Whatever happened to the 90s band Salad? They split up back in 1997 after just two albums. Well now they have reformed and released their first single in twenty plus years, so we thought it was time we uncovered their story.
Salad formed in London in 1992 by Marijne van der Vlugt, Paul Kennedy, Pete Brown and Rob Wakeman.
Salad produced dirty, spiky songs, riven with chunky bar chords, bracing percussion, and the insidious melodies of Marijne coated with obscene yet inpenitrable lyrics. They released their debut album Drink Me in 1995 featuring singles Drink the Elixir (which can still be heard cheering up the soundwaves on BBC 6Music) and Motorbike to Heaven.
Follow up Ice Cream (1997) was produced by Donald Ross Skinner, with Charley Stone joining as a live member in 1996. Why are we telling you all this? Because they ended up in the band for real when Salad reformed.
Paul and Marijne started writing together again in 2016 and recorded an album with Donald under the name Salad Undressed, then gathered the “lost” tracks intended for the unreleased 90’s third album, and released them both through a successful PledgeMusic crowdfunding campaign.
The full Salad band got back together to play the Indie Daze Festival 2017 (with Donald taking over the drum role from Rob). A headlining tour followed in April 2018. Here’s what guitarist Charley Stone says:
“I joined them in 1996 as an additional live member, playing a bit of guitar/keys/BVs. Then I joined the band properly and we started writing songs for a third album, but we got dropped by Island before I had the chance to record anything with them.
For nearly 20 years we went our separate ways, and then Marijne and Paul were offered a festival date in 2017 *if* the rest of the band would be involved – and I immediately said “yes!!!” because, out of all the very many bands I’d toured with in the intervening years, they were amongst the most fun and definitely the one I wanted to play with again.
And then, on our very first rehearsal in 20 years, the very first thing we did was to work on a new song. So immediately we knew we were actually reforming and not just doing a one-off nostalgia gig.
We’ve since released a lot of the demos we recorded back in the late 90s (The Lost Album Vol. 1) and we have dozens of new songs with more being written all the time. This single is the first one we’ve recorded together, and I love it. Oh, we also have Donald Ross-Skinner on drums now.”
The Selfishness of Love, the first Salad single in 21 years, is out now, on CD through their brand new PledgeMusic campaign and as a download via your usual online outlets, to tie in with a run of shows. A new Salad album is currently in the making.
Tour dates:
16th November – Shiiine On Festival, Butlins Minehead
8th December – Doncaster, The Leopard
https://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/salad-the-salad-way
Main photo by Tim Topple
