Interview with The Suzukis – Wigan’s Newest Hard-Rocking Hopefuls
Tuesday, 24 May 2011
Written by Rob Sleigh
When you think of Wigan and its musical contributions to the world, which examples spring instantly to mind? Northern soul? The Verve? George Formby? It’s true that this great mill and mining town has a long and colourful history in music that has, at brief intervals over the past 50 years or so, given us a number of notable movements and artists along the way. But what of the latest pretenders to the title? Wigan’s newest young hopefuls The Suzukis are finally here with their no-nonsense blend of raw punk rock and shameless Northern indie to put the town back on the musical atlas. Following some well-received shows at Brighton’s The Great Escape festival and Liverpool Sound City, The Suzukis are now getting ready to unleash their eponymous debut album, which is due out in July. Stereoboard catches up with The Suzukis’ vocalist Chris Veasey to find out more about the band and Wigan’s music scene.
“There’s a lot of bands, for the size of it,” says Chris, speaking about his home town. “I think there’s a lot of people that are trying to do something. Not just bands, but people trying to create stuff in general. Wigan isn’t on any band’s itinerary, but now we’re getting, like, Babyshambles to play and Arctic Monkeys. It’s good.” There’s no denying that after the boom of Northern Soul music, which was made popular in no small part by the iconic nightclub Wigan Casino during the ‘70s, the town has frequently had a big impact on British music. “Wigan has got a lot of music in it. You go into any bar or just some shitty pub on a Saturday night and they’ll all have the proper good Northern Soul stuff on because the DJs are all middle-aged fellas that used to go to the Casino. It’s good but, like anywhere, there’s a load of shit.”
Chris goes on to describe how the buzz within the town’s music scene had a lot of influence on the band early on: “The place where we practised when we started off was a rehearsal room and there was like I-don’t-know-how-many bands practising there. When we started, we were all like 16 or 17 and all the other bands were in their twenties. Everybody would go into each other’s practise rooms while they were playing. You grow up in it. You listen to everybody else and you want to try and do what they’re trying to do. Not sound-wise, but you want to be in a band and get stuck into it.”
The Suzukis first got together about eight or nine years ago while Chris and drummer Stuart Robinson were at school. “Stu was in a band and I used to go down and watch him practise. The other two [guitarist Adam Bamford and bassist Robert Warnes] were in a band that used to practise at the same place. When the other bands had gone home, we used to get on the instruments and ended up doing our own songs. That’s how we started.” He confirms that, as they went on, the band came about quite unintentionally: “We were just messing about, really. Their other bands split up and we were the only ones left, so we started playing gigs. There was no particular ambition. We’ve just carried on and carried on.”
While growing up listening to bands like T-Rex, The Sex Pistols, Nirvana and The Pixies, Chris also started to learn how to play the guitar. However, it wasn’t until much later on that he would begin thinking about being in a band. “I’d never really thought about it until I started to watch the other lads’ bands practise. I never thought I’d want to start a band, but they were all doing it and it seemed like a good idea [Laughs]. It was just a laugh. Just something to do.”
In addition to some of his own musical influences, Chris admits that, among the four band members, The Suzukis have a wide variety of tastes, which have helped to shape the group’s sound: “We’re all into a lot of different stuff. Our bass player Rob is really into Radiohead and stuff like that. He comes up with most of the musical ideas because he’s a dead good musician. He’s got better and better as we’ve been going along. And Stu the drummer as well. I can’t play guitar very well at all - I’m not much of a musician - but they have more good ideas for songs and stuff.” However, he reveals that, despite Wigan’s more recent musical success stories, few of them have actually had much of an effect on The Suzukis: “We were all into the earlier stuff The Verve did that was more sort of spaced-out. It wasn’t just the poppier stuff and the singles that they started doing later on. Other than The Verve, there’s only Starsailor… [Laughs] and none of us were into that.”
The big break came for The Suzukis a couple of years ago when they were first signed to Deltasonic Records – home of The Zutons and The Coral. Since then, the band have been working on their debut album. However, Chris explains that this process hasn’t been an easy one: “It was fucking hard. We tried to record it a couple of times at different places, but we found out that the people who are supposed to be producers don’t have any idea what they’re doing. If you’re slightly heavier than the other indie bands, they think you’re a heavy metal band and everything gets the Iron Maiden guitar sound put on it.”
He goes on to give us an idea of what The Suzukis really sound like: “It’s quite fast and it’s quite heavy, but it’s not heavy for the sake of being heavy. You can listen to bands like Radiohead and they’re heavy in a way, aren’t they? Heavy in a good way. That’s what we try and do – just make something that’s powerful. When you watch it live, it hits you in the chest. That’s the only part of being in a band that I actually like, to be honest – playing live. I’m not that bothered about recording.” He confirms that this is an opinion that the rest of the band share: “I love playing live, I think we all do. We’re all more focused on that than albums and stuff. It’s exactly what we want to do.”
Speaking of playing live, The Suzukis will be making a couple of festival appearances over the summer months, including Kendal Calling in July and Gloucester’s Underground Festival in September. Chris describes how one of the band’s recent sets at Brighton’s The Great Escape festival went down a storm. “It was a tiny little venue on the beach, but it sounded fucking brilliant. When we started, there was only about five people there, but when we finished, it was packed.”
Following the singles ‘Built In’, ‘Reasons for Leaving’ and this year’s ‘Are You Happy With Yourself?’, all of which have already received a significant amount of airplay on the radio, 2011 looks set to be a big year for The Suzukis. With their first full-length album due out in July, Chris tells us what we can expect: “It’s got real heavy bits and it’s got a lot of power in it, but I think it’s got good songs on it and I think it sounds good. I’m obviously going to say that though, aren’t I? I think it’s good and I think everybody should buy it [Laughs].”
The Suzukis – Festival Dates
Kendal Calling – Sunday 31st July
Underground Festival, Gloucester – Saturday 24th September
To find out more about The Suzukis, go to the band’s Facebook page.
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Chris goes on to describe how the buzz within the town’s music scene had a lot of influence on the band early on: “The place where we practised when we started off was a rehearsal room and there was like I-don’t-know-how-many bands practising there. When we started, we were all like 16 or 17 and all the other bands were in their twenties. Everybody would go into each other’s practise rooms while they were playing. You grow up in it. You listen to everybody else and you want to try and do what they’re trying to do. Not sound-wise, but you want to be in a band and get stuck into it.” 
