THE CANDYSKINS
It’s hard not to think of Creme Brûlée - The League Of Gentlemen’s dogged rock act - when thinking of The Candyskins. Songwriters of some excellence, few bands endured a ride as bumpy or as laced with disappointment as they. Shit business? Turns out it’s still rather fun, actually. And their story is certainly one with an ending happier than it could have been. I loved The Candyskins growing up, and as such, their victories felt as much mine as theirs. This addition to ‘Indie Heaven’ was a joy to assemble. Read on for a conversation with vocalist Nick Cope…
Hey Nick! It occurred to me that, while I followed The Candyskins pretty much from start to end, I don’t know loads about how the band came to be. I know a bunch of you were at school together, and grew up in Islip, Oxfordshire…
“So, my brother Mark [Cope, guitarist], the other Nick [Burton, guitarist] and myself did everything together growing up in the village. We were metalers, skateboarders, punk rockers… probably in that order too. Mark wasn’t bothered about playing an instrument at the start, but he always bought all the records and listened to John Peel and stuff, so he was a big influence on what I listened to. Nick and I formed a punk band and Mark then bought some drums and joined another punk band. We had known John [Halliday, drummer] from the village school and he was a proper musician with proper drums and stuff but he didn’t join us until a few years later once we had left the village. Move on a few years and a few reincarnations of the band later - which involved a brief excursion into trying to be Kid Creole & The Coconuts - Mark learnt guitar, John came on board… and The Candyskins were born!”
You signed to Geffen pretty much off the bat. A big deal to be on the same label as Nirvana and Guns ‘N Roses in the early ‘90’s…
“To quote Charles Dickens - and his great grandson is a friend on Facebook! - ‘it was the best of times, it was the worst of times!’ Signing was the best thing. We went from doing a few gigs in Oxford to flying to LA to meet the company and doing in-stores at Tower Records and touring round the US for three months. We really were living the dream. We sold a few records [of 1991’s Space I’m In] and the company seemed to like us. They committed to the second and third albums in the deal, but as the wheels left the tarmac at LAX, I couldn’t help thinking that it was going to be a lot harder second time around…”
And was it?
“Well we had obviously neglected performing at home in the UK because we didn’t have a record deal there, so we got on with the job of the ‘difficult second album’, happily revisiting the jangly baggy sound of the previous one .But what’s that coming over the hill ? Is it Nirvana! So we tried to fit in with that, and were listening to Dinosaur Jr., Teenage Fanclub and the rest, but the album [1993’s Fun?] didn’t do well, and so we moved on to the third album. It became like a game. We do demos, they listen to them, they ask for more. We do more, we wait, they say do more. And then they sent someone over to the UK to drop us. If I’m correct in thinking, they came to the show we did with Radiohead and Supergrass in Oxford - or it could have been Ride. We then started doing what we should have been doing all along - building a fanbase at home. We changed management and set off on the quest again…”
How did you come out of that deal financially, if you don’t mind me prying?
“It was shit. We all had to find jobs washing up, working in restaurants, cleaning floors and the like, but the desire to be a band was still there so we soldiered on doggedly. The rise of Radiohead was timely. We’re up to our waist wading through the quagmire of major label record company nonsense, and Thom and the fellas jog past us majestically with the wind in their hair.”
Did you ever get tired of reading the words ‘Radiohead’ and ‘Supergrass’ in reviews, when the only thing you really had in common was you shared a postcode?
“Well, we were all really supportive of each other, to be honest. Oxford has such a great tradition of bands and crew. Everyone knows each other so it was a massive boost to everyone in the city that they were doing so well. Plus they were all brilliant bands.”
You existed in an era where the music press still held great sway. What were your experiences with NME, Melody Maker and the like?
“At the beginning, we weren’t as cool, young and hip as Ride. And then we weren’t as cool, young and hip as Radiohead or Supergrass. We had a great relationship with the wonderful John Harris. He came to New York to do a piece for the Melody Maker, but we never cracked the NME and I remember a really bad album review that Blur guest reviewed which I’ve never read!! My brother Mark was an avid NME reader from an early age, so I think it bothered him a lot more than it did me. We had a few decent live reviews but we were just one of many bands doing their stuff.”
The opener of Fun?, ‘Wembley’, was a song I was obsessed with growing up. I think the line, “a love as big as Wembley” is just really, really lovely…
“That’s very kind! It’s one of my favourites too! ! At the time, we were very much influenced by Teenage Fanclub and Dinosaur Jr., so I was trying to write something like that. I do remember after working it out with the other Nick he said ‘I’m going to make up a great solo for this’ - and that evening he did! This feels a bit like I’m in a music biopic…”
Well, sticking with that theme, tell me about the decision to record 'For What It's Worth', by Buffalo Springfield, which was a single in 1991. You were a band rarely short of a tune. It seems surprising to release a cover as a single…
“We needed a hit! The record company wanted us to do it, basically. The Soup Dragons had done ‘I’m Free’ by The Rolling Stones and the idea was to do a cover version with a shuffly beat. Actually, we did get into trouble with the Stones for the sample [of the tribal chants from ‘Sympathy For The Devil’) which we had to redo. The other Nick did a very good Mick Jagger impression on that one but it did take a few takes!”
I was also hugely into your song ‘Mrs. Hoover’, which was a single in 1996. Almost twenty-five years on, what do you think Mrs. Hoover is doing?
“Good question! It was very loosely based on a neighbour. Not sure where they are now, but the Mrs. Hoover in the song has hopefully won the lottery and spends the day tending her garden with an army of pugs sniffing around her fluffy slippers.”
The same year - and a single from the same parent album, Sunday Morning Fever - you had a hit with Monday Morning! In like a bullet at number 34 in the charts. It was super exciting. I think Candyskins fans, aware of the bumps in the road prior, were really rooting for you at that moment…
“We were on TFI Friday! It was a very exciting experience. It was terrifying, but it was the accumulation of a lot of gigging and promotion and it felt amazing. Like we were a proper band at last! Little did we know…”
It wasn’t long before you split…
“Well, we carried on coming back from the dead for a few more years after - we even got to return to the States after signing to Velvel Records - but after that didn’t quite go to plan we retuned home, had a few artistic differences and that, I’m afraid, was the end of that!”
There’s been a few reunion shows since. In 2007 you played the last night of the famous Zodiac venue in Oxford. That was filmed for the 2010 documentary Anyone Can Play Guitar, which chronicled the history of the Oxford music scene. Then there was Truck Festival in 2009…
“Once again, they were the best of times, they were… The first one was really stressful. It seemed like we had something to prove and I really didn’t enjoy it as I was working as a waiter in town and it all felt wrong .When we did Truck a few years later it was great fun because I really didn’t care what was going on. I think because I was performing regularly in my new incarnation by that point…”
Speaking of which…
“So post Candyskins, my brother Mark became an excellent guitar teacher. He goes into Oxford primary schools and teaches children the love of music and song and he still writes and performs great songs under the name Nine Stone Cowboy. Nick Burton is a most excellent wine connoisseur in Bristol. John Halliday is a most excellent drum teacher and runs a recording studio in Oxford. And I present a series on Cbeebies called Nick Cope’s Popcast with my grandson and my whippet Norman!”
Bloody hell. That’s amazing. I’m so pleased for you, Nick!
“Thanks! I have six albums of totally original inspirational family songs available on my website. There are animations on YouTube. And check out the Nick Cope’s Popcast every Saturday morning on Cbeebies at 9.20am or catch the whole series on BBC iPlayer!”
