band went in. It was just the writing sessions, where we were demoing stuff, and I was like “Look everybody’s fighting for their own shit to be on these records right” and it was always like that with The Damned… They would just submit their own demos like Captain “Here’s 25 songs I’ve written!”, you know, and okay, you’re up against Captain Sensible the fucking magnificent guitarist and singer and songwriter. And Vanian, you know, an incredible lyricist and voice and everything, so I basically had to sneak these demos in with John Priestley playing bass and guitar and me singing and playing drums, and finish it and do like kind of a rough mix so that when Vanian got to the studio they were like “well what else have we got?” I’m like well I got this one Dave… and you should have seen Sensible’s face! He’s like fucking furious! Like how did you manage to do this?! So he knew how I’d managed to do it: I was getting into the studio before he rolled up. So Vanian heard that song, he’s like “Oh that’s definitely going on the record.”, which made Sensible even MORE furious! So the next day crack of dawn, Sensible’s parked outside the studio! (laughter) He just shows up, and he’s like what are you guys doing here so early? I’m like, oh you know, I’ve got to tune the kit. He’s like “uh. I’ll just come in with you.” He basically tried sabotage me trying to write my stuff for that record! I managed to get “Look Left” and they picked another one of mine which I really didn’t want them to pick called “Devil In Disguise” and they put it through the Damned machine. It started off as a very Stoogey sounding song that I got Pat Beers from the Schizophonics to come and play. You know, great San Diego legend guitar player born of fire and energy, and we had this thing sounding fucking brilliant! Super rough, fast, mean sounding super garagey, and then The Damned put it through The Damned machine, and it ended up as this silky smooth piece of cheese that I just disassociated. To the this day, I can’t bear to fucking listen to it. And they insisted on putting it in the set. So when they did, I would play it twice as fast and try and make it sound as spunky as I wanted it to sound, but it never could. They were great at Damned defining product, but for me with that, they just watered it down so much that I just ended up not wanting to own it.
(we start talking about Pinch joining Me First & The Gimme Gimmes)
Pinch: I got to 20 years with the Damned and I wanted to leave them professionally, so I’m not going to talk about the reasons that I left the band. That’s a completely private matter between me and the band members. But when I left the Damned at the end of 2019, I was kind of going to get off the road and don’t really know what my plan was, but my plan was to not be playing with the Damned anymore. So I put out my own press release. That I’m sure pissed certain members of the Damned off that I’d managed to control my own destiny and the way that I left. So of course a lot of people knew that I was leaving and I was available and blah blah. I got back and there was a lot of offers for different bands that I’m not going to talk about either. And I said no to everything because I didn’t really know what I was going to do.
And one of them was Me First & The Gimme Gimmes, because we shared the same agent, Stormy Shepard from Leave Home Booking, who is an amazing person and a great agent. And she was like, “Well Pinch, I’ve got this band are looking for a drummer to move on and I thought you would be a really great fit for them.” And when my wife heard about it, she said, “well, you should maybe revisit that band. They’re a really fun band. Everybody knows them.” I never stuck my toe in that part of American punk rock before. It was always very separate: English punk rock, American punk rock. For me, it just didn’t mix. So I met a few people over the years in several bands of that ilk, but it always seemed like a very closed shop, that whole Fat Records, Epitaph records thing. And, you know, they were kind of snarky, which I found out is very true, but funny in their own way and extremely talented musicians. Nearly all of them, I’ve got to say. So I ended up saying “yes” to the Gimmes and then almost immediately COVID hit. And of course Sensible hit me up like, “How did you… Did you know anything about this?” Because, you know…
Ted: COVID?
