So, after 30 years in the bathroom, sorry, business, The Wonder Stuff only went and released their most successful album since 1993’s Construction For The Modern Idiot, didn’t they? It even managed to chart at number 38. It might even be their best album. You want Miles to give give give you more more more? Well, here he is…
PART FIVE – 30 GOES AROUND THE SUN
Fast forward to 2016, The Wonder Stuff’s 30th anniversary year. Wow… how did that ever happen?
I knew we would tour in 2016, how better to celebrate me keeping this thing going for three decades? But I wanted to mark it in a more tangible way, I wanted to make an album that documented how The Wonder Stuff sounded thirty years in. Sure, members have come and gone over the years, some making more of an impression than others, but it took me a long time to realise that this band had always had me leading the charge and I could finally say that out loud.
In March of 2014 it struck me that we needed another line up change. Fuzz Townshend was now a bona fide TV presenter, co-hosting his Nat Geo show ‘Car SOS’, and the demands on his time were becoming more of a problem as time went on. And whilst guitarist Stevie Wyatt was a great mate and a great guitarist it started to become evident that he wasn’t the right guitarist for The Wonder Stuff, so we all very amicably decided to go our separate ways.
My old friend Tony Arthy, with whom I had recorded a couple of solo EPs in 2000, had decided that his time behind the drum kit with Jesus Jones was up and I jumped at the chance of asking him to join The Wonder Stuff. I won’t deny that he took some convincing, not only had he come to the end of his time in the Joneses, he was also seriously considering quitting playing the drums for good.
Eventually Tony decided that he’d give it a go; he had been great friends with original Wonder Stuff drummer, Martin Gilks, who had sadly died in a motorcycle accident in 2006, and figured that if The Wonder Stuff were going to carry on then at the very least he could make sure that Martin’s original drum patterns to the older songs would be performed with passion and respect if he took up the position.
Our new guitarist, Dan Donnelly, I had met in the late 2000’s whilst Erica and I were out on our ‘Never Ending Acoustic Tour’. A livewire to say the least, Dan had great form on him by way of his previous bands, years living and rock ’n’ rolling in New York City and a killer collection of solo material that he was regularly touring at the time we met.
Once Dan had agreed to audition with me, passing it with flying colours I might add, he spent weeks trying to talk me out of giving him the job.
“Are you sure you can’t get the old guy back Milo? I’m really not sure I’m the guy you need!” ever the epitome of modesty. But he was and now, into our third year of working together, talking Dan Donnelly into joining The Wonder Stuff was one of the best things I have ever done.
30 Goes Around The Sun began with me writing and demoing songs on my own at home. By the end of January 2015 I had written four songs, ‘The Affirmation’, ‘Good Deeds And Highs’, ‘The Last Days Of The Feast’, ‘Too Far To Fall’ and ‘In Clover’ with Erica. I figured that by the end of February I would have an entire album written, but it wasn’t to be. Those five songs were all I had in me. I struggled on for another couple of months but still nothing came.
I eventually told Tony Arthy that I was getting nowhere fast and he asked me how had the original line up of The Wonder Stuff written The Eight Legged Groove Machine? I told him that we used to just knock any ideas that we had around in a rehearsal room together. “Then why don’t we just do that then?!” came his reply. Well done Tony, sometimes the most obvious of solutions can be the most elusive.
The five of us convened in a recording studio in Stourbridge, of all places, in May of 2015 for three days. Someone would pick a key, Tony would give us a beat to play to and off we’d go. Just like the old days.
We had invited our long time live sound engineer, Simon Efemey, to sit in on the sessions with us. Simon had been one of the first guys to record us back in 1986 at his then rehearsal studio in Stourbridge, The Fridge, only half a mile away from where we were now jamming out new ideas in 2015.
