Exclusive Interview with
WOODY From MADNESS
MADNESS are one of the most iconic bands in the history of British Music and they are on their way to Whitehaven to perform for one night only, during the Whitehaven Festival, on June 18.
Personally I can't think of a better or bigger band than Madness, their songs are timeless and their audiences span generations.
With the feel-good party vibe that they carry with them onto every stage it means West Cumbria
is all set for a totally awesome night of Madness.
I had the pleasure to speak to Madness's drummer and the legend that is Woody a.k.a. Daniel Woodgate.
SM: Hi Woody, good to chat, so you are on your way to Cumbria.
DW: A lovely part of the world, I used to visit friends in Keswick back in the Eighties; loved the place and the beer.
SM: What are Madness busy with at the moment?
DW: Things are really exciting, we are kind of immersed in doing a new album so we are back in the studio; we just have so many songs its ridiculous, we just can't stop writing the bloody things!
SM: Where are you recording the new Album?
DW: It's funny really as we were in looking at a studio called The Premises in Hoxton, a very trendy Bohemian place. We tried to book the studio but is was too busy so we set up our own mikes in the rehearsal rooms and we got a pro-tools operator called Charlie who is really, really good. He started recording some of our rehearsals and some of the tracks sounded so good that we are considering a couple to go on the album so it's a real fresh sound. We don't want to over produce; we like good production but you have to be careful as sometimes the life can be sucked out of a song, all told we will have about 20 tracks on the album but I'm not sure exactly when its coming out.
SM: What did you want to be when you were a kid?
DW: It's one of those ironic things but I wanted to be a pop star; I wanted to be a rock star. When I went to my careers officers at school and they asked "What do you want to be?" and I said "Either an artist or a musician," his response was "You won't make any money," but I was adamant about what I wanted and I went on to be a fruity pop star, (laughing) and it was a bit like "Stuff you mate!"
SM: Why the drums, what's the story there?
DW: It's very, very simple, my brother Nick was 15 months younger than me and he is just the most incredible musician. He was a child prodigy; he could play anything, show him a chord and away he would go, we were so close and I wanted to join in. Drumming was the easiest option, I wasn't a good pianist or anything but drumming I picked up quite nicely.
SM: Your band with your brother Nick was called Steel Erection, where did that name come from?
DW: That band was a load of mates from school. We played all the usual, Alright Now; Long Train Coming; Jumping Jack Flash; it was a good laugh; but the name? I saw it when a motorway was being built, I was about six years old and I remember really clearly seeing the sign "Danger- Steel Erection,' and it was hilarious to me, being a kid, and it always stayed with me and that was what we called the band.
SM: When you joined Madness did you do so straight from school?
DW: I was a bit older, I'd left school, I was 17; I'd stayed on for a bit but left in the January. I got myself a job as a sign writer in a department store and I'd do all the signs like "Ladies Tights 3p;" "Doulton China £20 for the whole set"; I hated it but I had to save up for my first drum kit and paid on HP. I had to get a job to pay it off and that was about the time I saw the band, then called The Invaders, I already knew Mark the bass player, I saw my brother's band the same night but I liked the Invaders best. They were the worst band there but the best band in that they had an energy and they were just brilliant and I loved them totally. When I heard that the drummer Gary had been chucked out of the band I rang up Mark and said is there a place and he said "Yeah come along". Then I met these characters and they were like they were from a different world completely. They were older than Mark and I, not by much, but it made a whole world of difference. Then Suggs came along after I'd heard about him, he'd been kicked out for going to the football instead and from there Madness was born.
SM: Who were your influences?
DW: I'd listen to all sorts, progressive rock, I was partial to Led Zepplin. I loved Jimmy Hendrix, anyone who had a slight heavy side, then I met this bunch of wasters, Madness, and they introduced me to the completely new world of sca, which was really exciting, I'd never really ever heard it before. Madness were creating a new sound, cutting edge for its time.
SM: The energy has always been a part of Madness, is it still there?
DW: Oh god, yeah, massively, I mean we get really bored watching the shoe-gazing side of things, you just think that band's so boring and I'm talking about some great album bands that perform looking at their feet. Our job we feel is to have a good time playing live, if you get too self-indulgent it's just boring, we try and put a slow number here and there but we don't like people stood there looking at the floor, so we get the tempo up and get on with it.
SM: Is your highlight of Madness Finsbury Park?
DW: It was in ‘92 yeah, definitely , we had been away for such a long time so you know when you say you don't realise what you got till its gone ,it was a bit like that.
SM: Did you not realise how much people appreciated Madness?
DW: No not at all, we were always up against it, we only ever saw television executives and record company people who said your not selling enough records, or you should be doing this, it was always a struggle, we were always trying to pay off the money that we got from advance record sales and in ‘92 we had been away for such a long time and we didn't owe anyone any money we could do what we wanted and we came back to this absolutely rapturous response from everyone.
Our greatest hits record was flying of the shelves in the record shops and it was happy days, it was immense.
SM: You spent over 200 weeks in the charts in the Eighties, that's nearly four years.
DW: No wonder people got fed up of us.
SM: Do you miss the intimacy of the likes of the Dublin Castle?
DW: We are fortunate enough not to have made it huge around the world, I say that because we can go to venues around Europe and do some cracking gigs in smaller venues, so because we still do them when we want ,I don't miss it because we still do them. We did an Album recently called The Dangerman Sessions;, we did lots of covers and we actually did a couple of nights at the Dublin Castle, it was really funny, because we couldn't fit the whole band on as we had the brass section, it was absolutely hilarious every time the trombone player played the trumpet player had to duck!
SM: This year you are playing Ibiza Rocks, Majorca Rocks , Leeds -Reading Festival, Whitehaven is life just pure fun now?
DW: To be honest it really is, the only kind of dilemma we have is what we put in the set, as we go on we have a bigger catalogue of stuff... and it really is, how bad is that? That is our one and only problem; we give the audience exactly what they want and keep it fresh enough for us, I mean, if we just did our greatest hits it wouldn't be moving forward. We have to play live to survive, in this day and age you can't rely on record sales, it used to be a case of, you lost money on tour and made money with records, now it's the other way round really.
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