Pinch: Yeah. (sarcastically) Oh yeah, it was definitely my plan to leave you guys right before a global pandemic! (laughter) So anyways, the Gimmes didn’t want to let that stop them because they were on a roll with this new project and they wanted to cement this thing and keep it going forward. So, Audra, Spike’s wife and manager, God bless her, put together these GG TV. “We’re going to do this thing where we’re going to fake old TV programs and record it in a closed down environment and just broadcast it and people can stream it. At least there’s something happening to keep us in the public eye and try and get people some income.” Which was great. So I kind of learned my trade with them a little bit, playing with the Gimmes on these streaming things. And at the time, Scott Schiflett was in the band and Joey Cape was in the band. And it was CJ and Spike and me.
So it was very different and I really enjoyed it. They were, like I said, super snarky and you have to be one of, you have to be a smart ass, you know, and stand your ground and fight your corner. And, you know, it kind of keeps you alive. It was a really good thing to do. And since then we’ve had some amazing experiences together. We came out of COVID, one of the first bands to tour with Flogging Molly and Violent Femmes doing like seven weeks around outdoor venues, which were much bigger than that lineup that, you know, that cast would usually do because of the “social distancing” and all that bollocks. Don’t get me started COVID and, you know, masking and vaccines and all that shit. But anyway it was a really, really wildly successful tour. A mix of three completely different bands that you would never put together, but was a fantastic night out, especially as people had been “locked down”, and I use that in inverted commas, for so long and were dying for a really good show to see. And boy, was that a good show! So that was really the start of just a great run of fun touring with a bunch of people coming and going, who are all tour dogs… professionals… no “real drama” (fake coughs) Excuse me, pubic hair in the back of my throat.
Ted: You want some more rum?
Pinch: But on the whole, it’s just a really positive experience and you couldn’t wish for a better gig. I’m not religious, but I wake up every day thankful for the situation that I’m in, still able to play the drums. Still fit and healthy. Enjoy my cigars and whiskey. And there you go. There’s the story of an aging punk rocker who’s still fortunate enough to do it.
Ted: I remember asking you once at a party, what do you do while you’re playing, you have to pee? You’re the drummer. You can’t just… you said once you just pissed your pants while drumming…
Pinch: I did.
Ted: But that was planned.
Pinch: Yeah, it was.
Ted: Do you want to tell that story?
Pinch: When you’ve done thousands of gigs in your life, you might get to the point where you’re like, well, I’ve done this venue like 10 times. What’s going to make it different this time? So oftentimes… nerves or just bad timing of intake of liquids, whatever. Sometimes the second you go on stage, “Oh my God, I need to piss. I really need to piss.” And with the Damned, we would play between 90 minutes and three hours, depending on what kind of show it was. I’m like, “oh, alright, well, I mean, there’s a part in the middle of ‘Eloise’ where I can just run off and have a quick piss if there’s a bucket on the side of the stage.” Which I have done. I’ve actually gone for a shit in the middle of ‘Eloise’ before. I didn’t make it back in time and the drum tech took over and finished the song. That was another story. But I’m dying for a piss and I’m like, alright, I’m just going to do it. And I went over to the side of the stage to Chris Monk, our old long-suffering tour manager. I said, “Chris, check it out. During this next song, I’m going to have a piss on stage.” He’s like, “What do you mean, man? You can’t piss on stage!” I’m like, no, I’m going to be playing the drums, but I’m going to piss. He’s like, “What?!” So I go back to the drum stool and we’re playing “Melody Lee” or playing something, some fast song. And I’m just like, I’m going to let it go. And I just let it go. And I’m on this drum stool and it’s just raining down from all around this drum stool onto the floor. And I look over howling. He’s looking back at me like belly-laughing. (laughter) Of course, after the show, I’ve got a drum tech. He’s like, “well, I’m not touching that.” I’m like, I don’t blame you, mate. So we literally threw away the drum stool after that show and bought a new one for the next gig. But it was so liberating! I mean, you know, there’s some older musicians out there that obviously feel my pain. And I don’t know whether they wear depends or whether they just… Some of these tents that they have built on the side of the stage is like… Shane McGowan from the Pogues used to have a blackout tent built on the side. I’ve worked with the Pogues before. They were like, “You need to put in there like eight fucking towels and like, you know, two dustbins, both of them lined… and a table here and fucking a couple of chairs.” And you would get back in there afterwards. The bins would be full of puke. The towels would be covered in blood and… you know, whatever they’re doing back there, slaughtering cows…
I don’t fucking know, but, at least it’s right at the side of the stage. With us, I’ve got to either run a couple of flights of stairs and a security code for a dressing room to try and fucking piss. Well, no. So going on stage was very, very liberating. Would I do it again? I’d try and avoid it, because I have to buy a brand new drum stool the next day and they’re about 150 quid. But it was a magnificent experience. And that’s what you live for, right? The experience!