We had written ‘Unbearable’, ‘Poison’, ‘Mother And I’, ‘Ten Trenches Deep’ and a whole host of other early songs in Simon’s studio back in the late 80’s and seemingly we were conjuring up the exact same kind of energy that we had back then. But this time with Simon as our producer, sitting on the floor of the studio giving us encouragement when we were hitting the high spots and telling us to move on to something else when playing into dead ends.
We recorded very rough versions of what we came up with during those three days and I took the recordings home to try to make more sense of them and give the jams lyrics. ‘Don’t You Ever’, ‘For The Broken Hearted’, ‘One Day On’, ‘Weakened’, ‘Misunderstanding Burton Heel’ and ’30 Goes Around The Sun’ all came out of the three day jam session in Stourbridge. Tony had nailed it by encouraging all five of us to get together and I couldn’t have been more delighted. The same guys that had owned the studio in which we had jammed, Ross Syner and Harvey Champion, opened a new studio in Stourbridge in October of 2015, Mockingbird Studio, and The Wonder Stuff were the first band to record there.
I was incredibly grateful that Simon Efemey agreed to produce this new album, his track record in metal and hard rock production preceded him and the thirty year friendship that we shared from months on the road together meant that we knew how to communicate without ever having to disagree. As much as I love the sound of Oh No It’s… I really didn’t want to produce 30 Goes…. I wanted to be a musician, a writer and a singer, not the guy that had to keep fucking around with mic’ positions and compressors.
The studio owners Ross and Harvey acted as Simon’s engineers and their youthfulness and good humour made the sessions all the more enjoyable. There’s no doubt that recording 30 Goes… was one of the greatest experiences that I have ever had in a recording studio and I think that shines through when you listen to what we captured. It is an experience that I intend to repeat soon.
Given that we had decided not to spend absurd amounts of money on the promotion of this new album, after our experience at radio with ‘Oh No!’, we had money for studio time and a great producer. Fuck the music business, I’m in the business of making music, not selling it.
Tony Arthy had previously had dealings with Pledge Music, the crowd funding company, and successfully talked me into funding 30 Goes… via their platform. I wasn’t at all comfortable with the idea at first. To me it just represented a new business model within in the already deplorable music business, but once again, having taken Tony’s advice I learned that my gut feelings weren’t always the best thing to go with.
By working with Pledge Music it directly afforded our new album a chart position in the UK album charts. Don’t ask me what number it got to, those aren’t the kind of things that I commit to memory. But I have to admit that I allowed myself a brief moment of pride when I was told that my band was back in the UK album charts after a twenty-two year absence.
We were out on tour the day we were told about the chart position, sitting in a dressing room at the o2 Academy in Newcastle. I watched my band mates; Erica, Mark, Tony and Dan, as well as our producer, Simon, all take the news in. With the exception of Simon none of the others had ever had a record in the charts and I could see that they were all very proud that the work we had done together had been acknowledged in a very public way. I also felt that our audience took a certain personal pride in the chart position too. As if their support of this band of mine for all these years had finally paid off and they had been proved RIGHT!
I can be a jaded old fuck at times, but I have to say… that moment in the Newcastle dressing room was a sweet moment in The Wonder Stuff’s story. I’m in my 50’s now and I truly could not be in a happier place. This band has brought a lot of joy to a lot of people over the years, none more than me. There’s been a lot of work that has gone into keeping The Wonder Stuff afloat, a lot of good times, a lot of frustrating times and a lot of sad times. But it’s all been worth it to reach where we currently are.
I can only hope that in another ten years I can write a piece much like this that recalls the days in which we made another four albums. Onwards!
So that’s that then. HUGE thanks to Miles for five compelling days of reflection, and to Tony at Manilla PR for bringing this whole thing together in the first place. Those of you who will be having withdrawal symptoms now that the series is over may be interested to learn – if you didn’t already know – that Miles had a book published not too long ago that focused on the earliest days of The Wonder Stuff. It is still readily available and well worth your hard earned cash.
