YOUNGER YOUNGER 28s
It’s difficult, unless you lived through it - and I not only lived through it, but I was at university for it - to understand quite how boring pop music was at the turn of the millennium. This was an era where my beloved NME desperately peddled a scene they decided would be called ‘Stool Rock’ - men, on stools, playing acoustic guitars and singing about feelings. Check this out from Travis frontman Fran Healy in 1999 on the eve of the release of their bazillion selling second album The Man Who; “I’m fed up of jumping about the stage like an idiot. I want to play my instrument a bit better. This is a mellow album, the first album was one you could go out to. This one is an album you can stay in to. You can do your dishes to it, you can do your homework to it.” Two years later they were headlining Reading Festival. It was the worst of times…
Amidst this banality was a band who burning briefly but bright. I liked them so much I kept a scrapbook of their press cuttings in a Smash Hits!-stylee for a time! Funny, glamorous, touching too; take Dare era The Human League, add a twist of Pulp’s kitchen sink drama, the neo-eighties flava of Bis, a little bit of Steps - put it together and what have you got? Younger Younger 28s!
I caught up with singer Joe Northern - aka, Ashley Reaks. It was fun. It was heavy. I liked him a lot…
So, despite growing up loving Younger Younger 28s, I didn’t know you as Ashley Reaks until a few weeks ago. I knew Joe Northern. Tell me about Ashley Reaks…
“I grew up in Harrogate in Yorkshire and won an academic scholarship to the local archaic, all boys public school. I played football, rugby and cricket for the county as a junior so things could have turned out very differently, really. Abuse at home meant my life took a drastic turn. I flunked all my exams, got kicked out of home at sixteen and was in London with 10p in my pocket at seventeen. I had, however found music and the DIY ethos of punk rock in particular. The Ramones were the biggest influence on me with their misfit status and their sing-a-long anthems celebrating mental illness. I formed my first band No Reality at age twelve and found my own tribe of weirdos to hang around with.”
And when did Ashley Reaks the artist rear his head?
“Well, I made the artwork for the bands I was in, imitating the bleak, collage style of Gee Vaucher from Crass specifically, but also Linder Sterling - who did art for Buzzcocks and Magazine - and the political imagery of The Pop Group. I moved between London and Harrogate over the subsequent ten years, on the dole, getting stoned, making collages and playing in a variety of short-lived bands. Most of my lyrical influences for Younger Younger 28s were from this period.”
And how did that band come together?
“In 1994 my old London next-door neighbour Francis Dunnery called me up out of the blue. He had been the frontman of eighties pop stars It Bites. 'Calling All The Heroes', you know that song? More recently he was the lead guitarist for Robert Plant. He'd signed his own solo deal and asked if I wanted to go on a world tour with him. A few months later I was in New York City for the first time, supporting Radiohead on the first night of a three-month tour that took in America, Canada, Australia - where Frank's single was a hit - and the UK. After the tour I went back to Harrogate and the dole, but Francis' manager Kevin Nixon kept in touch with me and gave me some jobs playing session bass. I’m on Mark Owen's solo album! Kev also managed Scarborough poodle rockers Little Angels, whose keyboard player was Jim Dickinson - aka GI Jimmy D.”
Speaking of which, I always thought Younger Younger 28s first surfaced in the form I always knew them as, but I believe Jim was writing music for videogames under that name for a time prior…
“Yeah, after Little Angels split Jim was writing music for videogames and used the name Younger Younger 28s. The name was actually taken from the name of a yardie gang from Brixton, which got us into trouble when we were due to play there. The police advised us against it. Me and Jim started to write together around this time and kept the name. He was into The Prodigy at the time and I'd gone back to the post-punk influences of my youth, so our first gigs as Younger Younger 28s were the two of us doing a techno-punk thing. It didn't last long!”
How much of the album Soap was autobiographical? Your music spoke to me as a working class, northern kid. I didn't want to wear a kagool and sign on. I wanted to be a pop star. You were a rare example of a northern, working class band that got the aspirational element...
“Most of Soap was autobiographical and based round my small town life, and the colourful characters I'd met on the fringes of society. The songs were about our mutual desire to make something out of our often-desperate lives. The desire to escape reality, or at least create an alternate one, has always been a driving force for me. Like Kim from ‘The Next Big Thing’. She was loosely based on a friend of mine, who was the pin-up girl in my group of friends, and had dreams of becoming a model. Sadly, she suffered from mental health problems, drug addiction and domestic violence and died a couple of years ago. In an alternate reality she'd have found rehab, married a Championship footballer and launched her own album and perfume combo.”