(laughter)
Ted: I guess so. You told me a story once you played drums for War. For “Low Rider”.
Pinch: I played half of “Low Rider” when the drummer who…
Ted: … had to go pee? (laughs)
Pinch: (laughs) No. Well, I don’t know, actually! My other world is I work a production gig for a company in the States that puts entertainment… like generally legacy entertainment, which means famous older bands into casinos around the United States. I fly all over the States constantly when I’m not on tour. Well, when I am on tour, I’m advancing shows that I’m going to work and actually physically attend, and be a promoter rep, or stage manager, or whatever when I get back. So yeah, I’ve worked with a lot of very famous bands, many times. And you become quite friendly with quite a few of them. Especially, you know, drummers! We talk nerdy drum shit because we’re drummers. So I’m talking to this drummer and he’s… I’ve got to know him over several shows that we’d worked together. And he does the Spinal Tap thing, you know, where Nigel Tufnel turns up and David St. Hubbins is on stage and he’s all like, “Hey, hey, come on stage!” at the end of Spinal Tap. And this drummer is like kind of beckoning me over, you know? And I’m like, “What? What? What’s up?” And he just fucking stops playing and hands me the sticks. He’s like “You know this song, don’t ya?” I’m like “Yeah…” and he’s like “Just keep it straight. Just keep it straight. The percussionist will do all the weird shit.” So I’m like “Alright! Here we go!”. And I’m now playing “Low Rider” with War! Which was quite cool. It just goes into an endless jam. And then I call him over. I’m like “I don’t know how this ends! Here’s your sticks back, mate!” So yeah, that was a bit of a bucket list moment.
I’ve had some amazing bucket list moments in my career. I’ve been so lucky! I’ve fallen into situations that have been just, you know, as far as musicians go, some of the pinnacles of the things that you can do! I’ve been in a band that sold out the Royal Albert Hall in London with no advertising. Strictly word of mouth. I’ve played at Madison Square Garden! I’ve recorded at Abbey Road! I’ve recorded at the BBC Studios in Shepards Bush. I’ve done so many things that I’ve been really thankful for. But I’m not one of these guys who pats themselves on the back and I’m not very good at taking compliments. So I’ve kind of had to come to terms in my own head with what I’ve done. I’m proud of it. But do I brag about it? No, I don’t. And I can’t stand people that do. I think that kind of traces back to my whole… you know, where you’re a boxer and then you’re a scuzzy punk drummer. “Don’t you ever stick your head above that parapet, boy, because that’ll get smacked down!” And that’s the big difference I’ve learned about America and the UK is in America, you celebrate success and you laud a winner. In the UK, if you dare to celebrate success, they will find something to make you unsuccessful and slap you back down to the level that they believe you should be at. And that’s really sad.
Ted: I heard that’s what the papers were like there. They build you up and then they tear you down.
Pinch: Yeah, I mean, of course, they do it over here with Hollywood stars, but they do it over there with everything. So in the UK, if you come second, you’re a winner. Which is a really weird ass backwards way of thinking of how you should live your life. You should strive to do what you enjoy, but if you can be a bit successful doing it, great! Whether it’s selling ice cream or playing punk rock drums, it don’t matter.
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