That’s very sad. How was the experience of signing to V2? I always felt bad for you that you missed out on the noughties’ big eighties revival by about two years…
“I've always been completely out of sync with everything, so it came as absolutely no surprise that we existed in the 'wrong' time. But I did enjoy being an anomaly in a sea of deeply-serious pop stars! At one point we were going to go down the whole eighties route - both Trevor Horn and Heaven 17 wanted to produce our album and in hindsight it may have been a good idea. V2? Bad move. We had so many labels offering to sign us, but we ultimately went to V2 as our manager was hired by them to sort out the label as part of the deal. Unfortunately he fell out with someone at the label and his acts - us and Kirsty MacColl - were side-lined, so we didn't get the support we needed. Like, the album was meant to end with 'No More Yesterdays' but the record company wanted us to record a cover - for what I can't remember - so next thing you know they'd tagged our cover of The Cure’s ‘In Between Days’ onto the end of the album without us knowing.”
It’s a familiar story! What was your relationship with the music press at the time?
“Early on they loved us. Melody Maker and NME were very supportive, but that soon changed once we signed to V2 and decided upon 'We're Going Out' as the first single. Then we seemed to be disliked by most of the press! I remember one of them printing an article having a go at me, in my 'privileged position of pop star' for writing 'Valerie' and supposedly laughing at sad guys who were so emotionally impoverished that they could only form relationships with fantasy figures from cheap girlie mags. It never seemed to have crossed their mind that it might have been me! A critical saving grace came right at the end of the band, though, when the Independent ran a very complimentary article on us.”
I'd love to know more about the supermarket tour. James McMahon from Doncaster was very disappointed that you didn't come to Sunderland where he was at university...
“Another of my great ideas! As Kim worked in a supermarket, the video for 'The Next Big Thing' was filmed in Wembley Asda. Oh, the glamour! Obviously we decided to do a tour of supermarkets. I think the staff were a bit put out as they thought were taking the piss. I wish we'd gone to Sunderland too, by the way - my dad was from there and enrolled me as a season ticket holder for the football team aged two. I still go up there regularly…”
Can I ask about the abuse in childhood you talked about? I wouldn’t pry, but you do mention it in your twitter bio. Obviously tell me to fuck off if you want…
“I suffered many years of physical, mental, emotional and psychological abuse from my dad from the ages of eight until he finally kicked me out of the house. The abuse was methodical, prolonged and designed to humiliate me as much as possible and could happen at any time. The unpredictability led to life-long struggles with depression and high anxiety at best and panic attacks at worst. He'd been a mainly good parent to me up until then, so the sudden switch from my protector to my tormentor was hard to comprehend and undoubtedly changed me and my developing mind profoundly. I understand how abuse gets passed down the generations and I'm pretty sure he'll have received similar abuse at a similar age. It's no excuse for his behaviour but helps me understand.”
I’m sorry that happened to you Ashley. That’s very gracious of you to try to understand his behaviour when really you should be under no obligation to.
“It is why my life unravelled though. Like in a lot of cases, the abuse was never mentioned or acknowledged in the family - my mum saw it, but just pretended it hadn't happened - and I so I was scapegoated, left to carry the burden and to try to make some sense of it myself. After I got kicked out of the family home I spent six months sleeping on the floor with a kindred broken spirit who was also a childhood abuse victim and already a heroin addict at six. There then followed many DSS bedsits with other waifs and strays, a move to London away from the scene of the crime aged 16 and another 77 addresses since. I started therapy and recovery from the abuse and subsequent mental health and addiction problems in the late nineties so have come a long way since, compulsively making art and music still being my main coping mechanism of choice. After a few misdiagnoses from mental health professionals - Bipolar Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder - I'm now diagnosed with C-PTSD. Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. This results from a cluster of traumatic incidents, usually in childhood. I was also diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis at 40 which is an auto immune illness where the body attacks itself and has a strong link to childhood trauma.”
Can we talk a bit about the art you’ve made since Younger Younger 28s?
“Well, in relation to my art and music, this early trauma and it’s after-effects unconsciously inform pretty much everything I make. When seen through the lens of abuse the art especially makes more sense, though I don't make it directly as 'survivor art'. I write a lot about other wounded souls I've met along the way - our shared chaotic lives and the desire to get away from the chaos. These other 'walking wounded ' were the people that helped me navigate a way out of my own private hell and accepted me when love was in very short supply. After the band I committed to making art and music in the large quantities I now make it. I've 15 genre-hopping albums - post-punk, dub, art rock, punk, prog, spoken work - available via Bandcamp and my website. My art has been exhibited all over the world - NYC, Chicago, Valencia, Detroit - and last year I had a piece in Sotheby's in London as part of an Outsider Art show. I'm presently working on a book about a two month odyssey to India I undertook in 1993 and have plans to write up my Younger Younger 28s story in the future.”
Well, I wish you all the luck in the world with it. Incidentally, what are the other members of Younger Younger 28s up to these days?
“I'm in touch with Liz, who's recently become a mum. still sings and looks no older than she did in 1999. Last I heard, Jim was a music teacher at Bath University as well as doing the occasional Little Angels reunion gigs. I don't know what Andie's up to these days.”